.tv .TV inquiries

[garptrader]

End user inquiries in recent months on .TV domain names as a result of outbound marketing can be found below. If they didn't buy they felt it was too expensive but you don't ask "how much?" if you have no interest in .TV domains. Yes, I could be criticized for overpricing the domain and not following up with a lower price to test the market. True, selling .TV domains for five figures is not the norm and my experience is that selling .TV domains even for four figures is not as easy as it may appear by reading sales threads. Regardless, .TV is not some unheard new TLD that may never develop an aftermarket.

Vestidos.TV
Cachorros.TV
Perritos.TV
Lorena.TV
LuchaLibre.TV
StrengthTraining.TV
AsianModels.TV
ModelAgency.TV
Activewear.TV
Menswear.TV
Leaders.TV
Barranquilla.TV
Floristeria.TV
Conexion.TV
Bootcamp.TV
Adoracion.TV
Bachelor.TV
Barato.TV
Banquetes.tv
Beleza.TV
Bellezas.TV
Bucaramanga.TV
ItalianCuisine.TV
FishingGear.TV

will finish later...

 

[Nattydomain]

What sort of "outbound marketing" are you doing. I have just a handful of .tv domains and offers come in maybe 1-2 times a year.

 

[garptrader]

To avoid the issue of spam filters or emails being received by the receptionist who receives dozens of promotional emails every day and probably just deletes them I have been trying to use Facebook where possible. Keep in mind if you send too many messages in a short timespan FB will freeze your ability to send messages (happened to me so had to break for a few weeks) so you have to space out each message by doing something else for a couple of minutes between messages. Your search will be... Pages Named "Keyword" Note as well that while one could potentially target any company with keyword in their profile, it might save time to focus on companies which already have a TV domain i.e. you own .TV and they own TV.com or TV.cctld. Use BING and Google to identify such companies. There may be some UDRP risk in doing so if they have an established brand on that keyword. Outbound marketing is a LOT of work and the non-response rate is high - much better with FB than email but I have received responses as much as ten weeks after an initial contact. A two-week delay is not unusual. Another commenter mentioned you lose a lot when marketing domains and I would have to agree. You do more work and their willingness to pay is diminished because they started their day without even thinking about your domain so they can just as easily end their day without it if you want a lot of money.

 

[Nattydomain]

Used to send the emails routine for .com domains but never via Facebook. Also my email domains have been in the low to mid $XXX while when the contact me or use my BIN its $X,XXX May have to give it a shot for some lower .com I have

 

[garptrader]

Interesting observation on a TV.com domain I was promoting via FB yesterday. I noticed on the next day SEDO stats show three offer page views (zero visits) on that domain even though no one has yet responded "How much?" So what that tells me is that someone either visited SEDO directly to check the price / attempt a lowball offer or they may have been redirected there after visiting the Whois contact. Of course I don't want to spend my time marketing a domain and then give SEDO a commission they didn't work for.

Similar result on a .TV domain I promoted yesterday - one offer page view on SEDO (domain priced high $XXX) but no response to my message.

 

[garptrader]

A couple more added - continued END USER interest in .TV domains even though perhaps they don't want to pay $XXXX for them.

 

[garptrader]

I will add that some FB users have responded to messages even on Saturdays indicating that FB accounts are connecting to a person with more authority in an organization than an email inquiry.

 

[Ammudamus]

Leonard,
How are you approaching folks on FB? What is the pitch?

A

 

[garptrader]

A,
I look for companies with that keyword in their FB profile and my initial message is basically (or translated into Spanish for Spanish domains)...

Hi. Please let me know if you are interested in the domain name ___ for promoting video content related to your business.
Regards,


Sometimes I leave off the "promoting video content" part if the name is not as videocentric. Sometimes I change a couple words in the message so that FB doesn't see me sending the exact same message to dozens of contacts. Note that even for the same keyword sometimes you will have bands using that keyword or businesses which seem unrelated to the keyword but use that word as their brand or part of it. Technically there is some UDRP risk in contacting such a company so for higher-priced names I may avoid contacting them if they use the keyword as a brand.

I guess one fault of mine is not really selling the name once they ask "How much?" Perhaps as well I err by not following up if they fail to respond after quoting a price. For names I quote $2500 or above I will generally offer a monthly lease option of ~2% of the sales price. But if they don't respond to a quote it is likely they want the name for 5-10% of my asking price.

Ultimately outbound marketing is very labor intensive and does not seem to produce $XXXX sales which in my view would be the motive to justify the effort. Spending hours to generate a low $xxx sale is not as appealing.

