Expanding On A Good Idea
May 10th, 2008 | by ScottIt appears that you're new here, if you like what you read, please subscribe to the news feed or sign up for the Leap eTips news and updates email list. Thank you for visiting :)
Earlier this week I posted about a new script of mine that I created as a tool to help build fast, content rich and quality niche sites with. Basically, a mashup script for pulling the latest content and videos related to whatever keywords are plugged into it, so I called it NIMS (Niche Instant Mashup Sites).
In looking at how NIMS works and performs, the thought came to me that it might be able to serve a secondary purpose in addition to building multi-page sites specifically for entering into a niche market… since it takes less than 5 minutes to setup and have a keyword focused main page with tons of content I wondered if the script might not also be useful for some of the dozens of parked domains that I have sitting around?
The pages created by NIMS are certainly optimized for revenue. If you look at the image below, it shows the “above the fold” screen capture of a page built with NIMS, and what should stand out is that the display is designed to draw a visitor’s attention to the advertising and/or affiliate money links:
By having the money links prominent as it does, it encourages the click of a blue (money) link to leave the page.
As I mentioned, I have a ton of unused domains sitting around all the time. Most are parked with various services and I leave them there until I’m ready to build a site on them because the parking services generate a little revenue from whatever traffic the domains get.
But, that revenue is fairly low, so my thinking was that maybe spending 5 minutes throwing up a single page NIMS site on domains instead of spending 5 minutes parking them with a service would be more beneficial in a couple different ways.
First, the earnings might be higher. That would be great. With parking services the default pages are often spammy looking (promote low click rates) and you have to share the revenue with the service. Using NIMS would create better looking and more useful pages, and I wouldn’t have to share the earnings with anyone.
Second–and perhaps more important–by having actual content that’s constantly updating and relevant to the domain topic/keyword, in theory there could be some long-term benefit with search engines over just having the parking service advertising displayed on my domain main page.
To begin testing this I took a few of my domains and threw up single page NIMS sites on them 3 days ago.
It’s important to keep in mind that these are domains which have been just sitting out there with no promotions or backlink building in place. The traffic to these is super low. Several of them have been getting single digit visits daily and the others have all been averaging between 10 and 30 daily visits each for the most part.
The goal with parked domains isn’t to earn large money (unless you have a super domain), but to just maximize what you can earn from them until they’re developed into sites or you sell them off.
If you’ve got 20 domains out there each earning you $0.10 per day then that’s an extra $2 per day you make. My hope was that NIMS might turn that $0.10 into $0.15 or $0.20 or more for me without having to spend any more time setting up NIMS on the domains then it takes me to park them with a service. i.e. more money for the same labor time investment.
Now, obviously it will take some time (and a lot more test sites and data) to determine if there’s any long-term benefit for the domains with search engines by using NIMS on them instead of the default parking service ads, however in the last 3 days my test domains have earned me more money from their traffic than they ever did in a 3 day period with the parking services.
Sure this is a small and unscientific testing, but the early results are what I thought they would be and for good reason. People are blind to a lot of the advertising methods out there; just try to get decent click rates with a flashing 468×60 banner.
So when they land on a web page that looks like it’s all ads, or in some cases looks like search results (where you get paid for their clicks on listings) if they weren’t expecting search results, there’s a higher probability that the visitor will use their browser “Back” button instead of clicking unknown and untrusted links on the page.
However, if they land on a page full of content that’s relevant to the topic they were expecting, then there’s probably a better chance to grab their attention. And if you get their attention you should be able to guide them to your money links.
That was my theory anyway, and the early results suggest to me that it was sound.
In the immortal words of Col. John “Hannibal” Smith, “I love it when a plan comes together”.
Stumble It!
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2 Responses to “Expanding On A Good Idea”
By Bathroom Vanity Cabinets Guru on May 15, 2008 | Reply
I like the idea, but it needs to be refined a bit. When you plaster a page with affiliate links, CPC banners, etc. visitors have a tendency to be overwhelmed and not click on anything. You need to limit your monetization options, to preferably one, and at max 2. When you put all that stuff on a site it makes you look desperate.
By Scott on May 15, 2008 | Reply
I completely agree that too much advertising on a page can do more harm than good in some cases.
That’s why when I created the script I made it so that all 4 of the advertising opportunities were completely optional to include with each page created.
Users can have 1, some, all or none of the embedded advertising options display on their pages, and can control which ones show or not for every single page.
My screen shots and demo site show everything that’s possible, but none of it is forced or required to be used. Flexibility for the user was important to me while creating the script.
Having said that, and while I agree that users should be attentive to how much advertising they display on niche sites made from the script, when using it for parked domains as this posting really talks about I think there can’t be enough advertising links on the pages.
The fact is with parked domains you’re not expending any efforts to develop the domain yet, which also means you aren’t promoting it in any way either.
The only traffic coming in is going to be type-in traffic, and for the domain owner the only option to leverage this traffic at all is to facilitate high click-thru rates on advertisements.
That’s why domains sitting on parking services tend to display nothing but advertising links.
My thoughts for using NIMS instead on my undeveloped domains was that 1) I could provide a better user experience for visitors by actually giving them some topical content of interest, and 2) might be able to improve my earnings since I wouldn’t have to share the revenue with a parking service.
The trade-off though is that by giving visitors non-advertising content I’m giving them something other than my money earning links to click too. So, to prevent losing revenue from the domain there has to be a little bit of an “in your face” approach with the advertising displayed on these pages, otherwise it would be better to just leave them on the parking services and then everybody (except the parking services) loses out I think.