Today's Example

The way I use my domain names is different to most in that I develop them into sites where I believe I can successfully convert traffic into revenue.

Most of the industry is focused on PPC or affiliate programs - for good reason, there's some easy money there.

If you've seen the examples I've been posting during the past few days, you'll see that my sites usually carry some Google Adsense ads, but more importantly, they are being posted as potential ready-to-go businesses.

I use my domains to promote certain business activities - for example, surveying and recruitment.

At the moment, there's a big credit squeeze that we all know about and that in itself presents a great opportunitiy for those individuals and businesses that can take advantage.

Today's example is a site I have just revamped, UK House Buyer.

Instead of offering a service from the site (as it was meant to), I have created a few pages designed to capture the imagination of business people operating in the house buying sector at the moment.

Given the type-in traffic that the name gets, I would be amazed if I wasn't speaking directly to my target audience.

Hopefully, a reputable company will get in touch and I'll be able to set up another income stream.

Now this is where I have to tell you how my approach differs from other domainers and affiliates.

I like to to do some work for my money.

Therefore, I don't sell leads. I sell sales.

A site like ukhousebuyer.com will generate the enquiries, but not in massive numbers. With work, it might be capable of bringing in one or two enquiries a week.

Here's my step-by-step model and I promise you, this can be replicated in any sector, in any country.

UKHouseBuyer.com is likely to be a big ticket sell, meaning that there are large finders fees available for the right properties.

An inexperienced webmaster or someone without sales knowledge might simply set up a site and take a payment for every lead - and maybe earn themselves £10 a time.

I don't do that.

I take an interest in the sponsor's business and act as a partner. If I don't like the people, I don't do the deal. Relationships are everything.

So, my first step would be to spend a day or so in my sponsor's offices and see how they operate.
I want to know all there is to know about their sales processes, how they handle their customers and of course, what their finances are like.

Once I've done that, I build a web site using only the name, "UKHouseBuyer.com" - being careful not to mention the name of my sponsor.

This allows me to change sponsors easily if things go sour for some unforseen reason (usually non-payment sours a relationship pretty quickly).

A site like this will have a contact form linked to an autoresponder that sends daily emails for a few days to the prospective house seller, explaining all about the services offered and the pitfalls.

It's a complete education, with each email designed to create trust and credibilty -two words that should be top priority for anyone building a web site.

Each email would ask the potential seller to contact me if they require further information, with the final email suggesting very strongly that they should get in touch.

I should make it clear here that don't make sales calls. I do accept sales enquiries though, because that puts me in the driving seat.

It is far, far easier to sell a prospect who is calling you than the other way around - and online, getting people to call you isn't that hard of you build your web site to sell, (which 99.9% of people don't).

The reason I prefer to do the selling, is that sales pay far more than leads.

I can pretty much name my own price and when selling services, I aim for 50% of the profit.

Remember, services cost next to nothing, so it's all profit.

On high priced services, there's no point in selling yourself short.

Could somebody offer the same service for less? Sure they could, but what does it matter? The sponsor only pays me when I succeed. If somebody wants to come along and do the same thing for say 20%, they can, because when I call the sponsor and say I have a sale at 50%, he's not going to turn the money down.

All that happens is that someone else has left a pile of money on the table.

Could you do something similar with your domains?