WXTraffic.com is a free text banner exchange, I put this site together over a year ago, it’s using the walker software text exchange script as the backend, it’s the best script out there for running a text banner exchange, the script is $200, the site has a PR3, I think the design looks good but it’s pretty bad for search engines. I’m going to give the site a makeover to make it more search engine friendly.

The site has over 110 members at the moment, receives around 20 visitors a week.

To start this experiment we need to work out our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that we are going to measure our success by. I’ve come up with these.

KPIs

• Traffic
• Members
• Revenue

They are simple KPIs, but in this case that’s all I think we need, we need to increase our traffic, increase members and in turn we should be able to increase revenue since revenue is directly related to traffic.

I’ve put together a simple spreadsheet to give us an indication of where we’re at with our KPIs. The sheet shows a weekly breakdown over the last 2 months, and a weekly breakdown for the next 2 months, it also have a number difference and a percentage difference with a simple coloured background to give us a visual idea if we’re improving or not. Under all of that are some graphs, again, a visual indication if we’re improving or not.

Marketing wise I’ve checked out the standard PPC networks, Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter, the competition isn’t all that big, I think we can get it at about $0.30c per click, but since my highest offer I’ve had on this site was $300, I’m reluctant to spend much more than that to expand it.

I’m going to set a budget of $50 a week in marketing, I’m going to try some similar things that I’m going to be doing with myvisitioractivity.com and that’s to see if I can find some good links in forums and webmaster resource sites that I can buy, if not I’ll take this one to the PPC networks and pay by the click.

Myvisitoractivity.com is a free hit counter established over a year ago, the site has a PR3 and over 100 members. It’s getting next to no search traffic, it makes about $2 a month from Google Adwords and it’s in need of a redesign.

To start this experiment we need to work out our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that we are going to measure our success by. I’ve come up with these.

KPIs

• Traffic
• Members
• Revenue

They are simple KPIs, but in this case that’s all I think we need, we need to increase our traffic, increase members and in turn we should be able to increase revenue since revenue is directly related to traffic.

I’ve put together a simple spreadsheet to give us an indication of where we’re at with our KPIs. The sheet shows a weekly breakdown over the last 2 months, and a weekly breakdown for the next 2 months, it also have a number difference and a percentage difference with a simple coloured background to give us a visual idea if we’re improving or not. Under all of that are some graphs, again, a visual indication if we’re improving or not.

Marketing wise I’ve checked out the standard PPC networks, Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter, they all have a lot of competition for free hit counters, and checking the search results reveals the same too, lots of sites offer free hit counters, since this is a 1-2 month project I don’t think we’re going to get much value for money with PPC, and I don’t think we can compete with SEO in this short amount of time.

I’m going to put the site on a $25 a week budget, mostly because I don’t believe we can draw much profit in the short term, we could in the longer term but this is a short experiment, another reason is that spending around $25 a week over 2 months will add up close to $200. The more we spend on the site the more we need to make back and since I want to sell it at auction in a month or two I think I’m going to look elsewhere for advertising that might be able to produce a good return on investment (ROI).

My first experiment in advertising is going to consist of posting some ads on forums to try and buy ads on webmaster resources, or webmaster forums that could drive some traffic our way.

While I post these ads, I’ll work on touching up the design, there are a few problems with it, and I’ll make some improvements and go from there. Check the spreadsheet to see where we are at now, I’ll do an update next week on how we’re going with this experiment.

Okay so one of the main things I’m going to be doing on TalkingDynamics are business experiments. An experiment will usually be in the form of us acquiring a website, re-doing the design, trying to improve the SEO, and then throwing more traffic at it via a few different means.

Overall it’s one big experiment to work out if we can improve on what we’ve got, and to make more money from it - either from ads on the site, selling a service on the site or from selling the site for a profit.

I’m going to start off with 2 sites to experiment with, these are two sites I’ve had kicking around on my server for over a year now, I’ve never promoted them or done much at all with them, kind of set them up and then forgot about them so I figure I might as well use them as an experiment…

First site is a hit counter, myvisitoractivity.com, and second site is a text banner exchange, wxtraffic.com. I have no idea of the value of the hit counter, but I know wxtraffic.com is worth at least $300 at the moment, because that’s the last offer I had for it.

