I stumbled across an interesting landing page that I want to share with you. KidsActivities.com is a domain name owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. It had previously been parked with traditional pay per click revenue generating links as well as an orange “for sale” call out at the top of the landing page. Right now, it’s almost completely different.
In place of the PPC links, Schilling has put a call to action to encourage visitors to search for domain names ending in a new gTLD extension. The main message on the page says, “KidsActivities.com This name is taken in .com, but it may be available in other extensions.” Below this message is a search bar to search for available extensions at Uniregistry, the domain registrar owned by Frank Schilling. On the top of the landing page, there is a message announcing it’s for sale, but it’s much less of a call out than the standard orange bar found on most other DNS-parked landing pages.
I reached out to Schilling to inquire about the new landing page, and he was kind enough to share some more details. “We are trying many different implementations to see what works best,” Schilling told me. “Some of these names will only make $13 a year on parking but if we sell 2 domain names during that year we can generate more revenue than parking. The return on some names is just phenomenal.”
For many names in my portfolio, I’ve gotten rid of PPC links and send the traffic to an inquiry form. I assume many people visit a domain name to see if it is available, and I make it abundantly clear that it is. For me, I would rather make it clear that the name is for sale and forego the little revenue some of the names generate.
For Schilling’s company, he may end up making more revenue if someone buys a domain name in another extension. Not only could he sell them the name from his registry, but if they build on their alternative domain name, there’s a good chance there will be traffic leakage to the .com, which could be monetized. Additionally, these people and companies may eventually feel the need to buy the .com.
Schilling let me know that losing these PPC links isn’t having an impact on his bottom line as some might expect. “Our research is showing it grows the pie it does NOT cannibalize it as some have thought,” he told me.” It’s all a part of experimentation to grow the pie. We have said for a long time that PPC rates across many verticals have gotten so low that there is more money to be made selling names themselves. That has finally happened on certain names/traffic.”
I assume this landing page may become available to people who have signed up for the Uniregistry affiliate program. I am told that affiliates will earn revenue on the initial sale as well as renewals and inbound transfers.
If I invested heavily in GTLD’s like he has I’d promote them too… One thing about GTLD’s is, you cant sit on them, if you do they end up in the grave a lot sooner.
This landing page it’s already avaiable for all. You can choose from 3 options:
– a normal landing page with ads links where you can choose to add the Uniregistry’s banner at the bottom
– a simple “for sale” landing page with an inquiry form
– this landing page with the uniregistry search bar.
Great article Elliot. The real headline is that PPC revenue trends are down and sales/lease landers will eventually be on all low to no earning domains. Just the evolution of having Google as the monopoly and the enormous hidden rake-backs that they are doing to real clicks. If only Facebook comes out with a competing product in some way to compete against Google… I would try it. Again…thank you for the great article.
When you consider how much notoriety .mobi received and how many corporations invested in them, why would anyone think these GTLD’s would have a better chance of success?, You can promote, market, advertise and pump them up as much as humanly possible, the end result will always be the same, Domainers like Frank who BTW I admire greatly, is taking a gamble because he can afford too, but for most domainers they cant afford it and the quality of the domains they register show that.
When they figure out the reasons why dot .COM is the popular TLD in existence today, only then will they stop wasting their time and money on unnecessary GTLD’s.