In March I started working as a web developer / SEO for a recruitment company in London. It’s been excellent, we’ve jumped from no where in the rankings to #1 for competitive keyphrases without redesigning or spending tons of money on off-page SEO.

I’ve learned many things sitting opposite the person dealing with sales / business development which can translate to selling domains. Listening to her on the phone has been extremely beneficial. If the conversation isn’t going well, she ends it quickly yet amicably. If someone slams the phone down her, she’s already dialing the next number. All the time being 100% composed and focused.

What’s most impressive is the amount of time she puts in beforehand, fastidiously researching a company before initiating contact. Looking for names, numbers, email addresses, even the structure of email addresses in case she wants to leap over a person or department who may be an obstacle to get to the decision maker. When discussing numbers she knows the company’s history and financial situation.

This may be bread and butter to a lot of people. I think we all can learn if you submerge yourself in different environments, you learn and you grow – as a domainer, business person, human being.

In other news, Google has updated PageRank and Nomzo.com has jumped to PR3. Seeing that PageRank is largely irrelevant these days it’s probably not worth reporting, but hey ho, we like to celebrate!

If you have any news you’d like to share, get in touch.

Take a peek at the new site – Chef Jobs & Catering Recruitment

The development spec was clear. Maintain the brand!

We ensured that COREcruitment’s personality shined through with an adaption of their existing business logo, adding a cheeky little chef hat. The fun continued with an interactive banner showing of a baby chef eating flour. Structurally, it was important to produce a completely unique web design, but still deliver a clear message. Next to the logo we included a mini-splurge describing what CoreChefs would offer. Concise and to the point, giving visitors a quick insight to the company.

The branding emphasis continued in the vertical menu with more apples. The cool little CSS hover effects adds some eye candy and stops visitors getting bored. Contrasting colours were important, green to red, green to purple (with the sliding banner), all separating content and drawing a clients eye.

Over the next few days – we’ll be polishing the site to get it absolutely tip-top!

Check it out – CoreChefs.com

We’d all love to own a category-killer geo domain, the likes of London.com, NewYork.com, Rio.com, Vancouver.com, however that’s not always graspable (unless you have a multi-million dollar budget). But, keep heart, you don’t need a category-killer domain to make a money from a geo domain! Take a look at the post on Noupe, with the exception of a few domains (Baltimore.org, Vancouver.com, Denver.org, Spain.info), the majority use extra keywords such as visit, go, travel.

Development – Where to Start?

So you have a geo domain, now you want to develop. Where to start on the development road?

If you’re on a limited budget, there’s a helpful post on dnforum where domainers share which scripts they are using for their geo developments. WordPress with all its plugins is another sound option.

If you can afford custom web development, then that’s the way to go. It’s expensive but you can look through a site like Sortfolio.com to find a local company with a great portfolio and reputation.

Geo Domain Development – What to Include?

Once you’ve pin-pointed the geo domain name to develop, it’s time to plan what to include. News, weather, hotel room search, a business directory are all great features that a geo website should contain. The main ingredient which turns a good geo website in to a great one is interactivity. People love talking, sharing knowledge and getting involved, especially when it’s their hometown. Listing upcoming local events is a great way to build up a returning visitor base and goes a long way to becoming the main hub for residents and visitors.

Here’s the link to the inspiring article: http://www.noupe.com/showcases/showcase-of-tourism-website-designs.html

So, what are your favourite geo websites?

Overview

The site itself is http://www.webdesignerhelp.co.uk. It has strong foundations with a great generic domain name.

Other plus points:

• Existing revenue through multiple channels (advertising and link sales)
• Comes with a Twitter account with 1000+ followers.
• PR5

Bad points:

• Owner has pimped it out before the sale by selling links to unrelated sites. This could drop the PageRank in future updates.
• No proof of traffic or revenue.
• It’s on Digital Point, which has more scammers than most forums.
• Traffic quality is not great, stumble upon, facebook, twitter et al does not convert as well as search engine traffic.

Good Investment?

This is a safe investment. The buyer can improve the design, increase content creation, increase traffic and then flip the domain in a short period for a nice profit. Or sit the site for a while and recoup the initial outlay over a longer period. The one determining factor which stops us from buying the site is the extra workload.

The auction is underway with a high bid of $800, BIN Price is $2,500.

You can visit the auction here on Digital Point.

OMG code! Run for your life! — Old school domaining was about buying a quality domain and waiting for a wealthy buyer to knock on the door. Add in some domain parking revenue and there was no real need to develop. However, (dun dun dun) the recent decline in PPC revenue and questionable WIPO decisions becoming all too frequent has changed all that. Domain development is simply necessary today. Plus, it’s good for the domainer – increased targeted traffic. It’s good for the visitor – they find something useful. Win win!

If you have the funds to develop, hire people who are experienced developers. It’s a lot less stressful, time-consuming and the end product is infinitely better. On the other hand if you’re strapped for cash you can always learn a basic coding language like HTML. There are tons of great resources, W3School.com, being one of the best. Heck, you can avoid coding altogether by downloading WordPress or another CMS.

