If you don’t follow Rick Schwartz (Domain King) on Twitter, you should. I don’t agree with everything he says nor do I always agree with his approach to the business of domain investing, but there is no doubt that he is one of the most successful domain investors of all time. The way he operated his business over the years has put him in a position today that allows him to do whatever he wants. He maintains an exceptional domain name portfolio, and it continues to pay dividends for him.
Late last week, Rick replied to someone in a tweet and revealed that he has made $30 million in revenue via PPC parking. See the tweet for yourself:
Not really.
It’s really hard to convince a guy like me that has made $30 MILLION on PPC and also has landing pages and all types of content and experiments to change what works and STILL pays the bills.
Maybe you need to look harder at what I am doing. My path works better 🤠
— Rick Schwartz Domain👑King® (@DomainKing) May 17, 2019
I could not begin to speculate where that stands compared to other portfolio owners, but that is a lot of money from domain name parking.
Rick was probably one of the first people to add PPC links to his domain names. When Rick started out and up until maybe 10 years ago (give or take), domain name parking was a great source of income for domain name investors. PPC revenue is not close to what it once was, but I am sure there are people who still make a nice income from their parked domain names.
I have known that some people like Rick made a lot of money from PPC revenue, but I couldn’t have accurately guessed just how much that was.
in the 90’s super premium adult domain names were a goldmine. since the advent of free porn… not so much. that’s why he took a lowball offer of 8.8 million for porno.com. rick knows his shit.
The lowball offer was actually around $50k.
50k is what he paid for it.
Few people have done better but none with the efficiency of Rick. What sets Rick apart is he is a one person show, no partners, no operational costs than renewing domains. For most others that 30M really means they would need 100M. Operations, partnerships, etc. Not Rick.
Adult played a major part for Rick. If it wasn’t for adult traffic pre 2000, I estimate it would have bee half of that 30M. Rick can correct me if I’m wrong.
He had already revealed this kind of info before in one form or another, like over at his blog, so some of us have known for a while.
Some of his domains are still making ppc revenue to a degree many would consider significant under the present circumstances.
You should tell me what you disagree with regarding Rick, and I’ll tell you if you are right.
fake news. ..he lost everything in domaining similar to most domainers. he only had a few big sales ,but lost whatever he earned in buying domains and dying on wine when it comes to renewals.
No fake news except for your comment.
Question everything… and take with a grain of salt. I’ve heard property.com never did sell. Not sure if this is true or not, as I never did any further digging. No doubt that Rick is a huge success but I take sums like this with a grain of salt.
He sold it for cash and equity in 2008. They had a failed project in 2011. He now owns it again.
Did you read his blog or website? Maybe you want to do some further digging before writing a comment with whatever pops in your head?
Yeah, I apologize…to Rick foremost. I must had a Mandela-effect of what I read back then for Property.com. I’m a schizo and try to earn an buck extra through domaining.
“Must have had”… I did further digging for this one. 🙂
I need to ask this what PPC did he use ?
Interesting thread guys. Looking over your shoulders.
Domain Parking became a thing in 2002 with Overture and Yahoo. There was no ppc in the mid ‘90s. It peaked around late 2007. But let’s say it worked 10 years. $3m each year. $250k per month. Adult traffic was always very low PPC and had low CTR so you’d need around 3-4 million clicks per month, which means roughly 10x that amount in monthly visitors. Not possible imo.
I got online in the second half of 90s and I remember this thing some people were doing – “web surfing”, visiting sites for money, not sure if they were supposed to be clicking on ads or not, but that was a paid job (some of the kids I knew were doing that to pay for their internet access and even PC upgrades).
I remember the same thing. It was a “paid surfing” if you want to call it like that. Back then (1994-1997 Internet was on “cost per minute” and if you installed one of their tools if would show ads while you were browsing and they would also pay you per minute. I think I paid around $3 an hour and these guys paid you $1,50 per hour. No surprise that they all went under, lol.
It would be very interesting to know how much of that revenue was prior to the Google Panda Update of 23 February, 2011.
SearchEngineJournal reported that Google posted the following in a blog the next day (excerpt):
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
I don’t think parked domains ranked pre-Panda update (unless they recently were turned into parking mode from former content). AFAIK Panda tackled made-for-adsense sites that had thin “pretend” content instead of no content at all.
“Domain Parking became a thing in 2002 with Overture and Yahoo. There was no ppc in the mid ‘90s”
Overture was around paying for traffic in 1999 and maybe earlier, 7Search too. People used to get paid via direct deals with those companies. Prior to that Rick and others had direct deals. Rick’s fortunes came from a direct deal with Dean Shannon, the king of adult during those days.
