Name Monetizer - Name Monetizer - making money with domain names

Entries in domain development (6)

Monday

01Mar2010

More on WhyPark Development

Monday, March 1, 2010 at 6:57PM

WhyPark is actually a very sophisticated platform that lets you create almost any type of site you want to. You do this by editing the layout of your site using their editing tools. When you go to edit a layout you will see two windows - one for the stylesheet for your site and one for the HTML content. This gives you the ability to edit your site at a very granular level. Some blocks of content - such ad the main article list and the ads above and below - are not individually editable, but you can choose to omit them entirely if you want to by removing the [[mainbody]] tag. (You will almost never want to do this.) Most normal HTML will work with editing your layout. You can also use a bunch of "placeholders" as short-cuts to special pieces of content.

Site Placeholders:

According to WhyPark placeholders are "used to insert the dynamic pieces of your sites into your layout. They add functionality and provide a simple way to move functionality around within your layout." Use the double square bracket terms listed below when you are editing your WhyPark site's layout:

[[domain]] Inserts your domain name into layout.
[[forsale]] Insert a link to sell your domain. This placeholder is replaced with a link to an inquiry form where buyers can contact you.
[[image]] Insert the default small image for your site's category
[[imgHeader]] Insert the default header image for your site's theme or category
[[imgMedium]] Insert the dynamic 385x261 image
[[mainbody]] The main content for every page which includes the full articles, custom pages, etc.
[[newsletter]] Insert a sign up link for your newsletter. This feature is only available with subscribers to the Managed tier of service.
[[related]] Insert the related articles. Related articles show a title and summary of an article on your site to keep users engaged.
[[rssfeed-in]] If you have an external RSS feed associated with your site, insert this placeholder to indicate where the content from it will be displayed. This feature is only available with subscribers to the Enhanced and Managed tier of service. It may take up to 24 hours to see the first data from these feeds.
[[rssfeed-out]] Insert a link to download your RSS feed. This feature is only available with subscribers to the Managed tier of service.
[[sitename]] Insert the name of your site as defined in your main site settings.
[[textads]] Insert text ads you've setup for this site.

Leonard Holmes |

Monetizing a Domain Portfolio - Multiple Streams of Income

Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 6:10PM

When monetizing your domain portfolio it is important to adopt the concept of multiple streams of income. Many domain owners got lazy in the last few years as domain parking provided good income for domains that received traffic. Google and Yahoo were the source of most of this income, and both of these companies have been cutting back on the percentage of their revenue that they pay to domain parking companies. The domains you own, on average, need to earn at least enough to pay for their annual registration fees. There are many routes to this goal. You should consider all of the following:

Domain Parking - The major domain parking companies still pay good money for many domains. By all means continue to park the majority of your portfolio while you also pursue these other streams of income.
Quasi-development - Sites such as WhyPark and DevHub create semi-automated mini-sites that can sometimes draw more traffic than parked domains. Experience to date suggests that even though the sites draw more traffic and look nice they do not always make more money.
Mini-sites - Developed mini-sites are one step up the food chain. Often these appear to be templated "made-for-AdSense" sites that usually include some content. The best of these include unique content and may get listed in search engines for this reason. (My plan to get some mini-sites developed was temporarily delayed, but this is still planned.)
Affiliate Advertising - You can use your domains as landing pages for affiliate products, such as those found on ClickBank.
Domain Sales - This will be the focus of an upcoming post. If you sell a few domains a year you can probably pay the registration fees on the remainder of your domains.

Leonard Holmes |

How to Monetize Now?

Monday, November 2, 2009 at 8:24PM

Domain parking income is down 40-60% for most domain owners. While parking companies are tweaking their algorithms to squeeze every drop out of parking, there is also a shift toward domain sales as a way to monetize domain names. If you've been in the industry long enough, you've seen this before. This is how many of us monetized before the advent of parking.

