Having just returned from the recent T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Las Vegas, I was asked by Sahar to share my thoughts with you about the event. Considering the fact that I was the winner of the Bido.com contest (a free ticket to attend the conference), I felt it was my duty to oblige! Actually, truth be told, I would have obliged regardless of the free ticket because of the hospitality Sahar and his team have shown me prior to winning, and even prior to meeting him in person when I was someone he didn’t know posting on his blog, or emailing him with questions about the industry.
Although my partners and I at Typed-In hold almost 10,000 geo-targeted domains, we are fairly new to this industry so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this event. As a former Corporate Controller and Interim CFO for Tony Robbins, I have had the opportunity to attend numerous conferences and tradeshows, and also be a part of the production crew as well, so I know firsthand how much work goes into these events and how hard it is to pull everything off seamlessly. One thing is certain, although Rick Schwartz isn’t at all pleased that I got into the conference for free (something he let me know the minute I met him, half jokingly 
he and the team at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. really had their act together and pulled it off without a hitch; very impressive and Kudos to everyone involved.
In addition to the world class venue, there was plenty of networking opportunities, lots of parties, excellent food, and the sessions were full of expert panels with no shortage of opinions! From my vantage point, it was quite exciting to meet some of the people I have been reading about for the past year who have made an indelible mark on this industry (e.g., Frank Schilling, Dr. Kevin Ham, Dan Warner, Michael Gilmour, Ron Jackson and of course Sahar. Ok, you too Darren Cleveland :). Interestingly enough, I ran into 3 people at the event that live/work in Tampa, where I am from! Seems funny how I had to travel to Las Vegas to meet people that I probably see at Starbucks every day!
As an observer without any preconceived notions, one thing was quite clear to me: the domain industry is still early in its lifecycle and trying desperately to move from adolescent stage to young adult. I have a 17 year old daughter and a lot of the discussion at the conference was like listening to her speak; she wants respect, but doesn’t feel like she gets it.
I understand that domainers must look out for their best interest, and this is a great venue to share ideas about how to make things better for each other. However, quite honestly, there appeared to be a lot of whining about what domainers don’t have, or feel entitled to and I believe that is one reason the industry doesn’t get the respect it not only desires, but also deserves.
Moreover, as much attention and funding this industry has received during the past two years, I was surprised at the lack of venture capital and private equity representation, as well as cross selling of services beyond ‘parking companies’ (e.g., online advertising companies, IYPs, online directories, ad networks, etc.).
The approach my partners and I at Typed-In are taking with our domain portfolio is not the standard PPC approach mainly due to the fact that our geo-targeted portfolio has a better chance at succeeding long term with other monetization models. However, because most of the industry is still so PPC centric, I found it difficult to engage with anyone about anything other than how to make money by parking our sites and leveraging PPC. As a side note, the folks at Bido.com and RMG were the exception to the rule and actively engaged in discussions which focused on the future rather than the history or present.
A shining example of my frustration was during one of my first discussions at the event. This conversation was with Dan Warner. I was truly looking forward to speaking with Dan because of his background, expertise, and some of his portfolio is very similar to ours in the geo-targeted space. But within the first 30 seconds, it turned into a debate consisting of the following:
(Dan) “if you can get 50x - 500x PPC revenue by selling a domain you own, you should just sell it and move on.” Vs. (Bob) “why sell an asset that has intrinsic value from which you can monetize in other ways beyond PPC and achieve a much larger valuation later”
I tried to gauge his belief (actually, I was trying to validate my belief) that there were other long term, residual revenue opportunities by holding the domains and focusing on other monetization strategies that would allow a domain owner to earn income while watching the asset value increase over time. While Dan did say if I found a way that he would agree with me, he also made it quite clear to me that he didn’t believe it would be worth the effort.
Keep in mind, the 50x - 500x number was based on the concept of a niche geo-targeted domain that may make $20 per year revenue and maybe sell for $1,000 to $2,000; of course, if I could sell something at 500x earnings and earnings was material, anyone would be a fool not to sell it. That said, if domains are being sold at these multiples, it’s no wonder the auction performed as my new friend Michael Gilmour predicted; poorly in comparison to prior events. Truth be told, if there were no other ways to monetize a domain asset beyond PPC, I would buy into his argument. However, there are other ways to monetize these assets which by my observation at the event, the domain industry has yet to be able to effectively embracing in a meaningful way.
