We have so much to be grateful for. From the mundane turning of a tap to see water pour out of the faucet to our friends and family.

In this world of the 24-hour news cycle it often feels like we are being deluged with bad news. This video is about good news. I share some of the things that I’m grateful for in my life. I have some good news for you. It does something to your soul when you share with others what you’re grateful about…..it also inspires others to do likewise.

COVID-19 may be the fodder of the media empires, but the stuff of life is all around us in our relationships with one another, our jobs, hobbies and the fact there is food on the table. This is good news and we must not lose sight of this fact.

I would encourage you to reflect on what you’re grateful for in your life. In fact, don’t just reflect, share with others here in the comments or on my Youtube video comments.Don’t hold the love in, share it with us all and then pass on the video. Hopefully you get the sense that there is at least one Australian that wants to hear good news rather than the endless bad news we see to be fed.

Have a great weekend.
Michael

This week we saw a continuing of the trend that was established in the previous week’s data. Both Google and direct advertisers are beginning to stabilize their payouts with a slight growth in the overall monetization industry compared to the previous week.

Earnings per Click and Click Through Rate are doing their regular counter-cyclical dance as once goes up the other goes down. This is more of an artifact of smart pricing algorithms rather than actual user or advertiser behaviour.

What’s going to be interesting in the coming weeks is to see what happens to the normalized RPM as the big corporate advertisers come back online. Over the last 10 weeks the small to medium sized businesses have flocked online to try to sell….well….anything. This has kept the payout rates up but with the corporates coming out of hibernation anything is possible.

I spend some time in the last part of the video taking another look at a real, live case that is being optimized by ParkLogic. It’s real data, for a real client and I think you’re going to love it as I unpack what is going on at various traffic levels.

Don’t forget to like the video, leave comments and pass it onto other investors. Keep safe.

I’ve received such great feedback on these weekly videos that I decided to rename them from “COVID-19 Update” to “Domain Industry Update”. Many thanks to all those that have encouraged me to keep on providing them each week.

In this video I unpack the regular set of data that provides insight into what is happened with domain monestization this past week. Questions such as, “How are the RPMs trending?”, “Is Google winning more traffic?” and “Is the volatility increasing or decreasing?” are all answered.

In addition, I’ve added another segment where I open up a real client test and show you what domain optimization can achieve to the bottom line. The three charts display the benefits of a disciplined, focused approach to extracting the most from domain traffic.

Keep the comments, emails, skypes and messages flowing as they encourage me to keep on writing and videoing. Don’t forget to subscribe to either the WhizzbangsBlog Youtube channel or the Alerts here.

I’ve had a number of people ask me what my typical day looks like and in this article, I thought I’d open up about the life and times of yours truly. So how many hours do I work, what do I do and how do I manage all the various demands for my time. I would like to say it’s easy, but the reality it’s not.

Each workday I’m up at 7am and spend about 20 minutes reflecting about the different aspects of my life and thinking about big issues such as character. Don’t picture me sitting cross legged on the floor….I’m more likely in a comfortable chair staring outside and doing some serious thinking. I find this time very refreshing and gets me centered on what’s important.....what I don't want to do is climb the ladder of success to find it's leaning against the wrong wall.

About 7:20 I then dive into a topic I’m interested in. This may be reading a book, watching a Youtube video or studying something online. I typically use this time to get a picture of what is happening in the broader business/economic/political environment. For instance, would COVID-19 impact the domain monetization industry was something that I started researching back in January.

At 8am I’m checking ParkLogic’s daily numbers. I do this every day and zero in on any issues that I think may be problematic for a partner or client that the rest of the team needs to investigate. It could also result in things such as an idea to improve results for clients.

After this, I check my email, skype messages and the like. Any additional issues are identified and forwarded on to the person most suitable to take that task on. Any client/partner tasks are added to a tracking system we have built in SalesForce…..I really don’t like to forget issues.

I then examine my own “things to do list” and allocate time for those I plan on doing that week/day. My typical things end up being as varied as clients, business development, legal work, administration, marketing or even technical development.

After last week’s video I thought that we were about to enter a downturn for the domain Pay-Per-Click industry. The data was looking a little daunting but what a difference a week can make!

In this video I unpack what’s happened across this last week and do a comparison of direct advertisers versus Google. What the numbers clearly display is if you’re not exposed to the direct advertising market then you’re really missing out on a big increase in revenue.

This series of videos show a detailed picture of the domain monetization industry on a week by week basis. They are not to be missed so don’t forget to subscribe, like and pass them on to a friend that may need to get some additional insights with their domain investments.

Once again, we must not forget that in amongst all the analysis there are people really suffering as a result of COVID-19. Don’t forget to give a friend a call to encourage them while they’re in lock-down, have a family zoom session or just text a friend to let them know you’re thinking about them.