How best to monetize traffic on an old short .com?

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by tim99, Mar 15, 2007.

  1. #1
    Greetings-

    I'm in a bit of a unique situation (or so I think) with a domain and I'm interested in any thoughts or ideas that folks here might have. For my part I'm a long time net rat but I other than what I've read I don't know much of anything about monetizing domains esp. for the sake of it.

    So here's the deal. In 1994 I registered a good short .com that I still have. It doesn't really spell or stand for anything but it has value due mostly to its shortness and symmetry. I get a lot of offers for it but at this point its turned into an investment and I don't really want to cash out quite yet (at least not for investor/market value). But what I would like to do is figure out some way of monetizing it in the mean time.

    So the question is something like this. If you had a domain that had 3-4k completely random untargeted uniques each day what kind of site might you develop? Any site obviously takes hard work but I'm interested in finding something that takes advantage of this potential traffic advantage. And its harder than it sounds (at least to me) because they are really really untargeted. They're not finding search terms best I can tell they are just typing the domain in for some reason and ending up there.

    Any thoughts, comments, ideas etc are welcome.

    peace . . .
     
    tim99, Mar 15, 2007 IP
  2. checksum

    checksum Notable Member

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    #2
    Have you tried parking it at sedo?
     
    checksum, Mar 15, 2007 IP
  3. GreenTorii

    GreenTorii Peon

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    #3
    Might also check out godaddy parking?

    Nonetheless, these kinda of parking won't generate too much money.

    I can't think of any good ways to take advantage of untargeted traffic besides the above. If the domain is really special in your opinion, you can develop it into any kind of website you wish (your interests)

    what kind of offers have you been getting on it?
     
    GreenTorii, Mar 15, 2007 IP
  4. Mr Wonderful

    Mr Wonderful Banned

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    #4
    Is short.com your actual domain?

    You might want to list it on DNS Domain marketplace...
     
    Mr Wonderful, Mar 15, 2007 IP
  5. tim99

    tim99 Member

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    #5
    No I haven't tried parking it. Is there an advantage to using sedo etc over just parking it myself?


    It's special in that its short and super easy to remember. Actually that's the main reason I posted. I just started a site that reflects my interests but before I started building links etc I thought I'd get some opinions from the DP knowledge base to see if it would make more sense to do something like a link directory etc. I guess I could do that anyway.

    80-95k

    BTW thanks for the input!

    peace . . .
     
    tim99, Mar 15, 2007 IP
  6. checksum

    checksum Notable Member

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    #6
    Well, parking it at sedo or another parking service gives you the ability to monetize a site without actually writing content. You just point to their DNS server, pick a keyphrase to advertise and you're set (example of a sedo parked page: www.wonderfulwine.info). Considering your traffic is type ins it should work well, since they're not really going there for anything in specific, instead just testing the waters.
     
    checksum, Mar 15, 2007 IP
  7. tim99

    tim99 Member

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    #7
    I actually don't mind building the content, I just wanted to be sure that in my ignorance I wasn't missing something obvious that would make a lot more sense. One problem is a lot of people get there (I think) by mistake so their focus is initially on leaving. Its more than a little interesting to me how much pattern you can find in the randomness.

    peace . . .


     
    tim99, Mar 15, 2007 IP
  8. Martindale

    Martindale Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Link juice a real website. It'll be worth ten times as much as the domain by itself, and it'll generate recurring income.
     
    Martindale, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  9. GreenTorii

    GreenTorii Peon

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    #9
    I must say the offers on your domain are impressive from my perspective, as I have never gotten that high of an offer before.

    Cheers
     
    GreenTorii, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  10. pholpher

    pholpher Active Member

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    #10
    Yeah, that's a lot of money. I wish I would've seen how big the web would be today.
     
    pholpher, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  11. checksum

    checksum Notable Member

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    #11
    I'm curious, what's the domain name?
     
    checksum, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  12. tim99

    tim99 Member

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    #12
    I can't post a link yet. It's o o dot com. Check out my blog link.

    Thanks to everyone for all the input, I really appreciate the comments/opinions.


    peace . . .

     
    tim99, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  13. Brandon Sheley

    Brandon Sheley Illustrious Member

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    #13
    Great domain name www.oo.com

    will be interesting to see what you make of it, unless it gets sold.
     
    Brandon Sheley, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  14. tim99

    tim99 Member

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    #14
    No plan to sell it. I don't know what else I could do that would outperform it as an investment esp. over the last 6 years. As you can imagine there are a lot of inquires, enough to see trends. Timing will be everything I imagine but so far keeping it has proven to be good.

    But when it comes to what I have done with it over the last 13 years, I could write a book on the screwups I've made. Pains me to even think about it.

    peace . . .


     
    tim99, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  15. pjk

    pjk Well-Known Member

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    #15
    You could build something real nice out of it and make good money my guess would be.
     
    pjk, Mar 16, 2007 IP
  16. NITRO23456

    NITRO23456 Well-Known Member

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    #16
    heres an idea...........

    why don't you rent out the forwarding function.

    So, for example, it forwarded to www.mywebsite.com and you could change it daily, weekly, monthly and charge a certain amount for the time.

    People would pay big bucks for that traffic. Id consider it!!
     
    NITRO23456, Mar 17, 2007 IP
  17. CraigslistGuy

    CraigslistGuy Banned

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    #17
    Parking at sedo and redirecting would be good ideas but I am concerned about the name of the domain. It appears not be connected with any regular niche, in particular.

    Perhaps you can study the keywords used to find the site, demographics, etc and then build a new site for it and forward the traffic to it or put ads on them at sedo.
     
    CraigslistGuy, Mar 17, 2007 IP
  18. pholpher

    pholpher Active Member

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    #18
    This seems like good advice :) Marketing is all about knowing your demographic.
     
    pholpher, Mar 17, 2007 IP