All Domainers should take advantage of a FREE option to use at your disposal by adding a responsive contact form directly on your domain name.
Sedo, Flippa, Domain Name Sales, Afternic, GoDaddy and many allow to sell your domain names, but I often think the BEST place to sell your domain names is right on the domain name itself.
A simple contact form can be all you need to gain interest and sell it (at least start the process) and save some $$$ in commission.
One thing I have noticed in all my years domaining is the lack of “control” with all those services and simply adding a simple contact form on your domain name is a pain in the ass and it really shouldn’t be. Well, if you have had that problem and want to put a simple contact form on your domain name the way you want it to work/look without paying for web hosting or knowing any code…. for FREE… here you go!
JotForm.com (sign up, it’s FREE) This is not an affiliate link.
Building your perfect contact form:
After signing up and logging into your account at JotForm: Click Build Form (Orange button on left)
You then have 3 options: Blank Form, Use Template, Import Form (pick one) I will start with a Blank Form and click Create. (Note: you can select, Use Template and search: domain name as I added a template form that I use to make it all that more easy for you so you can skip the below if you choose)
If you continue to Build (which I would suggest to do, so you get familiar with the options) then will see a screen like this (which I have added a bunch of notes and arrows to help you navigate).
Name your form. Since this form is going on a specific domain name, name it that domain name!
I then use the “Form Tools” tab and mainly always just use the following:
- “Heading” ~ Inquire Today About DomainHere.com
- “Text Box” ~ 4 of those for: Full Name, Email Address, Offer Amount (all 3 of those required) and Phone or Skype ID (not required). You can also use the Quick Tools option for this, I just like using the Form Tools options.
- “Radio Button” ~ Use 3 options (default): Purchasing | Leasing | Both
- “Text Box” ~ Message
- “Captcha” ~ Cuts down on spam
- “Submit” ~Submit Button
- “Widgets” ~ The options are near limitless here but I always use the following, which are hidden fields in the form to grab user data:
- Mobile Responsive (so the form works on a mobile device properly ~ Google Analytics (enter unique code)
Note: Upon user submission, the form automatically grabs the users IP address.
Tips
Don’t over think all the above! Put what is needed on the form and only that (fields the user needs to fill out). You can put what you feel you need in hidden fields to help you detect who the potential interested party is. That is really key info for you to have!
With each added field you create, there is a little “Gear” symbol. That allows you to make a field “Required” to fill out. It also allows you to set the width of the in-put box and many other things.
Integration ~ Again, with integration’s (one of the very powerful things about JotForm IMO) your options are near limitless. If you wish to keep track of all your inquires, I’d suggest integrating your contact form with Google Sheets so all your contact data is in one spot, live and accessible as long as you can access the web. Salesforce, Dropbox and more are options.
Designer ~ A little hard to find the option if you are “building the form”.. so click My Forms again, select your specific form and click Edit Form. Then on the top is the Designer feature. Again, options are limitless here with color, width of form, logos, background image etc. One thing I like to do here is to “scrunch” the form to make it smaller/compact so the user doesn’t feel overwhelmed by a long contact form. In order to do this, go to the Line Layout. I put line spacing at 0px and vertical padding to 3px. Save and Preview.
Embed Form ~ This is where you will get the URL or Embed code for the form. The “easy” thing to do IMO is to get the URL, go to your domain name registrar with it and 301/302 redirect your domain name to the provided URL. Use Masking and it will appear the form is directly on the domain name. You can also make your form Secure if needed, and simply check the box next to the provided URL when clicking Embed Form.
Emails ~ You will get a email notification each time a form is filled out. The JotForm system defaults to the email address you signed up with, but you have the options here to select where those notifications are sent. You can also customize things here.
View Submissions ~ You can do this directly in your JotForm account for each specific form you create. Visit the specific form, click it, then More on the far right and View Submissions.
Account Details ~ As mentioned above, this is FREE, but everything is limited when it comes to free. The free account allows you to create as many forms as you wish. Limitations come into play based on how submissions you intake. The free account allows 100 form submissions per month. If you are going over that, then you will need to upgrade to the “Bronze” package which allows 1,000 submissions per month among other options. Bronze is $19 per month, Silver (10,000 submissions) is $39/mo and the Gold package is $99/mo for 100K submissions etc. You can view all pricing/packages here.
