Is It Still Possible to Register Domains with Value?

Is it possible to freshly register domain names of value (which may not necessarily make you rich) but have some value, and can make you at least a bit of money?

Rarely a week passes where we do not stumble upon at least a few unreg’d names which I am sure would get natural traffic plus search traffic too. We can’t possibly register them all (there are simply too many good ones) but when we do register the available domains there are often typein visitors to the temporary webpage right away.

Anyone else run across good targeted keyword unregistered domains lately?

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.

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)?

Pros & Cons Site Development vs Parked Domain

Many domain name owners are now saying the smart money in 2010 is on website development.

It appears most everyone is saying development is best but the fact is it can be much tougher to get revenue vs a ppc parked page.

Several reasons for that including the fact Click-thru-rates (CTR) is often 4 or 5 times better on a parked page which means the developed site will need 4 or 5 time more traffic to earn the same revenue, assuming the Earnings-per-click (EPC) is about the same comparing say Adsense/YPN vs the major parking firms.

With that said, a nice advantage the developed site has is the ability for site traffic to increase (but that can easily take many months or even years), whereas the parked domain is unlikely to ever get more traffic.

I have more developed sites vs parked domains so I also believe strongly in development but the strength of the keyword name is a big factor, imo. In addition, development involves vast amounts of time and work, including the site/domain server setup, content, hosting, seo work, site maintenance and monitoring, not to mention the hosting cost and time involved and many months or years of waiting for traffic to slowly build-up over time.

Keep the following example in mind if you are developing a good keyword name which gets say 100 typein visits/mo and earns say $2.80/mo at parking (based on 20% CTR and .14c EPC). Once you make it a developed site you will start-out with approx the same 100 typein visits but more often than not your CTR will drop to roughly 4% (or even lower) which means your revenue will decline to just .56c vs $2.80 on parking.

That typical example scenario in-effect means your traffic will need to skyrocket to 500 visits/mo to equal the same $2.80/mo revenue when parked. Can you imagine the time and work involved increasing your traffic from 100/mo to 500/mo!

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.

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

Jay Leno Jay Walking mimicking video re domains

This Howard Walking Video which minics Jay Leno’s popular Tonight Show Jay Walking episodes is very well done and interesting YouTube Video

The main issue I would have liked to have seen clarified is when Howard Neu asks folks about typing-in Amazon.com it would be good if he asked if they type it in to the Browser address window, or into the Google/Yahoo/MSN search box?

There is always confusion over that issue and many folks do not understand the difference or distinguish between the two methods of accessing a website directly. I believe the percentage of typeins is actually significantly greater than has been reported since typeins in to the search box are classified as a search but they could also be identified as a typein vs only being a search.

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.