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Worthy names changing hands privately
When you own a valuable domain name, the question of wether to use it for a given project, park it for future use, rent it to a third party or sell it eventually needs to be properly addressed.
Most domainers agree it’s best to launch a value-added and contextually-relevant web destination for every single domain name in their portfolio but with only 24h in a day, that might be hard to do with a more sizeable group of names.
So the next best option for busy domainers might be to use their domains as pay-per-click landers. DomainSponsor (for Google ads) and DotzUp (for Yahoo! ads) do a good job at that but it’s also possible to whip up your very own landing page. Like any kind of web design, it’s time consuming but if you do it right, the PPC revenues could be worth your while.
If landers aren’t bringing in enough money, you can always look to rent your domains to interested parties. For instance, any medical condition followed by a .com might be a worthy natural visitor generator for pharmaceutical companies. When such deals are inked, it’s usually for several years which bring you significant recurring revenues. And best of all, you remain the owner for the rented domain name!
In the last resort, domainers will look to sell their domain names. The most valuable ones stand to bring in the most revenue but from an emotional standpoint, they’re the hardest to part with.
Selling domain names you’ve owned for a while isn’t easy because evaluating the fair value can be tricky. Furthermore, some domains might become more valuable in the future, for all sorts of reasons so selling them early at a discounted price might sound good in the short term but prove to be a profoundly frustrating sell in the long term.
Newbie domainers like to evaluate past domain name transactions to put a price on their own but web sites such as DNJournal, DN Sale Price and Sold Names might not tell the whole story. They do a good job at keeping the score for publicly announced transactions but since most valuable domains change hand privately nowadays, it’s increasingly hard to know the real value “on the street” for domain names.
At the end of the day, many domainers simply go with their gut feeling to match a name with its fair price. Even if the price sounds right to the sellers’ ears, prospective buyers will always attempt to get the name for next to nothing, offering ridiculous amounts like 100$ or 1,000$ (depending on the name) and eventually settle closer to the fair price, which might be multiples higher than the initial offering.
Domainers with good negotiation skills, especially over the phone, will likely get more for their domains than those who attempt to hide and negotiate poorly. Domaining has become a business and selling names is just one more part of a bigger ensemble.
What smart domainers need to keep in mind is that once they sell a valuable domain, they might never have the money to buy it back as the new owner will likely develop it and therefore add significant value to it. As a rule of thumb, remember that if you sell a name, it’s because you -really- want to. There’s no “undo” in a domain name sale.
Finally, don’t be surprised if the buyer requests that you keep the transaction private, usually in exchange for a premium. That’s the way the most valuable domain name sales happen. It mainly has to do with rich companies not wanting to set precedents of paying top dollars for domains and then, having to pay even more for their next similar purchases. This logic might also extend to entire industries, like banking which is known to keep transaction details as private as possible.
Good luck with making the most of your domain name portfolio!
Tags: domain name monetization, make money with domains, selling domain names, sold domains, domain name sale, pay-per-click, ppc, monetization, landing pages, landers, parking pages, domainers, domaining, valuing domains, domain names worth, worthy domains
Hot market for domain names
Domainers have known this for quite a while but now, the mainstream business world is now taking a second look at the hot market for domain names.
CNN recently published an article about the current state of the domaining business and by all means, it’s on a roll.
The article describes how two domainers, Larry Fisher and his financial backer, Ari Goldberger, battle for the highest bid to land prestigious domains, like “megayachts.com” for a cool 150,000$. During the online bid, Larry and Ari are on the phone discussing ways to land the names they value most. Larry does the bidding from his laptop and Ari runs some background research on the coveted names.
This dynamic “Larry & Ari” duo is the only team of tech-savvy netrepreneurs looking to bank on the rush to buy up quality “type in” domain names.
The better the domain, the more chances web surfers will directly navigate to it, entirely bypassing the search engines while providing a healthy (pay-per-click) revenue stream for the domainers owning the name.
Services such as DomainSponsor, DotzUp and Parked help domainers monetize their domain name portfolio. Their services are especially useful when a domainer owns many domains and can’t optimize them all — external help then makes perfect sense.