Don’t get me wrong”I am quite happy that the industry isn’t embracing other means to monetize beyond PPC because that poses an opportunity for my company to acquire additional domain assets for cheap relative to the way our industry currently monetizes and values a domain in our niche. I guess I was just more disturbed to see and hear very little forward thinking or creativity about how we can leverage the high quality targeted traffic and brand-able assets we all own; not even from someone as bright as Dan Warner.
For the record, there is nothing wrong with Dan’s strategy”he is obviously very successful in this space. I am just using this as an example of my key take-away from the conference. It wasn’t just Dan”there seemed to be a predominant theme of ‘old school’ methodologies as opposed to looking creatively at the future of how we can all leverage our traffic to benefit ourselves beyond PPC.
One additional observation I took away from this conference is that the domain industry is still very domain centric. Yes, there are the select few enterprises that are doing a great job of expanding into other areas embracing partnerships and doing deals with folks outside the ‘domain world’ such as NameMedia, Marchex, Oversee, Tucows, ReInvent and RMG to name a few. But if our assets are going to get the attention and value they deserve, I believe we will need to expand beyond ourselves like any other industry. I believe this will be critical to changing the perception away from domainers as ‘individuals’ trying to loot the register, to ‘Domain Enterprises’ that have something the entire web community covets - TARGETED TRAFFIC.
All that said” Overall, I had a great time, met great people, learned a great deal and best of all, created some new friendships that I am certain will last for many years to come. I will certainly be attending the Orlando event (yes Rick, I will pay this time ! Who knows, maybe I will even be able to convince Dan Warner to sell me his portfolio of geo-targeted domains on the cheap next time!!!
Bob DeCecco, CPA
President & COO
Typed-In.com
www.linkedin.com/in/dececco
I like these posts. Thanks.
Good thoughts. You can see the disconnect I think you are talking about if you compare Elliot’s blog to Aaron Wall’s.
Elliot is a successful domainer dipping his toes into development and attracts positive (and useful) comments from other domainers.
Aaron Wall is focused on taking successful developed sites to the next level.
It makes for quite a contrast.
You won a contest for a ticket, so you did not get in free. Most of the people there had someone else pay for the ticket (You can be sure that Fabulous paid for Dan Warners ticket), and you can be sure that Rick’s wife did not pay for her ticket, so you deserved to be there, especially since Bido paid for the ticket on your behalf.
PPC is the most underrated thing going. It is also the most overrated. Those who know the difference have the most success. My two biggest purchases ever were for serious money….neither of the names were parked when I bought them, and I sold them both for much more than I paid.
There are some names that don’t need much PPC potential to be worth good money. Something like DallasPlumber.com is a great name…..it doesn’t matter what the traffic is. The potential is obvious. Whereas a name like FantasyFootballStats.com might be a good name, but the buyer would likely want to know how much traffic it got.
With the DallasPlumber.com name you could easily sign up a few advertisers for $100 per month, and you would likely be able to do something similar with FantasyFootballStats.com, but you would have to be more creative.
A good name needs to have at least one of three things: 1) Great traffic, 2)Great Brandability, or 3)Great potential to be developed into a legit business.
Thanks for writing the article.
Agree completely about the dallasplumber.com idea - as a matter of fact, that’s what most of our portfolio looks like. As for getting in for free…didn’t cost me anything…hence free to ME
Thanks again to Bido.com for paying for my ticket!!! hmmm…come to think of it…Rick…did your wife pay?!?! (just joshin!)
Excellent post!!!!
What distinguishes this post from many others is that Bob has a *business plan* in place for the next five years. Not to say that being in the right place at the right time (with some vision) is bad.
Hi Bob,
Thank you for sharing your comments and feelings on the event. I was really hoping to be in Vegas to meet many of the great people you mentioned, including Sahar. If I had made it, I would have done a little magic at the Bido.com party, shared your sentiment with others on the future of other means of monetization outside of PPC and selling domains based on this (thus my reason for not selling Magicians.com, Magician.com, and Illusionist.com), and watching my domain FantasyFootball.org (speaking of fantasy football from the posts above) not sell in the live and move to the silent!
Hopefully I can get out next year!
Best,
Ryan
Happy Birthday Bob!! You don’t look a day over 30. An insightful and Informative review. Thank You
Interesting post Bob! I have suggested in various comments that the domain industry lacks sophistication and desperately needs a silicon valley start-up mentality.
