Estibot.com Blog

Morgan just posted about minisites on his blog. I completely agree with what he said. I am no longer in the domain registration or minisite development business (we prohibit all Estibot staff from registering or buying domain names so we stay neutral and don’t compete with our customers), but I have some minisites still up and running from those days. Original content, decent design, some backlinks and an exact term domain name are the way to go.

The biggest myth is that minisites do not work. They do. Much better than parking. But you have to select the domain names right, and do the minisites right. The key is diligent keyword research.

I was actually so excited about this a couple of years ago that I wrote an ebook about it. It’s got all the details on how to mathematically select the niche domain names and so on. It’s a bit outdated maybe, but a lot of the stuff is still quite relevant, and it’s completely free to download and redistribute. You can download it at estibotpro.com.

For example, I hand registered ClassBRV.com in 2008. It made $1 per month parked. I paid $100 total to writers for original content and designer for a simple yet original minisite design. As a minisite it started very quickly making $70 per month (70x parking revenue!), ranking high in all search engines. Recently it dropped out of Google but is still ranking in Yahoo, and it’s still making $45 per month on average, without having ever been updated. There are many other examples.

Additionally if you keep adding content and building backlinks over the years, the sites will continue to prosper. I haven’t, so the revenue is dwindling, but they still make some money.

I certainly agree with Morgan’s main point: Minisites work if you’re willing to put some effort into them, but they won’t work if you’re lazy about it.

Cheers
Esa

I wanted to give a shout out to Bill at NameClerk.com for having provided domainers with awesome lists of available generic domain names and recently also his picks from the drop auction market. He’s been providing this great service for years, and has helped many a domainer to find real bargains to register and buy. Always a pleasure receiving Bill’s newsletters and the quality of the names keeps amazing me. Go visit Bill’s site, subscribe to his newsletter and support his efforts – time to give back!

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post of any kind. We at Estibot.com always want to show our appreciation for those in the domain industry who provide great services, especially those who are straight shooters and make the industry better for everyone involved.

Have a great weekend!

Many of our subscribers don’t seem to be aware of all the new (and some of the old) power tools that are at their disposal. Need to auto-categorize your domain portfolio? No problem, just use our categorization tool. Need to find end user buyers? It’s a breeze with our lead generator and business locator. Researching the market? We’ve got the most complete searchable domain sales database. Also, not everyone knows you can get PAID to use Estibot.com. We pay 25% commission for referrals – recurring each month!

Categorization tool
Instantly categorize your domain portfolio

End-user lead generator
Generate a list of potential end user buyers for your domain within minutes

Business locator
Search among over 13 million businesses those that have the same business name or acronym as your domain.

Domain sales database
The most complete historical domain sales database on the market.

Advertiser bid tool
Find out CPC bids and other search data for keywords

Affiliate program
Just link to us and receive 25% recurring commission for the lifetime of new subscribers and old subscribers who upgrade

Also make sure you check out our tools page and explore all the other various tools you can use to facilitate your domaining workflow.

EDIT Feb 14: By popular request, we are offering free trials for a very limited time: Contact us via this contact form to try out the tools for free.

Cheers
Esa

In support of our friends at Domaining.com, we’d like to announce their up and coming domain sale:

Submit your best domain name for a chance to have it included in Domaining.com’s January 9th, 2012 newsletter. The newsletter will also be broadcast to DNForum.com and DomainState.com in addition to Domaining.com’s regular newsletter subscribers. The best 100 submissions will be included in the newsletter.
Domain names should be submitted to http://www.cax.com/submit/newsletter/

Start the New Year off right! Submit your best domains today.

Looking at the recent turmoil in the Google pagerank world, we realized that there really isn’t a way to reliably check domain Pagerank in bulk, a tool many domainers and SEO professionals certainly need as part of their workflow toolbox. That’s why we went ahead and created a real power tool for domainers and SEO professionals to analyze large numbers of domains for Pagerank.

