I get a lot of emails from blog readers every week and as many of you know, I take the time to respond to every single one of them. Heck, if you’re going to take the time to read what I write, I will take the time to respond to you and help in any way I can. Unfortunately this often leaves me as the bearer of bad news as I have to tell people every week that what they thought was investments, are really just collectables, often valuable only to them.

Now there is nothing wrong with making mistakes, that’s how we all learn, it’s not learning from your mistakes that can be dangerous. Domaining can be an incredible investment opportunity, or a massive waste of money, just like real estate or the stock market, it all depends on what kind of return you are making on your investment, or lack thereof.

So I decided that I would put together a simple quiz that you can take to determine if you are actually making investments, or just building-up a collection of domains that will sit, collecting digital dust, for years to come. After taking the quiz, if you find-out you aren’t really investing, good! Now is the perfect time to make a change and turn things around, identifying bad habits is the first step to creating good ones.

Answer the questions below honestly and at the end I’ll let you know whether you are investing, or just collecting.

1. How much money did you spend on domain names in 2011?
2. How much money did you make from selling domain names in 2011?
3. How much money did you make from monetizing domain names 2011?
4. Did you turn down any offers on domain names you own? If so, what was the total of the offers?

Remember, an investment is something that pays you. Take a look at how much you spent on domain names and compare this to what you made selling and monetizing domain names. If you are spending more money than you are making, you might be tricking yourself into thinking you are investing, when in fact you are collecting.

However, there is a caveat here, if you turned-down offers that could have made the year profitable then you might have some solid investments, and yes, it’s okay to wait to sell these when you’re ready, and for the price you want.

So where do you go from here?

Well, if you are an investor, pat yourself on the back! This is a very challenging industry and if you’re making real investments, you should be proud!

If it turns-out that you’re a collector, don’t panic! Take this post as your wake-up call. Stop buying domain names that you can’t sell and don’t make you money. Look at how much money you spent on domain names last year and look at how you could have spent that money better, most likely on fewer domains. There are lots of incredible resources out there to learn more about how to make good investments.

Want to make money selling domains? Make sure to watch my interview with Toby Clements and he’ll help point you in the right direction.

Want to make money developing and monetizing domains? Make sure to read my article on Domain Development 101.

(Photo Credit)

As you all probably know, Braden is a good friend of mine and one of my main mentors in the Domaining and business world. Braden was the driving force that caused me to go .COM in 2011 and he always gives me great advice…now I just need to get a bit better at following it!

It was recently announced that Braden made an investment in ScienceFiction.com and I thought it would be a good idea to pick his brain and find-out a bit more about why he invested and what’s ahead for 2012.

What made you decide to invest in ScienceFiction.com?
Science Fiction has always had a loyal fan base. Add to that a continuous roster of scifi/horror/comic book related movies and you have the recipe to tap into some large ad budgets.

Patrick and Ze work tirelessly on this site and have done an awesome job. When Patrick approached me with the idea, it just felt like a good fit.

What role do you plan on playing within the company?
Other than annoying Patrick with an endless stream of crazy ideas? My plan is to stay out of his way ☺

Can you share any ideas you have for taking the site to the next level in 2012?
Once we get the traffic solidly over 500k monthly visitors, we can reach out to the large advertisers. There are some ideas that we’ve discussed related to co-op memorabilia auctions and other product sales but nothing has been inked yet.

How do the skills you’ve developed in your own business translate to this project?
I’ve helped acquire a small domain portfolio to support the site and various (future) initiatives. My office can help with content writing, linking, SEO, design, etc. My sales dept may be involved in sales as well. We’ll see how everything unfolds going forward.

What is the biggest challenge you see ahead for 2012?
Fighting the Google Monster!

(Photo Credit – Ron Jackson, DNJournal)

Day one is winding down after a great day of seminars and networking. I spent most of my morning hopping from meeting-to-meeting and then headed over to the seminars for the afternoon. DOMAINfest brings Domainers and Domaining companies in from all over the world so there are some incredible opportunities to make deals whether you’re buying domains, selling domains, or developing software in the space.

 As usual there are some very exciting companies sponsoring the show and the booths were packed with Domainers learning about different solutions that might give them an edge in 2012. For anyone who thinks these booth areas are dead during a show – think again! The booths were buzzing and business was getting done! Below is the Above.com booth – if you don’t know Above they are a very cool service that can help you A/B test different parking services to optimize your parking revenue.

After hanging-out with some of the cool companies that are here I headed to a very interesting seminar all about mobile – below is a quick review of the talk.

