Name Monetizer

Simonetta Batteiger Brings us Sedo's Future

Leonard Holmes — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:15:00 +0000

Simonetta Batteiger is the head of Finance and Sales for North America for Sedo. She's also the head of parking, but they took that out of the title when she succeeded Eben Smith. (Eben continues to work for Sedo.) You'll see in this interview that Simonetta is more than just a pretty face. She talks in depth about Sedo's strategy of simple landing pages and answers questions about why some accounts get cancelled. I found her to be both charming and intelligent, and she seems to be off to a great start.

Donny Simonton and Craig Rowe on Parked and Whypark's Future Together

Leonard Holmes — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:17:00 +0000

Donny Simonton and Craig Rowe talk about the reasons that Parked bought WhyPark and the synergies that they see going forward. There's not a lot new here, but it interesting to hear them talk about this together. I get the sense that they actually get along. Background on the merger is here.

Brian Carr of NameMedia on Domain Monetization in late 2009 and Beyond

Leonard Holmes — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:51:25 +0000

Brian Carr is Senior VP of Domain Publishing at NameMedia. He shares his thoughts about NameMedia's domain publishing (parking)services and the future of domain monetization. In this interview he talks about the new iPhone apps for GoldKey, ActiveAudience and GoldKey; and reveals that GoldKey and ActiveAudience domainers can get the SmartName Shopping.com feed that has formerly been available just to SmartName users. (Just ask you account manager turn on the Shopping.com landing pages.) You can even send paid traffic to these pages and use your own AdSense ads.

Google Cash Detective Free Trial

Leonard Holmes — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:33:55 +0000

This is a pretty amazing opportunity. Google Cash Detective is the highest rated of the internet marketing "spy tools." It contains weeks of fresh data on the successful ad campaigns being run by people in different Online niches. You can immediately find out what keywords your competitors are bidding on, which ones they keep bidding on week after week, and which ads they repeatedly run to generate income. That makes it very easy to clone their campaigns and grab part of the market.

Google Cash Detective is designed for people who are buying ads on AdWords and similar services and sending the traffic to CPA and Affiliate offers. You can easily find out what is working for others and save yourself hours of tedious keyword research. This tool has allowed me to start new income streams that do not depend on my domain names alone.

Try this tool on your own campaigns, and see how accurate it is. For the first time ever Chris Carpenter is offering a free trial of this very powerful tool. Sure, there is a lot of hype surrounding this campaign. He keeps membership closed for weeks, then opens it up in a big "launch" like this. The other reason that he keeps it closed is to not over-tax the tool. When the first version of this tool was released it was panned by most reviewers because it just didn't work that well.

Here's your chance to try this tool for a week. You can try it on your own campaigns to see how accurate it is. Quit after the free week and you owe nothing. There is a good chance you'll be hooked, though.

The Latest Domain Parking Trends by Sector

Howard Hoffman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:02:00 +0000

by Howard Hoffman

In my last column, I reviewed some of the reasons that domain parking revenues have fallen. As previously reported, my overall average revenue dropped about 45% between January 2007 and January 2009. First the good news: it appears that domain parking revenue may be stabilizing. Revenue has been fairly flat since December 2008. However, I must caution that I had a previous period, the 6 months from July 2007 through January 2008 where it appeared revenue had stabilized. However, a revenue decline from January 2008 through January 2009, corresponding to the collapse in the US/world economy, followed the 2nd half 2007 domain revenue rally.

To be a bit more specific, my overall RPM (Revenue per 1000 [Unique] Visitors) has fallen from an overall average of $95 to an overall average of $65 from peak to bottom. This has been accompanied by a decline in traffic, which have combined to reduce revenue by about 45%.

In general, my revenue from Yahoo-based parking providers seems to be off by more like 55% (from the January 2007 peak). My revenue from Google-based parking providers is off less, by around 40%.

One sector that has been especially hard hit has been casino/online gambling. In my experience, Fabulous.com has done well with most domains in this sector. As an Australian company, not subject to US law, Fabulous.com has attracted much of the advertising revenue in the sector. Changes in US law made it more difficult for online gambling sites to get US business and therefore, many of the relevant websites reduced their advertising. My casino/online gambling traffic earnings are off by around 55%. Even so, good poker, casino, and related traffic is still among the most profitable kinds of type-in traffic.

The loan and credit card businesses in the US have been hard hit by the US recession. Many financial services companies have gone out of business, usually by being absorbed by a more successful financial institution. However, credit cards are still an important and overall profitable business for US financial institutions. These companies have taken advantage of the economic situation to increase fees and interest rates, even as overall interest rates have fallen. My loan/credit card traffic earnings are off by an average of around 45%, consistent with the overall domain parking decline. This category is still among the most profitable major categories of traffic.

Another important sector is travel: especially hotels and airlines. Air fares have plummeted and so have hotel room rates, pretty much worldwide. People with cash (or intact credit) are taking advantage of record low international airfares. The airlines have recovered a bit from the extremely high fuel prices of early 2008. So, most of these companies have remained in business. Overall my travel traffic earnings are off by around 40% from the peak.

