The Domain Monetizer

30 Day Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:40:00 +0000

Hello avid readers!

Throughout August there is the Thirty Day Challenge. This "challenge" is a series of videos that describe how to set up a domain and make money from it. Various tools are explored and you will learn all about search engine rankings and how to boost your position in them.

My site is called Waterproof Digital Camera Housings.

If the world of the web and online marketing seems a little wild, then I suggest heading over to the Thirty Day Challenge and signing up. It doesn't matter if you are late: it is not a race. But it is important you stick with it. The first few days are hard, really hard, but it gets easier and soon you will be on your way to monetizing domains and learning a lot in the process!

ok one more time, at least...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:20:00 +0000

It has been two months since I decided not to continue with this blog, but thought I would just check up on things to see if anything interesting has happened.

Adsense for Domains pulled in around $1 last month. That could more or less pay for that domain over a year. No profit though, just break even!

Sedo has amassed a total of 2.7 euros for me! So not much luck there.

I will reconsider firing up this blog again soon. With at least a couple of people finding me lately it has given me some motivation to fire up the engines and give it another go!

The end is nigh!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:03:00 +0000

Well all good (and bad) things must come to an end. So far in May I have less than 1 euro on Sedo, and 44 cents in Google Adsense. The blog doesn't have any followers, or comments, so I can only guess that I'm the only one out there interested in it :-)

I'm going to cut my experiment short and not continue blogging here for a while. As much as I want to keep searching for that "killer domain", that will at least help me break even, I haven't found it yet. But I will keep my eyes and ears out for new trends and potentially hot domain names that might help get me back in the game.

Cashing in on Swine Flu

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:38:00 +0000

Speaking of cashing in... I wonder who got swineflu.com? It turns out it was registered back in 2000, and not during the last few weeks of panic. If you want this kind of information go and have a look at the domain tools web site here.

This tool is very cool. You can do the usual 'whois' query without trying to decrypt those silly distorted letters. More useful is you can see how many people have held on to the domain. When browsing through the deleted domain lists (such as Just Dropped, and use Bug Me Not to get a login) you often see interesting domains and wonder whether they would work. That whois domain tool might indicate that the domain has changed hand 4 times: and why would anyone let a domain lapse if it was making money, let alone 3 more times?

Cashing in on Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:36:00 +0000

With Windows 7 approaching I thought I might be able to grab a domain or two and cash in on the hype. Unfortunately I think I have missed the boat!

windows7.com was already taken, of course. Same with windowsseven.com, windowseven.com, and windosseven.com.

While a couple were snapped up in 2005 and 2006, two of them were only registered mid-last year. Unfortunately 9 months is an eternity on the Internet these days.

The early bird definitely catches the worm!

Monetization in the media

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 10 May 2009 05:27:00 +0000

The April edition of Nett Magazine had a few articles that touched upon the issue of monetization, and especially, parking domains. On columnist, Stephen Murphy, has some kind of axe to grind with monetizers who snap up domain names and cash in on misspellings (anericanexpress.com) or common search terms (cheapholidays.com.au).

Actually it isn't quite the monetizers he is upset about. It is Google and Adsense, who are collecting a lot of revenues from advertisements outside it's own search engine portal. Sites with no useful content are cropping up and generating revenue from people clicking on the ads.

So what?

If people want to click on the ads let them do so! Nobody is holding a gun to the public's head, asking them to click away. It's not a crime. If people didn't find parked domains or low-content sites useful they would just close their browser window and go somewhere else. Obviously there must be some benefit reaped from having ads because the advertisers are not going to continue to buy them unless there was some kind of return on their investment.

I suggest making hay while the sun shines. For as long as we have an online economy surviving with misspelt domain names and sites without rich content let's be happy. If the online advertising bubble bursts, and it just well might, so be it. We had our fun and (hopefully) nobody got hurt along the way.