Mobile and Local Opportunities for Publisher and Advertisers
Very interesting seminar on a topic that really should be at the front of all of our minds, mobile! More and more people are browsing the web on their mobile phones. There were some very interesting points that came-up during the talk, some highlights are:

• Test your site on a mobile phone – see what the user will actually see!
• Optimize for mobile and create a specific site for mobile users to improve usability
• Mobile security is important
• Complexities dealing with Android vs. iOS devices – optimizing for both

The main point of this seminar made a lot of sense, if you’re not thinking about mobile, you are missing-out! There are great opportunities both for Publisher and Advertisers but it takes doing things differently than you would for a standard website.

The next seminar was right up my alley with a nice focus on affiliate marketing. Below is a quick summary:

Affiliate Lead Generation Best Practices
Affiliate programs can offer some great options for lead generation and improving your revenue moving from PPC to CPA. DOMAINfest brought-together an expert panel to share their advice for being successful in the space.

Sites to know that will help with affiliate tracking and monetization support:

• OfferVault
• VigLink
• SkimLinks
• AffMeter
• Tracking202
• Bevomedia
• AffiliateReporting.com
• ForMeToCoupon.com

Anyone with traffic can monetize their traffic which means that in some cases merchants can also become affiliates themselves. Mobile Affiliate programs are getting hot, the main player in the niche is Ring Revenue.

What Domains Owners Need To KNow About Lead Gen In Ten Minutes

• Domainer Lead Gen Mindset – adding value to something you bought, taking beautiful domains and making them better. So why isn’t it more popular?
• It’s hard and it’s a completely different mindset
• A lot more money in lead generation than parking, but a lot more work
• You will be dealing with fewer people but making more money per person
• So what can you do?
• Educate lead gen guys and sell your names for good money
• Find partners with lead liquidity -> ping tree, buyers, etc. and become an affiliate
• Do it yourself
• What to ask yourself
• Do you want to be an affiliate? (good for those with less tech and time, smaller investment, smaller payouts)
• Do you want to build a business (good for those with more tech, time, and capital)
• Getting there
• WordPress has unlocked easy content creation and management
• Simple and powerful software plays a nice role, tools like MailChimp, Unbounce, Formstack, etc.
• Wide range of aggregators who can offer outsourced sales and manage the relationship/tech hassles

Okay, now I’m off to my last meeting for the day and then back home for a little R&R before the Sedo party tonight! As you have all probably learned by now, I don’t blog about parties so if you want to join in the fun, you’ll have to be here!

Last week I asked all of you to help me pick a logo for a new brand we are launching – TutorialsForGeeks.com. The feedback was phenomenal with 39 comments and lots of great input and ideas. So I’ve taken the feedback that I received, found what seemed to be the most popular recommendations, and went back to my designer (LogoNerds) with a revision request.

Now I have three new concepts based on your feedback, and it’s time to take the next step! Now is where you come-in again! Take a look at the new revisions and let me know if you think any of these are ready for prime-time, or if you think we still need to make some adjustments. I can make more revision requests if it looks like we’re still off the mark a bit so don’t hesitate to rip these apart and suggest what you think would look the best!

Also – a huge congratulations to Melly Walker and William Brister who won free logos last week! I plan on doing this monthly so you can expect to have the chance to win a free logo (or two) once a month.

Now it’s time to be critical, be harsh, and let me know how to make this logo really shine!

Heatmaps are an absolutely critical tool for understanding how users interact with your site. Small changes to a site can make a big difference and heatmaps are one of the tools that can provide useful visual data to understand how effective your design really is. Last week we were analyzing the new design of Kayaking.org that we launched later in 2011 to understand how well it was working. We’ve seen some incredible results from this design but still some areas that definitely need improvement.

So let’s take a look at the heatmap and go through the good, the bad, and the ugly:

(Click image to see full size)

So first, let’s start with what was working. Based on data from the previous version of Kayaking.org we found that the most popular portion of our site was information about choosing a kayak. To maximize our impact based on this information we reached-out to a professional kayaker to put-together a really solid article about choosing a kayak and we put it at the very top of the sidebar. As you can see from the Heatmap it’s definitely getting a lot of attention and it has made a nice impact on the average time a user spends on our site.

Our new booking engine is also seeing some good traction and the heatmap show the attention this gets. Looking at the sidebar and the top navigation you can also see which categories are the most important and we’ve worked hard to get our most popular topics above-the-fold, but we’re always tuning!

Okay, that’s the good, now for the bad. With the relaunch we really wanted to highlight a new central slider that we hoped would feature some of the most popular things visitors were looking for. Unfortunately, looking at the data behind the heatmap, the slider only receives 5% of the clicks. The “How To Choose A Kayak” article is actually getting more than double the slider with 11% of the total clicks. When we see something like this, we tune!

