Web Development

When I created one of my websites, I only had two types of advertisements on the site – Adsense and an internal banner. I still use Adsense on various parts of the site, but the RPC has been pretty low, so I sought out other monetization options.

After searching for something more niche than the big affiliate programs (never had much luck with those aside from a $30 Amazon payment no and again), I found a lesser known affiliate program, applied to it, and was approved. After implementing this program on the site, I saw a significant revenue lift (several hundred dollars a month).

To find appropriate affiliate programs, a publisher would locate sites like his own and then check out the affiliate programs behind the products or programs the other site owners advertised. The other option is to search through affiliate program offerings at companies like Linkshare, Commission Junction, Clickbank, Pepperjam and others.

One of the main problems with the big affiliate companies is that the programs with the higher RPCs have become overexposed, and it seems like everyone in a particular vertical is using the same ecact banners and offers. Even the best ads in their arsenal soon lose their pull, and it is difficult to earn revenue.

Niche affiliate programs may be a better option for publishers like myself. They often bait their programs with higher payouts and better customer incentives like coupon codes. In addition, many are more open to creative advertising banners and links.  A niche affiliate program will likely give better support to the publisher and treat them better, too.

It takes detective work to find the best programs, but it’s often worth the effort. Many of them are found with lesser known brands and newer companies to the market. If you have a website in a unique market, you should investigate all of your options. Adsense is great, as are the big affiliate programs because consumers recognize them. However, you might generate more revenue with a nice affiliate program.

At the end of April, I had an auction of sorts on my blog to benefit the Ronald McDonald House, an organization that helps children with cancer and their families. I auctioned off the “gutter space” in my blog for 48 hours, with all proceeds benefitting RMH.

I had no idea about the value of this extra space, but a company called  Lovelogo.com placed the winning bid, and all funds are being donated to the Ronald McDonald House.  I wasn’t familiar with  Lovelogo.com, so I asked them to share some information about the company:

Lovelogo.com is a marketplace where you can buy a domain and original logo for one low cost, quickly and easily. Although we are aimed towards startups, we understand that  domainers make up the largest section of the domain buying industry and so as an introduction we are offering for one week a $25 cash back offer. Any $99 purchase  will receive a $25 refund into their Paypal account.Also all of our $999 domains will be reduced to $899 (the adjustment will be made via Escrow).

I want to thank Lovelogo.com for winning the auction and supporting one of my favorite organizations. I also want to thank Tia Wood for helping me change the gutter graphic at no cost.

It’s a lazy Sunday, so here’s an update on some mini sites I built (or had built) in 2009-2011. I have not really been building them anymore because the revenue is low and I would rather focus on my current projects if I am going to work on development.

I sold a few of the domain names on which I built mini sites in the last year, so I won’t include those below (AthensVacations.com, ParabolicSkis.com, JerusalemVacations.com…etc). The websites were not included in the deals, although the buyers likely gave some consideration to the fact that they were listed in Google. I don’t know how much value that is, but that is my assumption.

As of now, I really only track six of these sites: CabCompanies.com, HousekeepingService.com, BullRidingHelmet.com, HockeyGoalieHelmet.com, TobagoVacations.com, and SlipperyElm.com. The first two sites aren’t exactly mini sites because they have hundreds of pages of data-driven content, but I don’t consider them full development projects either.

Here are the earnings for each of these sites in 2011 and 2012 YTD:

• CabCompanies.com – 2011: $692
• CabCompanies.com – 2012 YTD: $93
• HousekeepingService.com    – 2011: $38 (built at end of year)
• HousekeepingService.com    – 2012 YTD: $69
• TobagoVacations.com – 2011: $74
• TobagoVacations.com – 2012 YTD: $19
• 2 Helmet names (use the same Adsense code)    – 2011: $162
• 2 Helmet names (use the same Adsense code)    – 2012 YTD: $31
• SlipperyElm.com    – 2011 earnings: $234
• SlipperyElm.com    – 2012 YTD: $134

I received an email from Sean Sullivan, announcing his company’s launch of BankAds.com, a managed solution for banking and credit card domain names. According to Sullivan, while the industry standard offering is a 70/30 or 60/40 revenue split, BankAds.com revenue share is “well above it.”

I want to share the details of this with you because it looks like it could benefit owners of these types of domain names (I don’t have any, and I have not had the opportunity to personally test it out).

From the looks of it, domain owners don’t have to do much to get their sites launched aside from changing the DNS, which is the same as parking. The gist of these landing pages is to compare credit cards or banking solutions and allow visitors to easily apply for the card/bank account.

The company has two dozen designs, and I am told they do a considerable amount of split testing to keep and tweak the designs with the highest CTR and RPM. In my opinion, the designs are pretty sleek.  There are also widgets available for already developed websites.

From my perspective, one thing to keep in mind is that it’s important for these domain names to receive type-in traffic to be effective (or plan on doing marketing to drive traffic). Since it doesn’t appear that these websites have unique, one-of-a-kind content, they presumably won’t rank well in search engines, especially for competitive credit card and banking terms. Without the search traffic, you’re left with type-in traffic or traffic that is acquired by other means.

Sullivan mentioned something that appears to be unique to this program:

“One other feature is that is exclusive to our solution is that should any domain that is monetized with BankAds get hit with a C&D or UDRP notice our in house counsel will defend the domain owner free of charge. Our attorney has successfully defended a number of major domain owners. We honestly don’t anticipate UDRP being an issue at all, as we’re not going to take on TM domains within our solution.  But we all well know, there are companies and individuals out there who will try to take domains unjustly.  So having a great attorney ready to defend a domain when necessary is something that I’m sure will give peace of mind to some of our clients. “

You can have a look at some of the websites that are currently using BankAds.com for monetization:

• BestCreditCardForMiles.com
• GasCreditCards.co
• BestCreditCardForBadCredit.com
• GoldCard.com

Again, I have not tried out BankAds.com and was not paid or compensated in any way to post this. If you try it out, please think about posting your results here to let others know about your experience.