Name Monetizer - Name Monetizer - making money with domain names

Entries in domain monetization (16)

Monday

01Mar2010

Domain Monetization in early 2010

Monday, March 1, 2010 at 7:03PM

Domain parking income seems to have settled at lower levels than in the past few years, and some people have seen a slight increase in income in early 2010. Some have suggested that the Yahoo/Microsoft paid search deal should further boost parking income on Yahoo-based services such as SmartName, Parked / WhyPark, and TrafficZ. Paid search customers should add more competition for search terms in a combined Yahoo/Microsoft marketplace, and this could result in higher PPC rates for domain owners. There is always the chance that some of the increase won't get passed-on.

Domain owners who depend solely on domain parking for income are still hurting, however.

My advice remains to diversify. Diversify your income stream by actively marketing your domains for sale. Find quick and easy "development" platforms like WhyPark and SmartName to put up content-rich websites and court SEO traffic. Consider services like Above.com which let you compare parking with different companies, and connect you with Trellian's domain leasing service.

Leonard Holmes |

1 Comment |

tagged

domain monetization,

domain name sales,

domain names in

Friday

26Feb2010

Development with WhyPark

Friday, February 26, 2010 at 3:48PM

WhyPark is marketed as an alternative to domain parking. If you have simply dumped your domains there like you would at a parking company then you are not getting the most from their quasi-development platform. It's even possible to treat WhyPark as a complete development platform, although it means manually editing html and stylesheets.

Be Careful with Keywords.

When you initially add a name to WhyPark you are prompted for several set-up options. One of the most important options to attend to is the "keyword" option. If you put in the wrong keywords you will get off-topic articles from their collection. If you leave keywords for them to optimize you may also get off-topic articles. Part of the Control Panel in WhyPark

My vision for the site GreenInfants.com was to provide resources for eco-friendly parenting. I quickly set the site up and went on to other projects. When I returned to the site recently I found it pulling in articles for green-colored baby furniture and health articles about green poop and green vomit. What was goign on?

I examined the keywords and found: "baby shoes, carters green, green dragon costume, 4t green, green sleeper, feces infants, green babies, green stool, green blood, baby infants, constipation infants, green diarrhea, green baby, green feces, diarrhea infants, green stools, green poop, teething infants, gr

Click to read more ...

Leonard Holmes |

Post-Parking Monetization - Rapid Domain Builder

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 3:27PM

Oversee.net's DOMAINfest Global was again a big success. The company is the parent company of Domain Sponsor
- one of the premier domain parking companies - but they also introduced domain owners to some new monetization options at the recent conference. Rapid Domain Builder generated a lot of buzz at their "Pitchfest." The purpose of the pitchfest was to introduce domainers to "new, alpha- or beta-stage product and service ideas for increasing website traffic and revenue."

Rapid Domain Builder appears to be a hosting and content management package that is priced in a pay-as-you-go manner. It is still in beta and it has some rough edges. I've played around with it a little and there is a learning curve - but there is also a lot of promise. It uses several different content management systems, and allows you to use AdSense and DevHub as well. You can even create Wordpress sites with their platform (although I'm still not sure why you would want to - WordPress is free and easy to use.)

It does not appear to me that the service adds any content to your domains unless you pay extra for this. You can apparently hire staff to create content for you and develop out your site within their system. You can see your Rapid Domain Builder sites before you pay to actually host them. Kicking the tires is free.

Expect to spend several hours figuring out all the options here. Rapid Domain Builder is built on the MyPage.com platform which appears to primarily provide hosting services. The service promises to give domain owners a quick way to develop and monetize in bulk. Pricing is still a mystery to me too. In some places they quote prices as low as $1 per domain, and in other places it looks like $299 plus $2.99 per domain. That's quite a big difference. I see the potential in their site, but I am hopelessly lost figuring out all the options.

Leonard Holmes |

9 Comments |

tagged

domain monetization in

domain development,

domain industry,

domain monetization

Sunday

03Jan2010

Upcoming Events focus on Monetization

Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 11:42AM

The upcoming T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas show (January 21-23 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino) is the first produced by Rick Latona. He has ditched Rick Schwartz's "invitation only" policy and opened the show up to all (finally). The new Rick has followed the lead of "fun" conferences like Domainer Mardi Gras and skipped ealry morning sessions. According to the show schedule there are no morning sessions at all. The content starts at noon. Like Mardi Gras, Las Vegas lends itself to late night activities. The show also offers more networking events, and half price tickets have been liberally available. Monetization topics include "CPA as an Alternative to PPC" and "Optimizing Your Domain Portfolio in a PPC Environment."

DOMAINfest Global Follows from January 26th through the 28th at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica - a new venue for this show. Oversee.net has pulled-out all the stops, returning to the Playboy Mansion and inviting Frank Schilling, Ron Sheridan, and Adam Roux to be the judges for the show's new Pitchfest contest, which focus on domain monetization. The contest is designed to explore new products or services designed to enhance the value of parked or developed domain names. Pitchfests are often seen as blatant self-promotion and attendees at other conferences avoid such presentations. It will be interesting to see if this new approach gains popularity with domain owners. You can read their press release for all of the details.

Domainer Mardi Gras follows in February. Their sessions actually start a little earlier than T.R.A.F.F.I.C., at 10:45. On the agenda are topics such as "Domain Name Investments in 2010 and beyond. Where is the industry heading?" I should be on a panel at the Conference - but I'm not sure which one yet. Domainer Mardi Gras was apparently a small conference last year with a focus on fun (as can be seen in this video). Last year it was sponsored by Modern Domainer magazine, which apparently is no more. This year Parked has taken over as host, with a few additional sponsors announced. This may be my last conference for a while as I work on cutting expenses in 2010. How about you?

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 |