Buying cheap domain names is something we all want. Why pay the price listed on various domain registrar websites when you can use a promotional code or coupon code to get a special discount price for your new domain names.
Here are some tips to get discount or promo codes from top registrars, including GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Register.com, Name.com, Dynadot, Enom, Moniker, Fabulous, NameCheap, 1 & 1, and other leading domain name registrars:
Search Google for “domain name coupons,” “domain name discounts,” or other similar term
Be more specific and search Google for “Godaddy coupon” or “Network Solutions promo code”
Sign up for domain registrar newsletters to receive special offers
See previous emails from domain registrar to take advantage of offers
Visit the domain registrar website and see if they have a tab for special offers
See if partner sites like Paypal or hosting companies have coupon codes
I am still traveling today (almost back from vacation), so this is a guest post by Bobby Fitzgerald about how it appears that Google Adsense for Domains has changed/enhanced its landing pages by adding graphics. As you may recall, Bobby previously discussed how RestaurantsAgainstCancer.com was developed to raise money for the children of Camp Sunrise.
As I continue on my journey to learn this business I noticed something recently. Google has greatly improved the graphics of their Google for domains. Recently I have been moving a number of domains I plan on holding, or developing, to Google. I had been using a couple of the parking companies and was not seeing any income what so ever on over 100 unique visits a day. I believe someone who lands on a parked page will only make one click the vast majority of the time. They also need to see a trusted, related, choice like a hotel chain on a geo or travel site or a restaurant on a geo restaurant site. Just MHO.
Having read more than one of the industry leaders comment that parking income covers all or near-all renewal fees I decided to mix it up so the march to Google parking began.
Rather than just stating that, “Below are sponsored listings for goods and services related to…” as you see below:
Google now has a tighter window with color backgrounds and photos as well as a banner ad that is visible in the initial window.
There are 24 images to choose from within Google Adsense for domains.
The reality is my revenue has gone up and I will cover the cost of renewals if the trend continues. While I enjoy the traffic stats offered by the parking companies, money talks and, well, stats can walk. One thing I have done is use a parking company to test if there is any traffic at all and if so then move to Google where income appears to be happening. Hopefully Google will continue the improvements and offer traffic stats for each domain or the parking companies will up their game. I am still new enough to not understand how splitting Google ad income with a parking company can be more profitable than parking with Google directly, but that is why I am doing this-to learn.
I was reading Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com article discussing the embedded video from Google’s Matt Cutts regarding keyword domain names and the rankings they achieve in Google. Aaron is one of the more forward-thinking SEOs, and it’s a good article for domain investors to read.
Firstly, I think Aaron should note that there is a BIG difference between “keyword domain names” discussed by Matt Cutts and exact match domain names (EMD) discussed by Aaron. To me, keyword domain names are names like BestCarInsuranceQuotes.com or WatchMovieTrailersOnline.com, and exact match domain names would be names like SkiHelmets.com or SoccerCleats.com. Anyway, more on that below.
At the conclusion of the article, Aaron posed the question, “What happens to the value of domain names if EMD bonus goes away & Google keeps adding other data sources?”
From my perspective, strong descriptive domain names will still have the same value before and after because those domain names can be brands on their own. I think long tail keyword names, ugly keyword names with lots of hyphens, non .com, and nonsensical keyword domain names could take a hit in value, assuming they had any intrinsic value prior to the algo change.
Let me explain what I mean for a minute.
Domain names like Hotels.com, Ski.com, Golf.com, Cars.com, Insurance.com, and even my own DogWalker.com**, have become brands after development and marketing. Even Aaron Wall’s own domain name (SEOBook.com) is an example of a EMD, “SEO Book,” turned into a brand. These domain names say what they are and people bypass Google to visit those sites because they know what they’ll get.
Similar but yet to be developed domain names like Cats.com, or thousands of other EMDs can be bought and built into self-branded companies that have similar brand recognition as a branded company like Catster. If a local pet shop with big aspirations buys Cats.com and invests significant time and expense into building a helpful portal that people benefit from visiting, wouldn’t Google want to reward its efforts with a strong ranking, allowing it to compete with larger brands like Petco or PetSmart? Isn’t that one of the best things about the Internet?
Many domain investors (like myself) purchase and value domain names based on the potential for brand development, weighing that higher than current traffic / revenue. I didn’t buy DogWalker.com because I thought I could game a search engine, but rather because it’s easy to remember and I saw the potential it had to become a brand in and of itself.
