| LED Digest 2607: Domain Parking |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher Boutique Internet Marketing: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== Guest Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 14, 2008 Issue no. 2607 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Domain Parking ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen "My favorite service is TrafficZ.com..." ~ Steven Birk "There is a lot to say about that for sure so let's get the discussion started..." ~ John Smart "What would you want from a parked domain?" --== Success with Search Arbitrage ==-- ~ Shaun Johnston "My business strategy is that visitors are the ultimate commodity of value online." --== Redirecting Site to New Domain ==-- ~ David S. Taylor "...I suspect you may take a small hit when you change IP addresses." ~ DL Perry "Use 301 redirects liberally!" --== Link Building Ideas ==-- ~ Tom Anson "I've received quite a response in my InBox today..." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Domain parking Hi Dan, Well, it's really quite a large topic. I have a site planned for helping domain owners like yourself, but it's not going to be completed for quite a while. I do have a resource page that I have been working on for the past 6 months or so. I have just uploaded the page and it has many links to different sites that serve specific aspects of the domain industry: http://www.domainincubation.com/domain-sites.htm There are a number of forums that tend to focus on domaining, and the best one I have found so far is NamePros.com. There is a "Domain Newbie" topic where you can find answers to, or ask, common questions. Asking those type of questions in other areas make invoke a terse response from some members. To respond to your request, I would have to recommend you try parking your domains at iMonetize.com or Sedo.com. I think you will make more at iMonetize, but both are easy for those new to parking. But ease means you will not be able to do much more than to choose some keywords for your domains. That may be enough, but to really get nice looking parking pages that are less likely to instantly repel visitors, you want to be able to customize your pages with color, text, and images. My favorite service is TrafficZ.com, but you need about 100 domains or some really good domains to open an account there. One key is that if you have a parked domain that is getting traffic but no clicks, is to change the optimization or move it to a different service. Most of them work differently and some domains work better at one place than another. If your domains are not currently getting traffic, or are of a type that are not likely for people to type the domain name in the browser, then you are not likely to get much traffic or earn much money. Most of the parking services do not allow you to promote or drive traffic to your parked domains in any way. Check their rules, because breaking any can get your account closed. There are a number of domain scams that have been going on. One involves someone contacting you to buy your domain for a nice price. The only problem is they want you to get the domain appraised with a service to make sure of the value. And they only want you to use a specific service. The scam is about getting people to pay for appraisals they don't need at a service that may or may not have any real value. Another scam is where someone will be selling a domain and they publish the parking company information that shows the are making $xx a day or a month. In some cases this information could be faked, but generally it is real. Domains that make regular income commonly sell for 10-30 times income, so this can be a significant amount. But if bogus traffic/clicks are being generated to the domain, this may leave the new owner wondering where everybody went. This is a variation of the search engine click fraud that has been going on. Of course, if a domain is sold and moved to a new service that may also be responsible for a change in income. Just like with SEO, there is an awful lot of personal opinions about domain being put forth as fact. One example is that only .com domains have value, long domain names are bad, or that domains with hyphens are worthless. There may be some truth in what they say, such as trying to sell a new domain name, or one without traffic. But I have one domain that has three words, two hyphens, and is a .info domain that has made $30.75 for the three month period from 12/2007-2/2008. Thank you, Chris Nielsen -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Steve Birk Subject: Domain parking I brought up domain parking in my original post in LED 2604 ( http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2019/190/ ) about the fact that certain domains disappeared from Google after parking them with a parking service. They are indeed gone as when I do a site:mydomain.com at Google, nothing shows up in Google. I think I'll do what Chris Nielsen suggested and move a couple of them to another parking company to see what happens. Dan Rosenfield asks for more discussion and information on domain parking and the best places to park. There is a lot to say about that for sure so lets get the discussion started... The first thing I would say to Dan or anyone else for that matter who may be interested in the Domaining Industry, including parking (or are just curious) is to check out http://www.dnjournal.com (that's how I actually got