March 31st, 2008 by andy
So, Yahoo created a new portal/channel/whatever focused on women age 25-54. It’s called Shine. You can reach it at shine.yahoo.com.
But not Shine.com
Let me get this straight…. You pick some abstract word as a title. Hey, I give you props for not going after something like Fasnozzle. Good job there. But why Shine? Anyway, so that’s it. But you pick a term that you don’t even own the domain for? Really???
I shake my head in complete disbelief.
Here’s the news link – http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006722.html
February 5th, 2008 by andy
One thing that drives me crazy about industry blogs is that there are so many people saying the exact same thing over and over again. You can usually find one person will post something of interest and then 100 or so other people who subscribe to that original blog will post pretty much the same thing. Why??? Why do you do this? If you follow certain industries, then you have a bunch of industry blogs in your reader. Inevitably you end up with 101 posts about 1 thing. It’s just so circular because the people that read the blog with the unoriginal post and just wrote about it on their blog just also saw it on all the other blogs.
So, industry bloggy blogger guy, if you get the urge to regurge what you’ve read on someone else’s industry blog thinking you’re going to enlighten new people and get credit for being such an original thinker…. just stop.
I try to prevent topic overlap with my blogroll to spare people. If I catch it happening, I merely pull out the source that seems to be the follower. My roll changes fairly regularly as I move up the chain to credible forward thinkers.
I try not repost stuff that you can just as easily read somewhere else. It may result in me not following the ‘post every day’ mantra, but what I do post I try to make original.
Sorry, guess I’m still just grumpy about the Pats.
January 4th, 2008 by andy
Having been involved in internet marketing since 1997, I’ve traveled far and wide online and participated in many different communities and forums as I learn different facets of the trade. There’s always one general common theme: the other guy is cheating!
On search engine forums you read a lot about how Yahoo and Google (mostly Yahoo) are cheating advertisers out of their PPC dollars by allowing rampant click fraud through their distribution network.
On domainer boards, you can always find people challenging the parking companies because they’re either having their accounts terminated or the parking company is fudging the numbers and keeping an ever-growing share for themselves. Or it’s Yahoo and Google who are keeping the share.
On affiliate marketing focused discussion boards you can find lots of posts about how various affiliate programs screw affiliates paying paltry commissions or by letting them run up huge commissions and then terminating the account right before it’s time to pay the affiliate but also divulging some of the shady methods in which they go about generating traffic and making sales which means the affiliate program managers need to pay small commissions to hedge against all the junk that comes their way.
Put it all together and what do you get? A general state of distrust. It’s the OTHER guy that’s always doing the cheating! Kind of sad, really. Makes the internet look sleazy and unprofessional. But, when you have such a low barrier to entry, you attract all types.
December 13th, 2007 by andy
Today I want to continue what I started into yesterday. That is, the pros and cons of domain parking and domain development.
As I mentioned yesterday, one of the main advantages of parking is that you really don’t have to do much at all. If it gets type-in traffic, the money pretty much happens. Sure, there might be some optimization of keywords, but it’s a pretty simple process. For those lucky few that own those really powerful domains, this works just fine.
For the rest of us that have domains that are good but not great, development may be a better option.
When you park a domain and depend solely upon type-in traffic, you’re essentially limiting the ways that somebody gets to your site. I call this the Keyhole Effect. That one way, direct navigation, is the only way you’re going to see any traffic. And it’s only that one little phrase. Typo on that one phrase? That’s a lost visitor.
If you DEVELOP that domain, you unlock the doors of multiple traffic points. Search, link referrals, longtail, personal referrals, etc…
One reason to park is that you get that relationship with Google and Yahoo for high value clicks. If you load in Adsense or YPN, those are clicks that tend to be lower value because a lot of advertisers either lower their bids or opt out of that network entirely. As an advertiser, it’s certainly what I’ve done as my ROI through those channels are much lower.
As a domain owner/publisher I want to monetize my traffic as easily as possible. I prefer PPC because all I have to do is deliver the traffic. The visitor from my site clicks the link and is gone. I’ve done my job, now pay me. If I’m monetizing through some sort of inquiry/lead/purchase based affiliate program, I have to rely on the program manager to effectively convert the traffic I send them. I lose enough sleep over traffic as it is. I don’t really want to be worried on downstream conversions that I’m not involved with.
So, what I’m getting at is that you should develop if you think you can get traffic from from those other sources. If you’re only going to a half-a$$ed development don’t plan on getting any natural search rankings, any quality directory listings and friendly or linking referrals. You will be giving up the cleanest and easiest monetization. But if you do a good development job, you will easily surpass what you would have made from just parking.
October 18th, 2007 by andy
I’m sitting here watching the Wiggles with my 12 month old. Not a bad show, actually. I’m partial to Jack’s Big Music Show or the Upside Down Show.
But what I’m thinking about right now is how I recently did a program search on my Tivo for all available sitcoms and came up empty handed. I have how many hundreds of channels that are on 24 hours a day? Sure sure, there is a lot of ‘paid programming’ on at odd hours. But not one single channel has Alf? Diffrent Stroke? Charles in Charge? Growing Pains? Who’s the Boss? C’MON!!! No old Miami Vice or Magnum PI?
This seems to be the perfect web play. Can’t somebody license up with all the old tv shows to stream them on the web? I mean, how expensive could CHiPs be right now?