#DomainHistory
Thank for the insight!
You are right, Overture started with their PPC model in late 1999 (back then they were called goto.com, Adwords started in October of 2000.
There were also quite a few others paying via private deals back then (pre-2000) as well, and not only in adult. During the dot com bubble, mainstream companies (like About.com) would pay a flat fee per click for traffic.
Rick made most money on Porn clicks. That revenue is pretty much dead now. The Porn King. He did sell some generic domains as well. Career is 20 years dead.
If you want to make your money in porn, then follow Rick Schwartz. Everything he says and does is funded by porn. And your mother and sister will be proud of you.
He could not start today with a reasonable amount of cash and do what he did again without buying porn names.
Call a spade a spade. Taking advice from him is like taking business advice from the millionaire who inherited the business from his parents who worked their butts off. Not exactly, because your parents likely worked hard, didn’t degrade women, and worked in an ethical industry. But similar.
There is no coercion or dishonesty in legal porn, Tonya, and many of the actresses choose that form of employment over jobs which are low-paying, long-hour, and/or have disrespectful bosses. On the other hand, you have anonymously libeled someone, saying he has “degraded” women without presenting any evidence of such whatsoever. Google is showing the definition of degrade as “treat or regard (someone) with contempt or disrespect,” so who has been degrading?
Exactly John she or he is the typical jealous no nothing troll.
You have never experienced a “smile” from a former porn actress in her mid 40s and even 35s and was in the porn game for several years. Most adults wise up with age and many pornstars end up shattered inside when older.
I’m aware of the perils of sex work, John, but many of the women have serious problems before they start – which is one reason they choose that occupation – and would have had difficult lives anyway. I once ordered an escort from a Las Vegas agency and she was such a nice person that I became devoted to helping her get out. I offered to support her without her having to do anything, which she understably didn’t trust, so I simply gave her $100,000 to help her get on her feet. Nevertheless she wouldn’t quit. I spent three months trying to help her, until I was sure she wasn’t being coerced.
In any case, if you want to help porn actresses don’t criticize the industry (or people who do business with it, i.e. by forwarding domain traffic) as it’s providing them with an option which, for all you know, may be their best option. You’re like the people who criticize payday lenders and want to ban payday loans (based, for the most part, on religious ideas, i.e. the “sin” of usury or relatively high interest rates, which neglects the fact that the significance of the APR is directly proportional to the term of the loan), despite the fact that most people who have taken out a payday loan want them to continue to be available. You pride yourselves on being one of the good guys, trying to help the “oppressed,” when in fact you’re doing them more harm than good.
Sure he couldn’t. What have you done in the biz? Oh yeah nothing. Was candy a porn site? Hoe about property? Do you believe every woman is opposed to porn? Take your close minded opinions and leave them at the door. Or better yet try making a domain sale
“Taking advice from him is like taking business advice from the millionaire who inherited the business from his parents who worked their butts off.”
What does that mean? If someone works hard for years doing a job you don’t like it’s just like someone who got free money from their parents? Why, because you don’t like the type of work?
As far as your comments about porn, they sound very 1950s. Women enjoy porn just as much as men today. You’re shaming and degrading women because they make a choice to do a job you don’t like.
Tonya – that is absurd.
Rick started his business from scratch and was one of the first people to recognize the value of domain names and begin to monetize them. He was not handed anything.
Even when Rick found domain names, he understood the value they would have in the long-term. He didn’t sell them in the short term to make a small profit. He made a lot of money and still holds a valuable portfolio.
we made more with just hitfarm parking.
We were one of the first goto parking partners and later with Google. Overall we’ve done way more biz than Rick. There is at least 10 other domainers that have done better than Rick. With that said, he’s the first one to call himself Domain King and he gets to keep that title.
I remember when GoTo used to actually show how much the placement cost even to those (like me) who were just using it for personal search. Always seemed a bit odd.
My offer still stands.
I always make a comment about Rick my admiration as I see the same the future of the domain market and over the years he has amply demonstrated it.
Happy Day. Jose.
Apologies I repeat comment by mistake in spelling:
I always make a comment about Rick my admiration as he sees himself the future of the domain market and over the years he has amply demonstrated it.
Happy Day. Jose.
Yeah, old news. You can’t compare to Rick. That money was made in the early days. Today I doubt if he makes even 1% of that per year. Also Rick had the vision and intelligence to make great deals and he mainly sits down waiting for a big fish to buy one of his few thousand domains. Very difficult to replicate.
Rick means that he made that kind of money, millions, in parking revenue in the Past. No one is raking it in on parking these days. I still make some on parking, but nothing like the Old Days.