The industry is estimated to be generating 2 billion dollars, just related to the buying and selling of domain names. That number is expected to explode to a whopping 4 billion dollars, by 2010. Not too bad for an industry that’s not even a decade old. Needless to point out how exciting this is for domainers, especially those who happen to already own quality web names.
Since domain names are inherently unique, domainvestors see them as a stake in the online world, a virtual real estate lot, if you will. The “.com” names stand to win the most from this growth but different names can have regional (such as “job.ca“) or vanity value (like “greatest.name“) as well.
If a name is bound to be naturally typed in by users, it has value. In a web 2.0 era, perhaps a name like “staffr.com” will someday rise up to become an online brand. Invented words fare well with millions of users looking to explore new business concepts and ways to connect with one another. Domain names are often the foundation for entire business concepts. A name like “flickr.com” proves that point quite well.
If you’re looking to join the millions of domain name owners who are participating in this massive “virtual land grab”, it costs a mere about 8$ per year (everything included) to have a “.com” name. Once you’ve purchased all those you like (which happened to be available), you can sign-up (for free) with DomainSponsor, DotzUp or Parked so they can help you monetize your domain name portfolio — until you figure out what kind of web destinations you’d like to turn you names into.
Happy domaining, everyone!
Tags: domain names, domains, domainers, domaining, monetize, pay-per-click
Higher PPC revenues with Dotzup
Owning domain names is one thing. Lots of individuals and corporations do it. Intelligently generating pay-per-click (PPC) revenue through them, however, is a whole different story.
Some more advanced web developers prefer to create valuable web destinations to encourage repeat visits which are more often exposed to their advertising (PPC or otherwise).
Now, lots of domainers don’t have the time or resources to create this much value associated with every single one of the domain names in their portfolio so they purchase outside help.
Dotzup offers such “domain name portfolio management” landing page services, setting-up for you a highly relevant landing page that direct type-in visitors will likely appreciate — and click through.
More “pay-per-click revenue” generated through well-thought landing page design is obviously very be good news for any domain name owner so Dotzup’s continued partnership with Yahoo’s popular (and lucrative) PPC advertising network makes for an enviable sustained revenue stream.
Established in 1997, in Spokane, WA Dotzup is a leading Direct Navigation Technology Development and High Profile Domain Name Asset Management Corporation.
One of their goals, probably the most important one dor domainers, is to both produce higher PPC revenues -and- grow the domain names’ value (even in a “landing page” context). This is quite important for domainers looking to maintain the high “desirability factor” associated with their domain names.
If you want to see what some Dotzup “niche optimized” landing pages look like, you can check out MiamiJob.com, DetroitJob.com or DenverJob.com.
If your domains have to do with American or Canadian web visitors (naturally typing-in the names), Dotzup’s Yahoo Advertising Network back-end might yield surprisingly high revenues.
If you’re serious about growning your landing page pay-per-click revenues, make sure to give Dotzup a spin and see for yourself how high your monthly revenues can go.
Tags: dotzup, ypn, yahoo, domain names, ppc, pay-per-click, landing pages
WhyPark adds value
You’ve already seen the semi-generic domain name landing pages showing a relatively standard mix of category links leading to a second page featuring the related pay-per-click links.
Guess what? Some web visitors are getting smarter and they close the page when they see these pages. Why? Because they fail to see any value in them. Of course, to be fair, there is value because the sponsored links usually lead to excellent content but for your average visitor, that may not cut it.
Aware of this “value hunting” trend gaining ground, a company called WhyPark is going one step further by adding relevant -and valuable- content articles to keep the landing visitor interested. Having a “lander” feature standard Google AdSense ads alongside interesting articles can help build some level of “brand loyalty”, something which “traditional” landing pages hardly can.
The revenue model for WhyPark is different because they charge about 100$ to store up to 100 domain names and then leave 100% of the advertising revenue to the publisher. Furthermore, every new publisher referred (and signed-up) lands a sizeable commission in the domain owner’s pockets. This alone should quickly cover the initial registration fee!
Domain name owners enjoy a high level of control over the keywords, advertising codes, the meta description and even the statistics tracker code which means a publisher could choose to use Google Analytics to follow the visitor trend for a given domain.
