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Quick Tip of the Day: Direct Advertisers

Elliot Silver
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11

Whether you are a domain owner or a web developer, the best advertising deals are usually direct deals with advertisers. In many cases affiliate relationships pay more, but for the sake of this post, I will focus on direct advertising deals since that is guaranteed revenue.

The first thing you need to do is obviously build a website on your great domain name. Once you have your site with unique content, add some Adsense blocks on your site. I generally recommend waiting until you are receiving search engine traffic before doing this to make certain that Google and Bing will see that you don’t have a “spammy” site with the sole objective of monetizing the traffic. I don’t have quantifiable evidence, but I’ve been told they may rank these sites lower.

Once your Adsense blocks are showing relevant advertising, you should make note of all of the advertisers whose ads are showing on your site. Make sure you have both text and graphic banners, as some advertisers might choose one over the other. You should also contact friends and colleagues in different areas of the country and ask them to email you those advertisers as well, in the event that there is some geo targeted advertising.

I would then do some research on the advertisers, and contact the companies who most likely have the smaller marketing department, allowing you to get directly in touch with the decision maker. Let them know they are currently advertising on your site via Google, and you would be willing to give them great space on your site. You might even offer exclusivity if you can make it worth your while financially.

Do some research to estimate what they are paying (using Adwords) and offer them a compelling deal. You might also want to keep at least one Adsense text block so you can keep an eye on new advertisers.

If you can make a good argument about why an advertiser should be advertising on your website, you just might score a great deal.

As an FYI, you don’t necessarily need to install Adsense on your site, as you can do the same thing simply by searching Google, although you won’t see banner advertisers.

Use Your Photos At Parked.com

Elliot Silver
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Lucy

I believe other parking companies may allow you to use your own photographs on your landing pages, but I had never tried it out until a couple of days ago when I used a photo of my dog with a parked domain name.

I decided to park one of my dog-related domain names with Parked.com. I didn’t think the Dachshund they had on the “dog” template was cute, and I wanted to replace it with my a picture of my Puggle, Lucy. I took a photo my wife had taken and cut it down to the required dimensions. Because the file size was too large, I used a free jpg editor (found at a domain name I previously sold) to cut down the file size.

I then edited my domain name’s theme details, including the landing page image and the theme color. I uploaded the photo of my dog, and within seconds, she was the star of the landing page. It was simple to add Lucy’s photo to this domain name, and it would be simple to change images in any domain name you have parked with Parked.com.

Lucy Sleeping

IMG_0987

Bloggers Now Held to Higher Standard by FTC

Elliot Silver
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3

The US government’s Federal Trade Commission has changed the guidelines for bloggers (and celebrities) who write paid reviews or offer endorsements, and I think this is a very good thing for people who read blogs. Bloggers now must reveal whether they were compensated for a product or service review found on their website, which is similar to disclosures companies need to make in advertisements. If they fail to do so, they could receive significant fines.

According to the Federal Trade Commission’s revised Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.

I can’t recall a time when I wrote a paid review on behalf of a company, although I have turned down several requests. On occasion, a company will offer services (development services for example) in exchange for a mention on my blog, but I generally refrain from providing any opinion in those posts.

When I do provide an opinion, it is based on my actual experience rather than simply writing a glowing report in exchange for a fee. My blogging goal has always been to be helpful to others, and if there’s ever a time when something is written and I am compensated, I will certainly disclose it to you. I also want to add that when a person or company does exceptional work or goes above and beyond on a project for me, I want to let people know about it.

60 Minutes is Educational for Domain Investors

Elliot Silver
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14

60 MinutesI love watching television shows like 60 Minutes and 20/20 because I always seem to learn something. Frequently, what I learn has nothing to do with the Internet or domain names, but on occasion, it can help with my domain investment business.

Yesterday evening, after watching football and while waiting for a food delivery, I tuned in to 60 Minutes. After the lead in for the story about Marc Dreier and his Ponzi scheme, there was another lead in for a story about coal ash and how coal ash pollution has caused major problems for a town in Tennessee. Additionally, there are other areas that may face problems related to coal ash.

