Lower Domain/Website Income vs Higher Costs

Most everyone in the domain name and website development industry is reporting sharp declines of from 65% to as much as 85% in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Revenues compared to a few years ago. The income declines appear to go well beyond the overall decline in the economy, with several other factors involved in the big declines.

Making matters even worse is the future scenario of sharply higher cost domain name yearly renewals since it looks like the domain registry operators will be able to soon charge whatever they want for yearly name renewals, with non-fixed and non-regulated pricing looming on the dark horizon.

The double edge sword of low income combined with expected greater costs could easily put an end to the domain name industry as we now know it. Comments on this bleak outlook are welcome…

More Website Visits by Updating Page & DNS

A member of one of the forums has posted about how her website traffic and revenue spiked-up without obvious reason. There has been talk on that board about that subject and conjecture by the members where they believe changes to web site content and also possibly changing the nameservers may be responsible for a sudden and unexplained traffic/revenue spike.

The jury is out on that issue however assuming it’s valid it seems like someone could develop a script which automatically substitutes the index page on a regular basis (i.e. weekly schedule)? It appears that could be accomplished based on two different home-page versions with diverse content in the folder (i.e. index1.html & index2.html) and proceeds to rename one or the other index.html. In addition, the proposed script could also access the domain registration account and modify the nameservers on the same schedule (i.e. alternating between NS1. Example1.com & NS1.Example2.com).

Every ‘X’ number of days (i.e. weekly) the script could rename the index pages on a rotating schedule. Next it automatically goes into the domain registration account and change the nameservers too on the same rotating schedule. It would seem like a fairly easy script to have programmed and implemented.

Google to Allow 3rd-Party Ad Networks in Adsense

Google has announced to AdSense publishers they would soon be opening up accounts to allow Google approved third-party ad networks to run ads on publisher websites, in addition to Adsense ads. Up until now the AdSense ads are from advertisers who bid on keywords using Google’s AdWords system. With the new advertising system it becomes much more open likely resulting in higher paying click prices from the third party firms who may possibly appear on your web site ahead of Google’s own Adsense ad.

In our opinion, this bodes well for publishers since Google will allow a different ad network to run PPC ads on our websites, assuming they will be paying more per click vs Adsense. This also seems like the competition could easily cause publisher revenue to increase as time goes by. with the various networks trying to get more publishers displaying their ads by offering extra revenue.

Do Regular Changes to a Website Improve Traffic?

A member of one of the forums has posted about how her traffic and revenue had recently spiked-up without obvious reason. There has been talk on that board about that subject and conjecture by the members where they believe changes to website content and possibly changing the nameservers too may be responsible for sudden and unexplained traffic/revenue spikes.

The jury is out on that issue however assuming that is valid it would seem like someone could develop a script which automatically substitutes the index page on a regular basis (i.e. weekly schedule)? It appears that could be accomplished based on two different home-page versions with diverse content in the folder (i.e. index1.html & index2.html) and proceeds to rename one or the other index.html. In addition, the script could access the domain registration account and modify the nameservers on the same schedule (i.e. alternating between NS1. Example1.com & NS1.Example2.com).

Every ‘X’ number of days (i.e. weekly) the script could rename the index pages on a rotating basis.  Next the script automatically goes into the domain registration account and change the nameservers too on the same rotating schedule. It would seem like a fairly easy script to have programmed and implemented but who knows for sure? The end-results would certainly be interesting and the search engine and traffic improvement theory may or may not be proven valid and could turn-out to be little more than urban legend.

Importance of Domain Name in Search Engines

A keyword rich domain name is of little doubt a major importance with the search-engine ranking algorithm used by the major search engines. Most domain name and web site experts tend to downplay the value of the domain name in the URL. However, we believe it is a much more major factor than many search experts and guros realize or believe.

For example, in the Bing search results below for lemon juice you will find LemoinJuice.org ranked a very high #4 out of a significant 13,000,000 search results (even higher by ranking #3 with quotes used in the search). The LemonJuice.org web site is a nice little web site with some good relevant (but limited) content, nevertheless, the site itself is comparatively small, especially compared to many other much larger websites which rank below it.

Making its high-ranking even more impressive is the fact the three sites ranking above lemonjuice.org are extremely important and huge websites (Wikipedia and EzineArticles) with many 1000s of content pages and 1000s of links.

