iEstates.com

We just wrapped up our with SMX Advanced in Seattle this Tuesday and Wednesday. If you missed the press release about our attendance, be sure to read it. It was our first time at a search marketing conference, and it was interesting to introduce DomainTools to curious attendees who wanted more in-depth details about all of our services. Those conversations were nicely balanced with  stories from others who enthusiastically said, “I use you guys all the time”.  We love attending conferences as a chance to meet members and learn about what people love to use.

Here are a few photos of the conference, also posted on our Facebook page:

One of the highlights of SMX Advanced, like previous conferences, has been the You&A with Matt Cutts. Coined the Alan Greenspan of Google, Matt is their most well-known software engineer. The You&A was a hilarious and very engaging discussion that started out with Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land, giving Matt a giant Panda bear along with a panda foot stool. An interesting story surfaced about Larry Page, CEO of Google, and his search for the term “warm mangos”. The Google team who was working on improving search quality needed to understand the logic behind someone searching for the term ‘warm mangos’ – turns out, mangoes warm up when they are packaged in boxes due to the carbon dioxide produced. As the banter about ‘warm mangos’ was being highlighted, it is not a coincidence that WarmMangos.com was registered during that session

This episode of Domain Names Podcast I speak with Marc Ostrofsky the author of Get Rich Click The Ultimate Guide to Making Money on the Internet.

Here is a piece about Marc from his website -

If you have not yet visited Michael Cyger’s website DomainSherpa.com, then I would recommend that it is well worth your time. Michael’s website is new to the domain blogging world and brings a very fresh approach to the space. He has done some great video podcast interviews with some of the top people in the domain industry.

Check out his latest interview with Frank Schilling where Frank discusses his new domain parking and monetization service www.InternetTraffic.com Keep up the great work Michael.

The domain industry sees many changes. With the downturn of PPC revenue, many of the old-school domainers started to respond more actively to sales inquiries in order to make up for the loss. While it appears that PPC income is not yet on the rebound, many domain investors have been looking to development and other methods of generating additional revenue. Especially with domains that were using a Yahoo! PPC feed the change has been very noticeable.

Driven by the pinch of lower PPC revenues on a Yahoo!/Bing feed, it appears Frank Schilling’s NAMedia has recently switched to a Google feed. The company has also removed their social application originally launched as Note.com, then rebranded as Chatr and now finally Postboard. Via Email Schilling told DNN:

“In the early days of the oil-boom you could literally drill a hole in the ground with a hand-drill and strike a small gusher of oil. Then as the shallow oil ran out.. the hand-drill guys invested in bigger rigs and more sophisticated machinery. Today you have elaborate rigs manned by the hand drillers grandchildren, striking huge oilfields, miles below the sea floor. Many of the people behind the drilling equipment quite literally learned on the job. There is no university for this. The domain traffic business is very much like that. The last ten years have seen an evolution where things have gotten much more sophisticated. A few of the larger operators have embraced technology and grown to deal with the changed landscape in paid search. Google has become a critical partner in the evolution of type-in traffic monetization. The level of technical efficacy required to play there is higher though.

I remain hopeful that Yahoo will turn its third party marketplace around so it remains attractive to domain traffic, but that job is really Microsoft’s responsibility now, and it remains to be seen whether Microsoft cares enough to solidify third party publisher payouts and to fairly value domain name type-in traffic against other forms of traffic in the channel such as Error Search and Keyword Marketplace Arbitrage.”

Aside from switching parking feed providers NAMedia is also allowing others to use this new feed. Schilling created a site at InternetTraffic.com inviting people to apply for a “A no-frills domain monetization platform, for experienced type-in traffic operators.” and promising that “You will make significantly more money here“. According to WannaDevelop’s Mike Cohen, the service is being tested by the likes of Rick Schwartz, Chad Wright, Garry Chernoff, Alex Lerman. [Update] According to our friends at HosterStats, there are currently over 14,000 domains pointing to the service’s nameservers.

