October 25th, 2008 by andy
Many domainers have been trying out AEIOU.com‘s micro-site development as a way to rapidly develop some of their domains and get away from parking. As I’ve mentioned in the past, a developed site will still get the same amount of direct navigation traffic and now you’re hopefully going to be attracting some organic search traffic, as well. The cost of an AEIOU micro-site is $250 and the primary monetization option is AdSense.
I figured I’d give them a shot since I’m in the process of developing my portfolio and wanted to see if it was worth the money. We used my site about South American Vacations for the project. Check it out and let me know what you think.
**EDIT** – I’ve received several comments and emails all pretty much agreeing with my opinion that the AEIOU site just really isn’t that good. The only traffic that site has received has been either type-in or referrals from this post. So, I’m going to begin making gradual changes to improve the content, design and search traffic. The site you see is no longer the original AEIOU version.
August 20th, 2008 by andy
I was searching today for one of my recently launched mini-sites to see if it had been indexed yet and came across an interesting (at least to me) find. I found a Marchex domain ranking #1 in Google!
As many domainers know, Marchex is a big domain portfolio owner. Back in 2004, they bought Yun Ye (ultsearch ring any bells?) portfolio of more than 100,000 domains for around $155 million in cash and $9 million in stock. For a long time, they just continued to park those domains along with others they already owned or picked up along the way and earned their money monetizing off of direct navigation traffic or traffic from old links to a now-defunct site.
Marchex decided that they could make more money by providing some level of development as opposed to their old parking model. To do that, they acquired Open List in May 2006 for $13 million. The acquisition helped with content aggregation and allowed them to develop more robust sites on a large scale. The only reason I can imagine they would care to do that would be to get traffic from organic search.
By developing the sites, they reduce the number of monetizable actions the visitor can take. People go to sites looking for answers, either for specific question or general curiosities. Parked sites themselves do not provide any answers. They provide two options; forwards or back. If the parked page is properly optimized, the links people see will entice them to click forward to find their answer and that’s how parkers make money. Or the doesn’t think any of the links in front of them will answer their question and they back out and try another option. No money.
A developed site can actually answer the question or satisfy the curiosity without actually making any money. Why would a business want to do that? Well, that’s the trade many make when they want to get those juicy high organic rankings and traffic boosts.
Marchex went that route with their portfolio and it may have hurt their stock price. On May 5, 2006, MCHX was trading around 22 and today it’s 11.5. Other factors contributed to the decline, but there were many that criticized the strategic shift to development.
But today while searching for my site (which isn’t included yet), I came across one of their sites, detroitcontractjobs.com (search link)
So that works. Their traffic volume to their portfolio has to be way up but I wonder if the traffic increase makes up for the loss in revenues. If they can figure out how to monetize better, they’ll be golden.
And maybe they can get their stock back up to the $15 I paid for it long ago.
September 20th, 2007 by andy
One of the blogs that I subscribe to, DomainersGazette.com, had a post today that hit at just the right time.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday who’s looking at taking some Linux classes. I was telling him about some things that I would like to learn but just can’t find the place to learn it. Through work I’ve taken a couple of those 1 or 2 day seminars on things like Excel and Crystal, but I find them to be pretty useless. Often the scenarios used in those classes don’t lend itself to outside needs. If you can pick up one or two tidbits, you should be happy.
I can’t remember where I heard this, but if you want to add a new word to your vocabulary, you need to use it in speech three times. After that, it’s locked in. So, if you only take a one day class, a lot of those neat little things you just paid a lot of money to learn will be left behind unless you can immediately employ them.
But I digress. Peter over at Domainer’ Gazette posts about his desire to learn a bunch of new things like MySQL, PHP, Javascript, etc… I’ve been feeling the same way. I know tracking. I know SEO. I know PPC. But what I don’t know is the actual code that goes into making these things work. I wish I knew the things Peter is talking about. Just not sure where to go about learning it.
On the flipside, however, is it really necessary for me to learn those things? I have basic understanding and I know people that can handle those things for me. Are real estate developers architects, electricians and plumbers all at the same time? The key isn’t knowing it all but rather having a good team around you that can fill out the pieces you need. Would my time be better used becoming an expert at all those things or establishing relationships with those that already are experts that wish to join my projects?
