While the chess game between Microsoft and Yahoo continues, domainers seem to be a pawn.
After announcing that they were dropping there bid for Yahoo, the question becomes what will happen to Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and most importantly how will this all effect domainers.
Yahoo stock price closed north of $28.50 Friday. Prior to Microsoft’s offer in January, Yahoo stock was trading around $20 a share. We expect Yahoo to trade somewhere between $20-$24 on Monday. Investors definitely will punish Yahoo stock for Microsoft’s withdrawn offer, but still may give the shares a premium over the $20 a share, pre-Microsoft offer, because of the chance that there still will be a deal.
For domainers the problem will come if Yahoo attempts to make the 2 week traffic test it recently completed with Google permanent. As we discussed in several posts, Yahoo outsourced about 3% of its traffic to Google to place ads on the traffic for 2 weeks. After the test Yahoo stated that the test performed well and that Yahoo could cut tens of millions in cost by outsourcing all of its traffic to Google to for advertising.
Yahoo outsourcing its advertising to Google would leave all domainers with only only one PPC choice.
As you know Google blocks certain search terms, traffic for certain countries and optimizes keywords differently than Yahoo. Some traffic monetize better with Google and parking companies using Google, while other traffic performs better on Yahoo platform and its upstream partners.
Likewise advertisers would be left with only one serious choice to place its PPC advertising with.
MSN and AOL control less than 10% of the market. Ask.com went over to Google a couple of months ago.
We would expect hearings to be held in Congress if Yahoo goes down this path.
Once again the domain community will turn to the ICA for representation.
This situation will be serious for all domainers.
If one company is allowed to control 90% of the market, they could institute rules which would negatively effect domainers and publishers. They could reduced revenue shares offered to publishers and parking companies as there contracts come up for renewal.
Parking companies using Yahoo, which have invested millions in technology to separate themselves from competitors will be placed in a position where they have to retool as Google resellers.
We urge you to keep a very close eye on developments as this has the making of being an industry changing event.
Once again we bang the drum for the ICA.
If you have not joined the ICA you need to.
Today.
If your already a member think about moving up a level.
David J Castello says
Another good reason why developers need to start building their own clientele of advertisers.
Google and Yahoo only account for 6% of our revenue.
Paul Harrison says
It seems that Wall street knows less than most webmasters, I am sure 99% of webmasters are glad they failed in the take over bid and that would have possibly meant Yahoo became as bad as live search.
Kelly Lieberman says
Finding niche affiliate programs can provide a huge increase in your domain earnings. Targeted affiliate programs that cater to your domain category and keyword target are a necessity in this market.
If you have domains associated with autos, check out the automotive affiliates. There are landscape affiliates, credit card, loan, remodeling, senior services, gambling, investment affiliates etc…
They can provide great returns for no investment.
Also, consider developing mini sites where you have your own adsense account. http://www.domainembarking.com will build a site 8 pages deep for you for next to nothing and create RSS feeds, videos, blogs, games, content, images, links and a store with your adsense account. It is amazing the kind of money you can make from the smallest development on a decent domain.
Plus, in these days, it’s a great hedge if you are ever served a UDRP….at least they can’t accuse you of just parking your domains….
admin says
Kelly
Thanks for the link, looks interesting.
Have you used this service already for any of your domains and if so how are they performing revenue wise vs. a simple parked page?
admin says
Stock Updated
As predicted here Yahoo opened at $22.90 and is now trading around $24.
The Market therefore believe their is still a very good change that a deal will be worked out with Microsoft.
The closer the price drifts towards $20 the less the lightly the deal looks.
The market may also like the outsourcing possibility to Google which may increase Yahoo’s bottom line
Kelly Lieberman says
About Domain Embarking:
I started using their service in October of last year. At first, I embarked my own sites. It is really easy to do, you just fill in their template. I did not know HTML so I couldn’t add my own content but you can have them do it for you for a pretty small fee.
I have to say that it has done better than every single parking service that I have tried and that is saying a lot.
Once I saw the clicks that I was generating, and more suprisingly my Google page rank(!) I decided to move all my domains to their service. In just days some of my sites had page ranks of 1-2, and over months some are now at 3. I always thought the page rank is supposed to take a LONG time to develop.
What I really like about their service is that they have a “Network” plan available for domains that fit into a category. I have a ton of 3D related domains in http://www.3DWorldNetwork.com. They are all backlinked together and my domains are shown on the different pages so people can get to the exact 3D related info they are looking for.
I also have a network called http://www.AffiliateWorldNetworks.com that does the same thing with all of my niche affiliate sites. I currently have them working on http://www.AdvertisingWorldNetwork.com for domains I own in that category.
This is a pretty new concept, and I like it because it gives all my domains in that category additional exposure, and people tend to click from one domain to the next just looking around.
The big opportunity is if a big player in 3D checks out the site and decides there are enough domains that they want to own that they buy the entire network! Meanwhile, on these networks I have my own Adsense account and the revenue is building daily.
Of course, like everyone, I own a ton of random domains like http://www.CivilWarRelicHunts.com that are stand alones on the service – but you would be really surprised how much traffic that is getting!
If I had more time, I would actively write on my blog pages, but with over 1500 sites there is no way I can keep up. I may look at outsourcing at some point but right now my focus is to get every domain up and running with them so I can get a true feel for their potential.
Parked pages rely on direct navigation, so it really makes a difference if you own a one word generic. NOT so with even the minimum amount of development…now, even a domain like http://www.MersaVirus.com has become a winner.
The service, even if you pay to have them do the whole shebang, is so cheap that it is worth taking a few domains and giving it a try. Plus you are building page rank for a potential buyer..which you can’t do while a domain is parked.
The only drawback for me is that they don’t do casino related domains, and I own a ton of them.
Kelly Lieberman says
One correction:
http://www.CivilWarRelicSites.com
It’s funny when you can’t remember your own domain names..