I think the confusion stems from the idea that big domain portfolio owners are naturally expected to lead the industry interms of innovation and creativity, which is not essentially the case and is very unlikely to materialize. I spoke to a big domainer once who suggeted most domainers with deep pockets, have the money but not essentially the creativity to innovate . This also holds true in the general scheme of business, i.e innovative startups generally raise capital from VC companies with deep pockets who have the money but lack innovative creativity.
Therefore, what would be nice is to to see big domainers with deep pockets acting like VC’s to help domain start-ups who can bring innovative creativity to this industry. For instance I’d be interested in VC from a big domainer to help develop DomainAdvertisingAgency.com (DAA), however I would only want to engage with a backer who appreciates creative innovation with the ability to disrupt!
A domainer Venture Capitalist holds more apeal than a typical Silicon Valley VC company, because he already understands this industry. So imagine if we had several domainer VC’s looking for creativity and innovative startups to help take the domain industry to where it should really go, then you will see a vast difference!
To give a tip to what I mean by creativity & innovation, suppose a start-up domainer created a wicked domain app on facebook, that engages potentially every facebook user…just imagine the potential! 50 to 100 million facebook users who all of a sudden know what domain investing really means…get the picture? it dosen’t matter to me personally if I throw ideas like this out into the open, i’ve got tons of them, I’d just love to see this industry move from parochial thinking as emphasized in Bob’s article to real big innovative thinking…this is how real sustainable industries are created, or they slowly die!
was nice to meet you, but…
you must’ve had a memory lapse about our discussions.
we’ve been developing for years.
Bob,
It was great meeting you at TRAFFIC week. It is indeed a small world! Thank you for sharing your perspective. I think you have given a lot of people (industry veterans and newbies alike) a lot to think about as we plan and position our business for the future.
Talk soon,
Lance
Marcia Lynn, yes, it was nice to meet you and your husband too! However, I didn’t forget our conversation. I didn’t say anything specific about ‘developing’ vs ‘ppc’, rather that there are other models to earn revenue from these assets. Yes, development is one way for certain and you have done a remarkable job staying on the forefront of this industry. That said, since you have been developing for years, as well as some others that I met (e.g., Michael Castello, etc.), wouldn’t it be great to have experts in the field of development, SEO, online advertising, etc. at conferences like T.R.A.F.F.I.C.?!?! Think of how much we could learn by listening to experts in related industries, not to mention, how much we could earn by partnering with some of these companies…
Robert, YES!!! You are dead on!!! In the typical VC world, how did Silicon Valley start? It started by really smart, former tech guys/gals that made a boatload of money in the tech industry!!! These guys/gals didn’t want to retire in there 20s, 30s, or 40s, so they decided to use their capital, experience and expertise to finance up and coming tech guys/gals execute their great ideas for something bigger and better! Innovation and Creativity will propel this industry further than anyone could have imagined.
Great reply!
Bob
Good post. PPC isn’t the end-all be-all. One thing that is important to realize is that a domainers business model might not be geared in a way that monetizing is even an option. They spend their time and resources and energy making money buying/selling/monetizing domains and adding a development portion to that is just overwhelming. Add to it that development isn’t just a walk in the park and most domainers barely have the skill-set to put together a templated site. I think Sahar has said it here before. Development is a totally different beast. So don’t knock the guys making the money the way that their business is designed to make money. If you can do better. More power to ya.
Dan’s stance to sell at 50x is not bad advice given that their business model is based on monetizing their inventory in the most efficient way possible and at the same time bringing value to their shareholders. This sell-off approach works when you have a portfolio of 500,000 domains. Really it’s not like they are going to be developing every niche and every domain in their portfolio. The liquidity to keep the machine running is important in this case.
BTW Robert. There are plenty of domainers investing in great new ideas. Startupcapital.com is one. Internet Real Estate, Monster Capital, Domain Development Corp., Schilling and a good number of other smaller guys are investing in domain companies and startups. Dont be surprised if you see a large ‘ad network’ type of company with a domain channel built-in to it as well.
Adam,
I agree completely.
However, while there may have been some behind the scenes activity related to Angel type investments and/or other monetization methods, my observation as a first time attendee to the event was that the conference focus was PPC revenue. Yes, there was discussion about developing domains with a select few individuals (e.g., Marcia Lynn), but let me pose a picture/vision for you:
Wouldn’t it have been great to have had the opportunity to speak with a number of potential new media investors or partners/experts in the field of web development, SEO/SEM/SEA, online advertising, super aggregators, online ad network companies, etc., that we could speak to in person to help facilitate building a bridge of understanding between our respective industries and to identify potential ways we could leverage the traffic we bring via our domains?
