—-answer—-

Hi there,
Thanks. You can submit your domains here.
Cheers
Sahar

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.

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

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.

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

Great discussion and post!

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

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” .

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!

“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.