A look at where we’re headed for domain monetization.
It’s no secret that the traditional form of domain name monetization — PPC parking — has seen a decline over the past three years. Nonetheless, this form of monetization is still the best option for most domain names. Certain segments of domain names can do better through other monetization channels, however.
There are basically two different efforts going on in the evolution of domain monetization: traffic building and alternative monetization.
Traffic building involves generating traffic to domain names that receive little natural traffic. WhyPark and DevHub are good examples. These services create content on your domains with the hope of getting search engine traffic. Another example is SmartName, which recently released a content system and also has a “shops” system that populates products onto domains. While all of these may generate some traffic to web sites, they mostly still rely on pay-per-click for monetization. (DevHub has a network of CPM, CPA, and PPC advertisers).
Although these traffic building outfits are interesting, I’m more excited about recent developments in monetization beyond PPC. These solutions typically work best for domains that already have traffic, but aren’t optimized using PPC.
Cost-per-action, or the affiliate model, is certainly an opportunity. PPX is one company trying to marry the affiliate marketing world with domain name traffic.
But a bit further outside the box you’ll find a couple companies to really keep an eye on. I recently wrote a review of Octane360, which sells directory listings and leads on geo-targeted web sites. These fixed-price, monthly listings can far outpace potential PPC revenue and don’t rely on the Google-Yahoo duopoly. The typical domain owner will get about $5 per directory listing sold on his/her site, and most listings automatically renew each month. Two months of one listing covers the annual registration fee.
Case-in-point: My StlDaycare.com domain name made only a couple bucks a year parked. Octane has sold three listings on it, which will generate about $200 a year in revenue. That’s about 100 times what I was making from parking. Do that at scale and it’s a game changer.
Another interesting player is RootOrange. They are taking category-killer generics and splitting the traffic amongst cities, effectively leasing local rights to the domain to a related company in each city. They’re early in the game, and I’m not sure how it will work out. But strategies like this are innovative and promising.
One idea I’ve been kicking around is using domain traffic to capture opt-in email addresses. This doesn’t result in immediate monetization, but instead enables long term, recurring revenue opportunities.
I suspect that, even in five years’ time, pay-per-click parking will remain the top monetization method for domain names. But what happens with alternative monetization techniques will be extremely important to the industry.
Bruce Marler says
Wow, nice info on the StlDayCare.com (wait, I want that name!).
I had been keeping an eye on Octane360. With us at Localtek doing direct sale advertising we still know at times in areas we are not in yet (i.e. other states) having a way to penetrate before we get there would be great. Sounds like they have a solid option.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Bruce Marler – Octane also lets you sell your own listings, which means you can keep more of the money.
small domainer says
I don’t know if NameMedia has solved the problem but I belive Google and Yahoo usually ignores or downgrades the dns (ie., ns1.smartnames) that go to the ppc companies.
I guess most of the internet surfers have learned quickly to backup when they land on a ppc site. At least with content, the visitor is willing to look if the site has what they are looking for.
Have the search engines accepted the minisites like DevHub and WhyPark?
Bruce Marler says
@Andrew – Nice. I need to check out deeper. This is my kinda thing:)
bernard says
“Octane has sold three listings on it, which will generate about $200 a year in revenue.”
Just wait the end of the year. They will quit before if their ROI isn’t interesting compared with Adwords.
Bruce Marler says
I do not want to speak for Andrew, but I will say most small businesses in a local area do not touch adwords, they do not understand it and it is too tech. I speak from experience in the field with them…
They understand paying once.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Bruce Marler –
Indeed, most of the companies buying listings on my directory sites don’t even have a web site. They look at it like an online yellow pages ad.
Chris says
Octane360 is continuing to have a bad day:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 467215519 bytes) in /home/www/sites/production/html/frontend/support/common.php on line 200
Bruce Marler says
@Andrew
Very true, we have had customers call their directory listings their website, true story…
We fixed that perception.
rob sequin says
“Have the search engines accepted the minisites like DevHub and WhyPark?”
