Internet Babel

Google have announced the pending (although as yet undated) lauch of their ‘Wave’ product/platform.

What is Wave?

Well – to quote from Google:

A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

It is going to be in developer preview for a while, so expect some changes to occur, but looks like it’s going to be big and open-source with a full developer API and toolkits to develop your own apps based on the Wave protocol.

I don’t suppose Big G will be buying Twitter now.

Full details at the Official Google Blog

The results of a recent (admittedly small scale but well presented) experiment suggest that an effective way to boost a PPC ad campaign is to acquire relevant on-target generic names to enhance or enforce the ads and get more traffic from them.

The guys at Memorable Domains ran a study which showed that: “All other things being equal (same headline, same ad copy, same bids, same landing page etc.) the ads that used an on-topic generic domain name received up to twice the clicks that ads using a “coined” non-generic domain name did”.

Full details of the experiment and the results obtained can be found in the report at http://www.memorabledomains.co.uk/ppcanalysis.pdf

The results are something that many of us might have guessed at, but it’s nice to see some specific figures to back-up that intuition. Part of the reason could be down an increased ‘trust’ by the visitor in the generic sounding domain name, but the report proposes some more specific reasons, and certainly gives some food for thought.

Read the report – it’s only a few pages long. I hope it will encourage you to do some experimentation of your own with generic names.

Thanks to Memorable Domains for permission to post about this.

I thought I’d let you know about this excellent interview on BruceMarler.com with Domainer Aron Meystedt.

http://brucemarler.com/exclusive-interview-with-xfcom-founder-and-professional-domainer-aron-meystedt/

It’s a informative piece which could provide a bit of inspiration for new and experienced domainers. Many of the points Aron makes relate to areas that have been discussed here before, such as:

• Development vs Parking
• Strategies for getting into domaining
• Decline in PPC
• .com vs CCTLDs

All in all, a nice interview and well worth a read. Thanks to Bruce for publishing it.

Recent figures show that the 2008 online advertising spend in the US showed an increase of over 10% on 2007, despite the Financial Crisis that was beginning to take hold in the latter part of the year.

2008 US revenue (MOT Worldwide, just the US) came to a record $23.4 billion, surpassing 2007’s record of $21.2 billion by 10.6 percent.

The figures indicate a continuing shift from traditional to online modes of advertising, and a realisation that online provides a more targeted and measurable approach, which can be important when every advertsing dollar needs to be accounted for.

Search related advertising kept its position as the main player, accounting for almost half of the total spend, with an almost 20% increase over 2007. ‘Direct’ advertsing is also growing.

The largest vertical markets were, as in 2007, retail, financial services, computing and automotive.

The full article can be read  here:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/30/online-ad-revenue-up-106
Some points that arise from this article:

• Given that Search showed such a healthy increase in spend, this didn’t seem to be reflected in Adsense publisher’s incomes. This is anecdotal evidence of course, and there are always some publishers/sites who can show good growth but from looking around on the forums it certainly seems that the increase didn’t generally make it through to Adsense publishers’s wallets.
• It could well be that the increased spend was spread more thinly over the ever increasing amount of Web Real Estate, or inventory. More sites, more advertsing spots, more spend but distributed across an ever increasing pool of publishers.
• If that is the case, then will there be a ’saturation point’ where the amount of available Web Inventory becomes just too big? Will the growth in advertising outstrip the growth in available traffic, and returns start to flatten out naturally?
• If the online spend is being spread ever thinner, that only goes to highlight the importance of providing something different, regular site reviews, updates & changes (unlike this site recently – haha) and effective SEO to make a site stand out.
• Is it going to be better to run loads of sites to try and catch some of that thinly spread advertsing spend, or concentrate on a few key names that you can really push – and sell off the rest of your stable?
• Publishers should look more and more into ‘direct’ advertising (something that IM/MMO Bloggers in particular do anyway). Advertisers like PR and content, and the knowledge that traffic will be targetted, so activley pursue direct advertsing/sponsorship opportunities for all your sites.
• Only park domains when you have to. Parking can be good as a holding option, but you’re getting an even smaller slice of that spend when you do it. Review your parked domains, pick the best potential ones (through keyword analysis, seacrh temrs, parking stats etc) and stick a minsite on them, with a combination of static and RSS/Video type feeds. Throw Adsense, Adbrite or whatever floats your boat on there – you’ll see an increase over parking revenue, the chance of gaining some PR and backlinks, a growth in organic/search traffic – and open up the potential for adding direct advertising or selling the developed site on at a profit.

Just some thoughts.

Nice to be back

What’s going on chaps? My Google Adsense CTR has died in the arse.

I know the big G has been making some changes to it’s targetting lately, and introducing the new personalised visitor cookie stuff – but seriously, something bad has happened to the clicks. Early March I was doing just fine, but in the last 10 days or so views have stayed the same but my CTR has fallen through the floor.

Anyone else out there noticed this?

Coming soon: An explanation about my completely shite start to 2009 and why I’ve been so slack.

Hi Everyone,

Back from my Christmas and New Year break – spent a lovely couple of weeks over in Queensland (you know it – ‘Beautiful one day, Perfect the next…’). Surf, sea, kayaks, cold beer and all that stuff.

Settling back in now and looking forward to 2009 – a few things coming up over the next few weeks, such as:

• A look at Google’s horrible little personalized search thingy
• Continuation of the Domain Development/Flipping articles series
• A very neat little tool I’m putting together aimed at MMO/SEO/IM Bloggers
• Re-skin, addition of extra features on Internet Babel
• Domain news – such as possible delays in the introduction of the new high level TLDs
• A look at proposed Government Internet censorship in Australia

Now I’m back home I’ll see where the various Blog sales are at as well, cos there were a few Blogs that came up for sale at around the same time towards the end of 2008. Be interesting to see what happened.

Anyway – hope everyone had a great holiday season and we all have a happy and rewarding 2009.

Cheers
Dave

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