The fact LemonJuice.org ranks so impressively goes a long way in confirming the high value of the two keywords ‘Lemon Juice’ being in the websites URL address (view the live search results by clicking below):

Bing.com results – lemon juice without quotes: >http://www.bing.com/search?q=lemon+juice&go=&form=QBRE&qs=n target=”_blank”>

Bing.com results – “lemon juice” using quotes: >http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22lemon+juice%22&form=QBRE&qs=n target=”_blank”>

P.S. Even ranks #1 when searched without a space: > http://www.bing.com/search?q=lemonjuice&form=QBLH&qs=n” target=”_blank”>

Good Domains for Websites Sold for Under $1000

It’s interesting how the BuyDomains.com reported domain sale prices (substantial $950,000 total sales last week) vary so much. Some names which were reported as sold by BD last week stand-out as really good domain name buys based on end-user product sales possibilities, combined with their low sale prices and good keywords in well paying categories (such as in the financial markets for example).

Knowing to a degree how BuyDomains and Afternic operate I am sure many of these domains were purchased by website developers after successful email or phone price negotiations with BuyDomains and Afternic (which flexible pricing they typically offer) with the intention to make money from the future targeted websites using good keyword domains purchased at reasonable prices, including these examples.

The best buys are domains which are also in high-paying product categories, names such as AnnuitiesAdvisor.com ($900), DomainFutures.com ($488), FreeTradingSystem.com ($440). InternationalAssetProtection.com ($688), CommunityCollegeStudentLoan.com ($488) and CanadaHotelReservations.com ($450).

Those nice domain names were all priced reasonably at under $1,000. In fact, in my opinion, that low-priced group of names are better than many of the names which BuyDomains.com sold at much higher price levels last week. That may or may not be an anomaly but I would not be at all surprised if it was really a common occurrence since so many dubious value names are sold on a daily basis from what I can tell.

It Sure Seems Difficult to Get Affiliate Referrals

Here is a transcript of a recent live chat session with a well known domain name firm who offers developed sites either free or for a monthly fee and has what sounds like a lucrative affiliate program. For the benefit of those who don’t know, an affiliate program is where you get commission based on the income of the person you referred. The affiliate income you receive comes from the company and not out of the revenue of the referrals account (according to the terms of all ther affiliate program agreements I have seen).

Support: Hi, how may I help you today?

Me: Hi, regarding your affiliate referral program. I have HEAVILY marketed it with probably 100’s of forum posts and our affiliate link being on each post in the signature area, plus marketed it in my Blog too which gets good and relevant traffic but no affiliates are reported by you under me from all that time, work and energy I put into it.

Me: Are you sure your 90-day Cookie which identifies those who clicked the link for the next 3-months is really working?

Support: Yes, as far as I know. I can double check yours. Ok, please hold. Ok, I see your referral link is working fine. But I noticed that not all of your websites have the “develop your domains” affiliate link placeholder on the site.

Me: Right, because it detracts from the web site in my opinion.

Support: And you are using the correct referral link which is this number (example 12356789)?

Me: Yes, that number is accurate.

Me: No one could have possibly marketed your affiliate program more than myself recently what with 100s of forum board posts and many other posts including website blog articles but not even 1 sale from all that time, work and energy! My one and only affiliate was from personal level marketing I did with a close friend.

Me: What a complete waste of my time this has been. I will not be offering the affiliate code in blogs and forums anymore since it is an exercise in futility ASSUMING the COOKIE really is working for 90-days.

Support: Well, it could take some time for you to see the results

Me: Why?

Support: It would be difficult to predict any kind of average time

Me: If someone wants to sign up for an account why would they delay?

Support: Well, all new sign ups do need to go through an approval process

Me: But that takes a few days and I have been marketing your affiliate program for a much longer time (about 2-months) so that it makes no sense (to not even get one referral with all that effort).

As a side note I can say I did not market this affiliate program for only monetary purposes as I sincerely felt these sites were excellent and had great potential and in fact still feel that way today. That is a reason I marketed the affiliate program as much as I did since I felt other domain investors could also use this web site development service well. However, with that said, any revenues from the affilliate program would have been most welcome, especially in view of substantial declines in my other income sources.

