Supernatural Agency: Online business tales

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.

When you venture into the world of three and four word type-in domains there are still a lot of choices. You could just be random or pick fun or silly domains and they will probably still be worth more than your investment down the road. But why not focus on finding the highest value names, names that will either monetize very well or acquire high value to someone else in the near future (or both)?

Here’s are some key things to consider when buying these domains:

1. Are they associated with a big-ticket purchase? We own domains associated with buying diamonds, remodeling kitchens and learning about reverse mortgages. What do these have in common? The people searching on these terms are seeking information that will lead to multiple or high value purchase decisions. This means they are easy to monetize and easy to populate with high value content.
2. Do they make sense as a search phrase? Using Keyword Tracking services can help you identify the kind of phrases that people actually enter into search bars. That’s why we own DisadvantagesOfReverseMortgages.com. It’s a common entry for people researching the subject.
3. Is the universe big enough to support a marginal domain? Niche domains are fine as long as the niche isn’t too granular. You need subjects that affect millions of people to gather any kind of traction.
4. Does it require research? The key word here is ’search’. People will get to your domain because they are looking for answers. Obvious subject areas have less value, complex subjects have higher value.
5. Is the subject an emerging technology, issue or trend? These are the gold areas for reselling domains. If you correctly identify an emerging subject matter and buy all kinds of iterations of relevant words you’re going to have buyers down the road. I’m not going to give examples here!
6. Flip the phrase. If you can’t get ChicagoCondoInfo.com maybe you can get CondoInfoChicago.com. People type search terms in backwards syntax all the time.

There are still lots of good domains out there but the inventory goes down every day. That’s why you need to focus on the high value now- in a year from now the jig will be up.

In a fascinating interview on behavioral marketing within a site Offermatica CEO Matt Roche talks about increasing the effectiveness of behavioral marketing within a site by tracking keywords used to get to the site and serving up specific homepage content that targets those keywords:

“So with MusiciansFriend.com, [when] someone comes to the home page we know nothing about them, so they get the home page. What if we repeat the keyword that they searched on to get there, just show similar information? That increased the conversions. We repeat your keyword so you have a connection.”

That’s the first step. Then they look at the behavior within the site and retarget the message when they return to the home page:

“Then we install affinity targeting that says when you go to the drums section and come back to the home page it will show you more drum offers. It increased the conversion rate in double digits on all the categories where we did category affinity”

Here’s where the real payoff for the merchant comes in:

“What was more important, in my opinion, was that the guy who was running the category for drums has never had his stuff on the front page. The front page is reserved for those departments inside a company that have the power. But if you suddenly say that the front page visitor is not just a MusiciansFriend front page visitor but a MusiciansFriend drummer, then you say, Mr. Head of Drum Merchandise, you tell me what I should show them. In the past you sat back and prayed people get to the drum section. Now he is leaning forward and saying, I know they are a drummer, [so] what should I be showing them? When the marketer becomes engaged, when they do something and see the result of it, then they do things that are in the end more engaging for the consumer.”

This is incredibly powerful stuff that is not technologically beyond the range of most serious site marketers because, unlike behavioral retargeted ad campaigns, it would not require sophisticated third-party server solutions. Anyone with a serious shopping or informational affiliate site should be thinking in these terms because this could greatly increase conversions and improve customer/visitor loyalty.

“We could have put those resources into advertising. Instead, we wanted to work on getting people back,” Hsieh says. “We believe that the way to build a long-term, growing business is to focus on how to get repeat customers back to your site and purchase more often.”

That’s Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, the online shoe retailer, explaining one of the ways they grew their business from $1.6 million to $800 million is seven years, in a current Marketing Sherpa article (the article expires as a free version on August 14th- I recommend you sign up for a free sub to get more of these great pieces on lead gen, CS, direct and other marketing issues).

As you monetize, you must retain and resell or all your efforts are doomed to endless repetition with slow growth. Repeat customers tell others and spread viral referrals. Keeping them happy is critical yet many affiliate sites and ad-supported sites do little more than place a ‘Join Our Email List’ form on their pages to capture return business.

Here are a few things you must consider to build a happy and growing database of repeat customers:

• Provide compelling, current content that is frequently refreshed. Include email and RSS update options.
• Do the Amazon thing: Create lists of ‘Customers Who Bought This Also Liked This’
• Have an application on the site that solves a time-related problem for your users so they give you permission to contact them on a predictable basis
• Amazing customer service. Affiliates may say: ‘we don’t do customer service’ but the fact is they are your customers. Find ways to get them to return to you rather than the merchant site.
• Reward referrals. Offer points, giveaways, free shipping, etc., for legit referrals.
• Don’t work with marginal merchants or advertisers who are not very specific to your site subject. Having a high quality central resource on a subject including great merchants and advertising that directly addresses my interests will encourage me to come back- it’s all content and should be vetted by the same standards used for your editorial content (if you have any!). Those Hormel Spam recipe ads I get in my Gmail account really don’t help the Gmail cause…

How valuable is a repeat customer? You don’t have to constantly market to replenish the one-timers, they will refer, they will buy again and again. $$$ and they represent a major business asset which greatly increases your value should you want to sell.

If your site doesn’t lend itself to encouraging repeat visitors and a loyal fan base I’d suggest you’re doomed to small time status. It’s time to change your plan.