Hello, Happy Monday, and welcome to Domaining MBA Monday here on MorganLinton.com. Today I wanted to talk about a topic that is often misunderstood in the domain space, what I’m talking about is how developing your domain name impacts the potential offers you might get on a domain. There is a lot of buzz about developing domains and using this to increase the value of the name but what very few people think about is what happens if your domain isn’t bringing in the big bucks, what impact does it have on inbound offers.
Based on my own experience and conversations with other investors I can tell you that developing your domain name decreases the number of inbound offers you will receive on the domain. I have talked to countless startups who iterated onto a different name simply because they saw their first choice was developed and felt that they didn’t want to deal with the expense of paying for someone else to rebrand their business.
The point that many new domain investors miss is that many startups have an existing or new business they want to launch on the domain name. They don’t typically want to take over an existing business, that is more for affiliate marketers and web developers that have an interest in scaling existing businesses. Startups and entrepreneurs want to put their idea on your domain which means all the value you may have in the time and energy put into building your site and running your idea on it actually might turn them away.
Now I’m not saying don’t develop your domain names, do it, and if you make money rock and and sell it for a multiple of the revenue on Flippa or directly to another developer or affiliate marketer who buys profitable websites. Just understand that the goal of flipping a solid domain for the name value itself won’t necessarily be helped by developing and monetizing the domain.
Once again, just to re-iterate so there’s not confusion. By no means am I saying don’t develop and monetize your domains. Do it, and kick ass and take names (some pun intended), then sell it on Flippa, sell it to a seasoned affiliate marketer, or enjoy the cashflow yourself. If, on the other hand, you’re looking to sell a domain based on inbound offers, you may want to park with someone like TrafficZ or DomainNameSales.com where it’s easy to put a nice big banner at the top of the site letting everyone know the domain is for sale.
Like the title says, if you build it, they may never come.
Great solid advice there Morgan thanks. Thats a really interesting piece of advice to know about re. development of a domain and reduction of interest from a startup. Also, the two links, I like the idea but I’m not looking for a single ad on a landing page. To be honest I still have not found a decent ‘domain for sale’ landing page, as the ones I am currently using are from the big sites and have the ppc plus and are not all responsive on mobile, dont have the for sale big enough……….. Moreover, deving
out a domain to Flippa, as it goes to show that the content and architecture is king, as I have seen some normal website addresess sell for big money, that being said I would want to dev out with the best domain I possibly had. Cheers.