A couple of days ago, I read the story about the Alec Brownstein who found a job using AdWords. He basically identified the CEO’s of the companies he wanted to work for and left them a message in the form of an ad. Ultimately, he landed a several interviews and a job for a grand total of $6. Now my point isn’t just retelling this story which has been featured on several blogs and websites already. My point is how to take this idea and apply it to domain sales.
I’m definitely not an AdWords expert. But the system isn’t so complex that I can’t log in and give it a shot. So that’s just what I did. I chose a domain for this experiment that I felt has an easily targeted audience and that someone with interest in their existing site might Google to see what results come back. I also picked something with a limited scope, in the event that it got a ton of hits there would be limited waste. The domain I chose is MillersBlog.com. I set my monthly budget at $30 and my maximum daily budget at $1 (come on, I’m not cheap, it’s an experiment). I kept the key words to exact matches to further target my specific, limited audience.
It’s only been about 2 days and the ad has had 540 impressions, mostly through the content network. But I couldn’t get that kind of targeted exposure anywhere else. And I also decided to include the price right in the ad. That way, I would weed out anyone that was just curious as to the price of the domain and prevent curiosity clicking. So far, running the ad hasn’t cost me anything because there have been no click throughs. I also haven’t sold the domain yet either.
I plan to let the ad run for a month and possibly adjust along the way. If it turns out that it generates a sale, I’ll let you know. I’d be interested to hear your stories if you have tried this before.
5 comments
This is an interesting experiment Sully! Do you think this might be a viable way of advertising domains for sale?
@Fro, I think it could be. Not for all domains, though. I don’t think it would work well for a keyword domain like AnnulmentAttorneys.com. But perhaps it would if targeting the exact search key phrase “Divorce Domains.”
Hoping this is moderated… feel free not to post.
Seems like MillersBlog is available on Twitter. Might make someone feel even better about getting a great domain name.
Best,
JohnH
@John, That’s a great point. I appreciate you pointing that out. I picked up the Twitter account and I might create a page on MillersBlog.com detailing the package. Thanks again.
Hi Sully,
I tried this experiment a couple years ago, but no luck. I had the ad going to the domains listing page on Afternic. someone on a forum had reported success with this, so i figured i’d give it a shot. i used a travel domain and tried to target keywords i thought travel agents and agencies might search for. i believe i tried a couple other domains and never got a sale. keep me posted how your experiment goes. it may be something worth revisiting. cheers