One thing that Leslie Stahl mentioned in the preview was that “there are no federal regulations for coal ash disposal which is dumped in hundreds of sites all over the country.” Later on, she said that coal ash is regulated by individual states, but the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to rule on whether federal regulations for coal ash are needed by December. Some people think coal ash disposal is necessary (despite the potential $13 billion cost) while others say coal ash recycling is the most economic way to deal with this problem, which hasn’t been determined to be an official hazard yet.

To me, after seeing this segment I believe that “coal ash disposal” or “coal ash recycling” will become big business opportunities. As a domain investor, this leads me to a business opportunity, and I registered CoalAshDisposal.com and CoalAshRecycling.com. In doing some follow-up research, I think these were good purchases, and time will tell. There are over 600k results in Google for “coal ash disposal” already, but very few advertisers. I am betting that this will change if/when the government determines it to be a hazardous material that needs to be regulated similarly to asbestos.

As an aside, I am always asked about registering other extensions on speculative buys like these as well as tertiary terms (like CoalAshRecyclers.com). In my opinion, my $16 investment will pay off very well if coal ash disposal or recycling companies are mandated, and the other tertiary names will have a much less pay-off. As a result, I didn’t feel the need to spend additional speculative money.

Hotmail Security Alert: Email Address Passwords Posted Online

Elliot Silver
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1

HotmailAlthough it’s not considered a “best practice” to use a free email service as the administrative or registrant contact for your domain names, I know quite a few people who do use services such as Hotmail and Gmail.

This morning, BBC News and Neowin are reporting that account and password details from about 10,000 Hotmail accounts have been posted online, and it is suspected that there could be many more accounts exposed. If a hacker or cyber thief has access to the email account connected to domain names, he could easily request a password change on the account and gain access to the associated domain names.

If you use a free email service – and even if you don’t – maybe now is a good time to change your password. You might also consider security services from domain registrars such as Name.com’s NameSafe VIP Service or Moniker’s MaxLock service, where someone needs more than simply an account password to make domain changes.

Time Warner / Road Runner Hijacking Tribune Company’s TVListings.com Typo?

Elliot Silver
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10

I am sure you’ve heard about the hypocrisy of companies like Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, and other Internet Service Providers who display an error page laden with pay per click links when a user types in a domain name that doesn’t exist. It really irks me when ISPs monetize typo domain names – even for trademarked terms, especially when some of them file UDRPs and lawsuits against companies who monetize their marks.

I was so annoyed by this practice that I opted out of the Road Runner service, so when I typo a domain name that doesn’t exist, I am suppose to be taken to an error page that says “Server Not Found.” See screenshot below of a page that doesn’t exist to see the generic error page I generally receive in Firefox (I get a similar error page with Safari, too).

Error Page

When I enter a domain name without the .com in my browser, Safari automatically enters the .com for me, and I am taken to that site if it exists or an error page similar to the one above if there is no website. With Firefox, if I enter a domain name without the .com it takes me to the website I intended, or if the page doesn’t exist, it takes me to a Google search results page. If I enter a typo domain name and there is no website, I am taken to a page that looks like the one above. I am never suppose to be taken to a Road Runner error page since I opted out of their service.

This morning, I wanted to check out television listings to see what football games would be on TV this afternoon. I was a bit lazy, so instead of entering TVListings.com, I simply entered “TVListings” into my browser, assuming I would be taken to TVListings.com, a website owned by the Tribune  Company, since Safari is suppose to add the .com for me (same thing happens in Firefox which generally takes me to the closest website). To my surprise, I was taken to a Road Runner landing page (see screenshot below and click for larger image).

TVListings

Since I have opted out of the error page service, I don’t see how it’s okay for Road Runner to take me to their landing page instead of taking me to the page I intended to visit. I know Time Warner offers cable service, which I also have, so that’s probably their motivation for doing this. However, I don’t think this is right for them to take me to a page I didn’t intend to visit. They shouldn’t have one policy for some domain names and a different policy when they have a competing website.

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