Why Park Your Domains? Manage Them Yourself.

With dropping ad revenues across platforms it is in your best interest to build your own websites for your domains and place ads without giving a cut to the parking programs. Most domainers, especially those who have hundreds or thousands of domain names, can typically break them out into categories. In other words, you don't have a thousand domains with all being based upon different things. Chances are you have 15, 20, 50, or more domains you can lump into a specific niche or category.

Yes, parking companies will allow you classify which domains go into a selective group of pre-templatized categories, and most do not give you the flexibility to adjust your content, tags, ads, and backlinks. Good luck building in a good backlinking program too, as you will find most webmasters won't even take a second look at your domain if it is obviously parked.

Bottom line, do it yourself. Or have a developer create a simple content management system for you. You can even replicate the system to manage multiple niches or categories relevant to your domain names. If a developer tries to charge you an arm and leg for it, come talk to me. We may be able to put together a smoking deal which will ultimately make you much more money - because you will be getting all your ad dollars, not sharing with the parking programs.

For example, we are currently putting together a management system for our geo-wifi related domain names. We have hundreds of these domains and with in the next couple days we will have customized pages based upon the WiFi.com template; custom content, hotspots map integration, advertisements, custom titles, descriptions, tags, and much more.

Examples: wifimumbai.com, wifiparis.com, michiganwifi.com, montanawifi.com, hollywoodwifi.com, the list goes on.

Category Killer, Category-defining, Generic, and Premium Domains.

This is my opinion and is based upon my experience and expectations when dealing in domain names. I would like you to share your feelings on the subject.

I see the term Category Killer and/or Category-defining used frequently and I am not sure everybody gets it or is on the same page. The same can be said about using the term “generic” to describe a domain name. Furthermore, just how big is the scale when determining a domain name to be “premium?” Here is what I feel…

In general terms and defined in Wikipedia: Category killer is a term used in marketing and strategic management to describe a product, service, brand, or company that has such a distinct sustainable competitive advantage that competing firms find it almost impossible to operate profitably in that industry. The existence of a category killer will eliminate almost all market entities, whether real or virtual. Many existing firms will leave the industry, thereby increasing the industry's concentration ratio.

One example used in Wikipedia is eBay. However, eBay is not a good example as it relates to the domain industry. Why? Because eBay is an established brand which was built with gobs of money. The word eBay (which is not really a word), in itself, does not directly reflect what business the company operates – online consumer auction house. However, eBay is a category killer because it virtually owns the online auction market. What eBay is not, a category-defining domain name.

A category-defining domain name in the online auction space would be Auction.com – because it describes exactly what type of business is likely to be operating there. The domain name itself is not necessarily a category killer. However, the chances of a category-defining domain name of becoming a category killer are greater than if one tries to corner the market with something like OnlineAuctionsbyMike.com. In other words, if you spend the same amount of money, the category-defining domain name is more likely to succeed.

Now as far as generic domain names go, and this is what I am asking for when inquiring about yours; a generic domain name is one word with meaning. Some may argue for two words, but in my opinion those are called “premium” domain names.

Some examples of generic domain names; some.com, examples.com, of.com, this.com, or.com, that.com.

Premium domain names start at the top of the scale and end in one of two places: 1) high traffic, with a consideration for quality, or 2) short, keyword rich domains. For example; a category-defining domain name is premium. A generic domain name is premium. A domain with steady convertible traffic is premium – This number may vary depending on the quality of traffic, but on the low end I would expect 100 unique visitors per day. Lastly, keyword-rich domains which are not three, four, five, and more words long. There are some good examples in the geo-domain sector; ChicagoDoctors.com, FloridaOrganics.com, etc. What must be taken into account is the quality of the keywords as it relates to conversion (ROI). Furthermore, how much can I expect to spend to draw in good traffic? (Development)

It will be debated, but in my opinion this is how I perceive the differences between category killer, category-defining, generic, and premium domains.