This was the main objective of my blog…it was more about how do we ensure our assets continue to gain relevance and sustainably increase in value in the supply chain of the internet advertising world.
And since you pointed it out, I will respond to your point about Dan’s strategy being good for them based on their portfolio.
“…there is nothing wrong with Dan’s strategy”¦he is obviously very successful in this space. I am just using this as an example of my key take-away from the conference. It wasn’t just Dan”¦there seemed to be a predominant theme of “˜old school’ methodologies as opposed to looking creatively at the future of how we can all leverage our traffic to benefit ourselves beyond PPC.”
As I stated in my blog, I was merely trying to point out an overall theme I noticed at the event using a real life example of circumstances that occured between me and Dan. It wasn’t Dan’s model that I questioned, as much as it appeared to be a theme that seemed to stick with me as I went from booth to booth speaking to parking companies as well as listening to the panels discuss transparency between parking companies and domainers.
There are some great comments here. It was nice meeting you in Vegas Bob.
Many of you I believe could and should partake in many of the panels at these convention/conferences. I believe there is a twenty years cycle playing out in our industry. It is so hard to understand how the larger audience, that will surely enter this space, does not seem to “get it” yet. I have always seen the internet as “our” place for what we wanted to create ad advance. My main experience with the web was to develop something that I could call my own, something that might be enjoyed by others. Over the past 10 years I’ve seen great worth come to names that I would not have bothered registering earlier. That was someone else’s gain and there is still a lot more money to be made.
Years ago I registered what I felt I needed. At the time, no one else wanted them I can assure you. It is not for any one of us to buy, control or own the internet, it is here for all of us. A place to search, a name to develop, to lease, to IDO, to sell, flip etc. but there must be balance across all of them for the needs of the public.
I am amazed at the industries that have grown within the domain name arena. Currently is seems to be built upon domain names and what can quickly be drawn from that value only. My brother David and I spent many years developing names from 1995, one at a time. We still are. Over time we noticed that many other similar names were not being converted to something of substance. In turn those potential visitors were finding sites through search engines where they could not find reasonable content on undeveloped direct navigational domains. This gave search engines incredible power because everyone wanted to navigate and socialize on the internet directly. Advertisers came and found most of the public were starting at the search engines so they advertised there. When domain owners found that they could get traffic to their names for PPC they found ways to get posted on these search engines and get their “smaller” share of profits.
By not developing ourselves we have given huge chunks of power and land to search engines. At some point we need to “give the public what they want”? or the internet will be owned by a monopoly. David and I started appearing and speaking at these shows because we and others can offer keys to making money and having freedom by having a plan and developing on that plan. We all are the true gatekeepers. There needs to be balance in this space and we must all offer opportunities to each other in sharing those ideas and partnering for future endeavors.
If we all made an effort to build out one site at a time we could create a world of content making us the masters of this space. We are still in that 20 year cycle and again the greater public is beginning to see the true value of what the internet was originally built for. There are a lot of great minds on this blog and I know we will all make the most of these opportunities that have been made available to us and this point in time.
One day before I started in 2005 I didn’t “get it”, either. The thing about the domain business is that it is either very easy to understand…or you don’t get it at all. Kinda like how people who don’t play golf don’t understand how anybody could watch it. Even on the message boards you will see that most people simply don’t understand what makes a name valuable.
It is still the top of the first inning of the game. Many of the successful domainers of the last few years never even though about buying and selling domains until very recently. Most people that I explain it to are still working their 9-5 jobs and will never get ahead. Very few people I talk to have even gone further than saying: “really?”. I remember the news story that triggered my involvement. If that doesn’t happen I likely never would have gotten involved. That’s why it is still early in the game.
Hi Bob,
You said “Wouldn’t it have been great to have had the opportunity to speak with a number of potential new media investors or partners/experts in the field of web development, SEO/SEM/SEA, online advertising, super aggregators, online ad network companies, etc., that we could speak to in person to help facilitate building a bridge of understanding between our respective industries and to identify potential ways we could leverage the traffic we bring via our domains?”
I was on one of the panels (transparency in the industry) and your statement was a large part of the reason I was at TRAFFIC. I come from the SEO/SEM/Affiliate world and I see a ton of opportunity for domainers and parking companies to increase the pie by exploring other monetization avenues with a portion of their portfolios. That was the gist of my brief talk, would love to discuss it further with you..
