How to sell a website idea to a business?

[marketingweb]

Hi All,

Say you have found a combo location/occupation based domain such as sydneyflorist.com.au or perthvet.com.au (made up examples only) that were available for registration, and you had the perfect offline business in mind who it would ideally suit for a website.

Presuming the name was pretty generic, Would it be legal to register it an then approach the business/company (already having owned the name) to develop a website for them?

Basically I have a couple domains in mind and know a couple of businesses they would be ideal for. If a great domain was part of the selling pitch, if I didn't register it first they could easily love the idea but just register it themselves and get it developed elsewhere. If I DO register it first, i'm concerned about legality but also having potential client's feel like they are being blackmailed which isn't my intent!

By the way the domains are generic enough NOT to be specific business names, but specific enough to still be up for hand reg.

Any thoughts?

 

[FirstPageResults]

does sound kind of scamish .. no offense intended - it doesnt sound like that's what you are trying to do.

Obviously you would have to sit on the domain for 6 months aswell..

Also in my experience, it can be more trouble than its worth trying to sell someone a website rather than them coming to you when they want one.. they seem less motivated to do their bit. I worked for a company that had a sales guy out in the field approaching people.. he worked on commission and he did get people signing up but when it came to them supplying content and paying the installments there was major issues and delays. Sometimes up to 2+ years!

 

[Lorenzo]

perfectly legal as long as the names have no TMs

I surely dislike that business model.

 

[marketingweb]

Thanks for the advice "first page".

I'm not trying to be a scammer at all, but I think if I sound like that even to someone on here, i'm going to sound pretty bad to joe public! I know you aren't saying I am like that, but if thats how it could look then I may have to rethink.

Basically if I registered the domain myself, developed it and made a commission on leads or sales etc, this is what most people would do to "monitize". My theory is more rather than coming up with an domain and then developing a business around it (but not being able to put the time into it), is coming up with a domain and working with an existing business who it's perfect for in some way. Less work for me and potentially more lucrative.

The comment about clients not being motivated is very valid, maybe it's not really that good of an idea, or maybe it's all in how you sell it.

Maybe i'm just silly - i just see all these great domains and mentally match to people they would be ideal for - unfortunately they aren't really ideal to myself and the people who they would suit may not even think of it without a prompt!