Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

As I said in the past, Sedo pays fast. How fast, depends on your willingness to participate in the seller/buyer exchange.

If you fail to respond to messages regarding a transaction, or if you do not take the initiative to inform the transaction manager about completing that action, chances are that you are delaying receiving that paycheck.

As usual, for my latest Sedo sales payment was disbursed via direct deposit/ACH to my business account, the same day that I received the notification from Sedo. Obviously, I did my part of the work by issuing and uploading an invoice per the sellers’ requests.

It is important to stay on top of your brokered sales on Sedo or other venues, if you want your money fast.

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As I’ve been testing a handful of domains at VooDoo.com, a situation with one particular domain – MetaSurf.com – turned up.

Simply put, while traffic is minimal, 50% of the time that I tested for optimization purposes, no ads showed up, unlike in the past, according to snapshots captured by Screenshots – the free service by DomainTools.

After opening a ticket with VooDoo support, they escalated the matter with Google. I soon forgot about it and did not check back until a month later.

Turns out that Google support are scratching their heads as well, not sure what’s going on.

One response in particular was relayed to me verbatim:

“Also one general suggestions is for domains has very few traffic, it would be better if the domain owner check the ads less often. Suppose the owner check the ads daily and don’t click (click is not allowed), the system will consider ads is not good and reduce ads returned. “

Other than being grammatically incorrect and syntactically incoherent, the response by the Google tech is nonsensical. According to Google, fewer ads will be displayed when the ratio of clicks to visits decreases. In the case of this domain, there are very few clicks but half the time that I tested, there were no ads whatsoever.

This is the only domain I’ve witnessed such odd results with, when parked at a purely Google ad stream and I’m not convinced by Google’s response that they know what’s going on.

Per VooDoo’s suggestion I will move the domain back to Sedo, where the secondary ad channel is Yahoo’s feed.

Shane Cultra’s post about increased domain inquiries at Frank Schilling’s Internet Traffic outfit, clearly shows something that Sedo and other parking companies need to take note of.

The increased number of inquiries and offers aren’t due to the beautifully crafted landing pages that Frank offers. Actually, I’m being sarcastic about the look of those headers but that’s not the point here, as we’re not discussing PPC conversion rates.

There is one single thing that contributes to the increased number of inquiries, and that’s the large, bold, in-your-face line at the top of the domain that says:

This domain has recently been listed in the marketplace at domainnamesales.com. Click here to inquire.

It can’t be any simpler reason than that.

Meanwhile, Sedo’s “For sale” links in order to place an offer are hidden at various locations, sometimes below the notorious “fold” and in small print. And yes, this costs a lot of missed opportunities.

In the pre-PPC era, I used my own landing pages to promote and sell domains; a simple PHP script would parse the domain URL and create a contact form pre-populated with the domain in question. I received considerably more inquiries this way, which I would then convert into sales, mostly by utilizing Escrow.com

If you’re not concerned about the loss of PPC revenue due to moving your domains away from parking pages such as that of Sedo, creating your own landing pages with a contact form is the way to go, in order to achieve more direct sales.

There is also VooDoo.com that allows for custom placement of the “Domain For Sale” line, including my preferred top of the page.

It’s quite ironic issuing this statement; as a web developer I am supposed to be pushing everyone around me to develop, build, create.

Right?

While this is true in small quantities, when a domain is truly one project that derives its potential from its owner’s imagination and vision, developing all domain names into web sites is not the smartest thing to do.

You’ve heard the usual mumbo-jumbo for months: develop, mass develop, build minisites and traffic will come flooding faster than a waterfall, even for the ugliest long-tail B’ class TLD that you own.

Wrong.

Without a concrete plan, throwing “content” onto a web site can actually kill its current revenue and potential.

Let me explain.

There has been some conversation lately over at DNForum whether a parked domain can bring in $1,000 per day or more – day after day. While some responses were skeptical and some negative, in all truth such consistent daily revenue is not only possible, it’s actually achievable.

The secret is simple: obtain domains that do well at their basic function of traffic generation. While this category includes the obvious generics and typo-domains, there are also domains with dormant traffic, sleeping giants if you must.

Would you develop a sleeping giant of a domain in order to monetize the traffic that’s already there to be harvested?

Again, as a web developer I would be biased if I told you to go ahead and develop. As a domainer, I will tell you: don’t do it.

In a nutshell:

Smart domaining entails being selective in your domain registrations, parking and development. With time and experience you will learn how to make the right choices about which domains to register, which domains to park and which domains to develop.

There is no single solution for all.

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After reading Rick Schwartz’s latest blog post about how Google AdSense closed down his account over minisite content, I had an obvious question: why did Rick pay TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars for 10 minisites?

The term “minisite” was coined as an obvious bait for the domain community, sometime in the past year and a half. It indicates a quick and dirty development of a web site, often with no graphical user interface, with no custom images and with content of dubious quality. Creation of such “mass developed” minisites is aimed at those with a very small budget that want “something” to go live, in order to monetize it via the placement of AdSense ads or ads from other networks.

There are several such firms that provide development of small web sites, catering to the “minisite” domain gang. Quality of work varies – however, a minisite is a minisite and it does not really qualify as true web development.

With parking revenue dwindling, panicking domainers often opt for the cheapest alternative, not considering long-term results and consequences of pushing out badly executed content. The alternative option would entail the following elements:

• A proper business plan
• A budget
• A development expert
• Time

However, all these elements can be addressed, as long as there is proper focus on what one is trying to achieve.

If the need is for short-term cashflow, minisites *might* work – until Google pulls the plug as in Rick’s case. If the need is for long-term revenue from the development of web sites that actually provide content and add value to the Internet community, the answer is simple: full-fledged web development.

So get your paper pads and pens out and start outlining your next project. Big or small, it does not matter. What matters, is quality of work and control over its execution. So hire a true web development professional. Mass developed mini-sites stand no chance.