Successful Domain Management™

ARE YOU A DUMB OR A SMART DOMAINER?

December 15th, 2008 Posted in Domain Development, General Domain News

(Article inspired by Sahar Sarid’s story)

Good God, the End Times have arrived for domainers! Or have they? Like I reported over ten months ago, great things are coming for domainers. If you base that on yesterday’s domain strategies, that isn’t close to being true. However, I didn’t indicate back then on what type of domainer you had to be to reap the great opportunities ahead.  The caveat is that you’re a great domainer only if you’re a smart domainer.

With the current Google shenanigans, Yahoo woozy thinking and PPC revenues dropping across the board, many domainers who mistakenly thought the value of a domain was only determined by PPC multiples are now awakening to the realization that domainers like Zappy (chocolate.com), Elliot Silver (Burbank.com) and Stuart Wood (Wifi.com), to name just a few, were way ahead of the domainer game. Why? Because they focused on a domain niche (granted, they had killer premium domains) and then invested their time and money in forcing their offline competitors to consider them an online threat. Their domain buildouts were and are huge tactical advantages in pushing their domain investments upwards. Stock market and real estate disasters? Not an blip on their screen.

With the current upheaval in the narrow-minded PPC thinking on domain revenue, now all domainers have to stop and rethink their monetization strategies.

The real test now for domainers is to “reassess” the value of their domains. For most domainers, letting many of their domains sit at Parking Services (PS’s) maybe made enough income to pay for their renewal fees and give them some profit, but now, PPC income has dropped below the 50% comparison revenue mark from just six months ago. The decline in PPC revenue was easy to notice, if you think biting your nails is “easy”.

The next “side-step” to success? Domainers have to “evaluate” their portfolios. Each domain must be reviewed, assessed, and placed into the proper monetization categories as listed below:

Ask yourself – Is your domain:

1) A PPC earner (easy to determine by just watching rev reports at a PS)
2) A “Resell” to an end user (harder to determine, but can be realized by simple research tools and some phone calls)
3) A Buildout for a new monetization category called a “domprop”. This is where you see your domain as being more valuable to you as a website “property” generating its own revenue paths, with original content, prodserv variety sources, focus on CPA’s, new and returning visitors, and great SE placement (PR, linkbacks, etc).

The above are the “1,2,3’s” of domain monetization categories. Each category is easy to understand at the summary level, but as you delve into forging a successful path for any revenue category, there are more intricacies, labor, and further investment.

The key for domainers is to define each of their domains into one or more of these categories, and determine which path of “investment” you want to take to build on your domain’s value. Yes, I said “investment”. Long gone are the days of just having your domains sit around on a landing page making you lazy revenue. Even the best of the one-word naturals are making less money right now. Those days of easy money are not coming back soon.

Domainers now have to act like smart investors, and decide which domains will be best for each three categories of revenue.

NEWS FLASH: The fastest growing category of domaining investment and the path with the most value returned on a domain is content development, or making your domain a “domprop”.

NOTE: Advertisement:  WhyPark.com saw this situation coming for domainers over a year ago, and worked very hard to create and provide services to help domainers regain their revenue advantage from their domains, even while watching as PPC services lost their strengths.

Not only does WhyPark give your domprops an inexpensive jumpstart in “showing content on your domain”, but their services help you define your domain to the public, give it a chance for SE indexing so you have another source of traffic, allow you to scoop up 100% of the revenue from your own adfeeds and affiliate sales, and if you want to go “super domprop”, Whypark can provide you with original content, including graphics, relevant articles, and managed control of your domain’s website at all levels.

Bob Dylan sang “The Times They Are A-Changing” and that song perfectly describes the new direction many domainers are now taking by utilizing WhyPark’s inexpensive and innovative features to building value for your domains. The question is: “Do you believe in your domains enough to invest $.99 in each of them to get relevant content on a website created by WhyPark?”

If your domains aren’t performing well at a TPS (Traditional Parking Service), then it might be time to consider investing in making your domains start a “new life” at WhyPark.com.  You’ll be surprised at how little it costs to build your whole domain portfolio into living websites.