Google Adsense for domains result

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:30:00 +0000

Here are my April results for shopcoupons.info:

This site was only recently moved on to Adsense, so the figures aren't exactly representative of a full month, so let's go through the various statistics and understand them:

Total page impressions is the sum of landing page impressions, and results page impressions
Landing page impressions is the number of hits we got from visitors entering the site
Results page impressions is the number of searches conducted on the site (there is a Google search box on the site).
eCPM (effective Cost Per Mille (thousand) impressions) represents how much the domain is worth in revenue for every thousand hits. This figure can be used to compare the performance of domains, much like your Click-Through-Rate but in dollar terms (remember that some keywords are worth much more than others when it comes to ads)
Revenue is just that: how much the domain earnt me.

Sedo results for April

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:39:00 +0000

Here are my Sedo results for April:
(click on the image to view a larger version)

I am quite surprised by these results! Traffic is picking up and I have not done anything. chepeflights.com has an amazing click through rate of 80%+. Of course volume is tiny so I'm not going to be retiring anytime soon. It does show that people do click on ads when landing on a mispelt parked domain.

ShopCoupons.info is now on Google Adsense for Domains and so that will no longer record traffic on Sedo. Google results tomorrow...

Moved domain

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 03 May 2009 08:42:00 +0000

I have taken the howtomakemoneyparkingdomains.com name and pointed it to this blog. After all, if you were looking for advice on how to make money parking domains, wouldn't you rather some useful information over a parked site on Sedo?

For those who want to know how to do this, just drop a .htaccess file in the root folder of your web site and put a line in like so:

Redirect 301 / http://domainmonetizer.blogspot.com/

Easy! You can do this all inside the control panel if you are hosting with Blue Host like I am.

My gripe with Sedo and Google Adsense

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:10:00 +0000

One of the things I love about hosting sites on places like Blue Host is the ability to view statistics. You can turn on a program such as AWStats or Webalizer and see where traffic is coming from, such as other pages, search engines, or simply typed in to the browser. This kind of information would be really useful in determining where to focus monetization strategies for particular domains.

For example, if I saw that www.shopcoupons.info traffic was coming from Google searches, then I might be inclined to build a useful site there and climb higher in rankings. On the other hand if a site such as gpsreveiws.com only had natural traffic from mistyped browser entries then there is probably not much point developing a site there.

Sedo only gives you impression and click through counts. Google Adsense for domains is the same, unfortunately. If anyone knows how to get more useful information out of these providers please let us all know how!

I might try and experiment for a couple of days in putting up a Blue Host site to track statistics and see what is going on. Just long enough to get a sample then flick back the DNS over to Sedo or Google.

Helpful links

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:05:00 +0000

A couple of quick pointers to useful domain monetization tips for newbies like myself:

http://www.namenewbie.com/

http://www.bestblogs.asia/domain-money.php

Sedo update

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:49:00 +0000

A quick visual update on Sedo activities:

Not much action, eh? shopcoupons.info is not getting any action because I moved it to Google, which by the way hasn't scored any runs on the board either.

So I'm taking a step back to consider what is required. As the adage goes, "begin with the end in mind...". My primary goal is of course to break even. That's US$10 per year, or around 2.7 cents per day. Let's say that's one paid click per day, per domain, to break even. If I (very) conservatively estimate a click through rate (CTR) of 1%, that means I really need 100 visitors a day to break even. Sure, some clicks are worth more than others, and I might be able to achieve 3% CTR but I'm a pessimist!

Obviously the sites I have are not going to get that kind of volume. With many, if not all, parking sites insisting that traffic flows naturally to your domains I can't see how I'm going to achieve much with what I have. It turns out that the "misspelling domain name" idea could be too basic an approach to making money online. Also I don't have the time (or the ethics!) to register 100's of domains at a time and drop them quickly - read this old article for the idea.

hmmm.... so how is Domenic Carosa making so much money on his domains?

If you are out there Domenic, please share your secrets!

Whoops! a mistake on Zone Edit

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:22:00 +0000

Whoops! I made a mistake.

I forgot to create another alias on Zone Edit - not for the www but for the plain old shopcoupons.info, to point to the same location at Google (pub-6139901096467174.afd.ghs.google.com)

Here is the correct setup for getting Zone Edit to work with Adsense for Domains:

Google adsense for domains

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:29:00 +0000

I checked this evening and http://www.shopcoupons.info/ is up and running. It's a shame that Google doesn't put their logo up on there: it just appears as a fairly uninteresting parked page. Luckily there is an option buried in the Adsense control panel to change the colour scheme and fill in some keywords.

