A very nice little earner for me today, so I’m a happy chap.

I picked up two domains 3-4 months back, for $8 a piece. I didn’t do anything with them other than park them and collect a few dollars in revenue - but I wasn’t concerned because I KNEW that these were excellent pickups.

Both are three-word .coms, which still aren’t that fashionable but I knew they had the potential to do well their respective niches.

Sold them today for $380.

I can’t be bothered right now to work out the percentages but that is a nice return on an investment of $16.

I buy and sell at least a few domains every week. I’m quite happy to make just a few bucks on a sale, because at my end of the market its a low-investment, low-risk game. Make a quick profit of a few bucks on a sale, about10 times a month keeps the dollars coming in, and I know I’ll make a few bigger sales like these two pretty regularly as well.

Domain (and Website) buying and selling isn’t just for the big boys - it’s possible for any of us to make a decent, regular profit from it as long as you don’t think you’re going to jump straight in and make a million dollar sale - and that’s just what an upcoming series of articles will be about.

And No, I won’t tell you the two domain names in question…

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Well - Internet Babel has reached it’s first birthday! It’s not quite 1 month since I took over but I’m looking forward to the next 12 months, when I hope to re-build the stats up to and beyond where we used to be.

July showed some reasonable figures:

Page views: just under 20,000
Subscribers: 178 (min 176 - max 184)
Alexa: 235k
Technorati: 63k

These figures are all somewhat below the peaks reached during the year and they give me something to aim at as a first major target, to get the numbers back up.

Thanks to everyone for the various kind words and messages so far - I’ve been made to feel very welcome and here’s to the next 12 months. Also - thanks to Jason and everyone at the Blog Premiere Forum.

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Buying and selling of Domains and Websites (’Flipping’) is something I’ll be looking at in more detail in a series of posts over the next few months (plus using domain parking for income).

In the meantime, here’s an interesting article on Website Flipping from the New York Times. Gives a nice overview of what’s involved plus some interesting statistics, about growth, recent sales etc.

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Hey everyone - just a quick wrap up about a couple of things making me grumpy today:

Google PR:
After Nicks previous Google bitch slap incident, I had vague hopes that Internet Babel may start getting some of its PR back this time around. No such luck, and even Jim at The Net Fool confirmed my lowly ranking ;-(  It doesn’t really matter of course, PR ain’t that big a deal and I’ve just got to carry on with building the quality content and link building/SEO stuff.

Link-Lies/Link-Fraud:
The term ‘linkbait’ can cover a number of practices – WikiPedia breaks linkbait down into a number of distinct types, but something that really bugs me is the trend towards totally manufactured stories.

Of course, this kind of rubbish has been going on in the mainstream media for a while, and I guess there’s no real reason to assume it wouldn’t take off on the Web as well, but it annoys me when you see some of the people doing this stuff actually being proud of the crap they put out and getting some level of ‘respect’ from other people for it. It’s not as if fabricating a ‘sexy’ story and touting it to a gullible press is so difficult, it’s just that not all of us want to stoop that low.

More to the point is that the big G will start to look at ways of punishing fraudulent link-bait and people using legitimate teasers/bait/promotion methods may get caught up in the crossfire and get dragged down as well. There’s nothing wrong with building and promoting traffic and links but doing it with stuff that has absolutely no basis in truth (while trying to pass itself off as a legitimate ‘news’ piece on a respected site) is just plain wrong. A great short term result for the guy who placed it, probably not so good in the long run for everyone else.

Adsense:
This last few days, Adsense (on my other sites) has been performing  like an arthritic, three-legged nag. Very sad.

Waiting for people:
I put a bid in for some sweet domain names a few days back and the clown isn’t responding. It is annoying.

On the brighter side, I’ve got some nice ideas for upcoming posts about SEO, WP, domain speculation and parking etc - plus I have some Domain name giveaways coming up soon AND a neat little SEO project that I hope to start and that I will update about on this Blog.

On the even brighter side, I’m about to go and sink a few well-earned beers

All will be well soon and I hope your day is going better than mine.

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A site that caught my eye a few days ago is TextAdMarket.com - they’ve got a nice angle on providing a hybrid CPD-PPC ad solution.

For those of you don’t know the term, CPD (Cost Per Day) is a type of paid-advertising where (strangely enough) the Publisher gets paid for each full day that they carry an Advertiser’s ad on their site. There aren’t too many CPD providers around but there has been more talk about them lately, as they have the potential to offer a regular and known income stream without having to tie-in to any long term deals.

Background

TextAdMarket started out as a CPD ‘marketplace’, where Publishers could showcase their sites/ad-slots and advertisers can bid for those slots for an agreed period of time. Publisher’s can join up for free, and advertising ‘credits’ can be purchased in amounts as low as $20. TextAdMarket provides the mechanism for bidding, the embed code to use and various monitoring facilities.

The site went live in May 2008 and to date (23rd July) just over 300 Publishers/Advertisers have signed up.

CPD/PPC

One of the potential drawbacks with such a system is that ‘unused’ ad-slots can remain empty on sites, so the guys at TextAdMarket came up with a novel twist by also allowing PPC ads to be run whenever a CPD slot is not being used. Obviously these PPC ads are just paid ‘per click’ but all revenue goes into the same account.

Publishers can opt to sell their ad slots at a fixed price, or have their ad prices rise and fall on a nightly basis, based on ad popularity and other factors.