So last week we made several changes to the central slider. A lot of the tuning we do is based on some of the great insight provided in Tim Ash’s book – Landing Page Optimization, as well as some great blogs, and things I’ve learned at conferences like Affiliate Summit. There were a few things wrong with this slider so in tuning we made a few key changes:

1. Add bright, distinct buttons that grab the users attention – before the tiny red button at the top didn’t really capture your eye and it blended in a bit too much with the image. We replaced this button with electric blue buttons accented by a feathered white background so they really pop.
2. Change The Slides Based On Current User Behavior – we know choosing a kayak is big, but we also wanted to add more shopping-related options as this area has been a growing revenue source for our site. One of the most popular products we’ve ever sold through the site is the Go Pro HD Hero 2 which is an awesome waterproof HD cam that is very popular in the kayaking community. Finally, we have over 1,600 fans on Facebook and the interactivity we get is phenomenal, so it felt important to feature this as one of the main slides.
3. Provide Special Offers When Possible – people like deals and exclusive offers, by adding coupon codes and discounts on the slides we are able to give people more of a reason to click and find-out more.

The new slider has been up for about a week and I’m excited to say that this central slider now receives 14.6% of the clicks, almost a 3x increase from before. Of course this process doesn’t end, it continues all year long. The more you can optimize your sites to deliver what your user is looking for, the better brand loyalty you will get, and the more conversions and revenue you will generate. We sold a $219 piece of kayaking gear from the first slide just two days after making the change so along with more interactivity we’re already seeing it generate some money.

In 2012 Kayaking.org hit the first page of Google for the insanely high search-volume term “kayak” which has driven over 1.8 million impressions on Google just this year driving thousands of new visitors to the site to start-out the year. The more visitors, the more data we get and the quicker we can tune the site and optimize the flow. So for any of the Domain Investors out there that have developed their domains and want to take it to the next level, give heapmaps a try, you’ll be surprised what our visitors can teach you about your site!

–

Oh and if you want to know what software I use for heatmaps it’s called CrazyEgg and it is easy to setup and very affordable. This isn’t an affiliate link, it’s the software I use myself and highly recommend for anyone that wants to dive-into the world of heatmaps.

Hello everyone and welcome to my very first Domain Development Drop List of 2012! I started this segment in late 2011 and had a very positive response so I’ve decided to make it a regular feature on my blog. If you haven’t read about what I look for in expired domains, let me give you some basic things I look for:

• I like names with medium search volume, a good CPC, and in a market where there are half a dozen affiliate programs I can think of using right-away.
• If you want to get down to the numbers themselves I typically look for keywords with no less than 1,000 exact-match global searches and less than 10,000. Why limit it to 10,000? Typically terms with this much volume are a lot more work to rank well for so I go for the low hanging fruit in most cases.
• A good CPC to me really means anything above $0.50. I just want to see that advertisers see some kind of monetary value in people who search for this term.
• There is no one set of qualities for the perfect domain for development. Also I don’t follow the rules above every time I buy an expired domain and you shouldn’t either. Sometimes I do buy names with a very high search volume in the hundreds of thousands and with a CPC of only $0.23. That being said, a vast majority of the expired domains that I buy for development do meet the criteria I outlined above.

Bam! Now you know what I’m generally looking for in an expired domain name. If you want to know what I do once I buy a domain for development make sure to read – Domain Development 101. If you’re so darn excited after reading that article that you want to dive right in and build your first site, make sure to read – WordPress 101.

All of the domains featured in this list were found using Protrada. I started using Protrada last year and it has honestly changed the way I search for and buy expired domains. The software is rock solid, lightning fast, and has also been a great tool for managing my portfolio. I am not being paid by Protrada to mention them in this post, I just absolutely love the service and recommend it to everyone who reads my blog!

FlowersRoses.com - 1,900 global monthly searches and a CPC of $4.40 this would be a great option for one of the many flower affiliate programs out there. While it might not be a term you think people would be search for, they are and with a CPC like this there is definitely money to be made in this niche.

InstallationWindows.com - like the previous name this also doesn’t seem like it would get any search volume, but it does. With 1,900 exact-match global searches and a CPC of $6.80 this domain has some great lead generation potential.

ChineseToEnglish.org – while I’m not thrilled with a CPC of only $0.29, the search volume of 18,100 exact-match global and the ease of building a basic translation site makes this one a solid development candidate. With keywords like this I think that the .ORG plays in your favor vs. a .NET, of course having the .COM would be my top pick but for development a .ORG can rank just as well!

