 Issue 15 - October 2006 - formerly Domain Parking News | | | | | | | Are Pay-Per-Click Revenues falling? Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel and chief financial officer Susan Decker announced a slow-down in ad revenue growth at a New York investment conference on 9/20. "I think in this current quarter we are seeing some slowing [in ad growth] with perhaps two of the largest sectors, in both autos and financial services," Semel said. "They are still growing, but they are not growing as quickly as we would have hoped."
Decker reported that the drop-off began around September 1, and will be significant enough to undercut Yahoo's financial performance for the quarter ending Sept. 30. She said it's still too early to tell whether the advertising slump would spread into other industries besides auto and financial services. Yahoo's stock fell on the report. It is important to note that Yahoo did not talk about a drop in ad revenue (as of yet) - but rather a slowdown in the rate of ad revenue growth. My direct revenue from Yahoo ads is down slightly, and revenue from Overture-based services is also down slightly. I have not seen the same trend in Google-based ads. back to top
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| | | | | | | News from the Parking Services Parking Dots finally published their new front end in September, and it was worth waiting for. The new options bring their service up to the level of the industry leaders. You now have control over the keywords and custom graphics on your landing pages. In most cases you even have control of whether you get a one-click or a two-click lander. This has resulted in increased income for me in several cases. Overall income is probably affected by the Yahoo ad growth slowdown described earlier. DomainSponsor is getting ready to roll out some of their biggest changes to date. It seems that the new landing pages that some people are seeing are just the beginning. They are ready to launch a new DomainSponsor 2.5 platform that will include full DNS integration, referrer reports, and an improved user interface. Toward the end of the month they plan an even bigger roll-out which will include new landing pages and new customization features. Expansion internationally should follow these changes. DomainSponsor is highly recommmended, especially for commercial domains. Be sure to read the interview with Sam Nunez at the end of this issue.
Sedo announced major changes in their program back in August. They have repeatedly stated that most people have seen increased income since the change. I've seen income increase on many of my Sedo domains and I've heard similar reports from others. There is a vocal group of domainers who have seen their income drop, however. Another complaint that I've heard it that changing domain keywords and landing pages is complicated, and that changes you make don't seem to "stick" - that you come back later and the changes are gone. There may indeed be a problem here, but in some cases people may not be completing the 2-step process that is required to save the changes in Sedo's interface. Once you have made changes in your portfolio in the Domain Optimizer you will see yellow icons next to the changes you have made. You still need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save Changes" button before leaving that page. If you don't do this you will lose all of the changes that you have made. Ideally they should not need this second step. Why not just save your changes after you make them? At the very least they need to add a similar "save Changes" button toward the top of the page - or make the 2-step process a little more obvious.
Sedo also squashed a few bugs in their new system this month. According to Eben Smith, Director of Parking for North America "During the changeover to our new ad-feed we did experience a few technical problems.... Our system was paying US rates for non-domestic traffic for approximately 48 hours. We're continuing to see some fluctuations in EPC as our new Dynamic Pricing takes effect and the system stabilizes. I estimate that over the next week this issues will be resolved, and the resulting payouts will be up at least 25%-30% overall. We will also see high individual CPCs as a result of the new ad-feed switch". Sedo is highly recommended.
TrafficZ began adding graphic thumbnails to some of their adult landing pages. An example can be seen at nakedrussianwoman.com (not my site, by the way). Thumbnail graphics next to links have been shown to increase click rates. The theory is that one's eye is drawn to the picture and automatically associates the link with the picture, increasing the likelihood of clicking. I haven't seen this technique on other landing pages at TrafficZ yet, but there is no reason to assume that only adult pages will get this treatment. They also reported some problems related to efforts to improve traffic quality. They reported on 9/29 that they were having "some technical difficulties which have resulted in reduced CPC rates across the network...primarily associated with new traffic routing algorithms, recently implemented at the request of our search engine partners to improve traffic quality." It seems that some visitors "are being improperly routed to our second tier partners, rather than our primary partner, Yahoo!, resulting in less relevant, lower-value clicks." They are working on a fix, and promise that "domainers will be fully and properly compensated for any decrease in revenue associated with this issue".
NameDrive reported that they have added some new templates and categories. They reported on 9/25 that that they have "two new travel templates and two new electronics templates" and that "Internet, shopping and property/real estate will also go live this week." They also report that they overhauled their categories and sub categories, replacing the old Health and Beauty categories with Medicine, Cosmetics and Wellness. They added new categories for Insurance, Property/Real Estate and a number of new subcategories. Active Audience and Gold Key are also Yahoo/Overture based. Revenue seems to be down a little in the last week of September. ActiveAudience in particular continues to offer great stats details and a lot of flexibility in landing page creation. Gold Key keeps up in terms of revenue, and the interface is simpler to use. ActiveAudience and GoldKey are both highly recommended.
TrafficValet continues to impress. They offer premium service such as internalized counters, alternate and alternate masked redirects for their high volume customers. I can't really comment on these services because my domains are spread too thin for me to quality.
