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Hit the Jackpot! How to Find Money-making Domains
Investing in registered or expired domains can increase the visibility
of your Website and help direct traffic that will convert to sales.
However, with over 60 million domains currently registered, it can be
daunting to try to find the right domain -- one that will drive quality
traffic to your Website or parked domain.
How can you ensure you're making the right decision when you purchase
registered and expired domains? Do your research and you'll feel
confident in your purchase.
In this article, I'll explain the tools and techniques domain pros use
to determine -- or at least reasonably guesstimate -- how much, and what
type, of traffic a domain receives. Armed with this knowledge, you'll be
able to predict approximately how much money a given domain will make,
and thus gain a better understanding of the domain's true value. We'll
discuss three methods for evaluating the traffic a domain receives:
The educated buyer always comes out ahead, so read on to unlock the
mysteries of domain traffic and learn how to determine scientifically if
a domain is really worth buying.
Trackers/Direct Methods
Ideally, you could skip all of the guesswork and find out how much
traffic a domain receives directly from the domain owner. The easiest
way to do this is simply to ask the seller. However, the seller may make
a mistake (or simply be dishonest), so it's always a good idea to
double-check the numbers using one or more of the following methods.
Traffic counting scripts are one of the simplest and most reliable
methods for determining traffic to a developed Website. Many free
professional statistics programs are available. These can be integrated
easily into Website code to give buyers the additional reassurance of a
third-party-verified system. Most trackers will provide sellers even
more information, such as top referrers, the geographic and
chronological breakdown of visitors, and more.
Parked Domains
If a domain name is parked, the parking program may make traffic
statistics available automatically through the domain's sales listing
page. For example, at the time this article was written, the traffic
attracted by the parked domain, Wifi.com could be viewed on the domain's
sale page.
It's worth noting that visitor numbers can be manipulated by malevolent
sellers, but in general, parked domain visitor stats serve as a very
helpful guideline for potential buyers.
Predictors/Indirect Methods
What should you do if a domain is not parked and the seller is
unable to provide you with visitor statistics? Fortunately, a few handy
tricks can be used to help you get a rough indication of whether or not
a domain receives any traffic.
I wouldn't recommend relying exclusively on any of these tricks as a
bulletproof way to guesstimate traffic. However, taken as a whole (and
with a hefty spoonful of salt), they can shine a bit of light on the
question of whether or not a domain will receive valuable traffic.
Alexa.com
Alexa ranks web sites based on the number of visitors they receive. For
example, at the time this article was written, Yahoo.com ranked first,
while blue.com ranked at 212,093 and camera.com at 717,298. These
rankings are based on data derived from Alexa toolbar users. Translating
these numbers into unique views, Camera.com received over 10,000 unique
views in the month of September while Blue.com received over 70,000
uniques. (Statistics from Sedo.com).
Many high-traffic domain names will receive an Alexa ranking just from
their type-in traffic. In general, an Alexa ranking under 1,000,000 for
an undeveloped site is a good indicator that the domain receives decent
traffic (e.g. several thousand monthly uniques). Rankings over a million
are less reliable, but usually any sort of Alexa ranking means the
domain receives at least some traffic. As with all of these methods,
Alexa should be used as a guideline only: sometimes even domains for
which Alexa returns "No Data" (too low to rank) will still receive
traffic. Ranking.com offers a tool that's similar to Alexa's.
Overture Searches
Yahoo! Search Marketing's Keyword Selector Tool (known to many of us as
Overture) tells you how often a given keyword was searched on the Yahoo!
network. For example, "Yahoo" was searched 17,858,229 times in September
2005, while "Blue" was searched 178,124 times.
Naturally, a domain that contains a highly-searched keyword is more
likely to receive traffic. However, the Overture Tool's usefulness goes
beyond that: if you use the exact domain name (with extension) as the
keyword, Overture results can be used as a predictor for whether or not
a domain name receives traffic. For example, "Yahoo.com" was searched
over 11 million times in September, according to Overture. Our
comparison sites fared as follows: "Blue.com" was searched 794 times,
while "Camera.com" was searched 258 times.
