HOW TO: Sell an .au domain name to a retail buyer using Netfleet

Netfleet has two sales options, “Domain Catalogue” and “Auction“.

The Catalogue takes longer in theory, to produce a sale but you only need one interested party to produce a high sale price. Buyers make an offer and you then have 7 days to;

1. counter-offer

2. accept their offer or

3. ignore their offer

The Auction is faster as it has a sense of urgency but you need two interested parties in order to produce a high sale price. Under the proxy bidding , buyers only pay $1 more than the next highest bidder. This HOW-TO guide is how to best utilise the two options together to produce a good overall result.

Step 1. Add all your domains into the Catalogue, this should be the starting point for all sales. It gets them indexed by Search Engines and you can start getting offers.

Step 1.1 Add buy now/target prices to your Catalogue listings, this gives buyers a bit of an indication as to what you feel is the domains worth and it helps you to get a number into the buyers mind before they start talking to their advisers. There is no perfect formula for determining a domains value but imagine yourself as a buyer – you will try to guess how many sales a specific domain will bring you, then how much you will make off a sale and subtract the effort you need to add to make it work over a period of time.

Now you have a basic value for the domain.

If the buy now price for a domain is higher than the buyers “value” for a domain they will just shake their head and walk away so you need to be reasonable with the prices or you will be in for a long long wait. You do not have to have a price for every single domain on
day one, so work on this slowly if you have a large portfolio of domains.

Step 1.2 Add a “for sale” banner and link from the domain back to your listing on Netfleet. This one is so often overlooked but it is really crucial to getting eyes onto your listing.

If you are not using the site for monetisation/mini-site then set the name servers to dns1.netfleet.com.au and dns2.netfleet.com.au to “park” the domain with us, we will then add a “for sale” page and a link to get buyers to make offers.

Step 1.3 Check that your credit account details are all up to date so that funds will be deposited into your correct account as soon as the sale is processed.

Step 2. Wait for an offer. This can take months so be patient but as soon as you do get an offer make sure you counter-offer! It is important to get the ball rolling and to show the buyer that you are a serious seller. Lets assume for the sake of this argument that you set your “buy now” (BN) to about double what you will sell for.

~ If you get a low ball offer (less than 25% of your BN) counter-offer very quickly with your full buy now price (shows you are irritated).

~If you get a warm offer (25-50% of your BN) counter-offer quickly with 85% of BN (shows you are willing to negotiate).

~If you get a hot offer (> 60% of BN) then wait a few days before counter offering about 75% (seems like you are seriously considering the offer before responding).

~ If you get an offer of >80% of BN, then you should consider accepting the offer since they are probably not wanting to negotiate and they really think your BN is just too high.

If you get a sale immediately via your Buy Now price then be sure to check the whois details after the Change of Registrant is completed, if the whois shows a retail buyer (often the company name matches the domain name) then you did a good job with your pricing, but if the details look like another domain investor bought the domain then you should consider reviewing your Buy Now prices since they might be too low.

Step 3. If you get a few offers on a domain name but no one accepts your counter offers then you should look into who else would be interested in that domain. Do some research and marketing. Start with a search engine, see if there are multiple parties likely to be interested in the phrase the domain relates to. Good signs are lots of adverts around the term and multiple companies in the generic results.

This is a good time to consider an Auction. We suggest using a 7 – 10 day long auction, set to end on a Tues, Wed or Thursday. Once an auction is “LOADED” you start calling a few companies advertising on search engines using the term, or even ranking generically and let them know what there is a public auction ending on x day with this domain name and they will only pay $1 more than the next highest bidder so if that term is worth anything to them, then they need to act now.

Get them to give you their email address if they are interested so you can send them the link to click on, and you can answer any questions they may have.

* Netfleet will email all the people who have already made offers and even members who have browsed the listing in the past to let them know it is going into auction.

* Netfleet will also email people who have setup alerts for terms in your domains, so you are assured of quite a few “eyes” on your listing if it has been in the Catalogue for any length of time.

As far as Buy Now prices go, we suggest you start with 90% of the BN you used in the Catalogue. When it comes to setting a reserve we’d suggest using about 50% of the BN, this should be the bare minimum you would be okay walking away with. There are no second offers or chances to contact the highest under bidder so make sure if the auctions misses your BN by a few $s you will be relieved and not disappointed.

If you transfer the domain to Netfleet you will not need to pay a fee to set a reserve. Note: if you are setting a reserve; unless the
reserve is met, the domain will not appear in the very popular “Reserve Met and selling today” page on Netfleet so you need to make sure that you market the listing yourself and you direct buyers to https://www.netfleet.com.au/your-domain.com.au (replacing your-domain.com.au with your domain).

Step 4, is to just rinse and repeat step 3. As and when you think a domain is going to be popular (you might have had a few offers via email or a form on the site) then you set up a short term auction on the Netfleet site and again; it is well worth your while to do some marketing on that domain.

 


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