A few minutes ago we heard back from Sedo in relation to our story yesterday. As such we are posting their feedback in full below:

“We can confirm that Google is one of Sedo’s advertising partners, but cannot confirm that they are the source of the change.“

When asked about the effect of the decision on traffic aggregators, Sedo responded:

“As an unintended consequence, it might make things a little more complicated for traffic aggregators.  However, with these changes, it’s a great time for customers to re-evaluate things to make sure aggregators add value for them.  Some may opt for a stronger focus on increasing the domain sales portion (alongside their parking revenue).“

So what do you think? Is this a measure to:

1. Shut out aggregators, or at least make things more difficult for them?

2. Get “quality traffic” to their parking pages?

3. Reduce click fraud (thanks to Acro for the comment yesterday).

What are your thoughts on this? Post a comment and let us know!

Early this morning I received an email from Sedo regarding possible changes to the way their “primary advertising provider” monetizes Sedo parking pages.

I’m going to take a wild guess here (I could be wrong) and say that “primary advertising provider” is code for Google, although Sedo does not mention the name of their “primary advertising provider” anywhere in the email.

Here is a brief extract:

“Based on current discussions it is possible that our ad provider will cease its provision of advertising to URL-parked pages and in consequence only support DNS parked domains.

This step is considered by the online advertising provider in response to advertiser feedback and would affect all URL-parking customers at all parking companies worldwide that share this advertising provider.

This change could happen in the near future (potentially as early as the fourth quarter of 2010) and we wanted you to have this information in advance to take into account for your internal planning.“

What’s The Issue?

Let me cut through the spin and give you some context:

1. Traffic aggregators such as Park Logic, KeyRPM & Above use URL forwarding (amongst other techniques) to send traffic to multiple parking companies. URL forwarding allows them to quickly point the domain somewhere else, and therefore identify who is paying the most for a particular keyword. This is essentially an arbitrage opportunity. The problem for both the advertisers and parking companies, is that it makes their traffic numbers (and therefore their revenue line) less predictable.

2. There is certainly “no love lost” between parking companies, traffic aggregators and ad companies like Google. Yahoo. All of them take a slice of the parking pie!

What Does This Mean For Me?

Given the current environment, its a bit of a strange strategy for a “primary advertising provider” to undertake. It seems like its a demand, eg: “you are either with us or against us”.

Here is the bottom line, if you use traffic aggregators, you better make sure they support changing DNS (nameservers), so that you can still use parking companies that rely on the Google advertising feed (such as Sedo). For those that use KeyRPM or Park Logic, you are fine (they support changing nameservers) and I confirmed this with both companies today.

For the record, I have tried to contact Sedo for a comment and will update this post if/when I hear back.

About 3 years ago I made one decision that dramatically changed my life for the better. Just like the butterfly effect, that decision is going to change other peoples lives for the better too. Before I tell you what happened, let me give you some context.

As some of you know, I’ve been using the Internet for a long time (I started in 1989), before Mosaic, Netscape or the even the web. For the technical people, back then it was all about Bitnet, ftp and gopher, but that’s another story…. The fact is, I didn’t buy my first domain until the mid 90′s and I didn’t sell a domain until 2002! Why? There was simply no way of monetizing domains like there is now.

When I first began investing in domains, I tried and tested everything I could get my hands on. If there was:

A product – I’d buy it
A service – I’d subscribe to it
A forum post – I’d read it.

To cut a long story short, there wasn’t anything on the market that did what I wanted, so I developed my own system to help me find and buy, the RIGHT KIND of domains, but on a massive scale! It ended up being so big, we built a farm of dedicated servers at a top US Datacenter just to run it! It was a system that “plucked needles from haystacks” over, and over again!

But that led to another problem….

I was buying great domains and hording (stock piling) them. My behaviour was like Gollum from Lord of the Rings – my precious domains yesss….owww dot com….so beautiful. They were mine, mine MINE! In what seems a complete contradiction to many domainers, ego wasn’t a big a part of it. Why? I simply didn’t talk about it. I didn’t go to conferences. I didn’t have a blog back then either. It was “head down” and a hell of a lot of hard work! Then something changed. From a personal standpoint, this was the “tipping point” that changed everything for me….

One afternoon I was talking with my wife, Anna; I’ll never forget this conversation. Our system had identified a lot of high quality domains the week prior and I’d purchased all of them. Ok, I admit, I was actually complaining about the number of domains – there were too many good ones! Of course – I wasn’t going to let them drop or go to someone else for THAT price! If you buy at auction, you’ll know what I mean. Anyway, Anna said “Well why don’t you give this system to other people then?” I burst out laughing and said “Are you crazy? This is making us $$$$ – I’m not telling ANYONE about it”. Lets also not forget that domainers are a very secretive bunch. After a very long, somewhat heated discussion, Anna convinced me to release our domain investment platform to the public. I ended up showing a few domainers what we had done (under strict, non-disclosure agreements of course) and they were completely blown away. There was, and still is – nothing like it.

But that was 3 years ago! What happened I hear you ask? Well, I’m a perfectionist. If I was going to put my name to something, then it better be “the best in the industry”. Those that know me personally, know that I have a professional / corporate background, and have a firm belief in customer support. As such, we spent a lot of time and money making the interface more user friendly. We produced “how to video”s, created detailed online help, a customer support desk, we added all the trimmings a professional investor would expect. Of course, redesigning the site three times with a team of designers doesn’t help either. The fact is, we have been working day and night, making this happen. Its consumed late nights, weekends, kids school holidays – even Christmas afternoon (I should have been sleeping off lunch).

