Are Yahoo Traffic Quality Scores Nonsensical?

Yahoo! is a major advertising feed provider for a few well known domain name parking firms. Domains which are not active websites are usually parked so the domain-name owner gets an opportunity to earn revenue from pay-per-click ads which appear on the pages which are parked.

One of the larger and best domain parking firms is Parked.com, who reports by way of a graphical line chart viewable on the clients dashboard page showing their web-page visitor traffic quality scoring.

Even since the Yahoo feed traffic scores were openly disclosed we have always thought the scores made little sense and seemed nonsensical since the scores fluctuate a lot even though the parked domains and their visitor traffic stays basically the same.

In the past (again with about the same quality traffic) our score has ranged from a very low 1 and all the way up to a consistent 9 or 10, with 10 being the highest possible score, and has held as a 9 or 10 for  long time periods. Here is our most recent quality score report according to Yahoo! which covers the last nine quality score iterations:

2.5 – 3.0 – 0 – 0 – 6.0 – 1.0 – 1.0 – 5.5 – 7.0

In our opinion, it appears to be virtually impossible for such wild fluctuations to take place. In fact, the visitor quality scores almost appear like random numbers, keeping in mind the parked domains and their combined traffic are basically the same for the entire reporting period. What do you think?

Business Success Advice from Bob Parsons

Just ran across an excellent video presentation by Bob Parsons (GoDaddy) about how to be successful in business. It’s really worth a look, espcially Bob’s interesting advice about never answering your own phone!

101-years ago a Trader Showed His Greatness

The best stocks and commodities trader of all-time was without a doubt Mr. W.D. Gann, who certainly had the most interesting and mystical trading method too. This was reported about Mr Gann by the Ticker Magazine more than 100-years ago in the year 1909. During the summer of 1909 Willima D. Gann predicted the September Wheat contract trading on the Chicago Board of Trade would sell at a price of $1.20. This meant t it must touch $1.20 price before the end of the month of September. At 12:00 Chicago time, on September 30th (the last day) Sept Wheat futures was selling under $1.08, and it looked as though Gann;s 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 now history September Wheat surprised the whole country by selling at exactly $1.20 and no higher in the very last hour of trading, with its closing price being exactly $1.20”

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 25 trading days, W.D. Gann made in the presence of our representative 286 trades in various stocks, on both the long and short side of the market. 264 of these transactions resulted in profits, with just 22 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 other Gann articles are located here

Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is Shutting Down

Just received email from Yahoo announcing they are shutting down Yahoo Publisher Network by the end of April 2010.

Not really too surprising since it never did very well for many publishers compared to Google Adsense and never got out of Beta after several years in beta.

Some of their policies were also odd such as when they both emailed and called making us stop using the YPN Ad Targeting Tool where I was able to accurately target YPN ads to the right category based on both the domain name and site content.

The representative we spoke to said YPN did not like the way I was using it (but gave no real explanation after asking her for the reason many times) even though I was usng the ad targeting tool exactly as intended with 100% genuine ad targeting.

Funny thing is I always suspected YPN actually did not truly want completely accurate ad targeting since YPN allegedly had limited ad inventory in several important or niche categories. However, the ad targeting tool forced those ads where there may have been low inventory. Now I am thinking my guess about that was actually correct. LOL.

Time Duration Secrets to Profitable Day Trading

According to our extensive hands-on futures market research, most successful day-trades last about 7-minutes. That assumes the trader is using a reasonable profit objective and exiting the trade as his profit target is hit.

Most losing day trades last approximately 45-minutes on average, when the trader finally exits out of the losing trade. That’s because the trader relies on hope once he sees the trade losing money. The trader hangs-on to the losing trade position relying on hope the market will change trend and turn in his favor. However, eventually the equity loss becomes too large which finally forces the trader to exit the trade and take a big loss rather than possibly lose even more money by hanging on even longer.

Are you wondering how this little known information can help you trade the markets profitably? The short answer is at the end of 7-minutes in the trade you might consider getting out regardless of the fact your profit target was not hit or you have a loss at that time, keeping in mind the more past 7-minutes it goes the less likely the trade will be a winner.