As I mentioned, I do think that longer tail and nonsensical domain names with keywords will suffer. For instance, a name like Best-Car-Insurance-Quotes.info, which wouldn’t make for a good brand, shouldn’t get ranked higher in Google simply because the owner bought a name with keywords in it. Similarly, a nonsensical domain name like QuotesInsuranceCar.com should not get any EMD bonus simply because the name has a random assortment of meaningful keywords.
I do think Google’s algorithm change impacting keyword domain names will be felt by some. From my perspective, it’s likely that the biggest impact will be felt by domain registrars, since there will be far less incentive for someone to register long tail and nonsensical keyword domain names.
I happen to think that EMDs can be easily made into brands and that there is quite a bit of difference between a EMD and a keyword domain name, and Google is smart enough to know the difference.
**For my DogWalker.com site, it received around 100 visits/month before development about 16 months ago. Today, traffic is around 10,000 visits a month with 20-25% of it being direct navigation. To me, this indicates that people have learned about the brand and visit DogWalker.com in lieu of a search engine.
Google Unleashes “Revenge of the Niche Publishers“
Though it’s gone largely unnoticed in the domain industry, a Google algorithm update announced today may just be the best news the domain industry has heard in years. A first step towards ending the long reign of the “MegaSite”, content factories churning out endless supplies of content and ranking solely by the size and authority of their domain.
Or, it may just be another PR move from a search behemoth increasingly underfire for the declining quality of their results. Only time and detailed analysis of the results will tell.
So why should domain investors care about Google changes?
Since ~2007 Big G’s never-ending quest to fight spam has increasingly emphasized Site Authority ie, how big and well-linked a website is. Eric Schmidt famously stated that “[big] brands are how you sort out the cesspool” of the internet.
The unsurprising result of an emphasis on Site Authority was the rise of MegaSites like eHow, AssociatedContent, and About.com, where non-expert writers could make it to the top of the search results not because of their knowledge or the quality of their content, but because of the power of the host domain.
For those with multiple domains, 1+1+1 = 2. Three articles posted on 3 niche sites are worth far less than 3 articles posted on one mega site. The more domains you have, the bleaker the picture.
Now, with the Farmer Update, the pendulum may finally be swinging back in the other direction.
The domain industry needs this change. We need expert bloggers, mom-and-pop businesses, and niche publishers to be able to compete successfully in the search results, on their own domains. If they can’t, they’ll shift resources to social media platforms and hosted content solutions like article marketing rather than spending a lot on a domain for a site that nobody visits.
And finally, domainers increasingly are niche publishers. For those learning scalable domain development, targeted search traffic is an increasingly necessary replacement for declining parking revenues.
As of today, that goal may have just become a little bit easier.
===== Matt Bentley is a niche publisher, domain investor, former CEO of Sedo.com, and founder of BetterSEO.com, a stealth-phase content analytics startup.
I was looking through the Home Depot website today, and I saw something that I think is a bit strange, and I wanted to see what you think about it: Google Adsense advertising blocks on HomeDepot.com.
I was shopping for a bathroom vanity at Home Depot, and I saw a link to PlazaGallery.com, which is a competing website/company. Why would Home Depot want to make a tiny fraction of the revenue for my click than they would if they would sell me a full vanity, sink and faucet?
I monetize some of my smaller website with Adsense, especially the sites that don’t have direct advertiser relationships and don’t offer products for sale. I like the flexibility of Adsense, and I appreciate the fact that I can make money on some of my sites without actually having to sell anything.
I’ve always been taught that it doesn’t make much sense to send potential customers to a competitor for a fraction of the revenue that you could make from a sale. For instance, if I was selling $100 sneakers with a 30% profit margin, it wouldn’t make sense to have Adsense where I could get paid $.50 for a click, while sending customers who want to buy from me right to my competitors who could make a lot more money and gain a new customer.
I understand that their site has millions of visits, and they probably have a significant revenue stream with Adsense monetization, but it strikes me as odd, when the Home Depot has such a huge selection of products.
Yesterday evening, I received a Gmail chat message from someone I didn’t know asking why I requested to add him to his Gmail chat list. I didn’t recognize his email address, and I certainly hadn’t requested someone to be added to Gmail chat since I hardly ever use it.
I assumed it was another domain investor, so I did a quick Google search for the email address of the person who contacted me, and it turns out that the email address is the Whois address on file for someone with whom I was emailing about domain names last week.
I didn’t know why Google did this automatically, but when I looked in my Gmail settings, I noticed that this option was checked off: “Automatically allow people I communicate with often to chat with me and see when I’m online.”
If you are a frequent Gmail user and don’t want to weird people out by having Google request inclusion on their chat list, you should select this option: “Only allow people that I’ve explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I’m online.”
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