Newbies will be happy to hear there is no HTML, FTP or programming knowledge required to use WhyPark‘s service. Furthermore, there’s nothing to download or install. The fresh articles, related to your domains, are supplied at no extra charge.
Their newest feature might also be their most popular. It’s now possible for publishers to create their own custom layout using simple placeholders to give each of their landing pages a unique look. Alternatively, publishers are still free to use the pre-built stock templates.
Tags: whypark, landing pages, domain parking, domain names, web
Landing your domains at Parked
Anyone owning many domain names knows the importance of intelligently monetizing them. Landing your domains with the right domain monetizer can greatly influence the monthly payout.
Parked.com, based in Tampa, FL helps domain name owners land their valuable monikers on pages which lead to lucrative pay-per-click links. These paid links are continuously optimized to both properly answer the visitors’ requests and deliver significant payouts to the publisher (in this case, the domain name owner).
Facing stiff competition from market leaders like DomainSponsor and DotzUp, Parked.com makes extensive use of contextual images to convince the visitors that they’re on their way to relevant content. It’s still unclear if adding such images really improves the click-through rate, though.
Parked.com‘s proprietary statistics program is updated hourly and provides the publishers with a detailed view of how each domain name is performing, namely based on the following statistics: (1) number of visitors, (2) total clicks, (3) revenue per thousand visits, (4) click through rate, (5) revenue per click and (6) total revenue.
Publishers can view their own statistics online within their account. They can also be conveniently downloaded as reports in either .csv, .xml or RSS formats.
Moneywise, Parked.com claims to be offering the highest commissions possible and publishers will surely appreciate the fact that accrued revenues are paid every two weeks instead of only once a month.
Overall, there’s nothing complicated about Parked.com. The publisher interface is kept clean and simple so newbies and pros alike can get going quickly.
Click here to see an example of an optimized landing page!
Tags: parked domain names, parked.com, domains, landing pages
New designs for DomainSponsor landing pages
If you own a few (or a few thousand) domain names, you may be wondering how to make money off them, every day, from the “natural visitors” directly “typing them in” their browser.
Well, you’re not alone and DomainSponsor offers all domainers the opportunity to rake in impressive daily revenues from most (if not all) of their domain names by simply pointing them to DomainSponsor’s specially designed landing pages which morph to reflect the most popular (and profitable) keywords that “landers” might be searching for (also referred to as “auto-optimizing”).
As of October 23rd, 2006, DomainSponsor is offering four new lander designs that rotate dynamically within the whole portfolio of domains you’ve pointed their way. For existing publishers (that is, the domain name owners), the change is automatic.
That’s right, DomainSponsor takes the pain out of monetizing your domain names and now provides you with even more attractive landing pages in which visitors may feel even more compelled to “click” for the information they (most probably) need.
If you’re not a publisher yet, now’s the time to get registered (for free) and test a few domains with DomainSponsor’s new designs which were hand-picked among hundreds, mainly because the payout they “produce” is above all others.
Tags: domainsponsor, landing pages, domain monetization, pay-per-click, ppc, web publishers
Easily creating niche content for landing pages
There are billions of web documents out there and hundreds of millions of people potentially interested in them.
If you’re serious about monetizing your domain names, namely using pay-per-click advertising, you have the choice of building web destination by yourself or letting other people do it for you, like through the “landing page” services offered by DomainSponsor, DotzUp and Sedo.
If you choose to develop a web destination by yourself, you need to know a few things about web development, including certain things about (basic) online page layout.
If you’re a little pressed by time and you need to come up with a rather informative “landing page” for any of your domain names, perhaps using the Instant Niche Content creation suite of software will work for you.
Some of the most important software titles that are included in this suite help in buidling a web page (or site) filled with relevant information, which is good for both the search engine bots -and- the real visitors.
Furthermore, there are a few interesting (and up-to-date) tools to promote your newly created web destination.
All in all, it’s a lot of “web bang” for the money, even for professionals… especially the busy ones!
Tags: niche content, niche web sites, pay-per-click, ppc, monetization, web content, seo
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