Sorry couple more comments:
“Wouldn’t it have been great to have had the opportunity to speak with a number of potential new media investors or partners/experts in the field of web development, SEO/SEM/SEA, online advertising, super aggregators, online ad network companies, etc., that we could speak to in person to help facilitate building a bridge of understanding between our respective industries and to identify potential ways we could leverage the traffic we bring via our domains?”
I feel you Bob. I wasn’t at the actual show this time around but I’d venture to guess some of these people were there. I might say it was possibly the wrong venue for those sorts of expectations to be met. . . as you said “the domain industry is still very domain centric”. I do think this is a great point. There is the start of a convergence going on between our little piece of the internet advertising world and the SEO/ affiliate/ CPA/ ad network/ aggregators types. The current raft of domain shows has been pretty weak in bringing about a greater convergence. There may be underlying reasons for it. . .maybe not.
If your interest is in “going to the next level with your domains” you can work that angle by forging relationships with these other players in the online space in their own backyards (adtech, SES, pubcon, affiliate summit, LeadsCon, etc). Many of us have journeyed to “the other side” to work on forging these relationships and I think you’ll see more of this as the industry matures.
Jamie, Yes, I was at your panel discussion and would love to chat more. Please email me at bdececco@typed-in.com with your contact info so we can connect. Looking forward to it.
Adam, excellent comment! I AGREE 100% with you…that’s currently what I am doing. At some point, we will need to converge if we want to extract the most value over the long term and create a sustainable industry. I just think that somehow we need to get those industries thinking of how to interact with us. When we go to them, they hold the leverage
Great post, although I am pretty new to this I think there is no - “one size fits all” when it comes to domains or the potential value of them.
Some are great for PPC, some are great for developing, affiliate links, products, banner advertising etc. Others are great for mindshare/branding purposes like Bido.com, Jime.com etc
The Internet is not just about type in traffic - eventually people will get sick of seeing a pile of PPC links and they’ll just stop clicking on them… they want content.
Many people don’t realise the strength of good keywords and how much they can help rank high in the search engines even on a small website. A spot in the first 10 results of Google can potentialy bring far more visitors, especially on names that dont have a high level of pure type ins.
Selling based purely on PPC is selling yourself short
JM (newbie) O
Thanks Bob starting this blog title and for responding to my aforementioned comment regarding VC, Innovation and Creativity. It’s also very encouraging to read the many intelligent comments on this blog and shows we all seem to be on the same page..at least here! So for my part, here’s what I’m going to do right here as some form of impetus to this situation rather than just talk and no action. Do bear in mind I’m stepping out in the very very deep end here and what I’m about to suggest below can go either way.
I registered Domain adMedia.com and Domain Advertising Agency.com almost 2 years ago after attending Domain Sponsor’s Domain conference in Barcelona in July 2006. Quite frankly I immediately realized exactly what Bob has outlined in this blog after attending that conference which was very informative indeed and fun but in my mind, I thought surely there has to be a lot more to this lucrative industry. Since I came from a background working with Macromedia and founding blackworld.com, I essentially have some insight on how online advertising generally works and ran campaigns for IBM, the US Army, Disney World and Motorola on Blackworld pre and post the dot com bubble crash. Ok, here is what I plan to do as a very small domain investor, Domain adMedia is to be partly launched as the very first Domain Conference that will specifically invite Online Advertising Agencies, Conventional Advertising Agencies and Media Planners/Account Executives at Fortune 500 companies and lastly “Domainers” .
Essentially this conference will focus on education of why domains present the best advertising opportunities using all kinds of creative media such as text, banners, whole page exclusives, peels, videos and contextual advertising. The conference will also emphasize on business development with the first four media target groups, which I believe will begin to help transform our industry and most specifically bring “real”? money to domain investors, just like established websites.
Thereby, over a period of time, domainers can start to realize real revenue from big corporate brands and small to medium sized businesses as these advertisers begin to understand the huge intrinsic value of “DOMAINS” . The ROI potential for them is huge, be it natural type-in traffic or the perfect “KEYWORD/s” that provide a perfect match for their businesses, services or products. Hence, we ultimately break the stranglehold vulnerability from Y&G , which is clearly a very un-sustainable business model based on PPC. A typical ad campaign brought to an established website with traffic and a target audience makes on average $10,000 per month and bigger websites make a fortune!