Yes. Yahoo will show parked.com sites if you have content and whypark sites. However, even with #1 placement in Yahoo, I get no traffic on those domains since no one uses Yahoo.
Matt says
Yahoo will accept any parked domain.
Google and Bing BARELY accept any parked domain. To Google and Bing and Yahoo WhyPark, Parked, Sedo, or any other company is really the same thing.
They don’t look at the content, they look at where the domains are pointed first and we are all classifieds as web farms. They look at the content only after the fact.
Yahoo is the easiest on it. Once it merges with Bing this will go away.
Google, Bing, and Yahoo make money from sponsored ads. If they’d want to make money from this, they’d replace parking sites in the SERPs with sponsored listings. There’s no reason for them to put parked pages in SERPs as these parked pages are only a gateway back to their sponsored listings, and worse – sponsored listings of their competitors.
Matt says
As far as CPA, CPM, all these other ways of monetizing domains, it really won’t work out well. I’ve learned this over the years of playing with it myself.
PPC is still better for a reason – because it pays more.
If PPC on Google/Yahoo drops, so will the PPC rates on tier 2 networks. Since Sendori and all these other “different” ways of monetizing domains are mainly made up of tier 2 feeds (not direct advertisers as they claim), then their rates will also drop as Google/Yahoo drop the rates.
At the end of the day, PPC is still the best bet. CPA CPM and all other networks will not replace PPC in the near future, but they can compliment it nicely.
Btw, this already sounds like the search world. There’s like 1000 different tier 2 search networks, just go to a conference like AdTech. This is what domaining industry looks like it’s heading. No clear winner, just a lot of noise.
The only winner is Google, and they’re operating on a completely different level.
Domain industry IMO right now is branching out and branching off, instead it should be coming together as one. That’s my thought.
Furkat says
good article. I will try some of the services.
Thanks. Keep posting!
Buy Website Visitors says
People do not understand but if you have a good domain and have it set on a parked paged, then you can earn good money with it if the seo is done right.
Stephen Douglas says
@Dub-A
If you have a managed account at WhyPark.com, you can get a “dynamic storefront” setup on your domain website there. I’m currently running two, using “allposters.com” ready-built storefronts. So CPA storefronts through 3rd parties is available for Whypark users.
Coming soon, more cool monetization features at WhyPark.
Richard M. says
“Coming soon, more cool monetization features at WhyPark.”
That is good to see.
However, are the WhyPark sites being listed in Google under the keyword and on the first page besides the actual domain?
Brian Null says
good info… anyone have success with any of the above mentioned services for exact match product domains?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Brian – if they get traffic, you might try SmartName Shops. The use a Shopping.com feed that pays pay-per-click. The PPC is lower than what you get from Yahoo/Google, but the CTR should be higher.
Andrew Allemann says
follow up to Brian — of course part of the idea of SN Shops is that they can get search engine indexing, so even domains w/o traffic might work.
Andrew Allemann says
Interestingly, just checked my Octane account and they sold a fourth listing on StlDaycare.com. So that $200 number just went up.
PPC user says
“So that $200 number just went up.”
Just keep rubbing salt into our cuts with ppc !!!
Congratulations. That is good news.
Bruce Marler says
@Andrew
Very nice. I will say it again, small business understands paying once per year but will not PPC because of the technical nature of it. We sell direct on our own sites but in those regions we do not have people yet I am liking the sound of Octane.
@Brian Null
I can say without a doubt that the Smartname sites do rank and can raise income on a site. You got my digits and email, give me a shout and I will give you the scoop.
Brian Null says
Andrew and Bruce, thanks for the feedback.
Bruce, I’ll shoot ya a note.
Adam says
What about zero-click model of Elephant-traffic.com? It also seems to be interesting model in the future.