I opted to keep it and use it as an experiment, see if I can build it up with more members and more traffic and sell it at auction for a higher amount.

Each experiment will have its own post with its own information, check out the myvisitoractivity.com experiment here, or wxtraffic.com experiment here.

If you’re interested in keeping up to date on what’s going to happen with these experiments of mine, subscribe to the feed!

Domain kiting / domain tasting has got me thinking recently after a friend of mine who’s in the design arena lost a clients domain, the registrar dropped it and a different one picked it up instantly.

The registrar that picked it up was eNom. eNom is one of the biggest registrars in the world, 2^nd only to Go Daddy who I think we all know pretty well.

The registrar who had the domain in the first place sent out notices, there’s like a 45 day period after the domain expired for my friend to buy it again, but the emails were going to the wrong email address, someone else originally registered it and my friend was just looking after the site overall, so my friend never really got these emails and since it dropped the client is not very happy.

After the registrar dropped the domain eNom picked it up and is now basically kiting it. How did eNom catch this domain so quick? eNom has the largest domain aftermarket drop-catching tool, called Club Drop, for eNom it’s all about catching dropped names and trying to sell them again at a profit, to sell them they have a service called Afternic where they list their domains for sale, straight away the bidding on the domain starts at like $200. (Price varies for different domains). Now I’m not 100% if they own Afternic or not, but it’s fully integrated into their site, and eNom are fully integrated into theirs.

For my friend to make an offer on the domain (owned by eNom) he has to use a service called Afternic. Afternic which is an eNom company charges like $55 to ‘track down, contact and negotiate with the owner’. So for my friend to even try to get this domain back, has to pay this $55 fee, so he did, and he made the $200 offer to them, Afternic came back and said the owner wants $600, all this is starting to get expensive so he’s decided not to bother anymore and eNom have made $55 from him + more from anyone else who wants to buy the domain.

And now since he’s made that offer, there’s a notice on the Afternic page for the domain that says “Due to a prior offer on this domain, you must offer more than $200″

To me this is all a scam, buy dropped domains, charge people for an automated service that allows you to make an offer on the domain, up the amount they want for it, since your already invested in buying it your most likely to pay the higher amount anyway…

Anyway, while that domain is sitting there waiting for offers it’s being hosted on their servers with a template full of keyword driven ads, so in the meantime, until someone buys it, they’re making money from it.

Now here’s where it gets super profitable. Welcome to domain kiting / domain tasting. Registrars are using a five-day “grace period” to keep domains for free, for as long as they want. When a registrar registers a domain with ICANN (company that regulates domains) ICANN offer them this 5 day grace period to either, pay and keep the domain or not pay and loose the domain, so what they do is, keep it for 5 days, drop it so they don’t have to pay, then pick it back up again 2 seconds later for 5 more days. Again and again and again.

eNom never actually paid for the domain that dropped. It’s theirs for free basically. They get to make money from the ads on it; they get to sell it at auction all for profit, and they are charging heaps for the chance to make an offer on it without spending a cent on the actual domain.

What the…? It’s a loophole in the ICANN policies on domain registration

It’s a simple hole to fix but no one’s complaining loud enough to fix it.

Biggest problem I have with domain kiting is that the majority of domains you want to buy now days aren’t paid for, they’re just kited, squatted on until people pay a premium for them.

For example, this is an old article but interesting none the less, Bob Parsons, CEO of Go Daddy wrote about domain kiting a while ago, mostly he was targeting DirectNIC.

You might find the registration statistics of DirectNIC somewhat interesting. DirectNIC registered more than 8.4 million domain names in April 2006, but only permanently registered — or paid for — 51.4 thousand of those. The trend was the same in March, when DirectNIC registered 7.6 million names and only permanently registered — or paid for — 52.5 thousand. Whatever could DirectNIC be doing? Why are they dropping and re-registering all those names – again – and again – and again? And why doesn’t ICANN care?

You can see the full article about domain kiting / domain tasting on Bob Parsons blog, it’s interesting and all about domain kiting.

eNom actually have a useful tool out there called RegistrarSTATS, the tool also has a domain name generator based on keywords, which is also pretty useful.

… Continued in part 2 – What you can do and how you can profit this Sunday.

In part 2 we will show you:

• Where to buy and sell domains
• What to look for when buying a domain
• How to profit from domains names
• Different strategies and methods
• And more!