I honestly believe domains with present the highest value of quality traffic, whether it comes through natural type-in traffic or search engine traffic because the keywords reflect the product or service, provides the best ROI that any advertiser or business can ever hope to achieve…it’s common sense! the only thing is, as someone earlier pointed out, no one apart from domainers themselves understands our industry.
Therefore Domain adMedia.com and Domain Advertising Agency.com aims to hold an annual conference starting in my adopted most beautiful city of “Cape Town” South Africa. I believe ICANN held a Cape Town conference a few years ago.
I take the strong perspective, that we must court Advertising Media Agencies and not work against them. They already have all the clients we could ever need, all we need to do is revalue our assets and bring it to the Main Street in a way that makes proper business and financial sense in terms of Advertising revenue, not paltry ppc revenue.
I believe Rick Schwartz has been trying effortlessly to point out the tremendous “value” underlying, for a while which most domains do not realize. So to finish off here, I plan to invite big domainers such as Sahar Sarid, Rick Schwartz, Frank Schilling, The Castello Brothers etc to be speakers to the Advertising Media Industry and Fortune 500 representatives at this conference. I hope to also attract sponsorship from the various service providers in our industry such as Sedo, Domain Sponsor and many others and also want SEO companies to speak at this conference so the media really get it. Domainers who attend should also have an excellent opportunity to present their portfolios directly to the media ad agencies and fortune 500 attendees.
I realize this vision is very challenging indeed, but I feel this is the direction our industry needs to take to create a more sustainable domain industry. I would appreciate any feedback from anyone reading this, I’ll be honest guy’s”¦ I’m scared as hell right now and nervous about spilling my guts!…but by sharing my vision right here, maybe we can all come together and pull this off!
If anyone wants to email me, send to: robert@blackworld.com and yes I will need to raise money to make this a successful annual event so any interested investors please kindly contact me. And Sahar, thanks so much for creating a forum that we can all be part of.
The first step to creating destiny is to “take action”! (Step 2 of 5 of the Ultimate Success Formula…I will post the other 4 steps and start a blog on that soon if Sahar let’s me
Robert - congrats on ‘taking action’ - I look forward to speaking with you about this further.
Let’s Rock and Roll!!!
Bobby D.
Robert, I have been reading your comments for some time and you are a visionary in this field. You are poised for your time that will surely come. When you write:
“Thereby, over a period of time, domainers can start to realize real revenue from big corporate brands and small to medium sized businesses as these advertisers begin to understand the huge intrinsic value of “DOMAINS”? .”
It brings to mind that the .com TLD was originally promoted by cooperates and large advertising budgets in the last millennium. In essence they “branded” .com for themselves and the rest of us reaped from the billions we did not have to spend. Likewise, we see today that these same large corporations are now purchasing generic domains to point to their brands like Barnes and Nobles just did with books.com. The public will start to move increasing toward similar known words to navigate which will advance the worth of these names even further.
In their quest to reach even greater markets, cooperate advertising budgets will help to promote these generic domain brands which many of us own. How we sell, leverage or develop these treasures will dictate our control in the future.
David and I would love to travel to Cape Town to speak on your panel but it simply is too far for us to travel to. If you consider a closer venue we would surely participate. I think it is a great idea. Thanks for the invite.
Wicked Bob!
I will touch base with you via email over the weekend, outlining further on how I envisage a Domain adMedia conference focused on building relationships with/and helping educate Advertising Agencies, Fortune 500 media planners might work, and then I will follow up with a phone call and exchange further ideas if that’s ok with you.
These are very exciting times indeed! Like Christopher Columbus and his brave men onboard who suspected the world was not just flat and helped discover the new world in the Americas, perhaps all the Domainers here can do the same and everyone wins!
Gosh! it will surely be a priviledge to work and brainstorm with you Bob and anyone interested in making such an event happen.
Cheers!
Thanks Michael for the compliment! I really enjoy this industry and just feel priviledged to be part of it in some way. The experience I had working and living in the states broadened my horizons because Americans are doers and not just talkers, I learnt a whole lot through investment banking and eventually working at Macromedia which was a true innovative company.
The Domain adMedia conference does not have to launch in Cape Town, it would be nice though, however I’m very pragmatic and perhaps somewhere like the Moscone center in San Francisco will just be perfect! It is where macromedia used to hold their highly successful Macromedia World Conference with attendees such as Steve Jobs in those days.
