20180806_frustration Monetisation is NOT dead!

In this blog I’m going to be a little like Rick Schwartz and have a rant. Many domain investors make the mistake of assuming that domain parking is dead and the only real business model is available to them is domains sales. Is domain parking dead? No, it’s not dead but for a growing number of investors it’s morphed into something a lot more sophisticated.

Escrow.com

One of the strengths and weaknesses of traditional domain parking is that behind all the smoke and mirrors lies Google. Google buys a lot of the domain traffic because they have a huge breadth of advertisers. If you have a website that is about "Norwegian Knitting" then it’s likely Google can put relevant advertisements on the page.

The weakness of traditional domain parking is that Google has manoeuvred itself into an unassailable position and has then exploited this position by continually reducing pay-outs. Domain investors shouldn’t be surprised by this behaviour as it’s economically rational in a world that is driven by quarterly earnings calls….so stop complaining and just get over it.

Notice what I said earlier…..Google buys a lot of the traffic. Just because Google is wanting to buy your traffic doesn’t mean you have to sell everything to them. It would be far more sensible to only sell to Google what Google is paying fairly for and then sell to other people what they want to pay more for.

What I've found is the majority of domainers are like a person selling a bucket full of oranges. The buyer (ie. Google) asks if you can throw in your car with the deal and with a grateful smile you say “yes”. In fact, it’s a bit worse than that. Domain investors are selling oranges and Google takes the car without asking because they believe they deserve it. Remember they still only paid orange prices for your car.

I’m amazed at the number of investors I come across that still effectively sending all of their traffic to Google. It’s like they’ve been running around with their hands on their ears while complaining in the forums about the decline in earnings. For some reason Google seems to have hoodwinked the industry into believing that 100% of the time they pay the most for the traffic. This is absolutely NOT true.

In a recent post I wrote about how zero-click solutions are winning the day and providing massive revenue uplifts. I’m a data guy and I spelt it out with real numbers and yet no one left a comment which was something like, “That’s AMAZING! WOW! How do I take advantage of this and increase my revenue?”

Yes, in the past zero-click has had problems with some not nice advertising but these players have largely been weeded out. On the whole, tier two advertising networks are now providing brand advertisers that are desperate for domain traffic….in fact, even with our masses of domain traffic we can’t send enough to satisfy the demand.

So there I am reading Morgan Lintons blog (great guy and blogger btw) and sure enough there’s an article asking the question whether domain parking is dead. When I see articles (and comments) about this topic I’m at the point of pulling my hair out with frustration because on the whole the domain investment community is largely ignorant about the real numbers.

For example, I wrote another post where an investor had put all of their domain traffic with a single parking company. Here’s where I’m going to beat my own drum. They did a test with ParkLogic and we provided an uplift of well over 50% because we know how to manage the traffic and extract the full amount of value from it. As you may expect, the client was happy but unbelievably surprised by the result…..they’d made the mistake in assuming that Google paid the best 100% of the time.

Monetising domain traffic has developed into a specialised skill and if you think you are a genius by changing nameservers every so often then think again. What you are competing against is people like ParkLogic clients. We are constantly evaluating and then routing their traffic to the highest paying monetisation solution every 100 milliseconds. Without massive systems in place you are at both at an informational and technological disadvantage.

Why do I share all of this information? It’s really simple, I’m a firm believer that as an industry we need to get smarter about our traffic and begin to innovate. If I am to be 100% economically rational I don’t care where my traffic is monetised (Google or elsewhere) as long as the person that is currently paying IS paying more than the other guy. Remember, while there are advertisers, domain traffic will ALWAYS be valuable.

I don’t really care whether you use ParkLogic or some other platform but whatever you do make sure that you are fully extracting the value from your traffic. Stop moaning and groaning about the decline in your earnings and do something about it.

If anyone would be interested in me running a webinar on traffic monetisation then let me know….I’d be happy to do so to help educate domain investors on how they can increase their earnings.

That’s it for the Rick Schwartz like rant…..for now anyway.