Supernatural Agency: Online business tales

SalesIntelligentsia.com is a new blog in our network with a focus on success in sales management using all of the incredible online marketing tools out there. We’ll be talking about lead generation, sales processes, recruitment, CRM, reviewing books and training courses, discussing scripts, motivation, prospecting, compensation and a lot more.

So if you’re involved in sales, sales management, business development or own your own business check it out.

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.

Frank Schilling has a great piece on a long time domainer who understands where this whole thing is going. It’s worth the read just to see his sites which blow away the average parked page.

The fascinating thing about this piece is how it demonstrates how primitive and early stage the entire domaining market is. Putting up simple, well-designed affiliate sites on domains puts someone five years ahead of the rest? Frank is a very successful domain entrepreneur so I respect his POV but this is ridiculous- If people are making millions just parking thousands of longtail domains and trading, imagine what the untapped potential is?

Prediction: Some big money is going to come in and back someone with a vision and change the whole model. The challenge is manufacturing highly relevant content and matching it to relevant domains. Parking companies try to automate this but just end up with generic content based on primitive keyword matching. On the other end we have things like blog networks who are figuring out the content generation side but don’t understand business strategy. The people who match these two things and add in a strong monetization strategy that is highly relevant to the domain subject will be the leaders.

This is why our business has a founder who understands SEO, SEM, design and programming and a founder who is a writer/producer with strategic marketing skills. You need both to move beyond what will soon be laughably primitive models like the current parking systems. It will be a lot more work but the values will be exponentially higher.

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.