Now its done.

Would I change anything? No way! I still believe that there are MORE than enough domain names for everyone.

I also know this – Domainer Income will:

a) Help many people to generate passive income – making a HUGE difference to peoples lives from a financial standpoint.
b) Take the Domaining industry to a new level.
c) Create a level playing field, by making information available to everyone.

Today, YOU have an opportunity to be a part of that.

So – here is the result of many years of hard work – an enterprise grade, Domain Investment Platform. You now have everything you need to Find, Buy and PROFIT from domain names. Where do you start? I’ve created many FREE videos that explain Domainer Income in more detail. There is also a FREE Membership too – so nobody misses out on an opportunity to start making money with domains.

Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts….. remember – this has been my baby for many years. I’d love to hear what you think.

Simon

With the news that Adsense for Domains is now available to all publishers, it may be tempting to think “Screw my parking company – I’m leaving and going direct”.

Before temptation takes over and you jump into bed with Google, think about what you are doing:

Weakening An Industry – Ending Collective Bargaining

Parking companies negotiate rates with Google. Think of it as collective bargaining in the context of a union. What Google has essentially done, is to commence a breakup of an industry, which in the long run will weaken it. If you look at past behavior, I’d suggest they will:

• Establish their own rules
• Decrease payouts over time once they get a handle on where the traffic is

Landing Pages Not Optimized

• The Google landing pages are not going to convert very well (see the image below). I’d assume they will update them over time but right now you might be better off financially, by not moving.
• Parking companies spend $$$$ on optimising landing pages, getting the right graphics, colours etc.. so the page can convert. Its in the parking companies interest for your portfolio to work. If they make $$, you make $$$.

Customer Support

• If something goes wrong, or if I have a question, I know I can call my Account Manager and get a response within 24 hours. Good luck in getting this from Google.

Long Term Strategy and Intent

So how does Google monopolise Internet traffic increase profits? Google analytics knows about your traffic flows. Adsense and Adwords tracks advertising and what you click on. Google search knows what you search on, GMail knows the contents of your emails. All this information is stored and used by Google. The big unknown for Google is obviously anything outside its network. In this case its direct navigation (type it in traffic).

What happens long term when Google knows where your traffic is coming from and decides to alter search results, payouts and change traffic flows? If your domains depend on links from other sites, why wouldn’t Google cut YOU out, because you are the middleman!

Domains You Can’t Park With Google

In case you didn’t know, Google has restrictions on the keywords found in a domain. “Terms in the URL may not contain or be related to any of the following:

• Pornography, adult, or mature terms. This includes, but is not limited to, any terms that refer to or suggest nudity, partial nudity, sexual imagery/acts, lewd/graphic or profane language.
• Violent or racially intolerant language or any other form of hate speech directed against an individual, group, or organization
• Excessive profanity
• Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
• Gambling or casino-related content
• Weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles
• Beer or hard alcohol
• Tobacco or tobacco-related products
• Prescription drugs
• Promotion of an illegal activity or an activity that infringes on the legal rights of others.
• References to tragedies or other sensitive current events
• Any other terms that are illegal, promote illegal activity, or infringe on the legal rights of others.

Summary

I believe that competition is good. Some of the greedy parking companies will probably reduce their % as people will start to compare going direct with Google vs the parking company. That’s good for the industry.

Right now I wouldn’t do anything. It’s a “wait and see” approach for me. The big question is will Yahoo and MSN follow?

If I asked you to tell me the first things that come to mind when I say “Sedo” – what would you say? I might be completely wrong, but I’m guessing the word “cares” wouldn’t be one of them.

This morning I received an email titled “Wishing Well Promotion:: Win Cash and Promote Change!“. At first I thought spam, then I thought “promote change” – that sounds like CNN’s “be the change” promo…. so I opened the email from Sedo.

At the top of the email was a picture of the world, a large green leaf and a little African child. Wow, the marketing guys really picked one issue from each category for this promo! It looks like something from an NGO like WorldVision.

So what’s the bottom line? Well, if you spend 1,000 USD/EUR/GBP or more, Sedo puts $10 into a bucket (Wishing Well). At the end of the month half of the money in the “Wishing Well” is given to CHF International “in response to the drought occurring in Ethiopia“. The other half will be given at random to a buyer or seller who closed a transaction through Sedo during the month of August. What the? Am I living in the twilight zone here? What we have is – drought in Ethiopia vs large latte at Starbucks. Hmmmm… Some people might find this hard to believe, so here is their landing page for the promotion with all the info.

So let me get the straight – domainers buy stuff from Sedo for $1k and Sedo gives $5 to charity and the other $5 to a domainer. Great concept around the charity, but very BAD execution. It should be a competition OR a charity.

Here is an extract from CHF International which explains how much $$ is required:

• $300 provides a family with proper sanitation;
• $600 provides a year’s supply of food and water for one growing child;
• $1,000 repairs an existing well that will provide 400 people with clean water;
• $7,000 builds a new well, which could save the lives of 800 people;
• $12,000 builds a new school building, providing children with valuable education.“

Sedo, why don’t you donate 100% of the funds to the charity? $5 is nothing to a domainer. If you really cared, you would give it all to charity.

Don’t get me wrong – conceptually this is a great idea. I believe that Western countries and wealthy individuals have an obligation to give something back to society. I personally donate to several charities on a monthly basis.

Sedo should be congratulated on making the first step as they didn’t have to do it. There is now an opportunity to get it right and set an example to the rest of the industry.