The hard to believe poor results affiliate code was immediately removed in my signature lines at the 3 forums and I stopped the marketing of their service (at least from the affiliate aspect) since this entire affair and this support chat made little sense to me. Unfortunately, I suspect non-crediting (for whatever reason) of affiliate referrals may be more common than you would expect.

The Secret Identifying an End-User vs a Domainer

A “domainer” is a person or business who invests or trades in domains with the goal of reselling them for a profit, flipping them, or buys domain names mostly to park them with a domain parking firm running so called “Pay-Per-Click” advertisements on the web-pages with generating income (getting paid when a visitor clicks on ads on the page) in mind. Some domainers are also developers in the sense they develop a number of so called “minisites” which are small websites (often 5 web-pages or less).

A major intent with minisites is also to receive PPC income (typically from Yahoo or Adsense ads appearing in the pages), or from Affiliate program sales. However, some minisites may also offer various products and services for sale, often accompanied by advertising. Sometimes the minisite may be developed to help enhance the value of its corresponding domain name and bring traffic to it since it has been developed and may be listed well in the search-engines as a result of development and search engine optimization (SEO) work.

An end-user is much more likely to pay a significantly greater price for your domain vs much lower price offers you will get from domainers. That is to be expected since the end-user buyer is much more serious about putting the domain name to good commercial use compared to a typical domain-name investor or domain speculator.

Now for the secret to being able to successfully say with good accuracy the sales inquiry you received is from an end-user vs a domainer. The obvious way to figure it out is what is commonly done such as “googling” the persons name or email address and looking for other clues involving the identity of the person who has inquired. Those methods may or may not work well and often are unreliable.

The secret we have discovered over the years follows Occam’s Razor theory in that sometines the most simple answer is the correct answer. For more on Occam’s Razor please visit Occam’s Organization. So our secret is a true end-user will rarely if ever ask questions such as how much traffic or how many visitors does the domain or website get? What is its revenue? Where do the site visitors come from? Does it get typein traffic? How consistent is the site traffic? etc…

If you get questions like that it is quite likely you are dealing with a domainer or domain investor. If those question are not asked it is real likely the inquring party is a true end-user, who will in all likelihood be prepared to pay substantially more for your domain name or website vs the average domainer.

As to why it matters that much to know you are dealing with an end-user, it’s based mostly on the fact an end-user buyer is significantly more likely to pay far more money vs a domain name investor. That more than likely scenario is to be expected since the domainer wants to buy at or near a wholesale pricing level compared to the retail price range end user buyers often are willing to pay. That variation makes a major difference in the domain/website selling or not selling and in its final sales price .

New Website LondonOilExchange is Now Online

Today we completed one more new web site based on Whypark technology, which we feel is an informative website regarding a good deal of helpful content in combination with cool features such as a free oil exchange commodities futures related newsletter and a regularly updated with fresh content blog-based RSS feed, plus other nice benefits normally only seen in large and costly websites.

Please visit London Oil Exchange to see the new mini-website which looks to be very good quality. Keep in mind sites such as this money-making potential site can be put online with free hosting for basically little or no cost (a small monthly fee applies for unlimited custom domains and premium features).

We did not spend hours or even days working in this site (as you may have expected), instead it took took about 10-minutes time to make this good looking new web site from start to finish. Over time, website traffic and revenue should slowly build-up thanks to the new content-rich web site being developed and live on-the-web. Additional search engine optimization (SEO) work will help the new site get listed even better in the search engines.

Go-to the link to establish your own free Whypark account and get on the road to making great looking multi-page sites like LondonOilExchange using this website development company…

Be sure to visit the LondonOilExchange.com web site by going-here: LondonOilExchange

Start Making-Money Online with a Good Website

We have now completed out latest health related website based on Whypark which we feel is an excellent new site as far as helpful content goes combined with beneficial features such as a free newsletter and RSS feed in addition to other interesting functionality.

Please visit Arteries Tour to view the completed minisite which website quality I believe you will appreciate a lot, especially if you know this potential money-making new web site was both designed and hosted basically free of cost (except for a small monthly fee which allows for unlimited numbers of sites both small and large sites). Keep in mind it only took about 1-hour to make the cool ArteriesTour web site from start to finish.

