How GoDaddy Captured a 50% Market Share

I just read about how GoDaddy recently achieved a 50% domain market share, which internet people are saying is an amazing accomplishment. I am far from being surprised about that.

My reasons to expect their great success are (A) GoDaddy.com has a strong combination of excellent marketing skills, (B) very large ad budget, including substantial money for high price Super Bowl ads, (C) very diverse and extensive offering of additional products and services for sale, (D) including various web hosting products/services, and something you may not think much about but important to small domain buyers and small business owners is their overall (E) good 24X7 support with short on-hold wait times, often no hold time, all combined with a (F) powerful upselling program.

I am sure GoDaddy will soon go well beyond capturing a 50% market share, with the next big level being my prediction GD will eventually capture a 75% market share and dominate the space. hmmmm…..does GoDaddy have stock we can invest in?

Domain/Website Resale Markets Are Depressed

A domain name forum menber asked about more than unusual numbers of non-forum threads and posts lately and was wodnering why that seems to be taking place? My answer is maybe it appears that way because the domain name/website resale market appears to be declining big time and since so few are successfully selling (with the notable exception of the many which somehow almost magically sell in the DNjorunal.com sale reports each week for surprising prices) forum members have little to do all day except pass time with the non-domain related posts.

An example of how hard it is to sell at forums these days I was checking yesterday and see a majority of believed dubious or marginal value names I let expire (and got zero responses on via the Forums, or thru the Whois contact information and at other venues such as my Websites) were in fact puchased by others at places such as Snapnames.com, for example, and at for high prices vs the small amounts I would have quickly taken for them (even though I rarely offer names or websites for sale). I also see BuyDomains.com ended up getting many of my cancelled names. Really odd the marginal names appear to rarely sell at forums and via for-sale-listings at auction websites for a fraction of the prices many domain sellers would have accepted. Anyone know why?

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.

Sales Should Be Atributed to the Correct Website

Regarding domain name sales reports I noticed AfternicDLS gets credit for more sales than deserved. For example, I personally purchased a good health related dot-org domain last week but it was listed in DNjournal.com as being sold by AfternicDLS (even though Afernic.com had nothing to do with the process). It appears credit for many of the sales in both DNjournal and in other media too are often attributed to Afternic when the BuyDomains landing page was responsible for the sale, having nothing to do with Afternic’s name.

The name above and several others I have purchased this year were always a direct result of typing on the domain name and seeing the BuyDomains landing page. The landing page has the BuyDomains phone number at the top announcing the name is for sale and inviting a phone call to the BuyDomans toll-free number, or clicking the link for more details or making an online purchase it goes to the BuyDomains.com website, with Afternic not mentioned on the web-page from what I can see. In fact, I don’t believe Afternic is mentioned at all during the sales and ordering process which appears to be done only under the name BuyDomains.com

Of course I realize they are both divisions of NameMedia.com but it seems like the Afternic.com website gets undeserved credit for far more sales than warranted and greater marketing benefit than is due them. In fact, I would be willing to bet BD landers are responsible for many sales, especially to end-users and higher priced domains) compared to Afternic which is believed to have a lot of sales mostly to domainers and resellers.

The reason we mention this is that Afternic.com is obviously getting more marketing and advertising credit plus greater overall publicity than justly deserved for domain sales. On a more personal note, I dislike the Afternic.com web site which has been riddled with various bugs for ages, lacks certain important features such as bulk operations, and unfortunately has offered poor support for a long time). In fact I removed my domains from there some time ago.

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.

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.

Turning-Down a Ten-Million Dollar SEO Job?

Just visited an interesting website (www.wannadevelop.com/reviews/seo-expert-rand-fishkin-seomoz/) and read a few of its domain name and website development articles.  A quote from an interview/article about Mr Rand Fishkin is extremely difficult to understand (believe) regarding why in the world he or anyone else could turn down so much wealth and compensation because of some alleged stigma attached to doing search engine optimization (seo) work on a gambling web site. Personally I certainly could use ten million $ regardless of any perceived negative stigma (which alleged negativity I doubt even exists).

Here is the quote: “Not so long ago… Rand turned down a $10,000,000 offer from a company to help boost up the ranking of one of it’s gambling sites to the top of Google’s results. Rand knows his stuff and mostly does clean and whitehat SEO that is effective and works long term. Having a gambling site on the client list wouldn’t look so solid. Smart man.” 

Victoria’s Secret Super Model & T-Shirt Marketing

Victoria’s Secret is doing some excellent marketing of their Facebook Page which has almost one million fans already. Spotted in New York: Supermodels Alessandra & Doutzen showing their support for the new Facebook page at the flagship store on 58th & Lex.

Losing Sales by Not Showing a Website Address

Last night I was watching late night cable TV and the typical marketing with the short infomercials which are on frequently.

One commercial in particular looked real interesting so I decided to possibly order the product but first wanted a bit more product information. Therefore, instead of calling the toll-free number (where you could only place an immediate phone order) I waited and waited some more for the website address so I could later go online to check it out some more but there was no website address given. In fact, even if I wanted to order using the toll-free phone number I could not because I had neither a telephone or pen and paper handy to write the number down.

What idiots the producers are to limit their sales by not giving a (easy to remember) website address during the infomercial for someone like me who prefers to place an order later for whatever reason!

New Microsoft Search Engine Bing.com is online

Microsoft has just launched their new search engine Bing.com which a Microsoft press release says Bing will deliver a more functional experience than existing search engines like Gooogle and Yahoo. When you search in Bing you not only get the normal results but also product reviews, flights, and videos.