TextAdMarket say that they work on a fixed commission of 20%, regardless of the type of advert being carried.

This all seems like a good approach to me - I’m certainly going to sign up and try it out on a few of my sites (from both a publisher and advertiser perspective).

Conclusion

It’s early days yet of course, and the site’s success will hinge on the take-up rates, and also on the quality and breadth of advertising available. However, I think it’s certainly worth a closer look and the guys deserve some encouragement and exposure for bringing a pretty novel idea to the market.

The site can be found at http://www.TextAdMarket.com

Ben at TextAdMarket has also kindly offered an ‘opening special’ coupon code - for an extra 10% ad credit on all purchases until September 30th. Code: “10-GRANDOPEN”

This has not been a paid or commissioned review - just a service I came across that might be worth a punt. I’m not endorsing or making any claims for the site, nor am I getting any fee for this. Just saying it’s probably worth checking out.

I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this type of service, and feedback from anyone who signs up either as an Advertiser or a Publisher.

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Google trend figures show that the term ‘SEO’ is now becoming consistently more popular than ‘PPC’ in the major Western, English-speaking markets such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

For the last few years of the ‘boom’ economy, ‘PPC’ has generally had the upper-hand over ‘SEO’ as a search term, but the last few month’s figures show a steady reversal in fortunes, with ‘SEO’ gaining ground, overtaking and recently building a lead over ‘PPC’. The actual proportions vary from market to market but the pattern seems to be there.

This could be a reflection of the tougher economic times in the ‘Western’ markets, and an associated tightening of wallets. ‘PPC’ is going to be the first to feel the pinch because it’s more of a luxury item than bread-and-butter SEO. Consequently, more businesses are having to adjust to the reality that the slow-burn and long-tail business of GOOD SEO is always going to be reap dividends in the long term, even if you don’t get the ‘bang’ of a PPC campaign.

PPC is a ‘target’ traffic booster that is good for individual campaigns but of course it’s effect is generally short-lived and in the current financial circumstances PPC can be the first thing to be put on the back burner.

I had a quick look around at different regions and the same trends didn’t seem to be reflected in markets such as China and India, which seems to confirm the ‘recession/cutback’ idea - but there is every chance that China in particular will follow suit if their economy starts to overheat.

Just another reminder (if one was needed) that PPC and campaigns have their value in the right time and place, but content and quality SEO still rules the roost.

Comments welcome.

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Olive Riley, believed to be the World’s oldest Blogger, has died at the age of 108.

Olive, from Australia, took up Blogging at age 107, and made just over 70 posts to her Blog, before falling ill a couple of weeks ago.

She was born in 1899 in the outback town of Broken Hill, when Queen Victoria was still on the throne. She lived through both World Wars and was present at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932.

Olive should serve as an inspiration to Bloggers young and old.

A temporary Blog is in place where you can find out a bit more about her.

I reckon most of you guys have got about 90 years more Blogging ahead of you before you get near that record.

Cheers
Dave

http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com/

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quick post - I came across this recently updated bunch of ideas and hints - thought you might like to take a few minutes to look at it:

http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/articles/101-google-website-optimizer-tips/

cheers
Dave

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Hi Everyone - I hoped to get this one out a few days ago but the site move has all been a bit ‘hectic’

Following on from its purchase of Doubleclick, Google has re-badged the Performics Affiliate product as the Google Affiliate Network (1st July).

The Affiliate program will operate as a separate ‘entity’ to Adsense, and Publishers will need to apply to join the program even if they are curently Adsense publishers. Once accepted, Publishers will be able to apply to various advertisers and select creative for use on their sites.

Payments will of course be made on a ‘per sale’ basis rather than being based on impressions/clicks and may be flat-fee or commission-based, depending on the individual advertiser. Google says that payments will be made twice per month, although these will be subject to a minimum amount of $50USD per advertiser (it seems that payments due will not be aggregated for the purposes of Publisher payment). I’m assuming that the same payment methods as used for Adsense will be available. They also say that they’ll be offering a VIP/rewards type program to high-performing publishers.

The network’s page currently shows a small but impressive Advertiser list, and my understanding is that the program is still restricted to US advertisers/traffic only (according to a note on this page).

So, it’s a cautious, ‘toe in the water’ type approach but something that will have to be taken seriously, both by site owners who’ll be hoping to get some future leverage from Google’s muscle, and from existing players in the Affiliate marketplace, who may just be getting a bit worried about the effect Google could have on their current cosy arrangements.

I’ve been busy lately with the transfer of Internet Babel but I certainly intend to take a closer look at the program.

I’d really like to hear other people’s thoughts though, both in terms of any first-hand experience and also what you think this is going to do to the Affiliate arena if and when Google really jumps into this in a big way. How will players like CJ, Tradedoubler, Buy.at etc react? Will we see a shake up of the Affiliate marketplace or will things continue pretty much as before with Google just being another of many options?

With Google also dropping its referral program (in August) will we see a gradual integration between the Affiliate Network and Adsense, not just in terms of integrating your Publisher account, but maybe the creation of some kind of Affiliate CPA/Contextual hybrid - where you can choose your Advertiser base but still see a range of contextual ads from those Adverisers on your site?

Might be interesting times ahead - I don’t think the big boys will be too worried yet, but would love to hear your opinions on how this will all play out.

Dave

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Apparently the domain ‘phones.co.uk’ just sold for £175,000 (approximately $350,000 USD).

A 400% return on investment I believe (in just a few months).

Nice deal.

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