cctld Before we all starve.....

[DropWizard.com]

Heh heh let's face it the domain industry has some problems. Holding canadian .ca domains increases that problem.

PPC blows nowadays. I've watched our domains decline by some 90+% since 2007 and lately I've noticed our ctr on ppc has declined from an average high of 30% down to around 10%.

Domains sales, while attractive still don't really fulfill what I want. Why sell a future gold mine?

Adsense sucks we're removing it from all our sites as we revise them.

So where does the future lie?

We have some great minds here and I know from behind the scene conversations... some novel solutions.

So what and where do you think we should be headed.

1/ What are you doing that's different and making money?

2/ How are you handling bulk domain development?

3/ Where are you finding canadian product or offerings that are succesful?

4/ What platforms are you using to accomplish this? EG: WP Xsite Other?

5/ Any little pieces of software or plugins that are really successful

And so on. Let's see if we can't help each other out here

 

[onlinestoreca]

Great post. I see lots of views and no replies because I think everyone is stumped -lol.

 

[Namefox]

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[PeterMan]

I have noticed a big surge in my ppc with adsense the last few days with regards to my .ca sites, and I mean big... the problem is the week or so before was the lowest I have seen in a long time, so I certainly understand the frustration there... I really feel that .ca sites need to be developed differently, we need to really focus on what Canadians are looking for online and give them the experience they need/want... This takes time and effort, obviously, so I really feel that hard work and dedication are key to developing .ca sites... I have a number of potentially good .cas that need to be developed, and my strategy has been to whittle down the list until I get to one domain, then once that decision is made it becomes the number one priority... I plan on doing this in the very near future...

Oh and as far as development goes I have 2 basic strategies so it depends on the website I need to build. Wordpress is a wonderful tool and I use it whenever possible, but sometimes I really need to build a custom solution so I do just that, I use php and mysql and built a custom cms and website...

 

[hugegrowth]

Yes, a lot of questions but I'll add my two cents.

5-10 years ago it was easier to make a sale or revenues, there was less competition online. Now there are so many dominant retailers online, peole just know to go to Amazon, or ebay, etc. Good luck trying to operate a clothing store or book store online, unless you are in a niche category not well served by the big companies.

I don't think bulk domain development is really possible, if your end goal is to have a quality site with recurring and building visitors, and fresh daily content. You can't do that across 100 or 1000's of domains, most people can tell the quality. Sure you can do bulk development and have a site with ads, banners, affiliate links, RSS feeds, and make some ok revenues, but it won't get repeat visitors or become anything special.

The best thing to do is to pick a domain in a subject you like, with commercial appeal and where you can compete with products or services, and develop a real business that takes orders, ships products, has customer services, and is supported by a blog, twitter, facebook and social media. Something like AmericanFlags.com or Bobbleheads.com has done. As domainers many of us have many domains and see business potential in all of them, but don't have the time, money, resources, etc to build every one into a real business. I am as guilty of that as anyone else!

As PPC and ad revenues decrease, competition online increases, quality of sites out there increases, the ppc pages and minisites we send our traffic to don't look so great anymore. People want more of an experience and to know they are on a site someone is looking after and caring about, and is unique. I'm sure some here have some storefront sites and are selling products or services, and see a greater return on it than ppc and ads.

Right now, most of my revenues come from (in order) domain sales, ad-sense, friendfinder affiliate program, clickbank, then various other affiliate programs. A dating link or banner can go on almost any site and have a chance of someone clicking on it (wide reach). Clickbank.com is a marketplace of people who have created a wide range of digital products, you can sell them as an affiliate and usually get a good commission - and there is a product for almost any subject or topic you can think of, very easy to use. Ad-sense is still a good program, easy to use and serves up the ads for you, just set it and forget it - I still think it has value.

But again, there is no one-click solution to turn a portfolio of domains into quality sites that generate monster revenue. The answer is simple but not done by many - develop one or a handful of quality sites that you pour all your resources and time into. Guys like Schilling and Ham still have most of their domains parked, if there was a great solution people like that would be doing it already because their full time focus is on domains. And even they are starting to build out and develop real websites to gain recurring and building visitors.