More Than One ~ Once you have created a form you are happy with, simply click that form in your account and on the right, click More / Clone Form. Change the domain name in the Heading, set your unique code in Google Analytics and you have created a new form for a different domain. This should only take you seconds to add a contact form to any domain name you own then!
So how does the form look? Again, this will depend on what you do with the “Designer” feature but I like to keep mine as plain and simple as can be so there is little to no distractions. So nothing fancy here, just functional! Here is how it looks (keep in mind this is also mobile responsive, so it will work on a mobile device and there are several hidden fields delivering me good information with each submission)
I hope this article was helpful to you and provides you with another option to use in selling your domain names!
Steve says
Thanks, Jamie!
DNSal.es says
Can confirm. This is the way to go. Since the move away from the top parking companies to proprietary landing pages the number of enquiries rose five folds. And so did the sales. Know your customers and cut the middlemen.
av says
Almost $20 for only 1000 submissions is pretty steep.
Any recommendations for a script that I can host myself?
DNSal.es says
WordPress + ContactForm7… or whatever… any contact form is better than none, unless it cannot guard you from the bots.
Jamie Zoch says
@av,
If you sell the domain for a lot of profit, it’s not “steep” really. Also, if the contacts are all real (less to 0 spam from captcha) getting 1,000 inquires from the form… I’d be more than happy to pay the $20 a month. With that said, for sure you could likely find some solution available (script to buy, hire a coder etc) and pay about $10/mo hosting and having to update DNS, FTP the form/script and edit for each and every domain name, manage that etc. I have tried all that in the past and it just becomes a bit of a hassle. For sure you can do it though.
striker says
You folks are making this way too complicated. Every reputable registrar offers a free webpage with your domain registration (Godaddy, Dynadot, etc.) and will allow you to place a contact form on your webpage. Boom…Done…Free.
Jamie Zoch says
@striker,
As stated in my article, I always hated the lack of control or how the page looked or what fields they require or have etc. Yes, there are other options, this is just one that offers a good amount of control and very little effort to do.
Charles says
I use JotForm as well. It’s a really great tool. And yes, there are a gazillion options for building forms now, but JotForm’s customization is really pretty incredible. Plus their integration offering has spared me more than a few headaches. Great post.
SoFreeDomains says
I will give it a trial since there is a free version, I have nothing to lose then I can upgrade later.
Dk says
Is there any studies of effectiveness contact forms vs the actual building out market place type of domain for your own sites, with just separate posts for each domain. Since i could see market place benefiting more from SEO, while with forms it just that. But it might be faster and save time with forms, anyone did any analysis or studies on that topic?
Raymond says
What do you think of creating just 1 for sale landing page and redirect all 1000+ domain names to this landing page? This will save thousand times of work in creating individual landing pages.
Instead of naming individual domain name in each landing page, I just put ‘ Domain Name You Type-In Is For Sale!’
You can view the example I did on link http://www.billionaire.property/#!contact/c12fp
I know it may not be clear enough or confuse to public., but it save a lot of work!
Your feed back and opinions are much appreciated.
Raymond says
May be I need better wording than this ‘ Domain Name You Type-In Is For Sale!’ ?
Michael Berkens says
Also the domain billionaire.property might give the user the idea the domain name are pretty expensive
Steve says
@raymond
I believe it’s better to have one landing page per domain; and to show that domain at least once on the page.
And I agree with Michael — I’d leave out the “Billionaire property” angle, unless you’re presenting your portfolio only to affluent prospects (hedge fund folks, tycoons, etc)
Raymond says
I agree with you Steve and Michael.
That was my thought as well. Thanks for feed back.
Ira Zoot says
Thanks for the heads up on this. I’m testing it out on some pages to see
if there is a big difference in number of inquiries.
Nate Hayes says
Another free option for people to check out is to park your domain at Bodis and enble the “forward to inquiry page” option. This way when someone types in your domain it goes bypasses the ads and goes directly to the sales inquiry form. See GRMH.com as an example.
michel says
I still haven’t figure out “the Embed Form ”
Can anyone walk me through it?
Thanks.