Company provides scalable solution to monetize long tail geo domains.
Connecting local businesses to customers is a huge business. But it has always presented a challenge to owners of long tail geo domain names, such as (City)DaySpa.com. A couple scalable platforms exist to let you build out these domain names, but monetizing them with anything other than PPC has proven elusive.
That’s where Octane360 comes in. The Los Angeles-based company provides a platform for developing these domain names and monetizing them directly with local advertisers. I just started a test with Octane360 this past week on 200 domains and will report back frequently with my progress.
Here’s how it works. You add your domain names to Octane360’s platform and “build them out” based on a template. For example, I own a number of CityDermatologist.com domain names. Working with Octane360, we created a “dermatology” template that is applied across all of these domains. (Templates are already available for most major categories). You can see an example at SunnyvaleDermatologist.com.
Each web site’s focus is on local directory listings and lead generation, but also includes content such as an interactive Q&A section and shopping when applicable. Web sites can also include Adsense or other display and PPC advertising, but the focus is on driving leads to local businesses.
And that’s where the magic happens. It would be challenging, if not a waste of time, for the typical domainer to contact small business owners for each domain to sell them a directory listing. But Octane360 has partnerships with call centers that sell listings for you. They’re already calling on customers and prospects to buy certain advertising products, and the local directory listings on your domains are one more product to peddle.
Octane360 gave me a glimpse of its back-end advertising sales system and it’s impressive. When talking to a prospective customer, a sales rep can pull up an entire list of relevant directories within a certain radius of the business to cross sell. The company splits directory earnings with publishers, and publishers can keep 100% of Adsense earnings.
Octane360 has more development and directory capabilities, but for now I’m only working with them on these local directory sites. Will it perform better than PPC? The bar is set pretty low, and Octane360 shows promise. Stay tuned.
Jay says
That does show some promise. Currently I am selling ad space on parked domains similar to what Frank Schilling is doing. I do own a few hundred geo/service domains however so something to consider.
Lisa Kempler says
Are these people still in business? How do you contact them?
@crowdmanage says
This does sound like a great service. 360 is taking on the risk of paying the call center fees, or do you pay to join the platform? Look forward to hearing more. I recall a while back that Rick Latona was offering to loan you his longtails and basically you could just hand them back at minimal loss if you didn’t monetize them. If you did get them going then you would make the balloon payment.
Ron says
Great post! I am also testing the website builder; in addition to the other functions that you mentioned above, Octane is also perfect for getting ranked high in the search engines (I have quite a few on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd page of Google using Octane).
For example, I hand registered WebsiteHostingPackages(.)net earlier this month just to see if I can get close to the top without writing content – I just included an affiliate link – and this site is already on page 5 of Google with no real effort!
Nameclerk says
Looks impressive. I don’t a way to create a new account on their site. Do you just have to contact them and ask for one while they’re still in beta?
Andrew Allemann says
If you’re interested in setting up an account, contact them directly.
Lisa Kempler says
how do you contact them directly?