Part 5 - Portfolio Optimisation - Traffic Domains

So far we’ve touched on a number of aspects of building a domain into a solid business. Obviously we could spend years on that topic but what I would like to do is move onto the second segment in our portfolio optimisation – traffic domains.

Many people believe that generating revenue from domain traffic is dead and buried…..nothing could be further from the truth. The real issue is to assess what you are doing now which is different to what you were doing in the past. If you keep on doing the same thing as you’ve always done, then don’t expect your revenue line to increase.

Increasing your revenue from traffic has moved on a long way since the humble days of putting all of your domains with one parking company and then collecting a cheque. As one of the founders of ParkLogic, we’ve been optimising domain traffic for clients for nearly a decade and the sophistications of the real-time algorithms for routing traffic has grown considerably.

Let me say from the outset that optimising domain traffic is not a trivial exercise and has moved a long way from making decisions via a spreadsheet. To extract the full value out of your domain traffic routing decisions must be made on a real-time basis. If they aren’t then you are making sub-optimal decisions and leaving money on the table.

There are a number of ramifications to real-time traffic switching. Like any industry, the traffic side of the domain industry has evolved into two camps. Those that outsource their traffic optimisation and those that try to do it themselves.

Even if you have the expertise and the knowledge to be constantly working away at systems you would have to be crazy to invest in building your own traffic optimisation platform. Rather than managing a simple agreement you’ve now taken on the responsibility for an entire technology ecosystem that has real costs associated with it. The opportunity cost and distraction of managing such a platform is considerable.

For example, as many of you know, I’m a fan of the CRM platform, SalesForce. A major reason for this is I know that every single day I have literally thousands of developers working on my behalf to improve and maintain a platform I use extensively. The marginal cost I pay out each month is inconsequential compared to if I decided to build my own CRM. I’m getting a growing benefit for no additional effort or allocation of resources.

Likewise, by completely outsourcing your domain traffic optimisation you are getting a platform and a team that is constantly thinking about how to improve your results for you each and every day. I can’t speak for any other companies but I know that the number one issue for us is how to increase a client’s revenue from their traffic.

When you outsource your traffic revenue you need to be confident the company is doing the best job possible at every instant in getting the most from your traffic. More than that, they need to be able to prove it. This means that there needs to be real people, doing real work on your behalf that you can reach out to if you have any questions.

In the next article on traffic optimisation I'm going to dive into some compelling  numbers from a sample portfolio that prove the benefit of routing traffic to maximise revenue. For the first time ever I made the decision to expose some of our numbers in a presentation that I made at the recent Domaining Europe conference.

Over the years, many people have said to me that it really doesn’t make a difference what parking company you use as long as they have Google as their backend. The data in the next article proves that this assumption is false.