Root Orange Creates New Geo-Based Domain Leasing Option
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
New service leases domains based on physical location.
Visit the web site DivorceLawyer.com and you might get a message like this:
Are you trying to reach customers in Austin TX? Make ‘divorcelawyer.com’ yours today! Contact lease@rootorange.com to see how affordable leasing this domain can be.
The DivorceLawyer.com domain name is being leased based on geographic location. If you’re a New York divorce lawyer, you could capture all of the type-ins and other web traffic to the domain from New York residents by leasing the area. The same goes for any other location.
The company behind this new service is Washington, D.C-based Root Orange. The company helps premium domain owners lease out their domains based on geography, and local businesses get leads online by locking in all local traffic for a premium domain.
In its pitch to local businesses, the company claims its service does three things:
-Increase search rankings
-Easy-to-remember website URL makes referrals easier, while increasing your credibility
-40% increase in search engine marketing campaign click-thru’s
Of these three, I think the last one is the most valid. Type-in traffic is another bullet point that should be included. As for search engine traffic and actually using one of these geo-leased domains as a primary domain for your business, that’s of questionable value. Search engine bots won’t capture your local content, and I’m wary of over leasing a domain for a company’s primary web site.
On the domainer side, Root Orange provides a new monetization opportunity for category-killer domains by leasing them to multiple people.
Local businesses pay anywhere from $9 to over $1,000 per month to lease a domain in their area. For example, DivorceLawyer.com will cost a New York lawyer $1,099 per month, while it will cost a Montgomery, Alabama Lawyer $69. These rates seem reasonable given the number of possible leads. You can search for domains and prices by location on Root Orange’s web site. Other good domains available include BrakeRepair.com and WindowWashing.com.
The company was founded by Princeton Roommates Camilo Acosta and Frank Langston, who won $35,000 in a Princeton business case competition.
Root Orange is another example of innovative services popping up to monetize domains in the wake of falling domain parking revenue.
Further Reading:
Tags: domain monetization, root orange
Root Orange Creates New Geo-Based Domain Leasing Option – http://tinyurl.com/ygxysf5
interesting model, i read their website and did not find information on their role beyond leasing the name. for a name like divorcelawyer to compete in every market will take a ton of development and seo work, are they reinvesting the 80% into that…it seemed fairly vague
Nifty idea.
Others will no doubt shortly join them.
old idea. only works for lawyers, doctors. GeoSign bought a similar company out of Florida 3 year ago. Huge, huge bust for them.
On their site they say you can make $20,000 or more from your traffic on a site.
How did they come up with that stat? That’s a big number just to pull out of the air and apply liberally to every applicant. They should at least say “results may vary”.
I’d say it’s worth an experiment of a few smaller geo domains just to see what they got going on as a test.
Very very interesting. This model will live long if all the bottle necks are solved.
Great Idea.
Don, we lease the names and route traffic to the appropriate website based on the web user’s location.
Blubber, I’d love to learn more about the company you mentioned. What was it’s name?
Sigma Names, what bottle necks do you foresee?
We welcome all feedback in order to improve our service. Please contact us – domains@rootorange.com.
Thanks,
Camilo Acosta
Root Orange LLC
Ok, so I guess I would be hard pressed to see value if you are not reinvesting the revenues back into development. Competing in verticals such as divorce law to provide value will require significanlty more than a great domain name without content. If that is the biz model, why are you guys entitled to an 80% split of the revenues?
Don,
This isn’t a development model. We use our split of the revenues for sales & marketing efforts, since we are responsible for ensuring your names get leased. If the names aren’t leased, you don’t make money, and we don’t make money. The search engine rankings our names enjoy are due to our secret sauce
I hope I answered your question.
Cheers,
Camilo Acosta
Root Orange LLC
I believe blubber is referencing SWI which is now called Moxy Media.
SWIDigital.com
Frank and Sahar blogs discuss GeoSign’s activities in the past. Do a search.
So how is root orange doing?
Craig,
Thanks for checking in and asking. We are in the midst of a product revamp, informed largely by customer feedback. Our new version will be up on the website in early January.
We are also launching a related, but separate product for businesses that wish to geo-target their content. Keep an eye out in early January as well for that product and its accompanying website!
Cheers,
Camilo
Root Orange
1(800) 983-ROOT
[...] Orange, which launched a geo-splitting domain name service a year ago, announced a private beta for a new geo-splitting technology [...]