Fraud.net & Scams.net – Premium Generic Topic-related Pair + Swindled.net

A fellow domain name investor and I have decided to team up on this sale. It makes sense really. In short, I have been shopping Scams.net lightly over the past few months via DNForum and noticed another member selling Fraud.net. Considering these would be much more valuable to an end user as a pair, I reached out and asked if he would be interested in teaming up and selling these domains cooperatively.

Within a week I drafted up a a simple contract outlining the cut for us and how the transaction will be executed. I also drafted a sale post for domain name forums and blogs. We signed the contract yesterday and the posting went live yesterday afternoon. It will be interesting to see how this pair sells, if it does: We have a BIN of 35K and a reserve in mind.

Here is the link to our sale on DNF: Fraud.net & Scams.net Sale

Great Widget Offered by Google - 404 Widget

If you have a webmaster tools account through Google I strongly recommend accessing the tools menu through the dashboard. From there, check out the "Enhance 404 Pages" link. Google has created a widget for webmasters to add to their custom 404 pages.

What is so great about this widget?
Well, as many of you may know, the majority of visitors who encounter 404 pages leave your site. A custom 404 page with the Google widget offers the following: 1) A closest match to the page - assuming one mistyped the actual page and 404'd, this widget will offer a potential actual page offered by the site. 2) It offers other links on the site. 3) It offers a search box to access other pages on the site.

Get this widget and keep more of your visitors at your site!

Domain Development Learning from BuildsOut.com

Creating a useful space on the web for your visitors can be a very tedious activity. Since entering the domain space in 2004, I had an eye on development but had novice skills. So, I started by flipping domains, scouring droplists in hopes of snapping up a really good domain to develop. All the while banking so-so domains with the thought of building them out through solid SEO and a little SEM to get the sites jump started.

Fast forward to July 2006. I purchased WiFi.com and put together a small team to help me develop it into a wireless Internet portal. It was hard work, but it paid off within the first few months as I started to benefit from relationships I had built within the WiFi industry. To top it off, I had one thing alot of other domains do not...Traffic!

Fast forward again, its August 2007. My wife and I decide to offer a program for domain name investors, Buildsout.com. The thought being we could put to use our experience developing websites and we could offer something all domainers are looking for; a set of options which best fits there needs. Our options were; 1) A plan for domain name owners in which we build out the initial site and hand it off to them. 2) A second plan where we manage domains with greater than 3,000 unique visitors and share revenue with the domain owner. 3) A flex plan in which traffic is not a factor until we grow the site - we take a larger percentage up front as we expect revenue to be low and as it grows we will decrease our share.

As you can imagine, the flex plan quickly became popular. Why not hand off a subpar domain name (no traffic, less than great keywords) to someone who is going to build a site for free, build traffic, and share revenue on a decreasing basis as traffic grows? No brainer, right? Right.

Well, we have learned there is low value, low return for plans like these. A number of sites we have developed, and developed well I might add, have done little. We have SEO'd the hell out of these domains. We created great content for these sites. We poured a good amount of time and resources into these sites and our return does not look good. Dont get me wrong, creating these spaces for domain owners has been a great experience and we have learned how to streamline our process. But with returns being close to non-existent we began to wonder why we wouldnt just do this for our own portfolio of sub-par domains. We have more than a handful of domains which are parked and we are sharing revenue with the parking company - more like they are sharing with us!

It just makes more sense to develop your own names, unless someone comes along with a very high traffic domain which will pay off immediately.

Considering our learning we have decided to do the following: 1) All current clients of our flex plan will have the opportunity to use their own advertising code on their website. 2) They also can continue to host with us for free. 3) Clients can continue to benefit from the sites we built for them if they choose to move to a new host but keep our link in the footer. 4) If clients choose to use their advertising code, we will immediately square up with the amount of revenue their site has generated to date.

We will still be offering our Builds-Out and Bail plan. We will consider offering the Builds-Out and benefit plan on a case-byc-case basis.