 

[fatter]

One of these days the parking compainies will smarten up and join forces and sell traffic directly to endusers bypassing google and yahoo,till than since development is for me I will continue to sell

 

[katherine]

Personally: domain sales.
There is constant demand for good domains priced right. Just make sure you diversify and don't trade in .ca domains only... or you'll starve for real

 

[Premiumhosted]

One of these days the parking compainies will smarten up and join forces and sell traffic directly to endusers bypassing google and yahoo,till than since development is for me I will continue to sell

Already happening.

 

[liberator]

The last google update really hurts mass development, http://searchengineland.com/google-forecloses-on-content-farms-with-farmer-algorithm-update-66071, even 1 page with farmed content can bring the index level of the entire site down.

 

[Provider]

re: Adsense sucks we're removing it from all our sites as we revise them.

DropWizard, what do you use instead?

 

[DropWizard.com]

ANYTHINGGGGGG!

Seriously I'll even leave the space blank rather than give google one inch of space....to waste!

But I look through the various cpa offers, clickbank and there are a few other ppc that compete with adsense but aren't quite as restrictive.

Overall adsense has frequently been under the 1% CTR on traffic that Google analytics measures which is only around 20% of the REAL site traffic :-(

We're looking to develop directory sites for advertising or something like http://www.lifeannuity.com where we are going to start selling industry advertising.

We're developing our own information products and will give the space over to that.

I'm just setting up my first amazon stores and so far the results have been somewhat encouraging.


So here's where we're moving (seeing as how I started this)



1/ I'm taking selected domains and developing mini sites that are SEO experiments. I'm developing our expertise in search engine optimization now to the point that I can take on categories up to several million competitor sites and come out #1 or 2. Both on the .com & ca google.


2/ I'm looking to start developing our product domains (like watersofteners (.ca) ) into stores using amazon or other product suppliers. Nothing new there for a lot of people. But Amazon scares me in that they have walked away from major states over tax issues leaving their affilliates behind. That's bad business and it worries me to give them too much of what I'm doing. Doing this would involve several hundred domains. I'm encouraged by our first experiment that earned a grand total of .76c the second week. Not much until you start applying those numbers across thousands of domains. As the domain is nowhere in the serps and is just type in traffic so it will be interesting to see how it develops. One real problem is that amazon.ca doesn't have anywhere near the product availability that amazon.com does.


3/ Domains sales still figures highly in our revenue sources but I wish I could end that. I'd rather hold but the development costs & wife costs are high.


4/ We spent 6 months last year creating our first information product. It's health orientated and we wrote it to a standard that we have endorsements from doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals. I currently have several domains approaching top rankings in the area and will also then put it on clickbank and amazon. It will then be developed into a course (future need). To this end we also have doctors etc lined up to teach it I see this as a real growth area for us.

 

[south]

Wife costs.... yes..

---------- Post added at 09:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:10 PM ----------

Yes, a lot of questions but I'll add my two cents.

5-10 years ago it was easier to make a sale or revenues, there was less competition online. Now there are so many dominant retailers online, peole just know to go to Amazon, or ebay, etc. Good luck trying to operate a clothing store or book store online, unless you are in a niche category not well served by the big companies.

.

Correct. A unique niche. Preferably something you know something about, or something you enjoy and/or appreciate. But something not readily available at the big established sites or "brick & mortar" stores.

 

[hugegrowth]

How do Amazon stores work, don't most people already have an Amazon account anyway? Do they see that they are on amazon, and if they already have an account there do you still get a commission?

 

[Namefox]

.

 

[thebutler]

I've been using Ebaypartnernetwork which has taken some hits/bad press lately according to some affiliates (car sellers) but in certain niches it can be ok. Some people are making decent money from Ebay (US based people from what I've seen) and I'm sure if you match the right website you can make some cash. You need to attract people who have pretty much decided to "buy" because Ebay tracks sales and than pays you per click. If your traffic never converts to actually sales you'll end up making no money.

 

[Mark Talbot]

The best thing to do is to pick a domain in a subject you like, with commercial appeal and where you can compete with products or services, and develop a real business that takes orders, ships products, has customer services, and is supported by a blog, twitter, facebook and social media.

And therin is the power answer. And where I am at today.

Develop a niche you know, and beat the big boys where they are not able to spend the focus on that you can.

The rest is just a game.