QuickHealthyRecipes.org – 3,600 exact-match global searches and a CPC of $1.02 makes this a great fit for development. Recipe sites are easy to get started with and given the focus of these keywords you know exactly what kind of recipes your visitors are looking for. It’s always the best when you build a site that provides people with useful information, not only are you ranking well for a term, but you’re actually making a difference!

BestBackpack.net – backpacks are a big business with a zillion different affiliate offers available in the space. 3,600 exact-match global monthly searches and a CPC of $0.53 puts this right in my typical range.

ExerciseToLoseWeight.net – I will be bidding on this one so just giving you warning and probably shooting myself in the foot for including this in the list, but heck I want to let you know what I would buy myself right? Weight loss is a huge industry with tons of great affiliate offers in the space. This term gets 6,600 global monthly searches and a CPC of $2.92 and if I get it you can expect to see a case study going up very soon, I really love this one!

RimsAndTires.net – 27,100 exact-match global searches and a CPC of $1.08. While there is some reasonable competition in this space and the search volume is higher than I typically go for this name has a lot of development potential.

RouterWireless.org – 14,800 exact-match global searches and a CPC of $1.16. This is a very competitive niche so will really take some time to build-up your ranking for this term, but you know exactly what your visitor is looking for – a wireless router.

That’s it for this week, if you want to get Domain Development Drops more frequently make sure to become a fan of me on Facebook. This year I will be sharing a lot of exclusive content with my Facebook fans so make sure to “Like” my page if you haven’t done so yet!

Of course I always love to hear from you, my readers! So please feel free to share comments about the domains above or share some of your own recommendations. Comment and let your voice be heard!

This year I am going to be doing more case studies on my blog than ever before. My first case study about a new Credit Monitoring Site we are building went live on January 4th and now we’re onto our second case study. When it comes to mass development Epik has been in the game for a long time and with some impressive results. Of course seeing is believing so I’ll be doing a case study over the next few months detailing my experiences with Epik from start to finish.

The domain name I am using is InfraredCamera.net, the term “Infrared Camera” gets 14,800 exact-match global searches and a CPC of $4.44. I am using the Epik Product Portal to generate a website on the domain. As you can see from the image below this is light-years ahead of a parked page and does look legitimately like an online store for Infrared Cameras…however we’re going to of course be making lots of tweaks to really make the site shine!

My team will be following the same steps that we take with every brand we build, and it all starts with great content. It is easy to add custom content directly through Epik’s product portal GUI. You can add as many articles as you want and we’ll be adding roughly 3-4/month to start.

As you can see from the image above, new articles can be added by click on the “Articles” button below actions. You can also view your stats as well as edit the site itself from this menu. This will take you to the following screen where you can add custom articles and setup placement options.

We added our first article on January 6th and this week will begin building some basic backlinks to the site. This does not mean building hundreds of spammy links but instead focusing on getting a few good links from related sites. We are using TextBroker for our articles and with 3-4 articles/month I’m looking at a budget of around $40/month in content and about $50/month in paying my team to make changes and tweaks to the site along with adding content.

Right now this domain is a clean slate. According to Google Webmaster Tools it does not rank for any terms. As we continue to improve the site and build a stronger backlink profile I will continue to update all of you. So far this has been a very easy way to build a sophisticated product site. The site is getting no traffic and making $0 – let’s see what we can do going from an undeveloped domain to an Epik product portal. Stay-tuned, as always there’s more to come!

The moment I saw this session I knew I had to be there. Email and Social Media list building is a key element of any brand in any niche. Email and Social Media are critical ways to engage your audience and build brand loyalty. Enough about how cool this session is – let’s dive right in! Since there’s a lot of content here I’ve decided to split this into two posts – here’s part one!

Hunter Boyle - Aweber

List Building

• An effective list-building strategy is more than just a bunch of tactics – it’s tightly integrated with ROI.

• Content should be driving everything that you do.

• Develop partnerships with other experts in your space.

Case Study: Social Media Examiner

Don’t start selling right away; wait until you have subscribers and followers. Email is about relationship building so the initial focus is on great content not sales.

Top Five Tactics:

1. Pop-up form get 70% of opt ins (most people think this doesn’t work, but it does)
2. Bonus incentive lifts response
3. Confirmed (double) opt-in boosts quality
4. Social proof reduces anxiety
5. Social media makes sharing easy (confirmation page after sign-up allowing people to tweet and post to Facebook)

Key: Support your tactics with research and testing; integrate them with ROI goals to build strategy.

