I love the snow! I think we got around 8-10″ in the City. Nothing like playing in fresh snow in Cental Park on a relaxing Sunday morning. Here’s wishing you and your family happy Sunday.
Online Adwords Campaign vs. Offline Marketing
I am still a novice when it comes to Google Adwords advertising, but I have been learning for various projects. One such project is DogWalker.com, and I have been actively spending money on keyword buys. I got some solid traffic as a result, although the cost was relatively high – somewhere between $.31 – $1.00 per visitor.Overall, the cost per click I am paying is $0.39.
This morning, I tried a more traditional approach, using offline marketing. I posted an advertisement on Craigslist asking for someone to hand out magnets in Central Park for an hour, from 8am – 9am, as dog owners can have their dogs off leash until 9am. I know people keep this type of magnet, as I have very few things on my refrigerator, but there’s a 24/7 veterinarian magnet on it. She wished the dog owners a good morning and said something to the affect of “if you ever need a dog walker, please visit DogWalker.com.”
During this hour, the person I hired handed out around 100 magnets or so. The total cost was $15, which was probably generous, since I had about 30 responses. I think I got what I paid for though because her personality was more than I expected. Anyhow, the total cost per interaction was $0.15 – over 50% less than the cost per click on Adwords.
The big differences are:
- Adwords targets people when they need a dog walker
- My Adwords campaign has not simply targeted cities where there are listings, although they should.
- Magnets have more of a lifetime when they’re put on a fridge, and the interaction lets the person know about the site.
What this means to me is that I am going to be doing more magnet hand outs in parks across the city, and I may lower my rate to $10/hour. I am also going to change my targeting on Adwords and focus on dog owners in cities where I have listings. I will also target people looking to find dog walking jobs/work in a separate campaign.
As much as we spend a lot of time online, we can’t forget traditional marketing tactics.
On a separate note, Bruce Marler had a good post about drinking and driving today… be safe this holiday season.
Responsibility of Auction Houses & Domain Registrars Regarding Legal Threats
As many of you read yesterday, the non-profit organization, Goodwill Industries International has sued the owner of Goodwill.com for alleged trademark infringement, after he won the name in a Namejet auction for north of $55k. This doesn’t come as a surprise to me at all. Case in point, one of my clients was a bidder in that auction, and when it was in the $25,000 range, he asked my opinion on the value. My reply was, “there’s a thrift shop like salvation army… could be TM risk if monetized that way.”
The surprise to me in this situation was actually what was found in the lawsuit pdf (also found on DNW). According to Goodwill Industries’ complaint, “Upon learning of the auction from Radia Holdings, Goodwill contacted the registrar of the domain name, Network Solutions, to attempt to prevent the auction from going forward, but was unsuccessful.”
Whether Network Solutions passed this information to its partner Namejet is something we probably won’t know. It also might be possible that the information may not have been sent through the appropriate channels at Network Solutions, and the issue died in the customer service queue. Whatever the case is in this situation, it bothers me that Goodwill Industries claims that Net Sol had information that would have rendered this domain name even more risky for a domain investor to monetize.
I read a post on Namepros where Snapnames VP of Engineering, Nelson Brady reached out to bidders on the JeniferLopez.com auction to inform them that Snapnames had received a notice from Jennifer Lopez’ lawyer regarding the name. Although the domain name later appeared to be registered to “domainqueue@gmail.com,” a company allegedly linked to bidder Halvarez, one has to wonder if Snapnames had or has a policy of informing bidders of potential legal threats.
As far as my client recalls, he didn’t receive any notice from Namejet while bidding on Goodwill.com. Of course one could argue that there are plenty of proper uses for Goodwill.com that would not infringe on Goodwill Industries’ trademark. Why would Namejet or other auction house risk dampening interest in an auction when there are plenty of ways it could be used without any problems? That wouldn’t make a lot of fiscal sense.
My question is this: what responsibility should a domain registrar or auction house have when they receive a legal threat for a domain name that is going to be listed for sale by them or a partner? I am sure domain registrars and domain auction houses receive legal notices all the time. They aren’t a judge or jury, so it’s probably not their place to provide legal advice, but should they make bidders aware of a potential legal threat?
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joegratz/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
Opportunity Cost of Development
I was chatting with fellow domain investor, Peter Davis, about my DogWalker.com project, and we started discussing the opportunity cost of my working on this project. Peter knows that walking my dog is part of my daily routine, so it’s not really costing me much, but it could be difficult for my blog readers to do the same type of project.
“What might seem like fun stuff you do in your daily routine would be real work to other people,” said Peter.
I absolutely agree with what he is saying here, and it is certainly something you need to consider before embarking on a project such as the one I started. My reply to Peter was that “I hope people see that if you have a hobby or are passionate about something, you can turn that passion into a business opportunity.”
Starting a business is tough – it can take a lot of time and effort to do it right, and even if you do it right, it might not be successful. If you are building a website related to something you are passionate about, it’s less like work and more pleasurable.
This is probably the primary reason why I am making little money on TropicalBirds.com, which gets close to 5,000 visitors per month, and why the project is stalled. I am not passionate about birds and really have no interest in them. It’s a domain name and website I believe someone will want to buy and better monetize, but until that time it was stay as is.
Quick Tip for Buying a Domain Based on a Revenue Multiple
People still frequently sell domain names based on PPC revenue multiples. Personally, I don’t generally buy or sell based on a revenue multiple since that number is a moving target, but in case you do, here’s a quick tip that could help.
Do a quick back-of-napkin investigation about the domain name’s current owner. See what other domain names he owns and where he parks them. If he has a number of good domain names all parked with the same company, you can probably assume he has a more favorable revenue share with the parking company than the average client – which may or may not be you.
If his revenue share happens to be 50% higher than yours, you will make much less money even if everything else is the same – exact same landing page, same layout, same parking company…etc. If you change parking companies, that number is even more of a crapshoot.
On the other hand, if you see that his landing page isn’t optimized, or if you know your revenue share is on a VIP level, you could be paying an even better revenue multiple.
Just beware, as public companies need to disclose on their forward looking statements, “past performance is not indicative of future results.” This is especially true with PPC revenue.