Domain sales income has held up better than domain parking income for big companies and small domain investors alike. Sedo recently announced that 31% of it's recent income was from parking, while 69% was from sales. Guess what they will be emphasizing down the road? Despite this disparity, I don't expect to see these companies abandon parking. I do expect to see more parking companies get gobbled-up by the likes of Sedo, Parked & DomainSponsor.

What does threaten domain sales? ICANN's plan to roll-out new TLDs will hurt sales of non .com domains. I've dumped most of my .infos, because I believe that these new TLDs will dilute the market to such an extent that only .com and .org will really be meaningful in the future.

Domain development has even taken a hit lately. Rick Latona recently announced that his company aeiou.com will no longer create mini-sites for people. That leaves companies like Domain Mass Development and MiniSites competing for this market with quasi-development companies like WhyPark and DevHub. Is there money in mini-sites? I haven't seen much there yet. Even full-fledged site development with great SEO does not guarantee an income stream.

My strategy for the future is to get lean and watch for occasional buying opportunities as others get lean too. Forecasters are predicting an economic recovery in 2010, but I don't expect the domain industry to reciver that quickly. Domain parking is in bigger trouble than the economy in general, and many of us have relied on that source of "easy" income for too long. I'll also be cutting some sales prices. Look for more on monetizing through sales in future articles.

Leonard Holmes |

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Thursday

18Jun2009

Brian Carr of NameMedia on Domain Monetization in late 2009 and Beyond

Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 6:51PM

Brian Carr is Senior VP of Domain Publishing at NameMedia. He shares his thoughts about NameMedia's domain publishing (parking)services and the future of domain monetization. In this interview he talks about the new iPhone apps for GoldKey, ActiveAudience and GoldKey; and reveals that GoldKey and ActiveAudience domainers can get the SmartName Shopping.com feed that has formerly been available just to SmartName users. (Just ask you account manager turn on the Shopping.com landing pages.) You can even send paid traffic to these pages and use your own AdSense ads.

Leonard Holmes |

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Tuesday

31Mar2009

WhyPark adds Features and Charges

Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 8:06PM

WhyPark was the first quasi-development platform. [Update 4/28/09 - They have dropped the $1200 fee!] For $100 you could add up to 100 domains and they would build them out with content from article directories. You added your own AdSense ad code and you had a site full of content. At least that was the original model. WhyPark started having problems when Google started shutting off the AdSense ads because of duplicate content. They developed their own ad feeds, but they keep a part of that income on top of the $100 joining fee.

WhyPark has morphed into a development platform. They now offer traffic and link-building services such as blog placement services, content development, directory submissions, and RSS syndication services - all for additional fees. You can order custom design services, content development and domain analysis - all for additional fees.

I don't have a problem with these additional services costing more, but they even charge fees for use of any of their newer templates. They really want you to pay them at least $10 a month to upgrade your account. Right now they offer a small selection of "standard templates" and a much larger selection of premium templates. I don't know what the premium templates look like, because I haven't paid up. Their pitch:

"WhyPark Premium Templates are only available to customers who subscribe to the Enhanced ($10/mo) or Managed ($25/mo) accounts.

Upgrade Your Account Now and get instant access to 387 additional templates, including 3 templates in this category."

WhyPark does not have the selection of widgets that DevHub has, but they do allow you to put RSS feeds on your site.

At least I thought they did.

The option for RSS feeds is labeled "Only available in the Enhanced and Managed plans."

The current incarnation of WhyPark appears to a nice one-stop shop for domain development and site building. I haven't tried the value-added services, but they do seem reasonably priced. I do think that simple features like RSS feeds should be included in the $100 that you pay up front.

If you have already paid your $100 and are just using the minimum feature set, you should check out their premium services. It's nice to see this feature set offered without the hassle of dealing with independent contractors from eLance or similar services. The drawback is that these services appear to only be avialable for domains that you have "parked" with WhyPark . (Okay - maybe "parked" isn't the right word.)

Leonard Holmes |