[Video] Domainer Income TV – Interview With David Harry

If you currently use domain name parking services, then this video could be lifechanging for you. I’m deadly SERIOUS. Depending on how you optimize your parked websites, you should be able to substantally increase your earnings from parking companies. I’m not talking about just doubling your earnings either – I’m talking about multiples…. just wait to you see the video! I’ve had to chop it up into 5 parts (it goes for 50+ minutes) for YouTube. If you want the whole video, just subscribe to our iTunes channel.

For those people that do not use parking as a monetization strategy, then this will definitely make you reconsider!

This episode has been months in the making and David has given me unprecedented access to KEYRPM to show REAL EVIDENCE based on a LIVE PORTFOLIO of domains. Seriously – this is one episode that you cant afford to miss!

Can I ask you a favour? After you watch the video, please “Like It” and post a comment below to share your “lessons learned” with other viewers.

[Help] Us Shape The Future Of .au

As you may know, I’ve been representing the interests of both the domain investment community and small business on the auDA Names Policy Panel. The panel today released:

1. A discussion paper to the general public based upon deliberations to date.

2. This survey to seek public opinion on domain monetization, misspellings, eligibility and allocation policy rules.

Why should you care? Because:

1. If you buy .au domain names (or want to buy them, but you can’t), this gives you an opportunity to get your voice heard and change the rules.

2. If you think that domain monetization (eg: parking) is a legitimate business practice and want to see the “domain monetization policy” abolished, then now is your chance! Seriously, go and tell auDA what you REALLY think! Should Australia continue to be the only country in the world with these restrictions?

Anyone can provide feedback – you don’t have to be an auDA Member.

What You Should Do Right Now

Its Friday, take some time out and fill in this survey.

Thanks again for your support.

The Facts About Parking [Case Study]

Parking means different things to different people. It’s no secret that our organisation develops and parks – we have done so for years. To us, its quite simple; some domains do very well when they are parked – others do better when they developed out. Its a risk / return equation.

However, there are things you can do to earn more $$$$ from parking. One of them is to find a good parking company. Here is where the issue is; there are companies that call themselves “parking companies” and then there are the REAL parking companies. As you know, I’m all for transparency, hard facts and evidence; so I wanted to bring your attention to this study conducted by Michael Gilmour. The results are amazing and Michael deserves a huge round of applause for publishing it.

The reality is that you need to read the study for yourself, but here are a few highlights. To summarize, Park Logic split tested domains between parking companies (yes, I’m oversimplifying it) and compared the results:

1. There was a 164% increase in revenue for the 67% of domains which were “won” by the Domain Advertising provider.

2. Almost a $100 RPM aggregate revenue was achieved on those winning domains

When you look deeper into the data, some of the domains have a $236 RPM ! Now before you go moving your portfolio over…… results like these require a LOT of work. Its not a simple process of just pointing your portfolio somewhere else.

So… to all the people who think that parking is a waste of time and that development is the only way to go – think again.

When Are You Going To Do This? [Video]

If you are not making enough money from domaining, then I have a few questions for YOU:

1. When are you going to stop collecting domain names?

2. When are you going to monetize that group of domains you bought months ago?

3. When are you going to stop trawling through auctions late at night, buying domains that just end up sitting there doing nothing?

4. How are you going to get the knowledge you need to monetize your domains and start earning REAL $$$ from them?

At what point do you admit to yourself that you need help? Well… that’s exactly what I’m offering a limited number of mentoring students.

Apply now at http://www.MentoringBySimon.com – be quick, applications are closing!

Domainer Income TV Episode 2 – This Is BIG !

This episode is HUGE – both in content and length! It’s one of the longest episodes we have recorded (29 mins), and its so big we had to split it up into two parts – just to fit on YouTube.

For the second half of the video click here. If you use an iPhone or iPad, subscribe to our domaining channel on iTunes and you can download the entire episode.

Episode 2 is jam packed full of wisdom from two experienced domain investors that are known the world over. I’m talking about Michael and David Castello.

I know you will want to watch this episode straight away, but I’d strongly encourage you to get a pen and paper, because you will be taking down a LOT of notes. I also have no doubt, that many people who are new to domaining and buying / selling web sites will have a new perspective on the industry after watching this episode.

Please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you learned from it.

Sedo Flags Possible Changes In Advertising Provisions

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.

Why You Should NOT Get Into Bed With Google …. Yet

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?

