Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Shane Cultra’s post about increased domain inquiries at Frank Schilling’s Internet Traffic outfit, clearly shows something that Sedo and other parking companies need to take note of.

The increased number of inquiries and offers aren’t due to the beautifully crafted landing pages that Frank offers. Actually, I’m being sarcastic about the look of those headers but that’s not the point here, as we’re not discussing PPC conversion rates.

There is one single thing that contributes to the increased number of inquiries, and that’s the large, bold, in-your-face line at the top of the domain that says:

This domain has recently been listed in the marketplace at domainnamesales.com. Click here to inquire.

It can’t be any simpler reason than that.

Meanwhile, Sedo’s “For sale” links in order to place an offer are hidden at various locations, sometimes below the notorious “fold” and in small print. And yes, this costs a lot of missed opportunities.

In the pre-PPC era, I used my own landing pages to promote and sell domains; a simple PHP script would parse the domain URL and create a contact form pre-populated with the domain in question. I received considerably more inquiries this way, which I would then convert into sales, mostly by utilizing Escrow.com

If you’re not concerned about the loss of PPC revenue due to moving your domains away from parking pages such as that of Sedo, creating your own landing pages with a contact form is the way to go, in order to achieve more direct sales.

There is also VooDoo.com that allows for custom placement of the “Domain For Sale” line, including my preferred top of the page.

It’s one thing to have a substantiated opinion about a company and service, and another to troll endlessly about something you simply dislike.

A recent single incident of an account mix-up at Sedo unleashed the usual trolls, who started beating the drums to the sound of “burn Sedo!” and “Sedo sucks!”

I understand that jealousy compensates for the lack of success, but why is Sedo assaulted so often?

There are bugs and glitches in every system and customer satisfaction varies; but success for Sedo has been its people and company culture. They are the ones that produce results and pass milestones.

The truth is, that some of those that paint Sedo in a bad light have been banned from its marketplace for steering garbage traffic, clicking on their own links or for engaging in other fraudulent activity.

With $1.8 million is sales last week, Sedo continues to break industry records, even in a bad economy.

As for the trolls, they will always feed on any given opportunity to bring someone’s success down.

A few days ago I let one of my domains – Greek.in – cross its expiration date.

The domain is with Name.com and I simply “ignored” the reminders on a busy week.

While in the process of renewing it, I noticed that the domain was displaying a standard Sedo ad page, with the minimal, greenish text against a white background. There was no contact information regarding a sale on that page.

Checking the DNS I noticed that it was still that of Voodoo.com where I park some of my domains. I assumed that some type of DNS wizardry was occurring in the background, so I contacted Name.com support.

I was told that per the terms of use, Name.com reserves the right to park and monetize my traffic while I don’t renew my domain.

Since the domain was already listed for sale in my Sedo account, it was obvious that Name.com was forwarding it to a landing account of their own at Sedo.

After contacting my account manager at Sedo I was told that all URL forwarding has been ended for Sedo customers, at the request of Google. To use Sedo parking and monetize traffic, one must use the Sedo DNS.

So what’s going on here? Is Sedo giving “elite” customers such as Name.com a different ad channel to monetize domains and pile them up onto one account? Or is Name.com oblivious of the fact that this method of forwarding reaps no monies from traffic?

Within 4 hours of renewing my domain, it was pointing back to Voodoo.com but the mystery still remains.

Since Sedo implemented their transfer center for domain transactions, things have improved tremendously.

No longer dependent on email and the security issues that they entail, the transfer center offers a direct and up to date line of communication between the buyer, the seller and the Sedo transfer agent.

After dozens of personal domain sales and purchases at Sedo, I experienced the transfer center as the Technical Assistant, handling the domain transaction for a client.

The process was smooth and easy.

Once my contact info was added to the transaction as the Technical Assistant by the buyer, I received an email asking me to confirm my email by clicking on a link with a long hashed URL which ensures security.

Soon after that, I was sent the same link and a password that allowed me to log in as the Technical Assistant for the transaction.

The Technical Assistant has a partial view of the transaction’s particulars.

Unlike the buyer’s account, there is no information related to the negotiation, money involved or other information that should not be disclosed to a third party managing a transaction on behalf of someone else.

My experience with Sedo as the Technical Assistant was stellar; when the client needed an expedited registrar push versus a transfer to another registrar, the support team of Sedo responded very timely and literally saved the day; my client wanted to get the acquired domain up and running before the end of the week.

It only took 1/2 day for the entire process, including DNS propagation.

Once again, Sedo proves that they are worthy of being voted as the Best Overall Domain Solution at TRAFFIC 2011 in Ft. Lauderdale.

Yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a transaction that was pending at Sedo on Friday, moved on with payment on Saturday.

Specifically:

On Friday, I pushed as instructed a domain to the Sedo account with the holding registrar. Due to the time being around 5pm, there was no further action during that day on the domain.

On Saturday, the Sedo agent apparently reviewed the status of that transfer and issued a credit note, thus marking the transaction as complete.

It’s definitely exciting seeing Sedo active on the weekend, a move that speeds up the process of buying and selling domains!