Advertising Revenue
There's a lot of talk going around at the moment with people wanting to form assocations that would bring domainers together in sort of collective organisation, pooling their names into some sort of advertising pot perhaps and then splitting the resultant revenues.
I have thought about this a lot over the past few weeks and am convinced that although it *might* have some merit, the reality is that we all far too selfish for that to happen.
If my domains get developed, I want the spoils.
If someone wants to lease on of my domain names, I want to be in control of the contract terms.
If somebody wants to advertise on my web sites, then I want the revenue from that too.
My personal belief is that unless you have extremely strong generic, type-in names, then pay per click is a waste of time. (I acknowledge that there are specific exceptions to this statement for various reasons).
I also believe that 99.99% oif affiliate programs are a complete waste of time, from a sustainable revenue generating perspective.
So that only leaves development.
Development can take many different forms. Potals, information products, services, advertisnig hubs - the list is endless.
At the moment, I am concentrating my development efforts in VERY niche areas and picking some extremely lucrative low hanging fruit.
In the next few weeks, I hope to be launching a couple of niche market sites that will generate nice advertising income.
It's a fact that domainers are leaving too much money on the table if they are relying too much on the likes of Google and their Adsense cheques.
Things need to change. It's time for people to stand up and be counted. It's ok to make assertions that domains are a great investment opportunity, but in order to be heard, I think it's time to create something.
The cost of development is far less than you might think.
posted by David Carter @ 17:52
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1 Comments:
From Frank Schilling’s SevenMile comment area, written by Isabel Wong.
Frank,
Forget Yahoo! and Google. Domainers need to explore opportunities beyond getting higher PPC rates from search engines.
I recently read that Amazon’s auto-recommendation technology is responsible for 30% of its revenue. Similarly, Aggregate Knowledge’s personalization software helped Overstock.com generate $100M of incremental holiday sales.
So, imagine I’m shopping for X, an expensive product that retailers tend to sell at a high markup. While researching my purchase, I land on many of the related domains you own.
My type-in and click-through history could have given you a lot of clues about my preferences. By collecting this data, you’d have the ability to present me *AND* other visitors with similar behavior with spot-on recommendations. You could even build statistical models to calculate correlations: maybe new owners of X have a 80% likelihood of purchasing Y.
You’d be able to produce out-of-this-world conversion rates and retailers would pay enormous fortunes for your referrals.
But instead, you’re stuck waiting for your domains to “optimize”. Then you split Adsense revenues with Google, without benefiting from “in-network” traffic. I don’t get it, Frank. This is not worth settling for. Better technology already exists; it’s time for parking providers to catch up.
So how come we missed the biggest opportunity in time? “Forget Yahoo! and Google.” she says. Why do you need them when you can WORK HARD AND MAKE MORE? Why do nothing and make less? Did I mention just because you work harder does not guarantee you make more? oops, forgot.
And what about unique and time sensitive opportunities in time? Can you go into the domain industry today and do the same as in 98? But can you develop today as in 98? Development has no boundaries as it is related to creativity, but domaining is depandant on timing. FYI, With anything that is timing related, your OWN USE OF YOUR OWN TIME is a critical issue.
A question of focus. Where is best to put our time? And Doesn’t Google/yahoo deserve their fair share for their work? Why not split with them? They do provide VALUE so they should be compensated. Can we build our own networks? Sure.. I better off though sign away my life RIGHT THIS MINUTE if I’m about to do that. No thank you.
So instead of coming from the outside and screaming we know nothing, I would suggest you get yourself in our shoes, in our minds, by ASKING. Why are we doing what we do? Why are we NOT doing what you are suggesting? Were you the first to suggest development, personalization? Believe me, you are not.
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