Recommended Sites:
MarketingExperiments.com, MarketingSherpa.com, WhichTestWon.com

Optimizing Landing Pages:

• “Before” landing pages – where site visitors first opt into your list (blog, squeeze page)
• “After” landing pages – what they see right after signing-up (confirmation, special offers)

This is one of the sessions that really caught my eye when I was reviewing my itinerary for this trip. The session features some excellent speakers including Tim Ash, who is one of my personal favorites. In fact, Tim Ash will also be speaking at DOMAINfest this month as well so if you missed him at Affiliate Summit, you can see him later this month! Now onto the session!

Timothy Kerber - CEO, MemberGate Solutions (Moderator)

Split Testing
Creating alternative version of a site and testing different versions of a page. Tim recommendeds Google Website Optimizer – free and integrated with Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics.

It can be frustrating as a publisher to send good traffic for an advertiser and not seeing it convert. If this happens it is important to put these ads in less-visible places on the site. Top-converting ads should be placed in better locations. This may seem obvious but many developers often don’t pay careful enough attention to this.

Jennifer Myers Ward, CEO, ebove & beyond, inc.

Increasing Conversions

• Don’t force commitment. Let your buyers “buy” as a guest
• Don’t Keep Secrets: Make your return policy and your shipping charge easy to find
• Test, test, test…, and test again!
• What your competitors are doing isn’t necessarily the right thing
• Keep it simple. Don’t cram everything you sell into the “store window”
• Show them the way: Navigation is a roadmap, not a puzzle
• A Quick Read. Present content in outline format not as an essay
• Don’t Ignore them: keep in touch with your buyers
• What else do they need? Leveraging cross sell and upsell opportunities based on purchase
• Have a Strong Offer: Give them something they can’t get anywhere else

What is a good sales page conversion rate?
Good sites see a conversion rate of 10%-20% but this really depends on how targeted your online marketing efforts are.

Will split testing hurt your SEO efforts?
No! Google has said it themselves, they are fine with split testing and this will not impact your rankings.

Mike Allen, Chief Executive Shopper, Shopping-Bargains.com, LLC

Seven ways to make your Existing Traffic Convert better
1. Be The Expert – become the authority on the subject, embrace the tough questions, find solutions, empower people
2. Leverage Your Advantage – build partner relationships, offer something exclusive
3. Provide Better Content – be unique, give something away, provide great answers, drop the sales pitch (soft-sell)
4. Help People Decide – honest comparisons, reviews/ratings, images, provide details, gently lead
5. Increase Touch Points – customer service is critical, say thank you, help your users succeed, upsell opportunities about!
6. Build Lasting Relationships – customer service is critical, say “thank you”, help your users succeed
7. Monitor Behavior (analytics) – monitor what your readers are doing, survey your users, contact mega-users directly

Tim Ash, CEO, SiteTuners

Five Quick Tips Skyrocket Your Conversion Rates

1. Make Your Call-To-Action Clear – best way to do this is to de-clutter your page
2. Ask for less info – don’t ask for too much information from your users, ask for information that is absolutely necessary to complete the current transaction
3. Cut down your text – most people don’t read on the web, they scan, look for pictures, etc.
4. Keeping your promises – make sure that you keep every promise you make to your visitors
5. Make your trust visible – adding things like “As seen on” can increase conversions dramatically (Tim gave an example of a site that say 40% conversions after adding banners for media mentions)

This morning I woke-up in beautiful Las Vegas! Today is the first day of Affiliate Summit West 2012 and I am currently sitting in the first session which is intended for newcomers to the conference. This is the biggest Affiliate Summit yet with over 5,000 attendees, so if you every doubted the Affiliate Space is growing, think again, this industry is on fire and Affiliate Summit is leading the charge!

Unlike previous conferences where I’ve done incredible long posts summarizing each day I’ve decided to do multiple posts each covering different sections of the show. I’m hoping this will make it easy for people to follow the action as it’s happening! So let’s get started!

The conference is taking place at Caesars Palace at the center of the Vegas Strip. This morning exhibitors continue setting-up their booths as the main exhibit hall opens tomorrow!

The first session of the day is intended for new attendees to learn the ins and outs of the show. I’ve always thought this was a great idea for a conference as it makes newcomers feel very comfortable right-away.

The main sessions begin at 11:00AM and I’ll be attending a session titled – How to Quadruple Revenue using Existing Traffic. Doesn’t that sound awesome? Of course I’ll be sharing what I learn from the session with all of you so stay-tuned!

Geeky Note: This is the first conference that I’m shooting photos and videos with my brand new Nikon D5100. The days of photos and videos on my iPhone are over, I hope you all enjoy the upgrade!