Michael Gilmour Talks Risk – Traffic DownUnder 2008

Michael had a fantastic speech and covered off a variety of metrics and calculations. Keep your eye out on Whizzbangsblog for the presentation. In the meantime here are some key points:

Risks vs Business Models

• Risks depend upon the business model being adopted.

• Each business model has its own risk profile that will or will not suit the domain owner. For example: stock items, high value sales, traffic and development.

Risks To The Domain Name Industry

• Advertising aggregators (Google / Yahoo)
• Traffic Aggregators (Parking)
• Domain Sales Models
• Regulatory and Legal

Regulatory and Legal Risk

• Every domainer needs to evaluate their portfolio from a legal risk perspective.
• Asset protection is crucial to long-term success.
• ICANN & Registries will change the rules.
• Get rid of those domains that are unprofitable and with legal risk

Revenue Share

• Google is paying less for traffic
• Based on calculations looking at the mean (curve) the average cost of traffic is 27.9% (what Google pays network partners) and the domain Industry gets 17.6%

Rules For Dealing With Advertisers

• Quality: Google and Yahoo will smart price your whole portfolio up and down.
• Watch out for fraudulent behavior.
• Do not put high paying non-performing keywords on high volume low CTR traffic.
• Match advertisers to traffic.
• Its no longer good enough to set a keyword and never touch the domain again.
• Think about how our behavior effects the advertiser.

Measuring Performance

Parking companies use different metrics. For example, how is an IP address measured?

• 18 Hours – Parking Company 1
• 24 Hours  – Parking Company 2

Letting Go Of Your Domains

I had to make a few hard decisions this weekend, both of them philosophical in nature when it comes to domain name investment.

I backordered two domains (com and net) last year that were closely linked together by topic. Both of them were parked at a well known parking company. While both domains got a bit of traffic, they just werent converting. To be honest, I probably could have sold them on DNF for $XX, but I just don’t have the time.

Another domain name I won at auction many years ago has been declining in both traffic and consequently revenue. In 12 months to date its made US$4.50 on a very popular topic. In my book, that’s not enough, so I decided not to renew any of them!

The domain names are now gone, expired, thrown back into the drop. Some domainers that I know would have a heart attack and say “But you could build a site around X and use Adsense and blah blah blah”. But do you *REALLY* have the time to do this? Are you *REALLY* going to do it anyway?

What are your thoughts on this? When do you draw the line and say, enough is enough?

Exclusive: TDNAM Explains 7-Day Grace Period

Ever purchased a domain name using Godaddys TDNAM auction site, only to wait 7 days until it was transferred to you?

This happened again to me last week. I won an auction for a .us domain name. Now, I wouldn’t normally buy a .us domain. This is in fact my first, however it was a single English word AND was also being used as the name of a product line. How could I not buy it? So what happened?

Date Won:      9/8/2008 12:28:00 PM
Yours On:      *9/16/2008 12:00:00 AM

The domain name I won was parked at Godaddy when I purchased it. I must admit, I was quite irritated by the fact that I have to wait 7 days while the parking revenue, from a domain that I purchased, went to Godaddy. As I type this; 6 days later its still parked at Godaddy.

The 7-day grace period has been discussed in many forums, but without an explanation from Godaddy. As such, I asked Godaddy for an official view on this particular issue. While I’m not going to name specific individuals, Godaddy was both highly professional and very responsive.

Here is their unedited view, in full:

“When a domain name expires, the original registrant has a 42 day grace period to renew or redeem the domain.

If the customer has not renewed the domain name 26 days after expiration, the domain is sent to auction through TDNAM.  The auction for the domain runs from the 26th day to the 36th day of the domain’s expiration.

As the original domain registrant has 42 days to renew or redeem the domain, there is a 7 day grace period from the end of the auction (day 36) to the day the domain is no longer available to the original registrant.  While there is a chance for the domain to be renewed by the original registrant, many auctioned domains bid upon are awarded through TDNAM.

When a TDNAM bidder enters an auction for an expired domain, TDNAM states on the bid page (as part of the terms and conditions) the original registrant still has the opportunity to redeem the domain name.”

There you go. It’s pretty self explanatory. If I was to summarize it, I’d say that buy the time a domain expires, Godaddy has a buyer and cash in the bank from a) parking revenue and b) the auction process.

While it might irritate people having to wait 7 days, when you take the time to understand it, it makes good business sense. That’s Bob Parsons for you – which is why I have his 16 Rules for Success poster on my wall.