Interview with AJ Chadha of DomainsOutbound.com

On X formerly Twitter, I had been following a lot of discussion on outbound sales. Some people I follow were detailing just how much time they spent on outbound. I came across someone mentioning DomainsOutbound.com.

The person running the service is a gentleman named AJ Chadha.

I spoke to AJ on the phone to get some more info on what they were doing. I asked him if he would be up for an interview so that he could explain the nuts and bolts of what his company does.

Q1) Tell us how you got involved with domain investing AJ?

AJ) I bought my first domain in 98/99. I wanted to secure my own name AJChadha.com and a couple of other ones. I initially got them for preservation. At the time I was around 13 years old and designing websites for businesses.

I knew there was a lot of value in domains but was too young to understand how to actually sell them.

Over the years I bought and held thousands of domains. I was just waiting for a sale but nothing happened.

I wasted A LOT of money on domains and didn’t see a dime till I started becoming proactive and outbounding. That’s when everything changed for me.

Q2) Can you share your background in outbound marketing/sales?

AJ) I’ve been in marketing for 15+ years. I ran an agency and I worked in-house.

I currently handle cold emailing for tech startups, that’s what I’m great at. It took years to get to a point where I can confidently send out hundreds of thousands of emails and get results.

I combined the two things together, my cold emailing experience and love for domains.

Q3) Outbound is tricky for a lot of domain investors who don’t really understand the do’s and dont’s? There are things like the Can-Spam Act and other protocols to keep in mind. Does DomainsOutbound.com stay in compliance with all the applicable rules and regulations?

AJ) We are definitely compliant! That’s the number one rule with cold emailing. You can email any business, you just have to make sure you have an unsubscribe button, company info is displayed and your address is clearly stated in the email.

It’s not just about the rules and regulations, email providers want to protect their users from spam. So, you have to do many things like warmup inboxes, avoid using certain keywords etc. to ensure your emails land in inboxes.

It is tricky! You can get yourself into trouble very easily.

When we receive a reply from a potential buyer, we CC and introduce the domain owner so they can close the deal. We never include the price in our outbound emails.

Q4) Some domain names do not need outbounding and other domain names would have no proper end users to approach, something like a made up pronounceable for example. What are the kinds of domain names that work best with your service?

AJ) Geo domains are top of the list for sure.

Domains with a clear target audience are great for outbounding. Something like SeattleDentist.com is perfect. Why? You can find details for 500 dentists based in Seattle and reach out to them. 

Brandables are difficult. Without a clear target audience, who do we reach out to? 

Whilst we think Geo domains are best for outbounding, domains targeted at specific industries are great too. E.g. TopBets.com. With a domain like that, we can reach out to 1000 betting sites. 

So I’d say, Geo or industry specific domains are great for outbounding and we can definitely help.

Our service is there to make life easier for domain investors. We help those who don’t have the time or perhaps even the skill to outbound. However, we aren’t magicians and if a domain is very vague and generic, it’s tough to reach out to potential buyers. 

Q5) One concern that domain investors have when it comes to outbounding a domain name is that it will trigger a UDRP. How do you address those concerns?

AJ) A UDRP can happen at any time. We do understand that outbounding can increase the chances but every boat is safe in harbor.

How do we try to mitigate that? When clients submit their domains to us, we ask them to include any companies they don’t want us to contact.

Domain investors probably know exactly why they registered the domain, so instead of using guesswork, clients giving us a heads up really helps!

Also, we never reach out to companies with the same name. So if you own MarvelToys.com, we obviously won’t reach out to Marvel. Truth be told, we will refuse to outbound domains with clear trademarks like that anyway. It’s a waste of time.

Q6) Do you ever tell a customer we cannot help you on certain name? If you do that, can they substitute another name that is acceptable?

AJ) When clients sign up, we ask for 20 domains. We then select the 10 we think are best for outbounding. There’s a list of rules on our submissions page and we refund people who ignore them.

We are happy to discuss substitutions with our clients. 

Q7) Should an investor focus on only outbounding .com or do you allow other domain extensions?

AJ) When we launched, we were only accepting .com, .ai and .xyz domains. We have now added .io and .org domains. 

However, we have made exceptions for clients with amazing domains. Some really stand out and that’s why we ask clients to submit 20. The team has come across some gems!

Q8) How does your service work with domain brokers?

AJ) We actually have an entire page dedicated to brokers on our website. Domain brokers are allies. 

Domains Outbound charges zero commission. So if a broker hires us to outbound the domains they’re brokering, they only pay our small fee. 

Our service can be extremely beneficial to brokers. We sign NDAs and maintain complete confidentiality. They never have to let their clients know that they have used our service. 

When we receive an inquiry, we CC the broker and they take over negotiations. It’s a very simple process and we are already working with a few prominent brokers.

Some of the domains they’re brokering are well into six-figures, so our service is a no brainer for them.

Thank you for the time AJ, you can follow AJ on X here.