The result of our efforts: FastPagerank.com, the only tool on the Web where you can accurately check the real pagerank of thousands of domains in seconds.

Pagerank domains can be powerful assets for search engine optimization and website development. A high pagerank means that the domain has a large number of quality backlinks, high Google ranking and likely a steady flow of traffic. Great for a SEO strategy or domain reseller purposes.

FastPagerank.com features up to 50,000 pagerank lookups per day, 10,000 at a time, with custom plans for higher query limits available. The results for even large bulk queries are virtually instant, and fake pagerank is detected and displayed. In true estibot.com style, there is no need to pre-format your domain lists, just copy-paste whatever files or web pages you need to analyze and FastPagerank.com will parse the domains and present you with a highly readable output. Downloading the results in a .csv file is just a click away.

Check it out: FastPagerank.com

We hope you enjoy it.

We are working on a new version of the guide – in fact it will be a completely new product – and will cover much more stuff, basically everything you need to know about making money with domain names, from research to registration to buying and selling to development. By popular request I decided to extend the free download offer of the previous version for a limited time. This my original domain development guide, a 40-page ebook describing basic domain selection and development techniques. The techniques are still valid and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from readers. Please download it now and feel free to redistribute it. You can find the PDF here: Domain Development Guide

This just in from Google: They’ve disclosed the revenue share they pay out to Adsense publishers. Long the topic of much speculation, Adsense publisher revenue share has thus far been Google’s secret, but no more. I find the revenue share surprisingly large. I though it would have been much smaller for publishers. Certainly it is rare to see the sort of CPC in one’s Adsense account as one can spy on Google’s Adwords tool (or estibot’s) max CPC listings. Anyway, here’s a quote from the Inside Adsense email just in:

AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google’s costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.

We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations. As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it.

68% is a pretty handsome revenue share. I would really like to see the same figures published by domain parking houses such as SEDO, whose clicks seem to pay dismally. High-CPC keyword clicks on SEDO pay pennies. How much is their cut? I do realize that Google may pay less for domain parking feeds, and instead of two parties sharing the revenue, in the case of domain parking, there are always three.

While Google have their critics, and they are not without fault, Adsense still trumps any other contextual advertising system out there. For its ease of use, reliability, smart technology, and now a fair revenue share to boot.

It’s been a bit over a month since the launch of Estibot 2.0. Thanks to you and other Estibot 2.0 subscribers like you, we are now processing over half a million appraisals per day, and over a million total queries daily.  That’s quite a lot, but we can certainly do more for you – we’ve noticed that many of our subscribers are not fully aware of all the features we offer, so we wanted to remind you of some of the less known but equally powerful features on Estibot.com

Make sure you read this post to the end, there’s a bonus

Contents:
1. Affiliate program
2. Appraised droplists
3. End-User Lead Generator
4. Domain Sales History
5. Free eBook update
6. Bonus

1. Affiliate program
Did you know that as an Estibot subscriber, you’re already an Estibot affiliate, and that you earn recurring commissions for each subscriber you refer? You can even refer our existing users back to us, and earn commissions when they upgrade to a higher plan! We pay for new member registrations as well as for existing members who convert to a paid account or upgrade their plan.

Simply educate people about how they can benefit from an Estibot.com subscription, and earn 25% of the membership fees they generate, each month, for as long as they keep their subscription!

All you need to do get started is go to your Estibot.com affiliate links page:
http://www.estibot.com/affiliate.php?a=links

Just use these links to send people to Estibot.com and start earning! For best conversions, I recommend a pitch page or a review, where you tell people about how they can benefit from the Estibot.com tools. Make sure you promote the Exclusive tools, to maximize your commissions. The Exclusive plan is the best value for money and enables users to do real power research, including appraised drop lists, end user lead generation and much more.

2. Appraised droplists
Let Estibot do the legwork for your dropcatching and drop auction research! We publish complete daily pendingdelete, Snapnames, Namejet and GoDaddy auction lists, as well as dropped domains available for registration, all pre-appraised with an estimated end-user valuation and a wholesale valuation. That’s a couple of hundred thousand domains daily, all pre-appraised to save you time.