started). I am not affiliated with them, only a satisfied subscriber to their free newsletter and frequent visitor to their site. Ron Jackson, the editor, does a great job of keeping his finger on the pulse of this incredible, rapidly expanding industry... and if you want to get blown away check out the latest values of recent domain name sales at http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm. Fund.com tops the list with a recent sale at $9,999,950! There's just a little bit of money out there... Some good places to hang out and see what others are saying: http://www.DiscussNames.com http://www.NamePros.com You can read lots of info at those locations above about the following Parking Companies... http://www.ActiveAudience.com http://www.Fabulous.com http://www.Park.com There are many more for sure, but those seem to be the three that are talked about most and that should get you started... One thing about parking domains... everyone has their reasons on why you want to park a domain name, but whatever the reason; make sure that the content of your 'parked' page matches the domain name. Case in point, and this in my opinion is what may give 'parked' pages a bad name to some, is look at http://www.CancerTreatment101.com (no idea who owns it but what the heck does that have to do with Cancer Treatment, except maybe the few links at the bottom???)... I have a site that is awaiting my attention to start to develop, so in the mean time I parked it and it's at http://CancerTreatmentHub.com. With a little bit of leg work and customization, you can make your parked pages match the domain name of your site, and maybe not look so much like just a 'Parked' page that you threw up on the net during a TV commercial... My opinion is that for the long haul, you would want to develop your domain names into fully viable, quality sites. From everything I read lately, the PPC 'Parked' pages model may have seen its better days, although there are still those with premium domain names still making some good cash for sure. Regards, Steven Birk http://MedicalNewsCenter.com Complete, Current and Credible Medical News Coverage -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: Domain parking > I have several domains I have not had time > to do much with and have read a little > about domain parking. But, I am not sure I > fully understand it. I would love to have > Chris and others talk more about domain > parking and the best places to park > domains. - Dan Rosenfield, LED 2606 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2021/190/ This is a subject that interests me. As I understand it, if you own a domain that is doing nothing at all, there are legal channels that others can use to acquire your domain name. Hence the desire to park it. I presume that if you park it with the correct sort of junk filler, you can start to give the domain a Google (or other) presence, increasing its retail worth should you look to sell the domain later. I figures that it would not be worth developing this, as no one would pay to park a domain. Maybe I should reconsider. It strikes me that an admin interface allowing the parker to throw in a dozen or so keywords, and link in with a little fuzzy logic through to Amazon, Google or others. Which leads to: What would you want from a parked domain? What would I have to offer to have you park your domain with me? John Smart InternetDesign.com A Human Touch in a Digital world. -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Shaun Johnston Subject: Success with Search Arbitrage > Our experience with non-merchant websites > is that it is very hard to make a living by > buying links and then getting paid for > moving these customers on. In fact if you > do the whole thing through Adwords/Adsense, > you might fall foul of big G which has been > cracking down hard on 'arbitragers'. - Maty Matyszak, LED 2605 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2020/190/ Thanks for the warning, Maty. The issue is absolutely central to my business. I couldn't risk falling afoul of Google if they objected to their visits being "resold" via PPC. I took it up with Google. Here's their answer: --------------- "I understand that you want to know whether you'd be violating our terms of service if you use AdWords ads to pull visitors to the lodgings listings in your directories. I wish to inform you that we allow advertising of online directories. However, Arbitrage sites that are designed for the purpose of showing ads will be penalized with low landing page quality scores. If we further receive complaints about ads for websites of this kind, they will not be allowed to continue running." --------------- So to them the issue is not what you do with those visitors once you get them, it's whether Google will run their ads on such sites. Sites may be penalized for reproducing their listings but for the low quality of their content, not for reselling the visits. So I'm in the clear. Arbitraging visitors took over from advertising as my business model in 1999. I am in effect a very-vertical search engine. My sites sort visitors into more-qualified streams. My value-added to my clients is a refining of the quality of visitors over what they could get direct from Google. My value to visitors is the greater concentration of relevant listings I offer. I'm a middle-man helping online visitors with one segment of their search. A friend involved in building a large online travel-destination site out West USA tells me this is a growing trends in tourism sites. Sites like mine will join in networks. Sites in the network will buy visitors at a lower price from a broader-based site, add value as I do, and sell those visits to the next site in line which adds still further value. The final destination site extracts value from the visitor through a real-world sale, but has to pay the accumulated tolls-plus-surcharges from segments upstream. So, for example, a visitor from Spain might enter a US travel site, get passed on to a Sierra Mountain recreation site, from there to a State or Region site, from there to a kayak-tour packaging company's website where an order is placed and money changes hands. Some proportion of that money-10%?