In this article I’ll be addressing the final domain business model, traffic monetisation. As well as being valuable to advertisers, domain traffic drives many of the opportunities received from potential domain buyers. Contrary to popular opinion, traffic is the lifeblood of the domain industry…..not domain sales.

One of the keys to greater domain sales is to leverage your domain traffic. If you sell all your traffic domains, then expect there will be a commensurate drop in domain sales. In Part 1 of this series I discussed using your traffic for your own sales rather than providing it for free to the marketplaces and have it potentially result in another person’s sale.

Traffic monetisation is a way to generate additional funds to cover renewal costs and contribute to your profitability. Many people wrongly believe that traffic monetisation is dead. It’s not. I personally know of many people that earn thousands of dollars a day by focusing on building their domain traffic portfolios. For those of you that disagree….I’m happy to have a chat about purchasing your traffic domains.

The major difference between traffic monetisation and domain sales is traffic monetisation tends (not always) to generate less revenue per domain but that revenue comes in month after month. Domain sales tends to be very lumpy and unless you have a very large portfolio it’s difficult to achieve a consistent income – this also makes planning exceptionally difficult.

I’ve seen so many domain investors look at their domains and have delusions of grandeur with building them all out. A huge amount of money has been sacrificed on the developmental altar with very few people being successful. So why is this the case?

I want to say up front that there is no such thing as developing a domain name. Too many people believe that if they have the right domain they can just build a quick Wordpress site and voila! The masses will arrive and make them rich. This couldn’t be further from the truth!

Platforms such as Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Wix etc. are fantastic at solving many of the technical problems associated with development. What they don’t solve are the business problems.

In this series of articles, I’m endeavouring to identify some of the big issues the domain industry needs to tackle through innovation. For the last number of years, the industry has largely been stagnant in many of the business models being employed by investors and I believe it’s time for this to change.

In the previous article I looked at a couple of innovations for selling “stock item domains” and in this article, I’ll trying and provide some thoughts around selling “high value domains”.

The new gTLD domain extensions have created a scenario where we have a massive supply of domains. Regardless of your feelings about new gTLDs, having the same overall demand and a massive supply will tend to depress prices by providing additional options.

Just think about this for a minute. If you are a marketing director of a big company and someone offers you a .com domain for $500K or a new gTLD for $10, which would you take? They could essentially spend an additional $500K in marketing efforts and be in a net neutral position. Many marketing directors would believe their marketing efforts (ie. their smarts) are making the domain popular and not the other way around.

So what are the domain industry’s really big issues? What should we be driving innovatively to solve and what issues are way beyond the scope of short term solutions?

When I think about the really big issues in the domain industry I find that I’m forced to reflect on the four primary business models associated with domains:

1.       Selling domains like stock items
2.       Selling high value domains
3.       Traffic monetisation
4.       Development

Selling domains as stock items is all about increasing the sales turnover of low value domains (sub $2K) in your portfolio. This is similar to a supermarket which operates on low margins wanting to increase the throughput of products being sold.

When you look at the incumbents in this market they have all been trying to increase the demand. This has largely been achieved through increasing the breadth of their distribution networks (ie. Registrars) so their inventory is exposed to a larger audience.

I see a number of innovations that centre on pricing that can be explored in this market and I will discuss two of them in this article. To date, the feedback from domain marketplaces has been that if a domain is priced it’s more likely to sell. This seems to make sense as buyers like to know what they are about to pay for domain rather than “make and enquiry”.

There is one thing that I’ve realised in my travels….there is opportunity everywhere you go. I find that too many people journey through life with their eyes closed rather than take in the wonder all around them.

I’ve found the secret to opening your eyes to the opportunities all around me is to be perpetually curious. Engage others by asking questions and then listen with both ears wide open…..remember you have one mouth and two ears….use them in those proportions.

For example, I’m writing this while staying on a farm right now (it’s a stunningly beautiful place) and after talking with the owner I’ve learned a LOT about cattle. More importantly, the importance of data, GPS and managing the land to get the highest yield. It was fascinating hearing him describe some of the advances in geo-fencing that would allow him to control where his cattle roamed.