Go-here to open a free WhyPark acct and start making some great looking multi-page websites like ArteriesTour.com Free Website Development

Be sure to visit the artery tour site Arteries Tour

Internet Affiliate Marketing Has Negatives too

Interesting report from Mike Cohen (Wannadevelop.com/articles/affiliate-marketing) - who is extremely upbeat and excited about internet affiliate marketing. My response is there are some major negatives regarding affiliate marketing.  For example, there is a big problem involving the typical low Click-Thru-Rate (a.k.a. CTR) with internet-affiliate-marketing, what with the CTR being so very low on average. Unless your website gets lots of visitors  it will prove tough to monetize well, especially with consistent revenue.

Another problem with affiliates is you need to watch the links constantly since places like CJ.com seem to always be cancelling various programs for unknown reasons. If you do not handle the cancellation email you won’ t know you are not getting paid. Also, if you deal direct with the affiliate account there is the issue of the affiliate frequently changing the banner or link code and again you may not replace the code (perhaps forgetting) and not realize you are not getting paid.  Even if you do handle ongoing web site coding changes it will involve constant monitoring, time and work changing the code.

Amazing trading 100-yrs ago by William D Gann

It has been asked in phone calls and emails if there is a method to predict futures markets turning points based strictly on
numbers and charts. The only way we know how to do this is to Square Price & Time and to draw Geometric Gann Angles using “Square Charts”, as outlined in our W D Gann Trading Course.

We also have some great reprints of old articles about W. D. Gann, the most famous stocks & commodities trader of all time. Here is part of a fascinating article about Gann written in 1909 by a newspaper which later became known as The Wall Street Journal.
“It is very difficult for me to remember all the predictions and operations of Mr. Gann which may be classed as phenomenal, but the
following are a few. “In 1908 when the Union Pacific was 168-1/8, he told me it would not touch 169 before it had a good break. We sold it short all the way down to 152-5/8, covering on the weak spots and putting it out again on the rallies, securing 23-points profit out of an 18-point wave.”

“He came to me when United States Steel was selling around 50, and said, “This Steel will run up to 58 but it will not sell at 59. From there it should break 16 points.” We sold it short around 58 with a stop at 59. The highest it went was 58. From there it declined to 41-17 points.”

“At another time, wheat was selling at about .89¢. He predicted the May option would sell at $1.35. We bought it and made large profits on the way up. It actually touched $1.35.” “When Union Pacific was 172, he said it would go to 184-7/8 but not an
eighth higher until it had a good break. It went to 184-7/8 and came back from there eight or nine times. We sold it short repeatedly, with a stop-loss at 185, and were never caught. It eventually came back to 17.”

“Mr. Gann’s calculations are based on Natural Law. I have followed his work closely for years. I know that he has a firm grasp of the basic principles which govern stock market movements, and I do not believe any other man can duplicate the idea or his method at the present time.”

Early this year, he figured that the top of the advance would fall on a certain day in August and calculated the prices at which the Dow Jones Averages would then stand. The market culminated on the exact day and within four-tenths of one percent of the figures predicted.” “You and Mr. Gann must have cleaned up considerable money on all these operations,” was suggested. “Yes, we have made a great deal of money. He has taken half a million dollars out of the market in the past few years. I once saw him take $130, and in less than one month run it up to over $12,000. He can compound money faster than any man I have ever met.” (Editor’s Note: these figures are based on 1909 Numbers)

“One of the most astonishing calculations made by Mr. Gann was during last summer [1909] when he predicted that September Wheat would sell at $1.20. This meant that it must touch that figure before the end of the month of September. At twelve o’clock, Chicago time, on September 30th (the last day) the option was selling below $1.08, and it looked as though his
prediction would not be fulfilled.

Mr. Gann said, ‘If it does not touch $1.20 by the close of the market it will prove that there is something wrong with my whole method of calculation. I do not care what the price is now, it must go there.’ It’s common history that September Wheat surprised the whole country by selling at $1.20 and no higher in the very last hour of trading, closing at that figure.”

So much for what Mr. Gann has said and done as evidenced by himself and others. Now as to what demonstrations have taken place before our representative: During the month of October, 1909, in twenty-five market days, Mr. Gann made, in the presence of our representative, made 286 transactions in various stocks, on both the long and short side of the market. 264 of these transactions resulted in profits – twenty-two in losses.