--goes in PPC fees to the source-sites of such visitors. Analysis of quality of traffic streams moves to the forefront of business. As I said, I am buying visits from Google at around 50 cents and selling them to lodgings at around 30 cents per visit delivered but, after taking account of multiple visits delivered per visitors offset by bounces with no visits delivered, making around 38 cents per visitor from Google. The most critical element in success will be reducing the bounce rate, after that it's increasing the number of visits delivered per visit to me, and charging more per visit delivered. I've set my maximum fee per visit I deliver to 41 cents, set to automatically rise with the cost of first class postage. Once I succeed with one keyword in Google, Google search only, no content match, then I'll spread out to other keywords and other sources, swelling my investment only as I get my return over 100%. The goal is the original dream of perfectly-scalable Internet business, online transactions mushrooming with no labor input. I've been pursuing this dream through publishing online travel guides for 13 years. It has the irresistible allure of a gold rush. Until recently it's been a total bust but revenue is now doubling each year, though it's still only hobby-money. My business strategy is that visitors are the ultimate commodity of value online. Whoever makes most per visitor can pay most to sources of visitors. I can make money from visitors through PPC or through commission on room bookings made by visitors from me online. But revenue per visitor from commission on bookings appears to generate a maximum of around 15 cents while through PPC I hope to get up to one dollar. The reason for the difference is that visitors convert to bookings at a much higher rate on the phone than through online booking systems. So my strategy is industry-specific. It s a dirty business, but someone's got to do it. Cheers, Shaun Johnston -------- new post - new topic -------- From: David S. Taylor Subject: New domain > Any other things I should look for when > moving? I will be keeping the hitman23.com > domain and hopefully will be able to > redirect from the daemen.edu domain to the > new one. Is this a good way to ensure that > I don't lose any visitors? - Dan Curtis, LED 2606 Dan, There are others far more versed on the secrets of search engine rankings, but I suspect you may take a small hit when you change IP addresses. But you have to weigh that against the ability of not being able to update you site. You may see your site continue to drop down as the content grows more stale. As for hosting options, there are more than you can shake a truckload of sticks at. It depends on what you are looking for in a host. If you control the domain with the registrar then updating the records to point to the new site is relatively easy. You would host the site in your own server space and have control of the content and have the ability to have domain e-mail accounts of you wanted to. If you move to some personal space with your ISP (assuming it does not violate their T&Cs, which it does not appear to since it is a personal page) then you would have to update the redirection and it would be almost immediate. That would be better than a redirect unless you end up hosting on some personal pages provided by your ISP. So, get the site up on the new server and make the change. Worst case users that still have the old address in their DNS cache will get the old site. I just went through this process when I moved my servers to a new IP address. We put a short TTL in the DNS records over a week before the move, but still discovered a lot of ISPs (specifically cable companies) cache their DNS records for a really long time. I told customers experiencing issues to switch over the OpenDNS and their problems were solved. Good luck, David S. Taylor, CISSP, GCIH, GSEC DSTLink, Inc. http://www.dstlink.