 

[garptrader]

Perhaps one approach I could try rather than quoting a take it or leave it price would be to say our target price is $XXXX but we are open to offers. Please make your best offer and we will consider it. However, if their offer is 5% of my target price, am I going to seriously consider it? As well, expressing a willingness to accept offers below your target price is almost certainly going to result in offers considerably below your target price. I have worked for many years as an Accounting/Finance professional so I know how much companies spend on expenditures which are less critical than the brand name for their business. Domains are not valued by those outside the industry the way those of us who invest in domains view them.

To give you an example, within the last two weeks while marketing some other names, a company offered me $6000 for PremiumDomains.TV and said that if that offer did not suffice to please counteroffer. I thought about all the inconvenience of having to create another site to market my .TV portfolio, losing my email account and potential leads, having to redirect hundreds of .TV and TV.com domains to another site, losing the brand, etc and concluded I was not interested in selling at any price that a company not involved in selling domain names would even consider. I value the brand at six figures though I will likely never receive an offer that high.

 

[Ammudamus]

Perhaps one approach I could try rather than quoting a take it or leave it price would be to say our target price is $XXXX but we are open to offers. Please make your best offer and we will consider it. However, if their offer is 5% of my target price, am I going to seriously consider it? As well, expressing a willingness to accept offers below your target price is almost certainly going to result in offers considerably below your target price. I have worked for many years as an Accounting/Finance professional so I know how much companies spend on expenditures which are less critical than the brand name for their business. Domains are not valued by those outside the industry the way those of us who invest in domains view them.

To give you an example, within the last two weeks while marketing some other names, a company offered me $6000 for PremiumDomains.TV and said that if that offer did not suffice to please counteroffer. I thought about all the inconvenience of having to create another site to market my .TV portfolio, losing my email account and potential leads, having to redirect hundreds of .TV and TV.com domains to another site, losing the brand, etc and concluded I was not interested in selling at any price that a company not involved in selling domain names would even consider. I value the brand at six figures though I will likely never receive an offer that high.

Leonard,
In my personal opinion, you made a decision about inconvenience versus landing a significant sale on a domain name that without your brand will be hard to sell. I would have taken the money and ran! With the proceeds, hire a contractor to do all the redirecting and other updates.

You may have been able to pull off 5 figures.

A

 

[equity78]

Leonard,
In my personal opinion, you made a decision about inconvenience versus landing a significant sale on a domain name that without your brand will be hard to sell. I would have taken the money and ran! With the proceeds, hire a contractor to do all the redirecting and other updates.

You may have been able to pull off 5 figures.

A

I agree and how well known is that brand ? That imo is falling in love with something not worthy of that much love.

 

[Ammudamus]

I agree and how well known is that brand ? That imo is falling in love with something not worthy of that much love.

It also allows you to get on the board with a sale. A nice one for that matter. Less stress and or urgency to sell other names to pay for renewals or other costs. You should try to find that buyer back.

A

 

[yogiDomain]

It also allows you to get on the board with a sale. A nice one for that matter. Less stress and or urgency to sell other names to pay for renewals or other costs. You should try to find that buyer back.

A

I agree what "A" said.
Its a matter of choice though. Five figures was possible.

 

[jideofor]

Ammudamus, That's the problem with a lot of domainers. I will always take anything above 500 and move on, especially if the niche isn't established like 3d, cloud et al.

 

[Ammudamus]

Ammudamus, That's the problem with a lot of domainers. I will always take anything above 500 and move on, especially if the niche isn't established like 3d, cloud et al.

It's a fine line. You have to be careful on what a perceived value is and how long you want to wait. Here is my thinking when I get offers:

1.How many offers have I had on the domain name?

2.Is it a niche keyword?

If #1, is a lot and #2 is niche, I have to consider I may wait a while but I do have people constantly wanting the name. If #1 is low and #2 is niche, you should sell when you get an offer because you may not for a long time and burn through renewals.

Leave money for the next person on the table. They will keep buying from you more than what you sold the one domain name for.

A

 

[garptrader]

As previously noted I am getting dozens of "How much?" inquiries but they are not converting to $XXXX sales so inevitably I either need to bring prices down or stop wasting time on outbound marketing and just let offers trickle in.

 

[Domainstore]

To avoid the issue of spam filters or emails being received by the receptionist who receives dozens of promotional emails every day and probably just deletes them I have been trying to use Facebook where possible. Keep in mind if you send too many messages in a short timespan FB will freeze your ability to send messages (happened to me so had to break for a few weeks) so you have to space out each message by doing something else for a couple of minutes between messages. Your search will be... Pages Named "Keyword" Note as well that while one could potentially target any company with keyword in their profile, it might save time to focus on companies which already have a TV domain i.e. you own .TV and they own TV.com or TV.cctld. Use BING and Google to identify such companies. There may be some UDRP risk in doing so if they have an established brand on that keyword. Outbound marketing is a LOT of work and the non-response rate is high - much better with FB than email but I have received responses as much as ten weeks after an initial contact. A two-week delay is not unusual. Another commenter mentioned you lose a lot when marketing domains and I would have to agree. You do more work and their willingness to pay is diminished because they started their day without even thinking about your domain so they can just as easily end their day without it if you want a lot of money.