We'll see how it goes.

Google Adsense for Domains, using Blue Host and Zone Edit

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:03:00 +0000

I had heard about Adsense for Domains, and wanted to give it a whirl. Sounds easy? Unfortunately not. At least not if you are using BlueHost like me, because BlueHost doesn't allow much control over your DNS record.

side note: If you have registered your domain on GoDaddy or another popular registrar then Google will provide detailed instructions on how to point your site to Google.

You can get BlueHost support to make the changes for you, but I'm not sure I want to commit to Adsense for Domains just yet. So I used my ZoneEdit account to do the work for me. ZoneEdit is a DNS service, and offers the first five domains for free. (otherwise it equates to around $5 to $7 a year per domain).

Here is how to get Google Adsense working with BlueHost and ZoneEdit:

You will first need to create a Google account first (which can be used for GMail, blogger, or any one of the other Google services). The link is at the top right of the page when you visit Google.
Set up an Adsense account at Google. Google can be a little bit funny in deciding whether you are allowed to have one or not - I first tried creating an account before I had pointed the domain to any web site, and Google knocked back my application stating that I had an "underdeveloped site". I ended up first creating an Adsense account against this Blog (that took over 3 days, be patient!), and then created an Adsense-for-domains entry for my chosen domain shopcoupons.info.
Google will send you a link containing instructions of how to complete the setup of your Adsense domain.
Log in to ZoneEdit and create your domain.
Edit the CName part of your DNS record. Look up the top of your Zone Edit web page and you will see the menu option Aliases (CNAME). Fill in the "www" alias to point to pub-xxxxxxxxx.afd.ghs.google.com, where pub-xxxxxxxxx is your Adsense account number. This number found in the top right of your screen when you log in to Adsense (see image).
Still in Zone Edit, Edit the A record of your DNS, labelled as IP addresses (A) along the top menus.
This is where things get confusing: Google asks you to insert four @ entries. In Zone Edit, you need to use the * character. Just say *.mydomain.com points to 216.239.32.21 (or whatever Google asked you to point it to). Repeat for the other entries. Here is the finished result:
You can fiddle with the MX/Mail Forwarding record if you want. I have removed it for this domain.
Now the final piece of the puzzle. Jump back over to your Blue Host control panel. Click on Domain Manager. Find your domain and click on the Name Servers tab. Fill in the nameservers with the ones that Zone Edit told you to use:

There you have it! Whew!

Now wait anywhere from 4 minutes to 48+ hours for DNS servers across the globe to update their entries for your domain and you should be in business. Google will also need to wait for the changes before approving the domain, in the meantime it should appear as "Pending" in your Adsense for Domains account.

Note that during this swapover time your domain might be down and return a "Server not found 404 error" page.

More info

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:05:00 +0000

Here are a couple of other Blogs on monetization: more for the "involved monetizer" but useful for everyone:

http://themonetizer.blogspot.com/
http://namemonetizer.com/

First Monetization Results

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:27:00 +0000

I'm back to "real time" now. This post onwards describes where I am at to in my monetization experiment.

So how did I go on Sedo?

Here are my results from March:The first couple of views on each site were mine, just testing that everything is functioning ok. As you can see the sites managed to draw some natural traffic, and even a couple of click-throughs, but nothing too exciting. 23 Euro cents isn't going to help me break even!

ok so let's look at where we are as at April 19:

Some more views have arrived, but unfortunately no click-throughs. Maybe this blog will generate a bit of traffic? Probably not. And linking to the sites are unlikely to do much for their Google rankings because search engines are unlikely to give much (if any) ranking to parked domains with no useful content.

As I see it I have a few options available:

Abandon the experiment and concentrate on some more fruitful ventures!
Seek out more sites to park. However this might be just throwing good money after bad
Use a service such as WhyPark to help develop some content that will be search-engine friendly. Again, "good money after bad..."