All I am trying to do is share what I sincerely see as to where we can go. I certainly can’t do it alone, but the ball looks like it’s already rolling…so lets all fasten our seat belts, pull together in whatever shape or form and make this happen. “YES WE CAN” …” and “WE WANT CHANGE” .
Lots of interest and energy in this post. Good to see it.
I consider domain names as searches or questions from people that have a problem that needs solving. To create a successful event you take a domain name - try to become the visitor - guess at the problem/need the visitor is having and then attempt to solve their problem.
So DallasPlumber.com tells us
Geo - location
Need - Plumber
Search term - dallas plumber
Problem: Not sure.
With PPC we offload the thinking to Yahoo or Goog to provide the answers in the form of text ad links.
Development would then take the problem and create another layer of possibel solutions
Bathroom Renovation
Emergency
Flooding
Kitchen Leaks
and so on….
Once these topic rings are laid out then we add some content and then show much more targeted ads or provide a call to action - form or phone or email or subscription. These require affiliate agreements or in some cases the development of direct relationships with advertisers/service providers.
So the costs here are in web page creation and all that that implies.
At this point you then have to decide whether to offload your customer acquisition to ad agencies, lead networks, ad buying aggregators or to own your customers and then build and manage billing, tracking and other tools needed to provide reporting and manage the business.
Then this creates another level of cost or you can rent pre-existing tools like Quigo or Text Link Ads to manage your efforts and they might work.
Why domainers pick PPC is that while you may become efficient with web page creation and can manage the business with off the shelf tools you still have the challenge of acquiring and servicing customers. Since Google and Yahoo take the job of finding clients this is the main temptation for PPC.
If Yellow Pages (who have the real core of local ad buyers) had a parking program and could sell impressions or clicks on local geo domains then geo domainers would flock to them. The demand for local exposure at YP is higher than Google and Yahoo so price should be higher. Also these clients are buying geo print ads already.
So the real deterrent to non parking is not so much lack of development skills or ability it is more a matter of customer acquisition and support. IF all your domains are one theme then you can afford to go deep and build your own ad network but if you have little to no economies of scale in your customer base then PPC is much more intelligent way to find customers for your clicks.
PPC is a development platform - it is just currently very limited and forces you to just pick 4 or less words to try to solve the site visitor’s problem. When you or Yahoo or Goog guess correctly you get good CTR but even at 20% CTR 8 of 10 people had a problem that you didn’t solve.
Development should really drive higher CTR but at what cost.
Owning the client should drive higher revenue per action - lead, click call whatever but again at what cost.
Thats the challenge for most of the domainers I have met assuming of course their domains get any traffic.
AJ Martin
A couple of things. First, please don’t use these comment threads to promote your business(s). It dilutes the value of these exchanges.
Second, Bob has identified a very important aspect of the domain business: many domainers are essentially get rich quick hopefuls who are willing to trade a few clicks for a quick return rather than do more work for a far higher long term return.
As a long time Internet marketer and developer that came to the domain world late in the game I am continually surprised at the very limited perspective of the PPC/parking approach. Seeking fractional revenues from thousands of names vs. developing a serious portfolio of sites that are worth far more, as a package of media properties.
Bob, I think a lot of what you’re observing is a very real fear of content development as a basis for high value traffic. Content takes time.
We own some geo names centered around waterfront property. Parked, they get some clicks. However we just completed a deal with a major high-end realtor in one of our markets to pay a very good price for leads generated by the site ($XXX per lead). This is an example of a revenue model few seek in the ‘domain’ business but one that is common in the ‘website’ business.
I don’t think of ourselves as domainers per se but as media owners…
Great discussion and post!
Martin,
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TRYING TO GET AT!
“I don’t think of ourselves as domainers per se but as media owners”¦”
EXACTLY - we need to think of ourselves as a MEDIA play rather than limiting it to ‘domain’ play - that will drive our asset value and make it easier to deal with other constituencies!
Bob
Hello All - Dan Warner here
There are three main ways to make money as a domain owner: Development, Traffic and Sales.
What should we all be doing? Everything … with a concentration on some things.
Buy some, Develop some, Sell some. Be opportunistic. Don’t always look for the brass ring but shoot for the stars….. Balance.
Take money off the table ….. reinvest most of it in growth.
Selling Traffic? Try and do all of it: CPC, CPA, CPM, CCC, CPL, … anything.
Selling Domains? Legacy sales portals, human processes, automated processes, auctions, registrar distribution, domain brokers ……try everything, concentrate on what works.