“I’m looking for high quality type-in traffic partners to grow a long-term and stable traffic co-operative. I’m in a great position to do this, having a unique structure with a very large tranche of owned and operated traffic. I don’t need (or want) to create a huge profit center for myself on the back of my fellow domainers traffic. This is about trying to reward those who innovate by returning the bulk of the revenue to them, so they can do what they do best.. Everyone who has joined to date, is pleasantly surprised when they see what their traffic is really capable of.”

After years of efforts by Google to de-emphasize the importance of domain names (i.e. by combining the search and URL bar in Google Chrome), the company is apparently now experimenting with highlighting the domain name for paid search results, as reported by Search Engine Land who got the tip from a reader.

The domain name of the advertiser is displayed behind the ad headline, separated by a “|” and written in all lower case.

[Update]: This is now an official feature on “select ads”, as per a post on Google’s Inside Adwords blog. No details have been published as to how eligible ads are selected. Lisa Shieh from the Inside AdWords crew writes:

In an AdWords ad, the display URL may be last, but it’s certainly not least. In fact, the display URL can be an important deciding factor in whether a user clicks on your ad.

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (9)

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on the planet: Discover the details of a domain’s current ownership,
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According to MediaPost a judge has ordered Google to disclose financial metrics stemming from their Domain Parking and Error Pages programs within Google Adsense. The lawsuit that was started by advertising clients in 2008 and a recent pledge by Google to dismiss the suit before it goes to trial was rejected.

The marketers alleged that such pages are low-quality and yield fewer purchases or other conversions than ads that appear on Google’s search results pages. The marketers also said they believed that clicks on ads on parked domains “were unlikely to lead to desirable business outcomes, and that placement on such pages could damage their brands.”

Google rejects those claims and said that advertising on parked domains “perform as well as or better than ads on Search and Display Network sites.”

U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Harold Lloyd in San Jose, California ruled that Google also has to disclose how clicks are discounted on which sites based on the “smart pricing discount”.

[via MediaPost]

 

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (4)

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Wouldn’t it be really convenient to access Domain ownership records anytime, anywhere? From your phone, desktop or toolbar for Firefox, Chrome or Safari? Or, do you use WordPress and want the DomainTools plugin for your website? Well, good news! DomainTools has all of these applications available, right NOW.

We’ve seen many blog posts featuring different DomainTools applications and how to install them, but wanted to give everyone a run-down of ALL of the applications that make DomainTools’ Whois and other services that much easier to access:

DomainTools Whois iPhone App – Do quick queries of a domain name to retrieve the most recent Whois record from DomainTools.com right from your iPhone, iPad and IPod touch. You can also check out the most recent screenshot history image of the domain names’ homepage and find available names in other gTLD or ccTLD extensions and order them directly from your iPhone or iPad.

DomainTools for Windows – Get easy access to Whois records from the system tray so you can access the DomainTools Whois record with one click. Done.

Google Toolbar Plugin - Installing the icon in the Google Toolbar for quick and easy access to DomainTools services including:

• Whois Lookup
• Domain Search & Suggestions
• Name Server Alert
• Trademark Alert
• For Sale
• Internet Statistics
• And More!

DomainTools Whois Toolbar Bookmark – By placing the DomainTools Whois link in your link bar, you will be able to lookup the Whois record of the site you are visiting. Installation is easy. Simply drag the link to the browsers’ link toolbar for Firefox, Chrome and Safari or right-click and ‘Add to Favorites’ for Internet Explorer.

DomainTools WordPress Plugin - Automatically link your domain names in a WordPress page or blog post to the DomainTools Whois service. It also generates a pop-up containing a summary of Whois information that your visitors can see without leaving your site (score!)

Firefox Search Extensions – Installing these Firefox extensions will add another search engine to Firefox’s search box in theupper right corner of your browser.

Add Whois Engine

Add Ping Engine

Add DNS Engine

Add Traceroute Engine

Unofficial Firefox Toolbar Extensions…

The following Firefox extensions were published by DomainTools users and incorporate the DomainTools services into their functionality.