I'll think about it...

Finding domains - round 2

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:09:00 +0000

The results from Sedo of my shopcoupons.info domain were less than thrilling.

Apart from a few hits by me there were only one or two other hits. They could have been web crawlers for all I know.

I NEVER click on the links inside, of course. I didn't want to be known as a trouble maker for generating traffic myself!

So I quickly adopted an alternative strategy:

Forget the .info domain: nobody will find it, and by this time I had figured that Google is unlikely to index it because there was little original content on it.
Concentrate on .com domains

As I wrote earlier, all the good domains were taken. So I figure I will go for misspelled .com domain names in an attempt to generate traffic from people who typed in a domain but couldn't spell it correctly (accidentally or otherwise). There are millions of people all over the world using the internet. Surely some of them would make a mistake from time to time?

Since Blue Host's domains are relatively cheap I just stayed there and registered cheparent.com, chepeflights.com, exhert.com, gpsreveiws.com, and xhert.com.

New domain

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:13:00 +0000

A quick update:

I was reading up today on different techniques for finding a good domain. One is to look for a site that had existing traffic, but the domain is now available. I stumbled across howtomakemoneyparkingdomains.com and decided to grab it. It isn't the prettiest domain name, but it did have a small number of links out there, so let's see how it goes.

Early next week I will post my Sedo results so you can all see how I am faring.

Finding domains - round 1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:56:00 +0000

Full of enthusiasm I have tried to jump on the bandwagon of www.cheaphotels.com.au and find a similar domain.

I figure that people are just typing in cheaphotels in to the address bar of their browser and up comes Domenic's site.

How to see if a domain exists? visit instantdomainsearch.com for a quick and easy .com checker. For .com.au and other top level domains I used Planet Domain, which is our registrar-of-choice at work.

How to get ideas about domain names? visit the Keyword Cloud for inspiration.

The first thing you will notice when searching for a domain name is that everything you can think of is taken! at least in the .com realm. .com.au is ok, but I really wanted a .com domain to lever off the automatic searching that Internet Explorer, OpenDNS, Google and all sorts of other providers try to do for you.

My searching centered around anything to do with cheap, bargains, and anything else that is likely to become more popular in the declining economy. Since my existing BlueHost account includes a free domain that I hadn't used yet, I figured I'll go for shopcoupons.info and see what happens. (ok ok it isn't a .com, but if I can get it on to Google I should be ok).

After getting the domain I created an account on Sedo and pointed my nameservers to it. Sedo had the benefit of being easy to sign up to, and popular. They didn't require international taxation forms, and money can go straight in to a PayPal acccount. Maximizing the monetization wasn't a priority. Seeing the potential was.

Now we played the waiting game...

Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:16:00 +0000

I became interested in domain monetization after visiting a Reuben Buchanan Rich Business seminar. Domenic Carosa (of Dominet fame, and Destra infamy) was up on stage giving a talk about M&As, and he squeezed in a little story at the end about a way to earn some pocket money.

He said there is a quick and easy way to earn $1000 a month, with zero ongoing effort. Probably not enough to make a living, but enough to pay for a family holiday. Sounds good to me!

He showed a screenshot of his monetization results. The bulk of income was coming from just one domain name: www.cheaphotels.com.au. Go there, have a look. Notice anything missing? like useful content? That's an impressive money earner. Even more amazing is that Google records no links in to that page, and not much more on a web search. This blog might be the only link to that site ever recorded.

So if he can do it, so can I.

That has what inspired me to get involved and see what all the fuss is about.

Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:04:00 +0000

Welcome one and all to the Domain Monetizer blog!

Over the coming days and weeks I will describe a small experiment I am running. I am attempting to earn a bit of cash on the side by monetizing domains. This isn't a career move, it's just something to do in my free time.

Maybe the experiment will fail. Maybe I will break even and learn something. Maybe it turns in to a viable business. Who knows?

So please follow me as I set up new domains, park them, build sites on them, and try to make sense of how people all over the world are making money on the Internet for doing not much at all!

Next time I will share what inspired me to start this experiment...