Supernatural Agency: Online business tales

Adding value to a domain isn’t always about advertising, PPC, affiliate programs and other revenue generators. With some domains developing a site model and building traffic is the primary value-builder. In this monetization model you’re strictly building equity for an eventual sale of the domain or, alternatively, making a future decision to add revenue generators based on traffic.

We recently launched CleanTechNY.com. From a domaining perspective this URL is a good one, however our experience with environmental sites is that they are not typically associated with buying decisions (not yet anyway- it is rapidly changing). So rather than flipping it or adding a bunch of Adsense blocks we’re positioning it for future growth in a category that is exploding.

For those of you with a bias against content development this site has an interesting twist- it is a news aggregator site based on RSS feeds so the primary content is automatically generated, up to date and relevant. In the domain world the recently launched Domaining.com site has similar functionality. Both serve as portals for their subject matter. For search purposes and to clarify what the CleanTechNY site is about we’ve wrapped the dynamic content with descriptive text.

We’re watching this with interest as the model, once we figured it out, is extensible to other subject matter. FYI, Mike and I have about ten hours total invested in this project. Dev doesn’t have to be super labor intensive…

As recent observers and participants in the domaining world, but long time Internet marketers, we’re constantly surprised by the disconnect between pure domaining and search-friendly content development. Many type-in traffic domainers admittedly don’t care about search and are happy with the virtually content-free world of parking. This is fine if your model is thousands of names generating incremental revenue- it adds up nicely. However for a lot of us, particularly those with development skills and content (writing) abilities, there is another approach and it requires a basic understanding of the search model.

Search is based on two concepts, intent and relevance. The searcher broadcasts their intent by the keywords they enter into the search box. If you have the most relevant content match to their intent you rank higher on the SERP (search engine results page). This is the basis of SEO. So your first step is understand the intent of the searcher who is headed towards your site and make sure that if you rank and they click that they see relevant content. Parking pages won’t cut it in most cases. One common measurement is that there should be at least 600 words of relevant content including headlines, bullet lists and text (not embedded in images) on the landing page for your URL.

Now we understand that for a lot of people the prospect of writing 600 words is scary. But that 600 words is going to drastically increase the conversion rate for your site and the traffic stats. It also ensures that contextual advertising like Adsense will be a lot more relevant, increasing revenue. If you can’t or won’t write, hire a writer. While I am a writer, I have a lot of other things to do so I put an ad on Craigslist offering $25 for 600 words on a specific topic. I had dozens of responses and we’re not in a major market. That’s peanuts for something that can turn a url into a valuable commodity.

Writing is step one. Edit the writing to get your keywords into headlines, break up blocks of texts into lists or bullets and keep paragraphs and sentences short and sweet.

The next step is relevant monetization. Again ‘relevant’ is the key phrase here. The beauty of Google is that they reward Adwords advertisers for relevance by giving better positioning to ads that perform better. As a publisher (and that’s what you are if you take this path) then you want Adsense ads that closely match intent. Good content makes the difference. These ads will enhance the value of your site to the visitor.

Now for the next incredible breakthrough for domainers: API access to Amazon Web Services. With Amazon’s API (application programming interface) you can place Amazon content on your site and generate affiliate revenue, while maintaining that content as your own site content. You can choose what data to display (reviews for instance) and use keywords to automatically display products without manual selection. This means you can create shopping sites with a template and automatically populate them with relevant product offerings. Add your 600 words of advice and serve up the site on your domain.

If you’re efficient you could put these things up very quickly and see results that are much more valuable than any parking service. And once you’ve developed a portfolio of these automated content sites, you’re got a real marketable asset.

Rosalind Gardner writes about the importance of planning your desired lifestyle and then building a business that makes it possible. In her case the subject is affiliate marketing and she makes a great case that it’s possible to work 2 hours a week and achieve the same results as a 24/7 workaholic.

This is a big part of our business, something readers of Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Work Week will recognize as ‘lifestyle design’. We’ve both been in jobs where if you weren’t working 80 hour weeks you weren’t a real team player and let me tell you, these places are ugly- tired people, little creativity and no real increase in productivity.

So before you design your business, think about what you really want your life to be like, on a daily basis- read Roz’s post (and her ebook- its a great intro to becoming an affiliate marketer).

Here’s a shopping list of ways to earn money from your domains. It’s not complete and I welcome additional suggestions.

1. Parking. No brainer- when you register a new domain, park it immediately regardless of what your plans are for it. We just consider it one of the steps in registering a domain. When you’ve got something better built just move it.
2. Adsense. Put up a one page site, write a few paragraphs of keyword relevant copy and add AdSense code. This is the next step up from parking because you don’t have to share revenue but you do get into the world of servers and development, albeit a simple version. Great way to get your feet wet.
3. Wordpress Blog. This isn’t a monetization technique per se but it helps you get a lot of sites up fast. Set up a server account with someone like Media Temple or Rackspace and build your sites in WordPress using the many free templates out there. You can do this without programming skills but some basic html and CSS skills will make a big difference. We are experimenting with setting up FAQ sites using WP.
4. Affiliate Programs. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there and they can really generate money. We have sites that are entirely populated with pages generated by affiliate programs- all we had to do was drop the code onto a web page.
5. Amazon API. Our next big idea. Amazon sells a lot more kinds of stuff than you may think and if you can learn how to use their API (application programming interface) you can autopopulate sites with products, reviews, etc. and earn via Amazon Associates, their affiliate program. The beauty of this is that they dynamically serve up the content into your site, based on keywords, and you don’t have to keep changing things. Automatic baby!
6. Ad Servers. It’s getting easier to get on the radar of the ad servers like DoubleClick. As they run out of traffic on the big sites they are increasingly reaching into the long tail where a lot of us dwell. So you will be able to have CPM (cost per thousand impression) banners on your sites.
7. Lead Generation. Huge baby, huge! We get paid $40 per lead on one of our sites. There is a great untapped potential in lead generation and businesses of every kind are desperate for sales leads. One company we know pays $3 every time someone signs up for their free service. I know a software company that would glady pay $2000 for a qualified lead for their enterprise software app- and believe me we’re thinking about how to do it.
8. Sell Stuff. You can do e-commerce but it means inventory, pick, pack and ship, customer service and returns. Focus on selling digital stuff like #9:
9. eBooks. You write a book, put it online, promote it and sell downloads. Better yet, pay someone to write it- there are a lot of desperate writers out there who unervalue their services. I know, I was one.
10. Sell them. List all your domains on Sedo or somewhere similar. Put a minimum (ours are at $500 just to eliminate stupid offers). Who knows, you may get a ridiculous offer. But remember if a domain is worth that much to someone now it will be worth more later.
11. Sell shares in them. This is coming soon. As domains increase in value and decrease in availability people will want fractional ownership. Check with your securities lawyer on this one though- you need to be very careful about offering shares.
12. Lease them. There is starting to be a leasing market out there so you can lease your domain, get some cash yet still hold it. Very early stage right now.
13. Text Link Ads, etc. There are lots of alternative kinds of advertising to tap into. Read Shoemoney.
14. Find Investors. Get an angel group or a VC to invest in your company.
15. Build a business around a domain or group of domains. This means building a real web business around a good domain, the traditional hard work model that can mean huge money down the road but also means employees, management, operations, marketing etc.
16. Sell services related to the domain. If you’ve become an SEO/SEM expert while developing your domains you will be in demand. Just be careful you don’t get sidetracked from working on your own stuff. For us this is a means of bootstrapping.