Very good advice if you ask me !! Thanks !

 

[garptrader]

Price inquiries on TV.com as well but thus far merely quotes that don't get responded to in the affirmative. Thus far I have generally assumed if they don't respond after a quote that their willingness to pay is so far removed from my price that they don't believe it is even worth a counteroffer. But again I am offering a lease option to illustrate how reasonable the cost is relative to other expenses a business normally pays. So a $2500 buy it now is $50/month - comparable to a cell phone service.

 

[bretttina]

Thank you for the great advice on .TV domains and any domains when it comes to it,

I have tried the FB contact on several occasions but not really had much success , never really thought about a lease option to be included in the message .........

so would i leave this out until i get a response or not ?

and then send another message ??

Cheers

Brett.

 

[garptrader]

I believe most domainers who do outbound marketing of domains priced above $250 do not include a price in the initial email - reason being you want to confirm that the reason people don't respond is not related to price. Then if they don't like your price you at least have the option of lowering it if the company has expressed some interest. While I continue to quote the lease option to illustrate how reasonable my price is relative to other business expenses, thus far there have been no lessees. Theoretically the ideal situation would be to have two hundred or more domains under lease and all you have to do is collect every month - no further need to sell. But collecting $25 monthly might be more hassle than it is worth - particularly if you have someone who doesn't pay in a timely manner...

 

[garptrader]

After considerable marketing effort and many respondees who disappeared after quoting a price I received my first positive confirmation today - though on this particular domain I was afraid to quote a sales price so I only quoted the lease price - $500 monthly for a one-word Spanish .TV . Until they make the first payment we are still in limbo.... One concern I have is it took them about six weeks from the time of my lease quote till their response. Perhaps they just needed approval, but will I still be waiting six weeks from now for that first payment? We'll see.

 

[HeyNow]

When you market the names on FB, does anyone ever discuss the fact that .tv stands for Tuvalu according to ICANN? In other words, are the buyers truly aware of what they are buying?

 

[Paul]

@HeyNow, did you know that SSL isn't actually SSL? SSL died long ago. It's TLS now. Everybody just thinks it's SSL. Grinds my gears every time somebody calls it SSL instead of TLS or HTTPS.

• WHOIS is a protocol, not a bunch of websites. You don't need a website to use it.
• The Web and the Internet are not the same thing. The former is a subset of the latter.
• Dedicated servers are not the most reliable form of hosting, and shouldn't be used for critical applications.
• FTP is extraordinarily insecure, and is not used by enterprise professionals. To make it a little better, most FTP servers let you connect with FTPS, which is secure. However, most FTP servers are constantly getting attacked by automated hacking bots, so it only solves some problems.
  
• Mbps and MB/s are not the same thing. The capitalization of the "B" matters. Mb/s and MBps are misleading and therefore shouldn't be used.
• A password that most people would consider secure can typically be cracked in a matter of seconds or minutes, even with strong hashing algorithms. Passwords should be a randomly generated combination of letters, numbers, and symbols at least 17 or so characters long.
  
• The hardware in a Mac is significantly worse than the hardware in a comparable Windows computer. (You're paying for the OS, not the hardware.)
  
• Retina displays aren't all that great; all of my screens are significantly better. And I paid less.
• Bigger screens are actually worse than smaller screens with the same resolution because the pixels are bigger. A 1080p computer monitor is significantly more advanced than a 1080p TV.
• Most 4K displays only operate at 24 Hz, so animations become "choppy". HDMI cannot support 4K at 60 Hz at present, but will be able to in the future. DisplayPort (barely) can.
• FireWire and Thunderbolt, unlike USB, grant external devices low-level access to your computer. If you don't trust a FireWire or Thunderbolt devices, don't plug it in; it will have complete control over your computer. Use USB instead. (That being said, Thunderbolt is revolutionary and awesome.)

Oh, and did you know that those two-letter TLDs actually stand for countries? Who knew?

I volunteered for a town cable station for a while. They were so excited when they got {townname}.tv. At first, I was a little put off by the fact that it was a ccTLD. However, it quickly became well-known around town, and was much more popular than the previous domain. ccTLD abuse? Maybe. Success? Definitely.