Once you have a functioning website up and running, the emphasis shifts from development to traffic building. SEOChat.com is a good resource to get started with the basics of SEO and gaining natural traffic from search engines. There’s many other methods for gaining traffic like spamming the hell out of twitter.

As traffic starts to increase monetizing should be at the forefront of your plans. There’s plenty of revenue streams to pursue — Adsense, affiliate programs, or selling your own products or services.

That’s a brief idea of what domain development involves – hopefully you’re galvanized in to developing today!

The code is BOWL2010

As with most of these $0.99 GoDaddy promos, payment options are restricted, leaving domainers with a choice between paying by check or credit card. No PayPal option, unfortunately.

Thanks to ProductDomains.com for sharing.

We’ve added tags to the Domain Showcase. The newest addition is “Cool Domains“.

What’s a Cool Domain?

It’s a name which is short and sounds delicious. A cool domain is fresher than Web 2.0, Flickr is so last decade. It has to roll off the tongue and no missing letters for people to forget when typing in the URL.

A cool name must stir a reaction. When you hear Twitter, you think chit chat. When you hear Google, you think God. When you hear Nomzo, you think cool domain

Generic Domain Vs Cool Domain

Generic domains are great. They offer so many extra perks that cool domains do not. With a generic domain you can take over a market like Warren Royal did with Bobbleheads.com. But generic domains are not cool because cool is new. Cool domains are invented in the minds of the creative, in the souls of the lost, or in the input fields of a domain name generator.

Cool domains resonate with an audience. They intrigue. They stimulate passion. They force you to react!

(image source)

Disclaimer i) cool is subjective ii) this was not a guest post by Paris Hilton.

Learn domain tips to avoid making this mistake.

When you want to sell your domain you must get through to the decision-maker. This is crucial. Direct contact with the decision-maker saves so much time. On some occasions that’s not always possible though, due to privacy within corporations or lack of information on their website.

Going through other channels such as customer services is a viable option. Just make sure your intentions are clear and they fully understand your proposal, otherwise you’ll be passed from department to department, and eventually to the person who has to put up with 5000 solicitations a day and already begrudges you for the mere fact that you contacted him/her. (If that’s you, I feel for you)

Success Selling Domains? It’s not a Numbers Game

There’s the saying “quality over quantity”. In my opinion this holds true for selling domain names. Of course, some would disagree (would you?), and it largely depends on your pricing points and the size of the company you’re pitching to. My advice – try all approaches and see what works best for you.

We’ve all been spammed by someone in China soliciting the ugliest names seen to man. It sucks and it’s a waste of time. Now, put yourself in the shoes of the CEO (or whoever the decision-maker is). If you’re pitching crap, he/she’s getting the same feeling to when you receive the spam from China. Quality counts. Quality saves time.

Email, Written Letter, Social Media or Telephone

Options are aplenty when it comes to finding an end-user. The protocol to approach a prospective end-user depends on the corporate culture of their organisation. For instance, if there’s a design company who utilises social media such as Twitter or Facebook, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with approaching them through these means. If it’s a big financial corporation and you find their marketing manager’s personal Facebook profile, it’s not good etiquette to invade their privacy. Most big businesses prefer to receive business proposals by written letter anyway. We’ll go to the formalities of this another time.

Email is the #1 friend for a domainer. It’s quick, it’s cheap and it works. Studies show that email still provides the best ROI of any sales material. Be polite, be concise and be available. Make sure your contact details are accessible.

Pitching domains over the phone is rewarding though a little daunting to domainers who aren’t experienced. Just go for it, do it and gain experience. Talking to someone is more personal than email and you can build a good connection immediately. Conversely, when you’re speaking over the phone it’s also easier to tell if the other party is genuinely interested. Thus, giving the option to end the call and save time.

Strange People (& Accents) in Foreign Countries

At times in a domainer’s career–if proactively selling domains–you might come across the perfect end-user, the only problem is that they are half way around the Globe and speak a completely different language. The language barrier would seem to present an insurmountable obstacle to selling your domains. Take Nomzo, our clients span across the World. We’re perfect for pitching domains to end users in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan (that’s not a curveball, we really can pitch in Japanese). Saying that, if we wanted to sell a domain name to a person in Brazil, as none of us speak Portuguese, we’d have to find a domain broker to approach to the buyer. Domain forums are a priceless asset for connecting with other domain sellers from all parts of the World.

Have domain pitch ideas you want to share? Disagree with this article? Add your comment below.

If that’s an affirmative, Nomzo has exactly what you need!

DNTurbo from Nomzo is the top domain brokerage service geared towards domainers with quality generic domains.

DNWho? DNTurbo!

DNTurbo – it’s accelerated domain brokerage. Liquidate your domains in 7 days or less. No upfront fee and only 15% commission when we successfully sell your domain.

Domain Name Brokers

We market to your domain to end users. You know, the company leaders who make business BOOM!

By email, by telephone, by post, by networking, by climbing through their window (if needs be).