We just did some research and learned website owners may already add their web site address to Bing which add url feature was really fast for MS to offer when you consider how slow Microsoft/MSN usually are in getting things done.

Here is the link to Bing.com search engne for your web searches: bing.com

Here is the link to Add Url for website owners and webmasters: www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

Some People Don’t Understand Good Marketing?

We recently called a company LiveFaceOnTheWeb which markets their service this way “With thousands of LiveFaceOnWeb Virtual Greeters on the internet, we are seeing very creative and innovative ways to implement LiveFaceOnWeb Technology. We would like to help you pick out your LiveFaceOnWeb Virtual Greeter and explore the many options that will further improve your websites performance.”

When we called we were quite ready to buy their service and would have signed-up right away to put their Virtual Greeter on our FreeMLSlisting.com real estate website – if only we could have got a discount (even a small discount would have been OK at the time) since we dislike paying full price, especially for a higher priced service (which we assumed could have a degree of price flexibility, especially to attract new clients.

However, the person on the phone said absolutely no discounts are possible (even a small discount) and I need to pay full price which was about $600 for the package I had it mind. He said there is no negotiating possible, with a bit of a negative sounding voice, at least in our opinion.

Today we get email from them offering roughly 25% off the regular price bringing the cost down to near $400. Unfortunately, we are not as inclined to order today compared to a couple weeks ago so may not take the offer after all.

This shows the importance of offering prospective clients who are looking for a good deal on first contact a discounted price rather than waiting until you realize they did not buy the product so then you later want to give a lower price, but that’s often a failure due to the time delay.

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.

Futility of marketing & advertising domains for sale

The more and more we look at non-wholesale domain-name sales reports (including a number of believed average or mediocre non-premium looking names) which nevertheless sold for good coin, i.e. as listed and discussed in DNJournal.com the more and more we realized that domain sales success is *mostly* luck if you domain name sells or does not sell.

If you look at the current DNjournal.com DomainSales page you will see listings of 100s of substantail sales. However, if you look closely at all the sales you can tell most came about by being listed in the major domain names for sale firms, places such as Afternic.com, Sedo.com, BuyDomains.com, Namejet.com and Snapnames.com.

These domain venues in our opinion do not sell many domains as a direct result of any marketing or promotions they did but in all likelihood the sale transaction was the result of simply being listed there for sale and found by a link, forwarding to a parked page with a for sale notice, a for-sale page, typeins, or listed in the search engines.

That is based on the law of averages theory. For example, if there are say 1 million names for sale at any given time. Based on domain sales statistics say one-half percent a year successfully sell. In effect, that means roughly 14 names will sell on a typical day (per million for sale) at end-user pricing, irrespective of the strength or amount of any marketing, promotions, for sale websites, advertising, email spams, auctions and domain forum posts.

In other words, what we are trying to say is the typical futility of trying to market (non-wholesale) domain names for sale, especially selling on a web site (without very high traffic, but even then of dubious value) and on forum boards. For example, look at the incredibly dismal looking failed for sale threads on the various domain name boards such as namepros.com and dnforum.com for example.

Again, we are referring to sales which are above the wholesale price level, which by definition tends to exclude most domainer-to-domainer sales which are rarely based on commercial interest and appeal.

Of course, like most things in life there are always exceptions to our “luck theory” such as a domain owner who needs some cash and therefore offers a good name for sale at a price perceived to be low by a bargain-seeking buyer, often a domainer with excess investment money available (assuming the asking price sounds good). Thus seller may achieve a higher price non-end-user sale at a comparatively upper-tier wholesale price area.

How can the domain-forums (and other venues) generate so much quality and highly targeted internet traffic and yet it’s so rare for end-user price level sales to occur (beyond low price domainer to domainer sales and so called domain flips)? The obvious answer is so much of it is based heavily on timing and mostly just plain luck, combined with a shortage of potential commercial appeal level of prospective buyers to those domain-sales venues.

A domain end-user buyer (often a small business) may eventually come looking and knocking on the domain owners door, based mostly on luck as far as the timing of the buyer and their deciding one day they want or must have a specific name, so he/she goes out looking for it, finds it, and finally decides to buy it, for a reasonable non-wholesale price. Luck is without a doubt a huge issue and also the main factor.

Email Marketing

When I first got started on the internet back in 1996, when I received an email message I was extremely excited and couldn’t open my inbox fast enough for the joy of reading it. It was a new and innovative way of communication and people loved it. Of course, what came next is what has led to what we know call “SPAM”. With the emergence of email as a common and reliable way of communications people took advantage of that medium, and started emailing people with commercial messages that they did not request. This led to the Federal Government having to step in and pass laws to govern the sending of commercial email.

Now, there is a reason why SPAM is so popular, and that’s because you can make a substantial profit in a short period of time by sending your messages to people. Keep in mind that SPAM is illegal, but email marketing is not. There are ethical ways you can go about email marketing. You can build an actual email list of your customers who truly are interested in the products and services that you have to offer. If you build such a list, then you are not spamming, but instead you are email marketing.

Do not be turned off by email marketing, as it actually works well if done the right way. There are many ways you can go about building an email list, but the easiest way is to simply have a form box on your website, that allows visitors to your site “OPT IN” to receive email announcements regarding the products and services that you offer. You can then send messages to all those who sign up, ensuring that you give them the option to “OPT OUT” if they no longer want to receive any messages about what you have to offer.

Anther big threat is virus and spywar issues, Be sure you are always running an up-to-date antivirus anti-spyware progarm. However, even with spyware, virus and spam issues you should still never underestimate the immense power of email advertising and Internet marketing.