Just download the lists, fire up your spreadsheet program and sort by Estibot valuation to make sure you won’t miss any great drops. The appraised droplists are available for Exclusive subscribers, and can be found here:
http://www.estibot.com/drops.php

3. End-User Lead Generator
Selling or brokering a domain name? Estibot will find potential buyers and even contact them on your behalf! Simply appraise your domain name at estibot.com, and click “Help Me Sell This Domain” on the results page, or go directly to:
http://www.estibot.com/leads.php

Just type in your domain name and sit back while Estibot does in a few minutes the research it would take you a full day to do manually.

Estibot will find similar but inferior domain registrations, or similar registrations in inferior extensions, filter out the parked and unused domain names (unlikely buyers), and then provide you with contact information. Website metadata is analyzed, including website title, meta keywords and so on.

Estibot will also find advertiser based leads – potential buyers based on who is bidding on your domain’s keywords in the cost-per-click advertising market.

Furthermore, Estibot will email the leads on your behalf – just provide your email account information and use our preset email template or create and save a custom sales email template using variables that will automatically insert the proper content into your email for each domain you submit.

You can even create custom filters to ignore certain types of leads.

To get started, create your mail templates and enter your mail account details here:
http://www.estibot.com/leads.php?a=settings

4. Domain Sales History
Estibot.com has the most complete, hourly updated database of past domain sales. We retrieve data from various sources to compile a comprehensive sales database, which we use internally to hone our valuation algorithm, and you can use our database to browse recent sales, or search for certain type of past sales using various search filters. Check it out at:
http://www.estibot.com/sales.php

5. Ebook update
In case you haven’t yet checked out our free eBook, a 40-page guide to domain development, please go to
http://estibotpro.com/downloads/
and download your copy, free of charge, with redistribution rights. I’ve updated the adsense data since the last release.

Finally, please make sure you explore all the links on our Tools page, to make sure you’re not missing any great tools that will help you increase your productivity in the domain business. Try the bulk IDN converter, trademark risk analyzer, domain idea tool…….the list goes on.
http://www.estibot.com/tools.html

6. Bonus
As a small thanks for the time you took to read this newsletter, please find below a list of available domain names I recently found while testing new versions of the Estibot Domain Idea tool. All the domain names were available at the time of this writing. Some very developable names, and some names you could flip to end users, using our Lead Generator.

Domain    keywords    CPCbid    ExactSearches#
AutismInAdults.com  autism in adults 0.49    1900#
AcuteRheumaticFever.com  acute rheumatic fever 0.13    1600#
AdultAutismSymptoms.com  adult autism symptoms 0.38    480#
RheumaticHeartFever.com  rheumatic heart fever 0.30    390#
AnticoagulantTherapy.com  anticoagulant therapy 0.57    1600#

ActiveFitnessGym.com  active fitness gym 0.05    91#
ExerciseBikeEquipment.com  exercise bike equipment 1.99    720#
CrossTrainerEquipment.com  cross trainer equipment 2.36    390#

ArabicLanguageLessons.com  arabic language lessons 0.81    1300#

VintageTreeTopper.com  vintage tree topper 0.45    1900#
OrnamentDisplayTree.com  ornament display tree 0.82    1600#
SnowmanTreeTopper.com  snowman tree topper 0.31    1300#
GlassTreeTopper.com  glass tree topper 0.53    1000#
CrystalTreeTopper.com  crystal tree topper 0.96    880#
LightedTreeTopper.com  lighted tree topper 1.07    720#
VintageTreeToppers.com  vintage tree toppers 0.43    720#
XmasTreeToppers.com  xmas tree toppers 0.05    480#