The retail sector is made up of many subsectors. However, the trend for more and more consumers to spend more revenue for online retail purchases has continued, or at least not collapsed like so many other business sectors. So, my online retail traffic earnings are down by around 35%. Subsectors like shoes, clothing, jewelry, and home furnishings still provide healthy returns.

I have never owned a lot of adult traffic. However, this is one sector that has really fallen. A lot of what used to be profitable in the online adult business is now being sold at very low profit levels. My adult traffic revenue has fallen about 70% from the peak. Revenue per click levels in this sector are very low. Typically, my RPC for this type of traffic is around $.05 to $.08. Strong sectors like credit cards and hotels might have RPC values 10 times those low levels ($.50 to $.80 and sometimes even higher).

In summary, the drop in domain parking revenue has been uneven, with some sectors getting hit harder than others. Of course, that is true with the overall US and world economic slowdowns.

Howard Hoffman has a BS in Civil Engineering from MIT and an MS in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. He is a serious investor in domains. Based on his early experience as a PPC advertiser, he embraced the income side of PPC and was an early user of domain parking services. He shares some of his recommendations at PPCIncome.com.

Stealing Ad Campaigns - Is this Ethical?

Leonard Holmes — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:03:00 +0000

Chris Carpenter caused quite a stir with Google Cash Detective 2. After the first version tanked, he came back with a hosted version that has several months of very up-to-date data on PPC AdWords campaigns in every conceivable keyword. Think of this as SpyFu on steroids. If you've ever tried SpyFu on your own ad campaigns you have noticed that the data is usually several months old. You get useful data, but you have to be aware that it is not up-to-date. Google Cash Detective 2 has up-to-date data on almost every keyword. It is a massive database, and you do pay a significant sum for this ability (around $100-$150 a month, depending on how you pay).

Google Cash Detective 2 allows you to completely copy a competitor's AdWord campaign, down to their complete keyword list and all of their ads. You will see which keywords they are using right now, and which ones they have used for the past two months. This is legal - since they are just massively mining the publicly available AdWords data. Is it ethical?

Download a free report and videos

If you sign-up for Google Cash Detective 2 through the links in this post I will send you two 50 page bonus reports - one on CPA arbitrage and one on starting an Affiliate business. These are both profitable online fields that domainers are entering in order to supplement their parking income.Just send me an email after you have signed up along with a copy of your confirmation letter.

The Jay Westerdal Flap

Leonard Holmes — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:32:00 +0000

Most of the domain blogs have covered the dispute between Thought Convergence, parent company of Trafficz and Jay Westerdal the founder of DomainTools. I'm not sure how Andrew Allemann finds the time to cover this stuff, but I thought he did a good job of covering all angles (once he got all the info). You can see his coverage here:

http://domainnamewire.com/2009/05/13/jay-westerdal-and-thought-convergence-part-ways/

http://domainnamewire.com/2009/05/13/thought-convergence-sues-westerdal/

http://domainnamewire.com/2009/05/13/thought-convergences-releases-statement-about-westerdal-termination/

Sedo adds RevenueDirect Template

Leonard Holmes — Sun, 10 May 2009 04:13:04 +0000

Sedo announced last week that it has added the first template that they have taken over from the defunct RevenueDirect service that they acquired. They characterize the "Direct Blue" template as a "visually simple template with a high performance rate."

The template does have a clean look and feel. The graphic adds to the attractiveness of the page without detracting from the one-click links that are featured. Some research suggests that blue pages have higher click-through (go figure), so this may be a profitable templage partly for that reason. If you have domains parked as Sedo that aren't living up to their potantial you should give this template a try.

Revenue Direct gets Swallowed by Sedo

Leonard Holmes — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:03:17 +0000

The writing is now on the wall. RevenueDirect is closing down and all of their domains will be consolidated at Sedo. This makes sense from a business point-of-view. Why operate two competing platforms? Here's an excerpt of the email I received today:

As a valued RevenueDirect client, we´d like to welcome you into Sedo´s family of brands. For your convenience,as we further integrate RevenueDirect clients over to Sedo,our expert account team has already placed your parked domains into your Sedo account. Also, to keep this process as simple as possible for you, your domain traffic has been automatically transferred over to Sedo´s secure monetization platform.

Although you can still currently navigate through and edit your RevenueDirect account, none of your edits or actions will affect your domains. After May 21st, 2009, the RevenueDirect platform will no longer be operational. Please log into your RevenueDirect account to download your existing parking statistics prior to this date.

NameDrive Opens NDX Domain Market

Leonard Holmes — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:27:04 +0000

NameDrive has opened their new NDX domain market first announced in January. NameDrive's service will charge a 7% fee, compared to the standard 10% charged by Afternic and Sedo. All fees are waived for the first month, as a way of encouraging people to sign-up.

If you park your domains with NameDrive have can get the commission rate down to as low as 3%. Some domains, such as ccTLDs and gTLDs, carry no minimum commission (but still charge a percentage).

In announcing this service NameDrive claims that they are already a big player in the domain aftermarket. They have been doing a lot of selling through their "Park and Sell" program, and in some ways the NDXMarket is an extension of this.

Should you sell through NDXMarket? I'm planning to - but I already have some trouble keeping up with the current status of domains at Afternic and Sedo. Is it worth the hassle of adding a third marketplace in order to save a little on commission? Probably.