• Domain Lookup - Domain Lookup is a Firefox extension that helps you discover valuable generic domain names while surfing the web. Just select the text you wish to check and hit the shortcut key. Domain Lookup checks availability at your favourite registrar in a heartbeat.
• DT Whois – Adds a button to your browser for easy access to current site’s whois record.
• SEO – Contains a Whois button that uses DomainTools.com
• SEO Toolbar - A customizable toolbar that includes access to the DomainTools Whois service.

We realize there may be additional extensions that others have developed that may be missing from this list. It would be great to know what else is out there, so give us a shout if you know about others that are out in the wild!

If you’ve paid attention to some of 2010′s biggest product launches,
you probably noticed one thing they had in common.

www.kajabi.com.au

List Control
Product Launch Formula 3.0
Video Boss
Outsource Force

All had a little link at the bottom that said “Powered By
Kajabi” and until now, not too many people knew what that was about. Today, FINALLY, answers!

www.kajabi.com.au

It’s apparently already changed the way John Reese, Andy
Jenkins, Frank Kern, Trey Smith, and Jeff Walker marketed
their biggest products this year.

I think it’s going to change the way EVERYONE markets online
very soon. And after you watch this, it’ll probably make a
convert out of you too.

Cheers

Ed Keay-Smith

P.S. The only lame part of this video is how long you’ll have
to wait to get your hands on Kajabi after watching. But I guess a few days isn’t so bad. You decide: too long to wait?

www.kajabi.com.au

P.P.S. Oh yeah, there is NO OPT-IN NEEDED to watch this. It’s totally in the open. (Which is kind of shocking, considering.)

Disclaimer: Ed Keay-Smith & OzDomainer.com are affiliates of Kajabi and will make affiliate commissions on products or services purchased through these links.

I am happy to announce that my Aussie domainer friend Simon Johnson, who I interviewed on my Last Domain Names Podcast has launched his fantastic new show called Domainer Income TV which you can check out at DomainerIncome.tv.

This weeks guest is Jeff Kupietzky from Oversee.net where Jeff talks about some interesting facts regarding Oversee that I have not heard discussed anywhere before.

After talking with Simon this afternoon he told me who will be on his next episode (but has sworn me to secrecy) and I am sure that it will be a great show, don’t miss it.

Well done Simon for getting this show of the ground.

As most of you know who read this blog or listen to my podcasts, I own quite a few ccTLD domains including .Com.AU (of course!!) .Co.UK, .IN & .CO.IN

Over the last 6 months the traffic to many of my Indian sites .IN & .CO.IN such as WaterPurifiers.in & SolarPanels.in has at least tripled and they are getting thousands more visitors per month than they have been getting in the past.

On average they are both in the Top 5 results on Google.co.in and are competing up there with the multi million / multi Billion dollar companies that are targeting the same premium keywords that I am.

This now opens up some possible opportunities for me to either sell the domains to these companies or enter into some type of JV partnership with them.

One such company is Tata BP Solar India Limited which is one of India’s largest companies comprising a partnership with Tata & BP which are both Billion dollar companies.

Although I am at this moment only monetizing these sites with Google AdSense, it will not be that way for much longer as I have always had bigger plans for these websites.

I also own many of Tata / BP’s core product domains such as -

SolarHotWater.in

SolarInverters.co.in

SolarLantern.co.in

SolarLantern.in

SolarLanterns.co.in

SolarLanterns.in

SolarPanel.in

SolarPanels.in

SolarPowerInverters.co.in

SolarPowerInverters.in

SolarStreetLight.co.in

SolarStreetLight.in

SolarStreetLights.co.in

SolarStreetLights.in

SolarWaterHeater.co.in

SolarWaterHeater.in

SolarWaterHeaters.co.in

SolarWaterHeaters.in

SolarWaterHeating.in

With the middle class population of India growing at a rapid rate and expected to be larger the the total population of the US within the next 10+ years, I think there are some very exciting times ahead for the Indian domain name market.