Insights For Search Predicts Real Estate Collapse

In the past we have posted several times about how financial market traders can use relatively simple chart patterns involving higher-swing-lows and lower-swing-highs to successfully trade the stocks & commodities markets, options market and with other investing.

I was doing research on this powerful trading concept this morning and was thinking the incredible real estate market decline could be a good example of how well it can work. Therefore, I went to Google’s “Insights For Search” and searched for “MLS Listing” which is a widely used real estate term by home buyers and sellers.

This is the explanation of how Insights For Search works from Google: “Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of world-wide Google web-searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. You can choose to see data for select Google properties, including Web search, Images, Product search, and News search.”

The Google Chart displays the most perfect long-term examples I have ever seen visually depicting the great power of swing highs and swing lows. Starting in 2004 the chart shows a series of 8 important swing highs and 6 major swing-lows. Of particular importance is the Dec 06 swing low which broke the old support level established Dec 05 by that major 2005 swing low. Once that old support level was broken in Dec 06 it conformed a major real estate bear market. The market is believed to be the most severely depressed real estate market of all-time, especially in areas of the U.S. such as Arizona, Nevada, California and Florida.

If you were buying/selling real estate the chart clearly shows starting in the year 2005 you should have been selling (not buying) real estate based on the important July 2005 swing-low (which you knew about at the end of August 05, and was confirmed Nov of 2005 which was the month the previous major swing-low was confirmed. The next series of 4 major lower-swing-highs which were in mid-2006, mid-2007, and early-2008 and 2009 confirmed the bear market was ongoing and getting even stronger.

The strong nationwide real estate decline started in late summer of 2005 in several Sunbelt states at the end of Aug 05 (at least according to my knowledge and statistics). However, it got underway a little later in other areas of the nation and the media often reports the bear market started during the year 2006. In my opinion this chart is one of the most picture book perfect and accurate examples of how powerful swing-highs an swing-lows can be. It is something you should always look at and take into strong consideration while trading the markets or investing.

Millionaire Matchmaker About A Medical Device

We were watching the new hit TV show “Millionaire Matchmaker” (millionaire dating club) a few days ago when the millionaire asked the very attractive blond what she did for a living and he was informed she sells the incontinence condition medical device “Bladder Pacemaker” – We already have a new small website online for the domain anme and new medical device, which can help a lot of people with the serious incontinence health condition: Bladder Pacemaker

Why Develop Someone Else’s Domains Free?

Recently a forum member posted on one of the domain name boards he was looking for a reliable partner to develop his (no traffic) domain names into developed websites, including adding site content and making money from the site. He also wants the free developer to pay 50% of future expenses (such as web-hosting) in return for a 50% split of potential revenue.

Getting someone else to develop his no traffic and dubious value names (which also adds good value to them) and even pay 50% of future costs is a fabulous business plan for HIM. However, he needs to seriously ask himself why in the world would anyone do that when they can develop their own names and get 100% of the site ownership and future revenue for themselves (or develop for others receivung up-front compensation for the job)?

Time Duration Trading Secrets & Statistical Validity

Secrets of time durations of profitable & losing day-trades

Most successful daytrades last approximately 7-minutes. That typial trade duration assumes the trader is using a reasonable profit objective and exiting the trade as his profit objectivegets hit.

Most losing day trades last about 45-minutes. That’s because the trader relies on hope once he sees the trade looking like a failure. So he hangs on to the losing trade hoping it will turn, finally the loss becomes too big forcing him to exit the trade after being in the trade for a much longer time than originally anticipated, mostly due to relying on hope.

How many trades are needed for good statistical validity?

Lots of stocks and commodities traders ask how reliable their track-record may be as far as statistical validity goes. They may see some statistics on seasonal trades showing a market was mostly uptrending from April to June during 12 of the last 14 years, for example. The same traders may have experience with their own trading system showing 8 of 9 winners following say a 5-unit moving average crossing over a 9-unit moving average.

None of those scenarios are valid from a statistical validity standpoint. That’s because according to mathematical experts and statisticians a minimum of 30 occurrences are needed for good statistical validity. Please keep this in mind when evaluating a trading system or trader metholodology. Anything less than 30 samples will not be statistically accurate.

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…

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.