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: DL Perry Subject: New domain Greetings LED - I'm just a lurker and a 'once in a blue moon' poster, but I do have some thoughts on Dan's domain and host switching questions: > 1. What are some recommendations for > hosting? I am looking for good reliability, > user-friendly interface, and affordable > cost. I cannot recommend any one host in particular - but I'm happy enough with mine - HostingZoom https://www.hostingzoom.com. This may not be an issue in your instance, but ideally your new host will offer the same/similar hosting environment, platform, and configuration as your current host. ex: If your current host runs Windows, you will likely encounter some difficulties if you transfer the website to a non-Windows server. > 2. How do I make sure I do not drop out of > the search engines. I am in the top 10 for > Yahoo (used to be #3 but probably dropped > down b/c of inability to update content and > access issues). I've 'been there, done that, got the T-shirt', and one of the most important things I can recommend is - Use 301 redirects liberally! This is VITAL to successfully transferring a website with any hope of maintaining search listing. And thanks to Will Bontrager at willmaster.com - this task is now a little easier. As mentioned in Possibilities http://www.willmaster.com/possibilities/ issue #447 - a new, very useful and 'intelligent' *redirect 301 Generator service* http://www.willmaster.com/software/WebSitesSecret/whatsnew.php has been added at WebSites Secret http://www.willmaster.com/software/WebSitesSecret/: If I may, I'll let Will Bontrager tell you about the redirect 301 Generator service in his own words: *~as seen in Possibilities #447:* ------------------ "When web pages are moved or their files renamed, it is good to put a "redirect 301" line into the .htaccess file of site's directory where the web pages are moved from. This gives visitor's browsers and search engines the information they need to determine the web page was permanently moved to the new location. The "redirect 301" Generator can generate the redirect 301 lines for the .htaccess file. If you've ever had to move a lot of web pages, dozens or hundreds, and hand-build a "redirect 301" line for each web page, you will readily see the huge time savings the generator could represent. Here is an overview of how easy the generator is to us: 1. Before the web pages are moved, create a sitemap with their URLs. It can be any common type of site map (HTML, XML, or a plain text file of URLs). 2. After the web pages are moved, create a sitemap of the new URLs. 3. Fire up the generator, upload the two sitemaps, specify the domain URL, and click the button. 4. Copy the generated 301 lines and paste them into your .htaccess file. If your web page files have been renamed, the redirect 301 generator can employ fuzzy logic to match similar file names. Changed letter capitalizations, changed file name extension, and changed non-alphanumeric characters, like underscores to hyphens, can all be taken into account. The generator can not guess a match of /paintbrush.html with /camelhair.html. However, it can match /PaintBrush.html with /paint-brush.php." ------------------ Here's the control panel demo http://www.willmaster.com/software/WebSitesSecret/redirect-301-demo/ I have used this service twice, on a client site and a personal site, and this redirect 301 generator saved me literally hours of time. In addition - both site transfers went off without a hitch - with no loss of listing, no errors from Google or Yahoo or MSN, and most importantly - customers, clients and visitors using old bookmarks, etc. did not see the dreaded 404 Not Found error. In fact - both sites have actually increased in listing for many targeted keywords/phrases, and good old Google Page Rank has even increased (whoohoo). :). > 3. Any other things I should look for when > moving? I will be keeping the hitman23.com > domain and hopefully will be able to > redirect from the daemen.edu domain to the > new one. Is this a good way to ensure that > I don't lose any visitors? Yes - 301 redirects are VITAL. Of course you'll need access to the sites .htaccess file on the current host server. I also have an article on my site that discusses re-launching a website that you may find helpful - "From Re-launch to Google Index in less than 7 days! How I moved existing content to a new url - and lived to tell about it." http://www.dlperry.com/in-google-in-days.html hope this helps - back to LURK mode.... --dlp www.dlperry.com website design, maintenance, seo, software -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Links > I hired a company to manually submit my > site to reviewed directories. The result > has been amazing. The same company that > submitted my site to the directories will > also submit articles to article directories > and blogs. - Tom Anson, LED 2606 Hi, fellow LEDers, I've received quite a response in my InBox today, so I thought I'd take the more efficient way to get back to you. I've appreciated all of your comments, and some were quite entertaining. This is a great community, and I'm honored to be part of it. I'd like to thank Chris Nielsen; he's the one who hooked me up with the company I chose for directory submissions. A much better choice than the company I almost went with. I'm really pleased with the results I've achieved with this company; however, the experience was not "perfect". There were a fair number of denials, for various reasons. A few of the biggies were being country- or industry-specific directories where I did not fit, failure to submit according to guidelines and directories requiring reciprocal links. Some of the directories that accepted my listing were such that, if I had been making the decision, I would not have linked to. But, overall, this has been a good move for my business. Now, what everyone is waiting to hear: the company in question is Nationwide Submit at http://www.nationsubmit.com/. Hope this helps. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "And the raconteurs and roustabouts said, "Buddy, come on in, 'Cause the dreams ain't broken down here now, they're walking with a limp. Now that Small Change got rained on with his own thirty-eight." - Tom Waits |