The capital with which he operated was doubled ten times, so that at the end of the month he had one thousand percent of his original margin. In our presence Mr. Gann sold US Steel common short at 94-7/8, saying it would not go to 95. It did not. On a drive which occurred during the week ending October 29, Mr. Gann bought Steel common at 86-1/4, saying it would not go to 86. The lowest it sold was 86-1/3.

We have seen him give in one day sixteen successive orders in the same stock, eight of which turned out to be at either the top or the bottom eighth of that particular swing. The above we can positively verify. Such performances as these, coupled with the foregoing, are probably unparalleled in the history of the Street.

James R. Koene said, “The man who is right six times out of ten will make a fortune.” He is a trader who, without any attempt to make a showing, for he did not know the results were to be published, established a record of over ninety-two percent profitable trades. Mr. Gann has refused to disclose his method at any price, but to those scientifically inclined he has unquestionably added to the stock of Wall Street knowledge and pointed out infinite trading and investment possibilities.

The complete William D. Gann article and others are located here

Free 5-Pg Website which can Bring You Revenue

Do you own domain names which are not developed yet and/or are parked but due to lack of traffic they earn little or no revenue?

If the answer is yes, there is an excellent free service which will make a free 5-page website and supply relevant content plus several other cool features. That way as the web site gets indexed in the search engines your traffic should increase, along with possibly bringing you revenue too.

An example of the quality web site which can easily be made in just a few minutes time is Swine Flu Command Center.

You can sign-up for a free account here.

Getting Out of Bed for Buyer Offers Under $500

A well-known highly successful large domain portfolio owner and domainer RickLatona.com recently proposed on his blog that buyers make a low-offer such as $50 when interested in starting negotiations to buy good domains.

Personally, I don’t think starting out with a low-ball offer to buy a domain/website is a good strategy, assuming you are seriouslly interested in buying the domain or web site. As evidence of that it certainly would *not* work if you want to buy one of my good domains/sites since most all the time I don’t even bother to respond to low initial offers.

I will never forget a Sedona Arizona real estate investment class I attended 7-years ago which was conducted by a well known local attorney. He said he does not even bother to get out of bed for anything less than $500 (referring to his legal fee). That figure seems to me like the absolute lowest offer which carries at least a little credibility with it involving most non-blue-chip domain names.

That not bothering to get out of bed view (for a small amount of money) is often applicable with buying/selling domains too. If you have lots of expenses and ongoing concerns about revenue issues (as in-fact I do) you really need a substantial sum of money to help financially, or make much of a worthwhile change to your lifestyle. The fact the the offer to buy was a ridiculous price normally indicates (at least in my view) the seller was not a serious buyer.

Ironic as websites get better, revenue can decline

It has been asked on the domain name forums about improved ways to make money from mini-sites and other websites, including blogs and forums, such as WordPress blogs for example.

One reason that is asked is because domainers who run blogs or forum boards typically encounter extremely poor results as far as advertising revenue is concerned. It has been widely reported blogs and forums have “ad click rates” of 0.01% or lower, which is dramatically less than most all other website categories. A lower “CTR” normally results in lower revenue.

There appears to be very little that can be done to improve the dismal revenue for blogs/forums because of content issues. What we mean by that is obviously folks who operate blogs and forums want to do a quality job and get considerable valuable content to make their site better and result in a good visitor experience.

With that said, the main issue is quite ironic because the better the blog or forum is as far as good content is concerned the worse the revenue tends to be. As the owner adds more and more nice content he/she will see their PPC (pay-per-click) revenue constantly on the decline. So quite ironically the better job being done ends-up with less income from website ads.

Why does that scenario happen? In our opinion the primary reason is visitors tend to get seriously ‘distracted’ by the content. The more content they see and the better the content is as far as informative or entertaining value goes the visitors will be much more inclined to read the posts but end-up paying little if any attention to the advertising and marketing on the pages (which is usually there to pay the bills).

That situation is a most unfortunate position for the web site owner to be in and is contrary to the goal of providing valuable information to the site visitors, which of course is incredibly ironic.

P.S. The above odd scenario is also typical with non-blog and non-forum websites too. If anyone reading this knows of possible solutions or has some suggestions on ways to solve this problem they are invited to post a comment.

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