Internet Babel

Google are rolling out their Adsense for Domains product, initally in North America but soon to be worldwide.

What is Adsense for Domains?

This allows Adsense publishers to carry Adsense adverts on undeveloped, or parked domains – thus opening up another income stream that can be managed via your Google account.

Publishers will be able to add and manage parked domains through their Adsense account, customising (to an extent) the page appearance. The product will apparently allow you to do some analysis of stats on these domains as well. You then just have to point your Domains to Google’s nameservers and your parked Adsense domain will be up and running.

Parking

Previously, people wishing to get some revenue from undeveloped domains have had to use services such as NameDrive, Sedo, WhyPark etc. to park and monetize their domains – unless they wanted to develop and host mini-sites. These parking companies do, of course, take a percentage of all advertising revenue before it is passed on to you.

Initial Thoughts

• I believe that the standard restrictions/Terms will apply with regard to domain names/nature.
• I would imagine that Google may not pass on the ‘full’ Adsense payment when Ads are clicked on a parked domain, but will set the payout somewhere between their normal amount and what you’d get from a Parking company but that’s just a guess.
• Parking with Google almost certainly won’t make any difference to how (or if) Google indexes your domain either. 
• It doesn’t look like there will be any opportunity to mark the domain as ‘For Sale’ or to carry any other affiliate ads on the page. 

I’m not in North America so haven’t seen the product first-hand yet, but I’ll be trying a selection of my undeveloped domains on it as soon as I can – and I’ll be comparing results against what I’ve been getting at NameDrive.

What’s the Impact?

The parking companies are bound to be concerned by this development, as Google extends its reach/dominance even further – but until Google offers a range of templates/skins and keyword customisation options that can compete with what you get at NameDrive for example then they won’t be panicking to much just yet.

Time will tell if it’s going to be a good thing for Publishers. If the idea takes off then Google will almost certainly expand the feature range to make it more flexible for Publishers – but I would guess that many people only use Parking services as a ’holding’ area or use them as a test-bed for domain names to see what kind of type-in traffic they get before developing a proper site or mini-site on them.

Well – Darrin emailed me with a question, wanting to know what to do with 3 domains he owns. I thought this was a good opportunity for me to give him a few quick ideas, and also for anyone out there in Babel-Land to make any other suggestions.

Darrin has three domains, NO money and wants to try and make a go of things. So, I asked for the three domain names and below you’ll find my ‘off the top of me head’ sugestions as to what he could do with them. Bear in mind that he’s pretty new to Website development but wants to learn.

Domain 1: AffiliatedBlog [dot] com:

OK, as far as i’m concerned this is an easy one. It’s not a bad domain name – you could sell it for a few bucks of course, but the best course of action is to actually develop an Affiliate/PPC/MMO related Blog on it. Learn the Blogging trade, add some good content to it and maybe sell it on as a developed Blog after a few months, you’ll get a far better return than just selling the domain. 

It doesn’t have to cost you a packet, use one of the free hosting companies out there (but make sure it’s an ad-free one). I use 000Webhost for some of my static sites that I play with, I’m sure they’d be fine for Blog hosting as well but there’s a heap of free hosters out there.

Find a decent free theme/template and place your Google Adsense and Analytics code on the Blog. Register at BlogPremiere and DigitalPoint, give away a few sidebar ad slots, do some link exchanging and then use the Blog to learn Content development and SEO/SEM techniques. 

Domain 2: KnookAndCranny [dot] com:

This is the weakest of the three. it’s a decent sounding name but the spelling is wrong for most people (“knook and cranny” returns 1,060 Google results, “Nook and cranny” returns 535,000 so that’s bit of a no-contest).

I don’t think it’s worth parking, as that only gives results when you’ve got a type-in name, a typo or something with residual traffic. The domain itself has little value, particularly as it’s regged at Melbourne IT/Yahoo and last time I checked they didn’t do a free push.

Develop it, put a humour, video or news site on there – or perhaps use a free classified script such as Noah’s to get a service going for people clearing houses, trying to get that ‘hard to find’ item etc. again, use a free hoster. Then flip it once it’s got a bit of history.