CastIronAntique.com  cast iron antique 0.61    590#

OralAntifungal.com  oral antifungal 0.44    590#
DryMouthMouthwash.com  dry mouth mouthwash 2.81    320#
AntifungalMouthRinse.com  antifungal mouth rinse 0.05    260#
OralMouthwash.com  oral mouthwash 0.82    260#
PlaqueMouthwash.com  plaque mouthwash 0.05    260#
BreathMouthwash.com  breath mouthwash 1.23    210#
GumMouthwash.com  gum mouthwash 0.92    210#

OnlineAntiqueAppraisal.com  online antique appraisal 0.62    480#
HomesAppraisal.com  homes appraisal 1.24    170#
AutoAppraiserJobs.com  auto appraiser jobs 1.18    720#

WeddingDressesDesigners.com  wedding dresses designers 0.43    1300#
BacklessWeddingGowns.com  backless wedding gowns 0.41    880#

BlankCertificateTemplates.com  blank certificate templates 0.05    2400#
PrintableCertificateTemplates.com  printable certificate templates 0.05    1900#

LedBalloonLights.com  led balloon lights 0.05    880#

BarrelRacingTimer.com  barrel racing timer 0.89    720#
CloseContactSaddles.com  close contact saddles 0.52    1300#
WesternSaddleBlanket.com  western saddle blanket 0.56    1300#

BirthdayCardsByEMail.com  birthday cards by e mail 0.58    4400#
BioIonicStraightening.com  bio ionic straightening 1.39    720#

FishSoupRecipes.com  fish soup recipes 0.38    1000#
FountainMachines.com  fountain machines 0.91    320#

BursitisRemedies.com  bursitis remedies 0.88    260#
BursitisRemedy.com  bursitis remedy 0.84    210#

CheapestEmailHosting.com  cheapest email hosting 0.05    210#

CarburetorProblems.com  carburetor problems 0.36    1300#

CardiacStethoscope.com  cardiac stethoscope 1.86    480#
StethoscopeEartips.com  stethoscope eartips 1.73    320#
StethoscopeNameTags.com  stethoscope name tags 1.51    320#
StethoscopeTags.com  stethoscope tags 2.54    320#
DisposableStethoscopes.com  disposable stethoscopes 1.42    320#

VillasGrandCayman.com  villas grand cayman 3.05    110#
VillaGrandCayman.com  villa grand cayman 3.29    170#

AllergyHomeopathy.com  allergy homeopathy 0.96    260#
PepperAllergy.com  pepper allergy 1.01    260#
RagweedPlant.com  ragweed plant 1.18    1900#
ItchyWateryEyes.com  itchy watery eyes 2.25    1600#
RagweedSeason.com  ragweed season 0.05    880#

BenignRolandicEpilepsy.com  benign rolandic epilepsy 0.85    1600#
GrandMalEpilepsy.com  grand mal epilepsy 1.13    1300#
PetitMalEpilepsy.com  petit mal epilepsy 0.36    1300#
EpilepsyPictures.com  epilepsy pictures 0.67    1000#
EpilepsyDisease.com  epilepsy disease 1.26    480#
PsychomotorEpilepsy.com  psychomotor epilepsy 2.39    480#
TemporalEpilepsy.com  temporal epilepsy 0.70    390#
EpilepsySpecialist.com  epilepsy specialist 1.40    260#
BabyEpilepsy.com  baby epilepsy 0.53    210#
AtonicSeizures.com  atonic seizures 0.47    1300#
EpilepticDogs.com  epileptic dogs 0.61    2400#

HowToGetDivorce.com  how to get divorce 2.34    880#

ChristmasDoorMats.com  christmas door mats 0.05    720#

YogaMatsForKids.com  yoga mats for kids 1.17    480#

SeashellShowerCurtain.com  seashell shower curtain 0.73    1600#
PirateShowerCurtain.com  pirate shower curtain 0.54    1300#
WesternShowerCurtain.com  western shower curtain 0.73    1600#
VintageShowerCurtain.com  vintage shower curtain 0.75    1300#

