Hybrid Domainer

Global PPC Spend Up 15 % in the First Quarter

By: Raymond Hackney

Kenshoo is out with their Global Search Advertising Trends Report and it showed search advertisers spent 15% more globally year-over-year in Q1 with click volume rising by 21% and click-through-rate increasing by 62%

A couple highlights from the report:

Global click-through-rate (CTR) and click volume spike
Q1 2013 global CTR reached 1.68% compared to 1.04% in Q1 2012, a dramatic 62% increase year-over-year (YoY) while Q1 2013 click volume increased 21% YoY. Meanwhile, impression volume declined 26% compared to Q1 2012.

Global average paid search cost-per-click (CPC) reaches five-quarter low
After reaching a peak value of $0.46 in Q3 2012, global CPC levels continued to decline in Q1, reaching a five-quarter low of $0.39. This average CPC falls just below the Q1 2012 value of $0.41. In the U.S. and U.K., average CPC values declined to $0.38 and $0.44 respectively, while continental Europe CPC remained flat at $0.36.

Of interest to domainers should be the part about lower CPC levels. If these average cpc numbers are trending down it could mean lower parking clicks across the board.

Click here to read full report

Park Logic Explains Upcoming Google Parking Changes

By: RH

Michael Gilmour from Park Logic put together a very informative and important video on coming changes to parking. Members of InternetTraffic.com last week got an email where they had to provide a verification for the names they own.

Gilmour points out how many high paying advertisers are not available to parked domains, these changes from Google may give greater access to these higher paying advertisers.

The video is nine minutes long and worth watching.

 

 

Parking Industry..... It's not dead...it just needs a kick in the butt from you!

By: Richard Saperstein

Parking Industry..... It's not dead...it just needs a kick in the butt from you!

First off I would like to thank HybridDomainer.com for asking me to give my feedback and advice on the topic of domain parking.

Some of you might be wondering “What qualifies this guy to give me advice on an industry that's supposedly dead?”.

Well, I've been parking domains for over 5 years now and feel that I have a good grasp on what it takes to make money in it. It's not uncommon for me to have $25 clicks, $50 clicks, or even $100 + clicks inmy portfolio. With that being said I must be doing something right but what's more important is.... the size of the clicks, the consistency of the revenue and so on.

A common misconception is that parking is dead because the revenue is not what it used to be. I have to say that's not entirely true. Like any other business you need to evolve and re-invent yourself as times change. If you don't your revenue will suffer and I believe that's what's happened to a lot of domainers.

Some would say that these companies don't pay like they used to. Well that may be true for some, but companies like Voodoo.com & Domainsponsor.com have some of the highest revenue shares around. If anything corporate greed is why you have seen a decrease in revenue.

So what do you do?

It's simple....You move your domains to the companies that understand and are willing to take care of their customers. You move your domains to the ones that are willing to pay you top dollar for yourtraffic. In the parking world you are the ruler and the parking companies need to service you.

What I’ve found is that a lot of companies prefer to look out for themselves versus looking out for you which is the most important thing.

Don't believe me? Next time you talk to your account representative ask them what your “REVENUE SHARE” is set at. Let's take an example;

Parking Company 1: You have a rev share of 15%

− Domain A: You made .15 cents a click
− What this means is the total click value is: $1.00
− So this means the parking company is keeping: .85 cents for themselves

What would it do for your portfolio if you had a 50% rev share?

If you want to make a change in this business, move your domains to the companies that pay the most and ask questions about what your revenue share is.

Till next time!

Richard Saperstein is co-owner and director of sales for WealthInvestors.com
Wealth Investors provides alternative investment and long-term wealth building solutions for today’s entrepreneur

InternetTraffic becomes more flexible for smaller portfolios

By: RH

Frank Schilling's Internet Traffic has certainly been one of the best things to come along for domainers in a long time. The parking platform along with the sales platform at DomainNameSales.com is really a great asset to the domaining community.

With Frank opening the platform to more and more domainers that don't possess the big time parking revenue the $500 threshold to get paid seemed daunting.