Research has shown that Overture searches do sometimes have a rough
correlation with traffic (especially type-in traffic), but as with other
methods, there are many exceptions to the rule.
Traffic Source
If you want to better understand something, go to the source. This
aphorism applies to domain traffic just as well as it does to other
information. Thus, in addition to using the above methods to guesstimate
the quantity of traffic a given domain receives, you may want to use
these techniques to try to determine the source of that traffic.
Traffic source will affect the longevity and conversion of the traffic.
In simpler terms, it will have a huge impact on how much money the
domain will make.
Link Popularity
A web site or formerly-developed domain name may receive traffic from
old incoming links and directory listings. There are many online tools
for checking link popularity; Marketleap.com offers one of the best
tools.
The important thing to look for here is not the quantity of links, but
their quality. A single link from a major web site may be worth
thousands of links from smaller sites. The longevity of link traffic
varies widely: a link from a news article may generate a flurry of
traffic that lasts only a week, while a directory listing may continue
to generate steady traffic for years. Another similar tool worth
checking out is URLtrends.com.
Search Engine Listings
Search engine listings are a major source of traffic for many sites. You
can guesstimate how much search engine-derived traffic a web site
receives by looking at its "search engine saturation". This is an
indicator of how often the domain appears in the various search engine
indexes. Again, Marketleap.com offers an excellent tool for evaluating
search engine saturation.
Just keep in mind that it's also important to look at how high the site
is listed and how often the keyword is searched. And don't forget that
search engine listings change frequently, so if this is the primary
source of traffic, expect fluctuations!
Paid Fluctuations
Some traffic may be coming from PPC advertisements, exit popups or
banner ads that the seller has bought. This is the shortest-lived
traffic, because as soon as you buy the domain, the seller stops paying
for the ads! The best way to determine traffic origin is to ask the
seller about traffic sources and view the traffic logs. To ensure the
logs are not modified, ask for access to the logs instead of screenshot
of the statistics.
Without access to the logs, it can be difficult to determine if a domain
is receiving paid traffic, but a savvy domain buyer will look for a few
key pieces of evidence: do the domain statistics align with the Alexa
ranking and the number of incoming links? For example, a domain that
receives a couple hundred views a day, and has no Alexa ranking and very
few incoming links from low-traffic sites may likely receive paid
traffic. But don't discount such domains out of hand: they may be
receiving typo traffic (see below for more information) or may be a
seasonal domain (such as one related to the World Series).
Expired Traffic
If a domain was formerly developed, some users may continue to visit
because of old links and references, or simply because they remember the
domain name. This traffic may continue for years, but naturally, it
decreases with time.
If it's not possible to speak with the current owner about the past
development of the site, a few simple searches can help. In particular,
use the hints above to examine the types of sites that link to the
domain. With that information, you may be able to get some idea of the
type of traffic that's visiting the domain in search of old content.
After the content is removed, many of the links will be updated or
removed and this traffic will eventually dwindle or expire.
Typos and Variations
Don't ignore traffic that's diverted to the domain name as a result of
typos from other high traffic sites. Check out the traffic that flows to
similar or mistyped domains using the tools above. Also consider traffic
generated from variations of names, such as an abbreviated form of your
domain name, or an acronym. If these domains experience high volumes of
visitors, there is a possibility that this will translate to high
traffic levels for similar sites.
Alexa can be useful tool for doing this -- it offers a feature that
lists other web sites that visitors of a given domain also visit. For
example, an Alexa search on the domain hotmial.com shows that many
visitors to this domain also visit hotmail.com.
Find the Right Domain
Traffic is crucial for any revenue generating business on the Web.
Finding the right domain with targeted traffic can take your business --
and profits -- to new heights. If you haven't quite had the time to
build that web site, simply park your domains, let your parking company
place relevant advertisements on the domains' pages, and sit back and
monetize the traffic. Use the tools listed above to determine domain
traffic and never make a wrong buying decision again.
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