LedClearanceLights.com  led clearance lights 0.94    1600#

MetatarsalWorkBoots.com  metatarsal work boots 1.27    390#
SteelToeCapShoes.com  steel toe cap shoes 1.25    1600#
RiggerBoot.com  rigger boot 0.83    1000#

BabyBedRail.com  baby bed rail 1.35    1000#
DoubleBedRail.com  double bed rail 0.84    720#
BabyBedGuard.com  baby bed guard 1.98    880#
BabyBedGuards.com  baby bed guards 0.96    320#

CribTeether.com  crib teether 1.06    480#
CribTeethers.com  crib teethers 0.05    110#
CribTeethingGuard.com  crib teething guard 0.71    590#
TeethingRail.com  teething rail 0.96    1000#

WweBedding.com  wwe bedding 0.67    6600#
ButterflySarees.com  butterfly sarees 0.17    880#

BuiltRefrigerators.com  built refrigerators 1.00    2400#

EmployeeRecognitionCertificate.com  employee recognition certificate 1.33    4400#

OvernightTampons.com  overnight tampons 0.05    1000#

FirefighterTurnoutGear.com  firefighter turnout gear 1.99    1300#
FiremanShirts.com  fireman shirts 0.79    480#
FiremanOutfits.com  fireman outfits 0.05    390#
FiremanCareers.com  fireman careers 1.22    260#
FirewomanCostume.com  firewoman costume 0.54    880#

Some time ago I wrote a blog series on domain development. By popular request (both of my blog readers requested it) I expanded the scope and turned it into an eBook. The eBook is now ready, a 40-page guide to monetizing domain names through development. It covers both beginner and advanced strategies, keyword analysis, domain name selection, etc.. and best of all it’s completely free of charge (and comes with redistribution rights).

You can download it here: Domain Development Guide (PDF)

Here is the list of topics covered:
1. Recommended resources for the domain developer
2. No More Mr. Nice Guy: Trim Your Portfolio
3. Minisite development
4. Development Strategy for Keyword Domain Names
–>Case Studies
5. Affiliate e-commerce stores
6. Getting Serious About Development
7. Benefits of Domain Development
–>Search Engine Rankings
–>Increase in Domain Name Awareness and Value
–>Gauging the market and creating business contacts
8. Revenue Expectation
9. Scalability Strategies and Bulk Development
10. SEO
11. Transforming your Domain Name from a Minisite to a Bona Fide Business

I hope you enjoy the guide. Please send me some feedback once you’ve read it.

Thanks,

-Esa

This is a response to the Domain Name Wire post ‘Remember, no one searches with quotes’

In the post, the reader is reminded that while we often cite term frequency as the number of results we get from Google when searching for a term in quotes, most people do not use quotes when searching.

I agree that domainers and SEO people should keep this fact in mind, especially when they want to get long-tail search traffic beyond their main optimized terms, but quotes still rule for domain name and keyword research.

For preliminary estimation of potential type-in traffic, the SERP number with quotes is important. Reversed terms generally do not get type-in traffic.

Also, for SEO, the combination of the perfect domain name (correct word order) plus optimization for that exact term is powerful. Quotes are needed to research this. The huge optimization advantage provided by the domain name is lost if the page is optimized for anything other than the exact term in the exact order represented by the second level domain itself.

While it is true that most “lay” people don’t use quotes when searching, Google still considers the word order in ranking the sites, even when you don’t use quotes when searching. Different sites will rank high in the SERPs depending on whether you search for football game or game football, without quotes. This is one of the reasons why term frequency as represented by number of search results for the term in quotes (=phrase match) is much more meaningful than the term frequency without quotes (=broad match).

Broad match has its uses in research – e.g. it can be used as a variable in complex keyword analysis – but should not be used alone as indicator of term frequency or search popularity.

Finally, it’s worth noting that one should not mix term frequency (number of results in a Google search) with search popularity. Both can be given as phrase match or broad match and the significance of that distinction is different depending on whether you’re talking about term frequency or search popularity, which are both needed for complete keyword/domain name analysis, but they are two completely different things.