An update to my review of geo domain monetization solution.
It’s been over a year since I provided early results from monetizing domain names on Octane360.
I titled my review “Octane360 Takes Domain Monetization Beyond PPC“.
Although I’m still happy with my results on Octane360, a lot of things have changed since my original review — including the “beyond PPC”. As it turns out, over half of my revenue on the system is coming from PPC now.
The big change came when Local.com acquired the company for up to $11 million. Based on milestone payments the company has received since then (as detailed in Local.com’s recent annual report), Octane360 seems to be firing on all cylinders.
As a refresher, the service monetizes geo domain names such as CincinnatiPainters.com and LittlerockSiding.com. It creates a site for each domain that has multiple monetization methods: paid monthly listings, lead forms, and pay-per-click.
Local.com has a very strong PPC feed for local traffic and this has given a big boost to Octane360’s revenue stream. PPC from this feed now generates more than half of my revenue with the service.
I have just over 250 domains on the system. At any given time there are about 20-25 sold listings on the sites. Because of the sales commissions paid on these listings you make about $5 per listing per month. This is nothing to sneeze at — a listing sold for two months pays your entire registration fee for a year. If someone buys a listing directly on a site you get a much larger fee. I’ve found the churn on listings to be higher than I hoped, though.
Some of the domain names in my portfolio are hard to sell listings against (e.g. “prefab” domains), so I suspect other people are getting a higher listing-to-site sales ratio.
On the downside, Octane360 domain names aren’t doing so well in search. In my original review I reported that 90% of them were on the first page of Google for the exact match term. I even sold a couple of the sites to local business owners partly because of those good rankings.
But Google isn’t smiling upon the sites anymore. Now only a handful appear on the first page of Google.
That’s not necessarily a problem. My top 10 sites last month totaled about $100 in revenue with a median RPM of $1,166 thanks to listing revenue. Overall my RPM over the past month is $27, with $10.64 contributed from listings and $16.46 from PPC.
On standard parked pages I’d probably earn about a $10 RPM on these domains and get less traffic thanks to no search visitors.
In a nutshell, Octane360 is still a winner…even if it’s winning in a different way than I first imagined.
Dan says
I contacted them exactly a year ago about adding some of my names to their system, they had a 500 domain minimum.
Fine.
I sent over a list to one of the main guys and he never replied.
Fine. Not good enough, I guess.
A few months later, after they were acquired by Local.com I sent another email to a different person asking if they were interested.
She said yeah, but the minimum was 300 domain and it would cost $1 per domain to sign up.
Finally I decided to not work with them, their customer service is awful and they never communicate.
Glad I didn’t waste my time with them, my own development has been more successful than your experience with them.
Their content is ALL copied from scrapping google itself, just saying…
Elliot says
The sites look pretty good… one question about liability though.
On CincinnatiPainters.com, it says: “Find a Pre-Screened Painter in Cincinnati Fast!”
With regards to the pre-screening part, who does the pre-screening and what’s involved? What’s the potential liability like for a domain owner if a pre-screened painter does a bad job, steals from a house, or causes other problems?
Although I am not a legal expert, it would seem like there may be a fair amount of risk with a limited return unless you have some type of indemnity clause with the company (Octane/Local).
Andrew Allemann says
@ Elliot – the leads are sold to someone like ServiceMaster.
Rob says
I, too, contacted them twice to get more information about their services. I had well over the minimum number of domains, the majority are geo targeted.
No response . . . twice.
Dont know what their issues are, but they are obviously not ready to handle more business. Not a good sign.
Funny thing was that a week or two after my first contact (I think) someone from O360 contacted me about buying one of my domains . . . for $100. I think this was before the local.com acquisition though.
I am done with them. Fool me once (or dont reply to me once) shame on you, Fool me twice . . . .
john says
can you clarify your RPM statistics, you say 1166 median RPM, but then less afterwards? 1/100th less?
My top 10 sites last month totaled about $100 in revenue with a median RPM of $1,166 thanks to listing revenue. Overall my RPM over the past month is $27, with $10.64 contributed from listings and $16.46 from PPC.
RKB says
I have had same BAD experience with them.
I contacted them and sent them sample of my domains and they responded back after a few weeks and wanted to discuss it more later I think.
Then never heard from them.
I also had 1000s of nice geo domains.
I ignored them because they don’t appear very professional when dealing with domain owners imo.
Estufas says
Add me to the list.
I sent them about 300 to see if they’d be interested. They said they want to see my complete list of at least 500 domains. Okay. So I took the time out to extract the domains and organize them and sent them the list. I heard nothing.
I contacted the woman who I had been dealing with several times by both email and phone and she magically was no longer available.
If they did not like the list…fine…but I doubt it as I have been buying domains for 15 years. I think they just either got overwhelmed or they hired incompetent employees….or both.
It sure would have been nice after all the correspondence for them to say no or yes….even if it took two months to finally get back to me.
Sloppily run company at the beginning, not sure how it is now.
Anyhow, good to hear it worked for you Andrew.
Craig Marshall says
Good post.
Ultimately truth will prevail in the world of search engines, and “exact match” URL’s
will drive Octane’s success.