Learning from my readers – BIN landing pages seem to be the way to go

setting-a-bin-price-efty

Last week I wrote a post asking my readers if they are still parking their domains or instead using “make offer” landing pages. In my book these have been the two options I’ve moved between myself, starting with parked pages and moving to where I am now with all “make offer” landing pages.

This post started a good discussion in my comment thread that included some pretty solid words of wisdom from Logan Flatt, who in case you missed the memo, had a pretty kick-ass 2017 when it comes to domain sales. Here’s what Logan shared about the landing pages he puts on his domain names:

logan-flatt
I’ve spent the past year testing BIN landing pages and it’s been far more lucrative than PPC pages or “Make Offer” pages.
Over the years, “Make Offer” pages only seemed to invite the $100 tire kickers with a sense of unjustified entitlement or nice people from around the world who cannot read the page because they do not speak English and fill out the form thinking they are engaging with the business that formerly used the domain name for a now-defunct website. I grew tired of wasting my limited time on these inquiries and decided to start testing BIN landing pages. A made more money in one year using BIN landing pages than all other years combined.
My current 90-day test: BIN landing pages with a “Make Offer” option with a high minimum offer set at 67% of BIN. So far, so good — one negotiated sale based on the “Make Offer” option, one BIN sale that ignored the “Make Offer” option, and one “Make Offer” sale where, amazingly, the buyer offered higher than the BIN price because he wanted to make payments over time and felt the higher price would compensate me for not taking the full BIN price in cash immediately (he’s currently making payments).
I think the key is to test different approaches for at least 90 to 180 days and sticking to the test for the full test period without deviating from the strategy for that period (commitment and discipline!). Assess the sales made during the period, formulate new hypotheses about what new strategies to test that might increase portfolio cash flow, and start another test to confirm or reject the new hypotheses. Repeat again and again until you lock in a winning strategy based on portfolio cash flow and a minimum ROI for the portfolio. (Read Logan’s comment on my original post)

I’m not sure why BIN landing pages never crossed my mind, but it hadn’t, and based on Logan’s feedback I think I’ll be giving them a shot. I don’t do any outbound on my domain names so everything I sell is inbound.

I like Logan’s approach of testing for 90 to 180 days, sticking to the test, and then staying with the strategy that works the best. At Bold Metrics we live by the mantra “build, measure, learn” and I think applying this approach to domain investing as well is a smart approach.

So here’s what I plan on testing:

  • Half of my domains using DomainNameSales.com landing pages with BIN prices
  • Half of my domains using Efty landing pages with BIN prices
  • Total testing time – 90 days

As usual I’ll share results with all of you along the way and then determine hopefully one of two things at the end of this experiment.

  1. Does adding BIN prices increase my sales velocity?
  2. Between DomainNameSales.com and Efty, who performs the best in this scenario?

Of course, if after 90 days the results are inconclusive I’ll likely continue to run the test unless for some reason I notice negative results (i.e. nothing selling) in which case I’ll augment either my sales prices or start to split test BIN landing pages vs. my normal “make offer” landing pages.

The complexities with running a test like this is that no two domains are truly created equal so it’s going to be hard to adjust for the fact that I might end up with better names on one of the platforms. The other complexity is that the sales velocity is also dependent on what BIN price I use so I’ll be doing my best to put competitive prices on as many names as possible during the testing period. If I sell a handful of names for a bit less than expected, I’m okay with that as long as I’m still booking a solid profit.

Now is where you come in – what else do you think I can do to help create the best conditions for a test like this? I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton