Nucite Network

I just got back from the Targeted Traffic conference that was held in New York this past week.  It was my second time attending this conference.  My first time was earlier this year in Vegas.  Although I saw many of the same faces, I found the focus and interests of most people to be much different.

It was earlier in the year when Google began cracking down on web sites (and parked pages) in their AdSense content network.  Of course, they now assign a quality score to web site pages in an attempt to estimate the click-through value to advertisers on a given web site.  Although that made for a real boost in quality traffic for an advertiser, it truly hurt the bottom lines of many domainers that depend on the revenues their parked pages provide.

So now that these domainers' pocket books have been affected, they're taking a very serious look at how development can increase their revenues.  Unfortunately though, most seem to be looking for an easy journey through development that will increase their earnings without taking up too much of their time.  Let's face it, many of these people own thousands of domains.  Properly developing one domain is tough enough.

There were two main solutions at the conference that were getting the bulk of the attention, and I can't help but be concerned for the domain owner's well being if these avenues are utilized.  The two companies I'm referring to are WhyPark and EVO Landing.  Both of these business models are based upon attracting traffic from search engines utilizing glorified content scraping tools.  Sure, it produces results in the short term, but some people are quickly realizing it's not a viable long-term solution.

What's wrong with these types of fast content solutions?

I made a post about EVO Landing that I would highly encourage people to read.  Essentially, Google seems to be looking at these sites as pure duplicate content and in many cases is banning them from their search index.  Given that Google damn near monopolizes the search market, getting banned from their results has got to be about the single worst thing that could happen to your domain.  And as best as I can tell, WhyPark sites aren't doing much better... unless you're willing to add in your own unique content on top of their "scraped" information.  But if a domainer is going to take the time to do this, why not just create a site that's purely unique content and not take the duplicate content hit from Google?

Another solution that scares me...

There was also some buzz about mini-sites.  A mini-site is a web site that houses only a few pages that each hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 words per page.  There was a company offering mini-sites there at $250 per domain.  Most developers refer to these as MFA (Made for AdSense) sites.  Google has been cracking down on these in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as well.  But just like the content scraping solutions, they tend to offer a boost of traffic right after they're live and slowly trickle back to near worthless traffic numbers.  Although Google doesn't seem to ban these types of domains, it sure seems that they're getting suppressed (in my opinion/experience a worse scenario).

The problem with all of this is that domainers are domainers.  Most of them are speculating on the value of an individual domain name, regardless of what kind of traffic it receives from search engines.  So like lemmings, many of these people will follow these solutions for short term gain.  I personally spoke with many people at the conference and the idea of being banned or suppressed by a search engine was so far over the heads of so many attendees that those conversations were often one-sided.  Basically those conversations were me explaining to a domainer that Google does ban domains and that it truly can have a negative effect on the value of their domains.

What should domainers be doing now?

Don't get me wrong... I think domain development is a great idea... if it's done properly.  That being the case, someone who owns a few thousand domains can't possibly take the correct paths to development.  My suggestion - pick only a few of the gems out of your portfolio.  FOCUS on developing those... ONE at a time.  Learn from the situations you face along the way.  Once you feel comfortable with the process give ONE more a try.  Don't be in a rush.  Learn from every hurdle you overcome and every stumble you get back up from.  As for those thousands of other domains you own - keep them parked.  There's still good money there and chances are it could get better as Google gets better at providing proper quality scores.

What will future TRAFFIC conferences be about?

Eventually, many domainers will walk down the paths of development.  We're talking about a pretty savvy group of people here who tend to learn and quickly adapt to their business environment.  My guess is that many domainers will get a feel for just how profitable a well developed domain can be and they'll start looking for more premium domains to tackle.  The only problem is that they'll quickly become aware of how important search engines (Google in particular) are to that business model and they'll begin demanding better knowledge about the history of the domain they're considering buying.  Is this domain already banned by Google?  Is it being suppressed by Google?  Have past development efforts been attempted?  How did those work out?

I also see more attention being placed away from development and focused on selling domains to the appropriate end users.  That is a science all its own and there are still many domain holders that have yet to explore the options available to them there.

In any event, the future is sure to prove interesting.  It always has in the past.

I’ve decided to go back and provide an analysis of my original trip to the Target Traffic conference in Las Vegas, 2008.  Although I had tracked some of the happenings of the TRAFFIC conference for about a year prior, I never felt the need to actually attend.  On a whim, I decided to attend the Vegas conference with the primary intentions of visiting Moniker’s live auction.

Within my first few hours at the conference I realized that it was a networking wonderland. I’ve never attended a conference where the attendees were all so intensely curious about what the other is doing.  Rick and Howard create such a warm atmosphere that even the shyest of people would have no choice but to collect the business cards of at least 20 of their colleagues while attending.

I attended TRAFFIC West, 2008 representing myself as a partner in a (then potential) 3-person LLC that was interested in picking up a few quality domains with the intentions of developing them into leading web sites in their respective niches.  I left that conference with 6 great domain names.  Although only one did not get developed, there are 3 that are truly worth mentioning as they are not only great domains, but ideal brand names: DVDs.com, ConsultingFirms.com and AlaskanKingCrab.com.  All three sites are now (September, 2008) live and in an ongoing development/analysis phase.  They were great buys and each is climbing in the search engines for its respective niche.

Because I’ve been receptive to joint-venture partnerships, I quickly made some interesting contacts during those three days in Vegas… not the least of which led me to begin development of Bar.com – what an amazing domain.

