Monetize Domain Name

The currently leader in domain monetizing market is probably parked.com. Other well known companies in this space are sedopro, Name Drive and DDC.com. Although they all claim to be different, or have the "highest payout" in the industry, they all have one thing in common. Their parked web page is made up entirely of advertisement links, or from the perspective of an unsuspecting user, contains no useful information.

Although the differentiating factor in current domain parking companies might be one has better keyword matching base on the domain name itself or option to allow domain owner to manually set up keywords which theoretically would better serve end user by guessing they're looking for. But ultimately it's just ads, no different from a flier some stranger hands you at the street corner.

As I talked about in the last post, the logical next wave of domain parking is content. "Content is the king" is latest slogan in the evolution of domain monetization. "what so new or evolutionary about creating website that contains useful information?" you ask. Isn't this why world wide web, or to some degree its predecessor Gopher became popular in the first place? The difference is, if you consider from a domain owners' perspective, how do you "develop" hundreds of website? The idea here isn't trying to turn your ONE website into the next facebook or youtube. The goal here is to generate a positive cash flow for each and everyone of your domain name. If you're able to make $100 per month per site, multiple that by 100 sites, you got yourself a very nice home business.

There sprung up few new "domain parking" companies such as DomainEmbarking, WhyPark, Noomle. Now "domain parking" isn't the name these companies like to use, and they are correct. Once the website contain information of some use, they are by definition no longer "parked." The new focus of these companies is to allow domain user easily develop websites with contents. Some of them does a decent job, some do not. One particular have the CNN look and feel, so why would a "www.japantickets.info" website look like CNN and have a whole bunch of news link? mmm.... I'm no expert, but I would think user is looking for information about buying tickets in Japan or tickets to Japan? Back to the drawing board for that one company I would say ....

In my next installment, I'll have a detail look at some of these content based domain parking companies.

Domaineering vs Domaining

Welcome to the world of "domaineering". This new term described in wikipedia as:

Domaineering is the web-based marketing business of acquiring and monetizing Internet domain names focusing on their use specifically as an advertising medium rather than primarily speculating on domains as intellectual property investments for resale as in domaining where generating advertising revenue is considered more of a bonus while awaiting a sale

I guess people eventually figure out there is a better way to make money with their domain name other then just sales of the name itself. It's a natural progression that makes perfect sense. Why not derive extra income while waiting for your "property" to sell. I would use the real estate analogy. Your domain name is your Internet property. Why just let it be vacant while you're waiting for the value of your property to appreciate. Why not rent it out and get extra income. Perhaps the steady income you derived from your property is more valuable than if you sell it outright.

To further clarify, the "Domaining" owner have being putting up web page full of advertisement while it's "parked" pretty much since the beginning of cyber-squatting. What is new NOW is they can make more moeny by better utilizing their domain name. After all these years, people have gotten to know the "parked domain" template, which contain absolutely no useful information, and simply close the window if they do indeed land on that web page by accident. The Click-Through-Rate (CTR), ratio of visitor actually clicking on a advertisement link, for these websites are steady going down. Not to mention the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) value, amount domain owner gets pay per click, is also going down fast as advertiser beginning to realize many of these clicks are NOT result of genuen interest but user click by accident or even "click-fraud". Hold the thought on click-fraud, that another topic for another time. The point is, domain owner have now realize that they do need to have some useful information to attract people to view their web page, which in turn increase the likely hood that they'll click on some advertisement link.

The current new domain parking trend is to create "mini-site." Website with few pages of information related to the domain name. For example, if you sitting on "buildNetWorth.net," instead of a generic template, you will actually have articles about building net worth or investment strategy. Once the domain owner starts to think in this direction suddenly it opens up more money making possibility. One popular format of these mini-sites is 1 menu tab which leads to articles with paid advertisement (such as google adsense) sprinkle through out. Another tab, maybe a list of Youtube videos, 3rd tab a list of "ebook" you can buy (there is a popular money making program for that too). Of course, you can always add Ebay or/and Amazon referral program. The idea here is you'll have a list a items for sale just like a real web store. Except it's just a referral to Ebay or Amazon. The domain owner collects commission if Ebay or Amazon makes the sale. All of a sudden, what you have looks like a real legitimate website.

Thus transformation from a low earning (oops, I click on the link by accident) incoming to an almost real website with just enough information to have people take a look. My personal opinion is there are money to be made here by small entrepreneur that's willing to spend the time to develop these website.

First Edition

I have finally decided to put up a new blog. Blogging on blogger.com seems a lot easier and cheaper than running your own website. This is the page where you can read all about my rants, complaints, and thoughts, most likely in that order too.

One of interesting thing I came across this week is the idea of "domain parking." I have known about concept of people buying up domain name for resale. They target name of well known companies or products, typo of high traffic websites, or domain name full of good keywords. My impression of domain buying business were -- scammer, cyber-squatter, or generally people of no ethics. However, as I looked into it more, that certainly is not the case. It is a legitimate business that does serves a purpose. I mean... sure, there are plenty of squatter, scammer and/or spammer out there, but that's the case with every industry. You can say it's always the bad apple that gives bad impressions.

Funny how I came about looking into this concept of domain parking, I was searching for a new domain name for my new business (I'm not ready to reveal what my new business is until it's ready to go live). When I started searching, oh boy-o-boy, IT IS TOUGH to find a good domain that's not taken. Just about every suitable name has been registered. I thought to myself, how in the world are all these domain names taken. Are they my competitors I didn't know about? Naturally, I have to check out their websites. To my relief, these websites did not belong to my unknown nemesis. These websites are plain and simple looking, it contains nothing but advertisement links. The whois information, a tools that shows domain owner information, shows the same owner for many of these domain names. The whois tool on domaintools.com also indicate that one particular owner owns over 150,000 domains. That's right, 150,000 websites?! If you do the simple math of average of $9 registration fee per domain, which means the guy spent over $1.3 million dollars per year on registration fee along. Who in world spend over 1.3 million dollars a year just on domain registration not counting money spend on putting up and managing these "empty" websites? There's got to be more to owning these unused domain than just cyber squatting. I mean who in their right mind would squat on 1.3 million dollars worth of "stuff"?

I will continue in the next segment... Stay tune