Name has been sold.
Secaucus.com Now for Sale
Print is Dead!
With an invitation that read, “Print is Dead,” Radar Magazine celebrated Halloween and their final issue this weekend. Elsewhere on the print-front, Men’s Vogue magazine is being folded into Women’s Vogue magazine, according to a report in Bloomberg. Additionally Portfolio magazine will be producing 10 issues instead of 12, which was also reported in Bloomberg. Portfolio, which operates online at Portfolio.com is an upscale lifestyle publication. It certainly was a smart move to acquire that fantastic domain name.
It’s a tough time to be a print publication these days. Printing costs are up, delivery costs are up over the last year, rent and real estate taxes at production facilities are up, and readership and advertising is mostly down. Many advertisers are being required to show a “real” ROI for their advertising dollars, and advertising online allows them to do this.
While a good domain name isn’t essential to being online, not having your keyword domain name can mean the loss of thousands of readers. Just from personal experience, ElliottsBlog.com, which I also own and redirect to my blog, receives a fair amount of traffic, too. This traffic would be lost if I didn’t own this alternative domain name. In the case of Portfolio, it would presumable lose traffic if the site was located on PortfolioMagazine.com, as people assume they would find it at Portfolio.com.
At this moment, there are many companies who don’t own their ideal domain name, and I bet some of them don’t even realize the amount of leaked traffic. While it might just be a few thousand unique visitors, it’s still a considerable amount since advertisers are paying based on readership. Circulation numbers (circs) have been critical to newspapers and magazines forever, so you’d think they would do a cost/benefit analysis of acquiring the generic domain name that consumers might expect to find their favorite mags.
Richmond Times-Dispatch Parent Buys Richmond.com
As reported on DNN.com late last week, Richmond.com has been purchased by Media General, parent company of Richmond Times-Dispatch and other newspapers in different medium to large markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Richmond.com receives 2.7 million monthly page views, 120,000 monthly unique visitors and an 8.8% share of the Richmond online viewing market.
Richmond.com has been one of the best examples of a non-newspaper-owned geodomain that saw huge traffic (and presumably revenue) figures because of the great content they produced. They had no newspapers to print and could focus all of their efforts into producing great, relevant articles that were important to viewers in the Richmond area. The 2.7 million page views to 120,000 unique visitors shows that people return to the site frequently, proving how important good content is.
I don’t know any details about the deal aside from what I read, but I presume the Richmond Times-Dispatch online newspaper will eventually be integrated with the domain name Richmond.com, which is certainly better than the current domain name they use, InRich.com. Media General will receive the best domain name for the Richmond area as well as a devoted audience.
I won’t preach, but this deal is exciting for someone like myself. My plan continues to revolve around making Burbank.com and Lowell.com websites that are useful and important to people who want to learn more about these cities. As revenue increases, I intend to hire reporters to expand the news offering on the sites, which will increase traffic and revenues. I hope 2009 will be a year of great growth for Burbank.com and Lowell.com, and if the last two weeks of search engine traffic for Burbank.com is indicative, it’s going to be a very good year.
TRAFFIC Down Under ICA Auction
TRAFFIC Down Under will hold a charity auction of ten premium domain names with the revenue to be donated to the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), a non-profit advocate for the domain name industry.
The auction will benefit the ICA, a grass roots organization formed to ensure domain services and owners are robustly represented in areas of great risk and importance to the global domain community.
The ICA utilizes dues and contributions to enable activities related to legislative lobbying, regulatory representation, industry public relations, legal test case support, industry publication of statistics and reports, revenue research, and market intelligence. In order for the association to continue and expand its activities, it requires the support and participation from current members and the entire professional domain name community.
We are happy to announce that the top ten domains to be auctioned off are:
LanzaroteCanaryIslands.com – Kevin J. Sinclair
CityChicks.com – Anonymous
FreeRangeFoods.com – Howard Hoffman
AudioCabinets.net – Rick Latona
CarbBlockers.com – Fabulous.com
FranchiseCompany.com – Fabulous.com
BiometricReader.com – Fabulous.com
MovingCosts.com – Fabulous.com
DisplayUnit.com – Fabulous.com
BodybuildingProducts.com – Fabulous.com
These domains are to be auctioned without reserves at the conference Gala Dinner on the 19th November. Rick Latona Auctions has also committed to donate their expertise and time to manage the charity auction.
Getting the Ax: Sidebar Links
I’ve had a few conversations with some people who are involved in SEO, and all agree to an extent that there are (well, were) too many links in my right sidebar and that could hurt my blog’s rankings and PR. The problem I have is that I find it difficult to say no when someone asks me to add them to the sidebar – especially when I know the person. A common email I receive is goes a little something like this:
“Dear Elliot,
I read your blog…. etc… I just started a blog/website/journal…etc and added a link to your blog. As a courtesy, please add a link back to whateverblogistarted.com. etc…”
Lately I haven’t been responding to these emails because my blogroll became gigantic and I don’t think it looks good or is helpful to anyone (except those who want to benefit from the “link juice”). I feel badly about it, but I also don’t think it’s fair to be asked to be added to my blog especially from a brand new blog that may die once the owner realizes how much work a blog is. I never asked anyone ever to add my blog to their blogroll, and I felt it was an honor to be added (I still do think that way).
So… after conversing with a few SEO friends, and after deciding that an overhaul of the design of my blog will be done by my developer and introduced in January (once I finish re-developing Lowell.com), I removed most of the links in my sidebar and added them to a resource page on the site with “no follow” on them. If you are pissed off or offended by this, I am sorry. I am spending less and less time reading other blogs and domain news sources because of the work I am doing on my sites, so maybe I haven’t been to your site in a while or ever.
I will admit that I do ask for link exchanges on some other sites with my geodomains. The difference though is that my geosites have long been established (even before I owned them), receive considerable type-in traffic, and have Google page rank, so it’s an even exchange or possibly better for the person that I contact.
Google Alerts Drive Website Content
Writing unique and relevant content for a blog or a website can be difficult. With the Internet, news is old minutes after it hits the most popular websites. With sites like Drudge and TMZ, a news story that is interesting will be read by thousands of people within minutes of a news aggregator posting it on their website or blog.
One way I keep my blog and websites updated is by subscribing to Google Alerts. I have key phrases that would be most relevant to my websites. Not only do I have certain keywords set as alerts, I also have key phrases in quotations. I know I won’t be the first person to post a news story, but it’s always good to have fresh content on your site.
Also, it’s important to credit the original source of the news story for a number of reasons, but most important for legal purposes and credibility. If the source isn’t generally the most reliable like CNN or NY Times, it’s important to see where they found the article, so you can investigate. To add uniqueness to the article, I recommend adding your opinion or spin of the story – what it means to you or to people who will read the article.
You might not be first to print an article or news story, but if you offer good analysis, people will still be interested in reading what you write.