Domain 3: GambleGive [dot] com:

I could see this doing VERY nicely but it would need some custom development. I think some kind of site where people could gamble/play games online but give a portion of the proceeds to charities would be a great thing, with a heap of potential for being picked up by Social Networking sites and possibly Merchants who you could tie up deals with.

You would probably need to partner up with someone who could help you develop the concept, and it wouldn’t be an instant earner but I reckon the idea’s got legs.

So – all in all I don’t think there are any instant money-makers in these particular domains, but I’d say:

• put something cheap and quick on KnookandCranny and try to flip it
• Build a Blog on AffiliatedBlog, learn some development/SEO techniques and sell it later (if you need some quick cash, sell the domain on DigitalPoint or NamePros)
• Find a partner to develop the GambleGive concept with

Like I said, these are my initial thoughts on the list. I may come up with some others, but I’d also like anyone reading this to shout out if they have ideas and suggestions to help Darrin out.

Cheers
Dave

A few months back, Google announced that they would be releasing a product that would allow easy integration of Social Networking features within websites and Blogs.

As of 4th December the Beta release of FriendConnect has been unveiled – and Google are accepting signups (to go on a wait-List i believe) for a phased roll out of the product.

What is FriendConnect?

Using OpenID, FriendConnect will allow you to add a range of social interactivity tools onto your website, in just the same way that you ad Adsense or analytics code. This will allow people to sign-up as Members of your site, post messages, reviews and ratings plus expected features such as sharing of apps, videos and pictures. 

Benefits and How-To:

Members wil also be able to invite others to join, so the potential for spreading the word about your site is obvious. There may also be tools to allow easy communication between Friend Connect and other social apps such as Facebook and Hi5.

As with other Google tools, you will need to sign up under your Google account and apply to join the program, but after that it seems that adding the Social features to your site really will be just the same as adsense – i.e. generating and pasting the required code into your site/template.

FriendConnect will of course be competing against a number of established players, but I’d be very surprised if they don’t grab a large chunk of the market with this – and they will almost certainly be adding a host of media and application type features into it.

It certainly opens up new possiblilities for smaller sites and new developers who would like to integrate social/membership type features into their sites.

Here’s a handy little video about Google Friend Connect (from CampFire one):

Of course, Facebook have also launched a Friend Connect tool so let battle commence

See more at: http://www.google.com/friendconnect

Here’s a nice little idea for maybe getting a different audience to come to your Blog or Website.

Plenty of News and Newspaper Websites have areas where you can comment on news, but there are a few that actually let you have your own Blog as well.

For example, the Telegraph and the Independent (both are respected and big readership UK Newspapers) have Blog areas where you can sign up and create your own Blog area.

Of course, you can’t carry adverts on there, but you can put your URL in your Profile.

More importantly, you can Post (and comment on other readers’ Blogs) about a massively wide range of subjects – and that means that you can incorporate links back to your desired Website/Post as part of that content.

Off the top of my head I can see a number of good things about this:

• It’s another avenue for you to post content and to drive people to your site
• It exposes you to a new and diverse readership – a large proportion of whom are interested in current affairs, technology, politics, finance etc but perhaps wouldn’t normally fall in your ‘target’ audience
• You get some neat backlinks, most likely from a site with some good authority
• With the telegraph, you get a neat little ‘my.telegraph.co.uk/yourname’ URL for your Blog The independent service is offered via LiveJournal 
• It is of course free
• You can post about your selected subject matter, outside of the strict confines of your own Blog, and direct any links back to specific landing pages/posts
• As Newspapers have a fairly loyal readership, I would guess that by signing up for Blogs at a number of Newspaper sites, you would not be getting too much overlap in your audience 

I haven’t really seen anyone talk about this much before, although the Blogs themselves are very popular with the Newspaper online readership. I seriously think these Blogs have some potential to open your material up to a new audience and to drive some trafic your way. 

The Telegraph Blog area can be found here:
http://www.my.telegraph.co.uk/

The Independent Blog area is here:
http://www.livejournal.com/integration/independent/learnmore.bml

There are almost certainly others out there, but these are the two I wanted to highlight for the purposes of this post. I think it’s worth a try.

Thanks
Dave