Fabulous have tried almost everything that is available, we innovate to create things which have never been tried, we concentrate on what has been proven to work and be profitable.
Return on Investment (ROI), Risk Aversion, Liability, Legal Issues - think of everything - ignore or gloss over nothing.
Be strategic, buy, sell, develop, move traffic around and auction it off - try everything, do anything, don’t ignore facts, innovate.
Concentrate on what makes money today, take some money off the table and grow your business.
The ying and yang of business is about balance of simultaneous actions and projects which may seem in conflict but are in harmony.
Sell domains - does not mean sell all your domains
Buy domains - does not mean buy at any price
Develop - doesn’t mean that cost is not a consideration
Park - does not mean part everything
Strategy - is not just a buzz word
……do everything.
Dan,
Glad to see you visiting my recent guest blog. Seems as though it has caused a lot of stir.
Sorry we didn’t get more of a chance to connect at TRAFFIC. Maybe next time!
By the way, I think Jonathan Boswell might take issue with your leaving off a 4th way to make money with our internet real estate
#4 - leasing domains to existing SMBs or larger enterprises
Best,
Bob DeCecco
@Bob,
I am an SEO/search strategist, working for the past 10 years on monetization and traffic issues across many markets. Because so much traffic is targeted by the search funnel process these days, monetization people like me have a strong SEO and search marketing focus. Because there are so many technical aspects of online publishing, and because Google basically eliminates sites to create its search results set, we are also focused on technical platform issues as well. I can usually teach even the best systems and development guys a few tricks, simply because I focus on what matters risk management, not just what’s proper. Perhaps you can see how practical competitive web publishing might differ from what gets discussed by CEOs at a domainer conference?
You may have met some domainers with a singular focus, but I can assure you that is now how most of the online players consider the web, and there are many serious players represented at TRAFFIC. The high-value online markets are very competitive and virtually all online markets are getting more competitive every day. You may have met people only involved with the domainer aspects, because it was TRAFFIC.. a networking meeting of leaders and CEOs and decision makers.
Rick invited a handful of SEO/SEM people to TRAFFIC in Miami last fall. After meeting many of the domainers attending, I catered my brief presentation to increasing understanding of Google’s long term approach to search optimization in web publishing, since the first impression people have of SEO is that is is a set of tricks or tactics. In truth, successful search marketing is a strategic endeavor very closely integrated with business operations. My observance was TRAFFIC attracted more CEO types and independent portfolio owners than operations or business development people.
BizDev people (and the SEOs who would work with them to achieve business goals) can attest to the significant amount of effort required to make CitynamePlumbers.com a profitable business, even at $100/month per plumber.
As an independent SEO I can probably enter that market in a day with an automated site on cityname-plumbers.com or something like TightPipes.com bought at reg fee, with very little overhead (commitment), underselling you while outranking you in the search results. You will have to pay attention to stay profitable, either investing to win or falling back to being a “domainer” happy to earn $4000/year because it’s so much better than PPC. You may have been on the receiving end of that sort of advice at TRAFFIC…better to flip it to someone who will invest in one domain as a defensible business. It seems Google is getting very good at dropping the lesser sites these days, creating even more of a problem for casual players.
As Michael Castello showed us, hands-on focus and dedication to the local relationships works. That’s not low overhead, nor low commitment. If you have 1000 domains, how will you develop them all? And if you’re prepared to commit, could you do better with one global plumber directory? These are not simple questions, but ones we deal with everyday. Eric says it well above when he says he meets domainers “Seeking fractional revenues from thousands of names vs. developing a serious portfolio of sites that are worth far more, as a package of media properties.” Sounds like two approaches to business to me, at different levels of commitment in different areas.
Hi Sahar; I just happened upon your site today and must say it is very enlightening.Especially in regards to Human Trafficing, I will surely be back.
But my question is about bido.com I went to their site and found it very useful as I have a few domains that I would like to try to sell. But the site (bido) does not have any way to contact anyone at their site. I would have a few questions esp. in regards to the April 8 auction. Do you happen to know how I can contact them or ask some questions to them about how do I try to sell a domain name on their site.??? I was hoping you could help me out. All I could see was places to register to be in on the auctions, but I have a few questions before I sign up for something that I have questions about. Any help would be greatly apprectiated. And once again love your blog and I have gotten alot of helpful information, enough so I will be back. Thanks again jessiejojames
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Hi there,
Thanks. You can submit your domains here.
Cheers
Sahar