Now that InternetTraffic has added a paypal option, I emailed John Smrekar and he told me that the min payout for Paypal is $100, even though the terms of service say $500.

This is a nice move on their part and more domainers will be able to meet the monthly minimum.

Paid Search Growth Continues to Slip, CPCs Down But ROI Improves in Q3 2012

By: RH

Search Engine Watch posted an article about slowing growth in the paid search segment. Its interesting  that part of the lower CPC's comes from lower mobile clicks. When we interviewed Donny Simonton from Voodoo we asked him if there were lower payouts on clicks from mobile.

Donny said:

We usually classify traffic into 4 categories, desktop, tablets, smartphones, and dumbphones.  Desktop and Smartphone traffic are usually on par with each other as far as RPM goes.  Tablets usually have the highest RPM and Dumbphones have the lowest.

Mobile traffic has definitely been increasing since the beginning of the year, but desktop traffic has been staying very steady as well.  I would have expected to see a drop in the percentage of desktop traffic when there was an increase in mobile traffic.  But overall, the numbers continue to go higher month over month.

From the Search Engine Journal article:

Slowing growth and lower CPCs in paid search don’t bode well for companies like Google, though advertisers are seeing a higher return on their paid search investment, according to recent reports.

U.S. search spend grew by 11 percent Year over Year (YoY) while ROI improved by 26 percent, according to Adobe. They found that Google’s CPCs fell 10 percent over the last year and attribute the loss to an increased volume of less expensive mobile clicks. It’s a problem Google knows all too well; one that was a hot topic during their recent quarterly earnings call.

Adobe expects Google’s CPC losses to turn around next quarter, explaining, “The cost per click (CPC) downward trend caused by mobile traffic appears to have bottomed out and is projected to rise in Q4 due to seasonal trends and changes to the Google Shopping model.”

Read the whole article here

PPC Guide for Small Business Owners

By: RH

PPC for Small Business Owners

Most small business owners are not too familiar with PPC when they first get online. After a little time most sign up for Google Adwords. Running successful campaigns most find out are a lot more complicated than picking a keyword and setting a budget.

Copper Bridge Media put together an illustrated look at PPC for the small business website.

"There has been some perceptible changes in the nature of PPC SOS calls lately – Business owners have gradually shown a greater inclination towards other modes of PPC marketing and Remarketing – Facebook PPC, LinkedIn PPC, ADRoll, Facebook Exchange…etc.

Our designing team offered a hand by recommending a visual depiction of the most common client issues. This infographic is the outcome of a joint effort of the PPC team and the designing team."

Courtesy of Copper Bridge Media

Paid search and clicks up big to start the season

Laurie Sullivan wrote a piece detailing the strong start to the holiday season as far as paid search goes.

From the article:

Both paid-search spend and clicks rose this holiday season compared with last year. Marketers spent 128% more, driving up consumer clicks. In fact, clicks rose 87% on Thanksgiving Day compared with a year ago, according to Performics. Marketers spent 120% more to drive up clicks on Black Friday this year, to 65%. Cost per clicks (CPCs) rose steadily throughout the week, to 34% year-over-year on Black Friday.

Mobile comprised more than 20% of Google paid-search clicks on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, according to Performics. The company predicts that mobile paid search will make up 25.4% of all clicks -- both desktop and mobile -- in December 2011.

Read the whole article on MediaPost

InternetTraffic.com could still help the little guy

All the buzz around InternetTraffic.com has been the amazing payout increases.  So there should be some value in big domainers who can get into the platform buying the traffic domains of smaller domainers who cannot.

There are plenty of domainers who cannot meet the requirement for InternetTraffic.com.  But they may have some nice traffic domains. If they have a name making $20 a month they may look to sell for two years revenue or $480. If the name is making $20 a month on a non InternetTraffic.com parking platform, it should do much better there.

The value proposition for the big domainer is to buy at a two year multiple and park on InternetTraffic.com which should reduce the payback to closer to one year. 

Imo there is a lot of a business to be done between the big guys and the little guys if InternetTraffic.com continues to payout better than all the other parking programs out there.