Use the Hello Bar to Sell a Website

Last week I redirected nearly all my domains to a page with a simple enquiry form instead of parking – if this week is representative, it looks like enquiries will be more than 400% better.

As Gene said above, people want to see the name is unused – several possible reasons for that.

Huge thanks for the tip. Much less intrusive than the “evil popup mode” we’re currently rocking on DomainFuze!

Great tip, and very timely – about 30 seconds after I replied to your tweet I posted that I anticipate completely moving away from parking in favor of custom “for sale” landing pages, much as @JamesD has. The hello bar tip will make the process easier.

Unfortunately, due to the volume of clicks as a result of the article, the Hello Bar is now inactive because I use the free account. Under normal circumstances, I doubt there would be that much click volume. Perhaps setting up a HB account for each website would be a good idea or just pay for the account.

I don’t see the Hello bar on BabyRegistries.com, using IE or Chrome. Did you take it off?

The flipside to this approach is that a ‘domain for sale’ type feature can be thought to cheapen the content of the webpage to people who aren’t looking to buy the domain, but are looking for information or products to do with the domain keywords. It’s a fine line, but if your real goal is to sell the domain or website, I think it does help.

Very cool plugin. I always wondered what people were using.

For a free form service, I would recommend jotform.com. They allow users to have unlimited forms.

@@Domains You could probably mitigate any negative effects on your bounce rate by using non-sales wording on the HB. I think something like “Inquire about this website” would have less of a negative effect than “This website is for sale.”

You would obviously have a lot more experience in this being a flipper, would you say the people who are unfamiliar with the Whois database are really able to purchase a domain name for a considerable amount?

I would think if someone had the money and wanted a name they would take the time to figure out the whois process.

@ Shai

Maybe but maybe not. I think most people know about huge sales like Sex.com and whatnot, so they may have some idea of the value of a good name but no clue on how to find the owner.

That aside though, the first place many people look to see if a name is a business/website/developed is the domain name itself. For instance, they probably wouldn’t waste time trying to buy Diapers.com when they see the company was bought by Amazon (found on the About Us page).

I hear ya Elliot,

If your main business is selling domains I guess this makes sense. If your developing you need to look at the flip side of this and think of how many of your potential users will look at that in a negative way. i.e. if your a directory charging annual listing fees I would think if a potential advertiser saw a “for sale” sign on top of the homepage he would have second thoughts if he couldn’t be sure the owner was in it for the long haul.

BTW, BabyRegistries.com looks great. You need to email me your designer.

That’s exactly what i did 5 days ago.
I took all my domains from parking,where it had the bar “for sale”.I was not in touch with the potential buyers and i parked them back to Gd,then i went in to my parking acc.and click the for sale option.Now i get inquiries every day and i stay in touch with potential buyers.Big difference
Here is an example:http://visittoturkey.com

I don’t know. I am forging ahead with development of at least one domain per topic. For instance, my DualScreenPhones.com is page 1 of Google not just for the plural, but for the more valuable singular:

http://www.google.com/search?q=dual%20screen%20phone

because it needs to be competitive with the other extensions and with the singular. Well done, if I do say so myself.

Isn’t that the reason domains which sell on Sedo and Afternic get everyone scratching their head, because they are indexed and have traffic or other advantages.

My QRReader.org is page one of Bing, too. It has to beat the competition. I don’t want to fool around.

From my testing, domains with a ‘for sale’ contact form/parking page do get hungry buyers more than domains that look like ‘developed’ (even just a simple wordpress site). One of the reasons ppc domain parking still work.

@Shai – my entire business model is reliant on sales, so the easier I make it for potential buyers, the better.

I use the “Hanbai” template from ThemeForest.com (http://themeforest.net/item/hanbai-multilanguage-domain-for-sale/151728) as an alternative to parking with some good results in contact rates compared to when I was parking.

@AndyO
Seems like a decent template, but the $5 license seems to cover only one site.

GoDaddy’s InstantPage product has a nice “Domain For Sale” Option one can set up. I like their InstantPage product, but it only works with names one has registered over the last 14 months or so. Anything older they force one to use Website Tonight. Wish they allowed the InstantPage option for all domain names one owns.

@ Elliot – that’s an interesting idea to add a sales bar to websites for sale. I just wonder, what’s the major benefit of using such a service as HelloBar.com? Is there some principle difference between using the bar provided by it and a similar html-coded bar (e.g. like one I’ve added today to the site I’m linking to)?