For a test drive, visit http://beta.whypark.com.  You can also email Successclick to ask for high volume discounts. If you want to move 1000+ domains to WhyPark, I will personally handle your account and give you significant discounts on multiple buildout features for your domains. You can literally have your domains feature original content, custom design, your own revenue sources to keep 100% of your income, and have your site promoted in a variety of ways for less than $50 a month at the premium level services. But even at Standard level Whypark services, you can gain advantages you haven’t received yet at those TPS’s.



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  1. 7 Responses to “ARE YOU A DUMB OR A SMART DOMAINER?”

  2. By Reece Berg on Dec 15, 2008

    RIP dumb domainer :)

    I’m going to have to try out Whypark one of these days and see how it compares to Wordpress/Adsense.

    XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:

    Hi Reece!

    Well, as long as Wordpress doesn’t provide you with regular content feeds for a one-time fee of $.99 like WhyPark does, I think you’ll immediately find there’s no comparison! And you can put your own adsense feeds on your websites at WhyPark and keep 100% of your revenue. Customize your websites the way you like. Bring your non-performing domains and give them a new life! Check out http://beta.whypark.com for our new Phase 2 features!

  3. By RegFeeNames.com on Dec 15, 2008

    Great Post!

    We all need to sit back for a minute and look at what we do!

    Whats next for our portfolios?

    Sell?
    Buy?
    Develop?
    Stick with what you got?

    Times are changing and we all need to move forward!

    Regards,

    Robbie

    XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:

    Hi Robbie,

    That’s my whole point. Domainers have to evaluate their domains now, and break them down to how best to monetize them. By the way, Successclick.com has done this process for as little as $.25 a domain for some of the largest domain industry portfolios. This is one of the expert services we provide. Domain portfolios we’ve evaluated have sold for millions of dollars, so we have a pretty good track record.

  4. By Barry on Dec 16, 2008

    I’ve been using VentureNames.com which are on the same lines as WhyPark with auto content and lot’s of templates, also they are free.

    XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:

    Hi Barry,

    First of all, Venturenames isn’t “on the same lines as Whypark with autocontent and lots of templates.” However, I’d be glad to see you posting here a sample website or two of your domains on Venturenames, and we put them up for comparison with a few of my Whypark 99 cent websites.

    Thanks for writing!

  5. By jeff schneider on Jan 28, 2009

    Smart Post!!

    Stephen thank you for this thought provoking post. It has helped me as well as others to really focus on the strengths and weaknesses of our domain portfolios.

    We long ago figured out that you have to have a plan for buying and selling, or developing, your cyber assets. The trouble is we sometimes get sidetracked or confused about how to either develop or sell our properties. The ups and downs of our industry can confuse our goals at times and your post helps us focus on the bottom line.

    We have employed the services of WhyPark and have watched our link stats and reference stats improve dramatically. We would highly recommend this service to anyone interested in improving their results.

    Our strategy from day one with our USeBiz.com portfolio was to leverage the advantages of traffic and branding by marrying the two of them together. There is no doubt that WhyPark favors our strategy. Our general google search references went from under a thousand references to 1000s of search references and continues to build exponentially.

    Everyone in our industry knows that attracting advertising firms to our names is the key to increasing market participation and valuations of our names. We feel that there will be an ever increasing tendency for ad firms to adopt traffic along with branding to be successful in cyber space. We feel there is great potential for the art of Target Market Branding of which our portfolio represents. Thank you for your efforts in representing WhyPark.

    XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:

    Hi Jeff,

    Thanks for jumping on board WhyPark. You should contact me for learning about the additional features we’ve added with our Phase 2 Platform, and I’ll give you an hour of advice on how to build up the values of your domains through WhyPark. If any of my readers wish to get a special discount, and are ready to be serious about creating value on their domains affordably, please email me and I’ll be glad to get you started, and keep you very happy on being a WhyPark member. That’s what I’m here for!

    My email address is Stephen at Whypark dotcom.

  6. By Find Niches on Jan 30, 2009

    Glad I found this site – I’m finding the content very useful – thanks!

  7. By Niche Marketing on Feb 6, 2009

    Excellent content here and a nice writing style too – keep up the great work!

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