Hobart.com.au sold!

[Oz.]

Pass the popcorn.

 

[payattention]

 

[snoopy]

Snoop, do you ever get sick of being a know all f***wit?

Sometimes I do, but usually that passes by the next day.

 

[davids]

Snoopy is one of the few reasons I stick about, without him I'm sure we'd have a lot more circlejerks than we currently do! Sometimes I disagree with what he says, most of the time I don't, but I'm sure glad he's here!

 

[Drop.com.au]

Snoopy is one of the few reasons I stick about, without him I'm sure we'd have a lot more circlejerks than we currently do! Sometimes I disagree with what he says, most of the time I don't, but I'm sure glad he's here!

+1

Snoopy has probably earned more money, selling, buying and monetizing domain names than any individual on this forum.

While many people here might disagree with what he says, his experience in this industry (let alone the portfolio he has built) makes his comments worth noting.

Andrew

 

[DavidL]

Snoopy is one of the few reasons I stick about, without him I'm sure we'd have a lot more circlejerks than we currently do! Sometimes I disagree with what he says, most of the time I don't, but I'm sure glad he's here!

+1 (except the 'most of the time' bit - I'm probably at about 40%)

+1

Snoopy has probably earned more money, selling, buying and monetizing domain names than any individual on this forum.

While many people here might disagree with what he says, his experience in this industry (let alone the portfolio he has built) makes his comments worth noting.

Andrew

Sure - bear in mind though that all that was a long long time ago and in a different market. Don't mean to sound sound resentful in any way saying that - I'm certainly not! Snoopy is a very smart guy and deserves and has earned every cent he's ever made but I just want to make the point that it was a long time ago and things change.

Unfortunately, the rest of us didn't have the foresight back then and coming in later have had to work a lot harder to make money including development, choosing domains other than .com's, marketing domains to end users etc. so it's a new skillset required.

OK back to the discussion at hand:

Geo's have lower CTR's compared to say product names or the like (especially non tourist names). If you have say a portfolio of names that combined produces 20% ctr, I would say those names aren't really natural type in names. A lot of it is likely bot traffic, or names with very low traffic counts where the people visiting are coming for a reason others than because they just thought they'd type in the web address.

So do your other parked names have a higher CTR than 70% odd in general? Maybe you're right about my traffic but, man, I feel like I'm missing out!! You park through Above.com right?

Never really heard anything like that. Parking company margins are often slim. I think the owner of melbourne.com would be getting a much larger cut than the owner of sydney.com.au.

Even with slim margins, a parking company is still a middleman. As for the excluding parked domains specifically - here it is - http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=112273

Would be interested whether anyone has any evidence to confirm or deny this - eg do you have some parked domains with the exact same niche as developed Adsense domains? If so how does the CPC compare?

I guess the thing is this, your "rose coloured glasses" estimate is under $4000/mo.

If we start talking about half that, 1/4 of that....less (eg if CTR and CPC is out) we are talking terrible returns compared to just selling it in my view. I don't know what is involved in running this site (hopefully not much) but that doesn't sound like a good business to me. It is an impressive name, and ranks well on a big keyword and still makes not much. There is just no substance in the site, no business model, it sounds to me like almost the exact situation of what you have described with hobart.com.au.

Well that's not really 'the thing'. The 'thing' was James stated sydney.com.au would be making more money than melbourne.com and you disputed it.

Nobody is arguing that the sydney.com.au site is well under potential.

The fact is, even with my rose coloured glasses estimates (which I honestly think are conservative esp with the 5% CTR guess) compared against your high traffic 70%+ CTR estimates on the parked page, it still absolutely smashes it revenue-wise

 

[snoopy]

Sure - bear in mind though that all that was a long long time ago and in a different market. Don't mean to sound sound resentful in any way saying that - I'm certainly not! Snoopy is a very smart guy and deserves and has earned every cent he's ever made but I just want to make the point that it was a long time ago and things change.

What was along time ago? Most of the domains I have bought were between 2004-2008. What has changed since then is the decline in parking but that doesn't mean waiting and hoping is suddenly a good strategy. Whatever people do, make sure it makes money right now, that is my suggestion.

Unfortunately, the rest of us didn't have the foresight back then and coming in later have had to work a lot harder to make money including development, choosing domains other than .com's, marketing domains to end users etc. so it's a new skillset required.

Funny how you talk all day about how bad .com is and how great .com.au is then you come up with this gem about needing to "choose domains other than .com". All the stuff you talk of is hardly a "new skill set", people in the domain industry have been doing everything you talk of for the last couple of decades. But if development means running some MFA stuff where the hope is getting free traffic off google, registering names in unpopular extensions etc then that is a bad strategy in my view.

So do your other parked names have a higher CTR than 70% odd in general? Maybe you're right about my traffic but, man, I feel like I'm missing out!! You park through Above.com right?

70% is just typical, I would not describe as good or bad for a popular keyword domain, over 100% I would describe as something with a high CTR. It is not going to depend much on the the parking company (unless they are really poor), but have everything to do with the names. As I said before,

"If you have say a portfolio of names that combined produces 20% ctr, I would say those names aren't really natural type in names. A lot of it is likely bot traffic, or names with very low traffic counts where the people visiting are coming for a reason others than because they just thought they'd type in the web address."

The fact is for .com.au very few names really have much in the way of natural type in traffic.

Even with slim margins, a parking company is still a middleman. As for the excluding parked domains specifically - here it is - http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=112273

Parking companies get much high revenue shares from Google compared to what adsense pays to anyone who signs up.

Well that's not really 'the thing'. The 'thing' was James stated sydney.com.au would be making more money than melbourne.com and you disputed it.

Nobody is arguing that the sydney.com.au site is well under potential.

He watered it down later on to that, the initial claim was that it "far outweighs it". In my view this is an example of a very poor site. You think it makes under $4000 per month. I suspect it is half/quarter/less than that. I don't think the development on the site is really worth anything. It basically a tin shed on a prime block.

take Sydney.com.au for example they have been making money off this domain for years, imo far out weights a dodgy parking page with the wrong city image.

The fact is, even with my rose coloured glasses estimates (which I honestly think are conservative esp with the 5% CTR guess) compared against your high traffic 70%+ CTR estimates on the parked page, it still absolutely smashes it revenue-wise

The revenue is higher but it hardly "far outweighs" parking it. I don't know how much time is spent running this site, but I'd be surprised it was really a good roi.

I think they'd be better off just selling it and doing something else with the money.

 

[xwdomains]

Just to let you know we sold Hobart.com.au for $65K today. Bittersweet as we had a decent little site on there that was ranking #1 for a while but same old story - too many projects, too little time so it needed a good home.

Best of luck to the new owners (who are local which is always nice)

Congrats on the sale awesome for the .au market and those holding city names

 

[findtim]

Snoop, do you ever get sick of.........

i like the challenge, he has "tom jones" qualities, he can sing the same song over and over again

tim

 

[Chris.C]

i like the challenge, he has "tom jones" qualities, he can sing the same song over and over again

I can just see Snoopy... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekeELle5g-o&t=0m7s