What I Noticed

I quickly realized that this conference was different from others in another way – these people are almost entirely domainers.  There are very few developers in the crowd.  However, the buzz to begin development was in the air in Vegas.  People were talking about needing to get started on developing their domains, but not many had taken any serious steps toward action.  These were premium domain holders, many of whom had been burned by developing near the dot com bubble burst and were very hesitant to throw more dollars in that direction.

There didn't seem to be much of an urgency to develop and most people that I spoke with left the conference with only thoughts of development lingering in their minds.

One of the main questions many people ask me is "Should I develop this domain?"  So I figured I might as well lay out my criteria for whether or not a domain is worth developing.  This is how I analyze whether or not a domain has the proper keywords and relative search volume for me to invest the time and money it requires to properly develop a web property.

What kind of domain is it?
To me, there are 4 types of domains - generic keyword domains, mis-types, trade/copyright included domains and the types of domains whose name just sounds good... something memorable.  In my opinion, you shouldn't even hold trade/copyright domains or mis-type domains in your portfolio, so both of those are out (* see note below).  A good sounding domain is essentially either a speculative investment or it corresponds to a development idea you already have.  Both can be a good situation, but don't really apply here.  So therefore, only solid, generic keyword domains pass the test.

Does the domain contain any stop words?
A stop word is a word that search engines overlook when performing a search (i.e. the, a, and, or, etc.).  If the domain contains any "stop words" you can also through it out at this point.  That's not to say the domain can't be developed if it fits a specific circumstance.  I'm just trying to create a general guideline here.

How many words does the domain contain?
So we've established that you've got a domain that's pure generic keywords in it.  How many?  If it's more than 3, it's probably not worth developing.  And if it's 3, then that 3 word phrase better get a great deal of search volume (AlaskanKingCrab.com comes to mind here... one I'm involved with).  If it's a one or two word generic, it's still a great candidate.

Are we looking at root words here?
Are the words in the domain root words or do they contain some sort of prefix or suffix that restricts their meaning?  I'm not talking singular or plural yet, so let's not get confused.  An example root word might be 'network.'  The domain network.com would be a much better candidate for development than networked.com... but be careful on this one, because networking.com could also make for a great web site.  This criteria's kinda fuzzy, but for most situations, root words are the best for development as they generally provide more development branches.

How many potential development branches are involved?
Okay, I just made that term up.  I like it though... and I just checked and it's available in both singular and plural forms in a .com.  Ugh, my domianerdom (is that a word?  It's available too) shines through.  Anyhow, back to how many development branches.  Think of the root word (or words) as the tree in your web site.  The branches would be the words that, when attached to the words(s) in the domain, make up phrases that receive fair amounts of search volume.  Many call these long-tail phrases.  Do those additional phrases seem to lead to different development areas of your domain?  Is the search volume high enough on those branches to warrant development of separate sections of your web site dedicated to those longer-tail phrases?

How much search volume are we looking at?
If you've gotten to this point and your domain is still a good candidate then it's time to start looking at raw numbers.  Google has a great tool that will help us with this free of charge.  Their AdWords Keyword Tool will tell us the number of times a given phrase is search upon in Google for a given month.

Again, it gets fuzzy here.  For me though the keyword that the domain holds should have at least a search volume in the tens of thousands range.  And even at that point, the monetization efforts need to have great payouts to make it worth while.  Once we get into the hundreds of thousands range, we're talking about a much safer bet.  And getting into the millions is almost a lock for development.

What's the TLD?
There is really so much more to this than the scope of this blog entry can handle, but let's just say that if it isn't a .com then it better be a great .net or .org.  And if it's anything else (other than some of the more popular ccTLD's like .co.uk) then it needs to evaluated on an individual basis.  But basically, .com is king.  I personally require that any joint-venture development be done on .com only.

Singular or plural?
This criteria really depends on the individual circumstance.  And there is really no way to place a generic restriction on whether or not to develop it.  In some cases, it doesn't even matter.  A great one word domain, whether singular or plural, can almost always be developed well.  Whether or not it's singular or plural may change how it should be developed though (maybe a topic of conversation at another time).

There are many, many more factors that I didn't even touch on here, but hopefully that gets the ball rolling in your mind.  The fact of the matter is that each domain should be evaluated on an individual basis to determine if it's a prime candidate for development.

If you're looking to develop a premium keyword domain and you're not sure where to start, I may be interested in hearing from you.  I do involve myself in joint-0venture domain development and I'm always happy to consider the gems in any portfolio.  If you're not much for the idea of a joint-venture, then you may also be interested in a little consulting to point you in the right direction of getting that domain developed properly.  Feel free to use the contact form here on the site to get in touch with me.  Just be sure to address me (Jeff) in the top of your message and I'll be sure to get it.

* Note about mis-types (personal disclosure)
I mentioned above that you should not even hold mis-type domains.  Just to fully disclose something, I personally hold a domain that does receive mis-type traffic, but I originally purchased it before it was even an issue.  I own Slackr.com.  I bought it because I thought it was a domain that could provide online entertainment and that it had a catchy, memorable name... think flickr.com - see what I mean?  About 3 or 4 months after I bought the name, the Slacker Radio device was announced.  I still like the name I bought, but it does now get mis-type traffic.  Should I let it go just because something more popular came along?  No, but I'm also not going to make any attempt to monetize the site based upon the mis-type traffic it receives.  Feel free to slam me on this one, but that's how I feel.