We are still evaluating iMonetize , the service that tests your domains with other services and parks them where they do best on different days of the week. It seems clear that this service really required high traffic domains to work, so we will need to throw some more domains their way.
Remember to check the Getting Started page at ParkQuick.com for the latest recommendations if you are just getting started with domain parking.
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| | | | | | | Making Money with Viral Videos The term "Web 2.0" has been used to describe a number of cutting edge techniques that come together to form a better Online user experience. Viral video on sites such as YouTube are at  the cutting edge of Web 2.0. Revver.com is a site that collects viral videos and integrates a brief paid ad at the end. The video creator and the publisher share part of the ad revenue. Revver also serves the videos so that you don't incur bandwidth fees. Revver.com lets you quickly and easily add any of hundreds of YouTube-like viral videos to your site, and theoretically earn some money. You are paid if someone clicks on the ad after the video has played. This is certainly an easy way to add video to your site - and they supposedly pay you even months and weeks later if someone downloads the entire video and eventually clicks on the embedded ad. If any one has good or bad experiences with this service I'd love to hear about them. |
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| | | | | | | T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East Later this Month
I'll be joining several hundred domain professionals October 24-28 in Miami/Hollywood, Florida for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East domain conference. This is shaping up to be a great event. It looks like the emphasis will be on valueing domains. Many of the new breed of domain investors value domains purely on a multiple of their current ad revenue, while domain portfolio owners often see the value of their domains quite differently. Email me if you'd like to set aside some time to talk domain monetization at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
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| | | | | Interview with Sam Nunez of DomainSponsor: Thanks for joining us for this interview, Sam. What is your position with Oversee.net - and what is the difference between Oversee.net and Revenue.net? Thanks for having me. I am the Group Product Manager for Domain Sponsor, which is Oversee.net’s domain monetization product. Oversee.net is a technology-driven media company that was founded in 2000; Revenue.net is its ad network.
We've seen DomainSponsor try some new landing pages and add landing page rotatation to the mix. In the past you have stuck with fairly plain pages, reporting that they often convert better than pages with graphics. It seems that you do now offer graphic landing pages that mix with others in rotation. Will users have more control over these in the future? Are there other things happening at DomainSponsor?
We continue to innovate the product to produce the best results for our customers; testing new landers and new optimization technology consistently is a part of that effort. DomainSponsor has always focused on monetization first; that’s what made us who we are. It turns out that simple landers systematically perform better than graphic-rich ones. But some of our domainers also want to have some control over the look and feel of their pages, to add images, their own keywords for navigation and turn on and off some features. We have already included some of these customization options over the last few months, in a new platform that will enable users to heavily customize their pages, but we are still keeping an eye on RPM.
When should we see these changes?
In early October you’ll see some convenience features added to our Publisher Tools interface, like additional referrer reports, sleeker portfolio management and integrated DNS setup. Most of the big changes will come late October, including the new landers and the advanced customization features.
The people behind DomainSponsor have joined the venture capital crowd purchasing domains. How does this affect DomainSponsor down the road? How does this affect domainers who park with you?
I think this is good news for our domainers. First, this gives them an additional option to sell their portfolio to a trusted source if that is their goal. Second, it proves that DomainSponsor’s solutions work. All the domains we own are monetized with our own technology, so our goals for our internal portfolio and our domainers are totally aligned.
I know that at one time [several years ago] you had yellow landing pages for people with small portfolios and better-paying blue pages for people with larger portfolios. Do these two levels still exist in some form? Does everyone get the same landing pages at DomainSponsor? How will this change with the coming updates? No, this was never the case. What’s happening is that DomainSponsor relies on a complex optimization engine, as you know, that rotates different content and keywords based on the domain name and where users are clicking. This engine is what makes us the leader in monetization. As a result, some domains may optimize on the yellow landing page, while others optimize on the blue page. That does not mean the yellow is better or worse than the blue one. It means that for a particular domain and traffic, the blue page will pay the most, while for others it will be the yellow one.
In some ways your reputation has been for ugly landing pages and excellent income. I've even heard it said that ugly pages may work better, since people click quickly to get the ugly page off the screen. Is this changing? Will you always have at least a few ugly landing pages for us to choose from? Excellent income is what we thrive on. We let our optimization engine and tests decide which landers work best to achieve maximum income. The ugly pages often win, but some of the new landing pages we are launching next month have a bit more color and a more pleasing layout. We are adding these new landers to the mix because they simply pay more, not because they are more attractive. With the new customization platform, users will be able to make their own choice and force some of the prettier templates over our recommended mix. And they’ll have some very sleek tools to see by themselves how their pretty custom landers compare with our “uglier” ones. Stay tuned.
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I will send this newsletter out monthly or when there have been significant changes in the domain name monetization industry. I do not anticipate sending it more than once a month unless there is a huge change in a service that warrants your immediate attention. Back issues are available at NameMonetizer.com. Leonard Holmes, Ph.D.
CEO, Healing Sites Network, LLC You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the end of every issue. ParkQuick.com - Make Quick Money on Dormant Domains
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