But you know, it happens to everybody, sooner than later. Rarely anything good lasts too long. This is what has been happening the past few years in the domain industry… Big time. The bigger players, such as registrars and veteran domainers with money up the ass have been squeezing the little guys right out.

Crying or bitching really won’t do much. You just have to suck it up and re-strategize. There are many ways to go about earning a buck in this wonderful biz we call domaining. You just can’t get attached to any one method too much. You have to be well prepared and ready for the unexpected because that’s how this biz is. Lifecycle of any one opportunity is very short.

So I have a good friend who I helped start his very own e-commerce store about 4 – 5 years ago. He did great in 2005… 2006 he did even better. 2007 and 2008 he continued to grow his entire operation by 300 – 500% easily, year over year, with record sales. Now 2009 is when he started running into problems… He started getting squeezed!

The whole idea behind going online with his retail operation was due to the fact that his offline store was seeing less and less activity as more people were shopping online, because there were better deals. I suggested to go exclusively online with e-commerce and soon after they did just that. It just made more sense and was better for the bottom line.

Well, they had a great run for a couple of years and then they started seeing more competition from smaller players who turned into big players, because that’s what always happens with time. People flock to where there is good or easy money. Then soon it didn’t make sense anymore to mess around with eBay, one of their best sales outlets so they said bye bye to it.

Now earlier this year, Amazon, the place where they sell close to two third’s of their stuff and do the most of their biz online started directly competing with them… Looks like Amazon saw an opportunity (analyzed all the sales data from last few years, looked into margins and added the inventory by going direct to manufacturer since there is some nice $$$ to be made) and that’s that.

Looks like by this time next year they will be all out of biz… Just hard to compete with all these big boys, and these guys just squeeze you right out. Unfortunately it happens to everybody, sooner than later. Once my friend was one of the top guys in their niche, but in a few month’s time ever… It may all be over.

Now back to domains… Registrars are nowadays squeezing out the small guys, more and more. They are keeping tons of the best expired domains inventory, and whatever good domains do make it to the auction stage, the well established and professional domainers who have been around for 5 – 10 years or more are overpaying because they can do just that.

Register.com for example keeps tons of domains, and then they try to liquidate it by running special auctions via SnapNames and NameJet. A domain which cost them to acquire $7 per year they easily flip for hundreds or thousands. Nice ROI there… Aaah!

It’s not easy to make it in the e-commerce biz or any online biz as a matter of fact in 2010 and moving forward… Unless you find yourself a small niche which you can dominate eventually, and the sooner the better. Same goes for domains. You gotta have a specialty and go after a very certain type of domains. Being all over the place is not a very good or winnable strategy for those who are beginners.

You spread yourself out too much and you will lose focus and just end up in a big mess. You gotta have a specialty when doing “domain investment” and know exactly what it is you are getting yourself into.

Just the other day a Q2 click fraud report was released by Click Forensics which to no surprise is up and at almost 20%… We’re talking about maybe a billion or two billion dollars worth of fraudulent clicks…. Most of the blame lays with domain parking companies.

“Now in its fourth year, the Click Forensics reporting service provides statistically significant data collected from Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising campaigns for both large and small advertisers across all leading search engines as well as comparison shopping engines and social networks. Traffic across more than 300 ad networks is reflected in the data. Key findings for Q2 2010 include:

• The overall industry average click fraud rate was 18.6 percent. That’s up from the 17.4 percent reported for Q1 2010 and the 12.7 percent rate reported for Q2 2009.
• In Q2 2010, the countries outside North America with significant CPC traffic producing the greatest volume of click fraud were Singapore, Pakistan, Japan, Ukraine and China respectively.

“Over the past several quarters, we’ve seen the overall click fraud rate slowly trending higher,� said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “The main reasons appear to be the continued sophistication of botnets and malware prevalent in the fast-growing search marketing space. We advise online marketers to be watchful of their campaigns as they spend more on search advertising in the coming quarters.�

So who the heck is responsible for all this click fraud… And what do domain parking companies have to do with it you ask? Well, click fraudsters come from all walks of life. There is some who only make $50 – $100 per day and then there are some that make 7 and 8 figures annually.. Running very sophisticated operations.

I blame domain parking largely for this record breaking numbers and much of the click fraud because they make it so easy to access PPC ads. You just get a random domain, switch name servers, and let the clicks flow and wait to get paid. They don’t really have any security measures in place to detect anything… They talk a big game, but trust me when I say…. They really don’t got shit.

There is even an underground market that is thriving for the past few years where certain companies’ domain parking accounts sell for $1000s of dollars each. Ones that are not easy to get into  (private / invitation only) and the ones specifically that are powered by Yahoo, because their entire PPC eco-system to begin with sucks at detecting click fraud while Google’s is a little better.

Even though traditionally Google’s feed pays more, click fraudsters choose Yahoo, because they can get away with it a lot easier. These people are on top of their game and have extremely well organized operations and money up the ass. If you were ever approached by somebody looking to buy or rent your parking account at a forum, e-mail or im’s… Well, you had your run in with a click fraudster.

Basically, they have shitloads of people sitting in packed to full capacity computer labs, remotely controlling infected computers thanks to malware and viruses. When the infected computer shows no activity, in other words it is idle… They load up the browser real quick, visit whatever parked domain they want… Click around.. BAM! There it is…. Cha-ching $$$

The browsing activity looks, feel and checks out as real because it is… So this stuff is virtually impossible to detect. They make a few dollars per click easily. Somebody working a regular 9 – 5  day clicking around can make thousands.

These click fraudster guys even own premium domains… Domains which aren’t that suspicious to be receiving some traffic, but they crank things  up 100x and send 1000s of clicks to it. Once again, domain parking companies do nothing… They are happy and all about it. They are making $$$ as is Yahoo, the traffic broker and middleman. The advertisers are the ones getting fucked in the ass, big time!

The domain industry as a whole is hated by pretty much all search engine marketers for this very reason… Because thanks to wreckless domain parking companies, everybody has to suffer.

Now guys like Frank Schilling or Scott Day who have private feeds with Yahoo are OK. Their traffic quality is A++ but the rest of the industry…. Whole different story. Even though the clicks look and feel real…. They simply do not convert.

So WTF do I know about PPC and click fraud anyways you are wondering? Well, I have been the accounts supervisor with Maxxximize.com for close to 3 years now. I get to see 1000s of fake applications for our domain monetization service each and every month. These assholes have captcha breakers, and send applications time and time over and over again. They do not stop.

I’ve also had multiple run-ins with click fraudsters looking to buy parking accounts from me. I even had one PayPal $5000 to me in exchange for 4 to 5 accounts… I never gave him anything, just gamed him. Was very interesting to get into his mind and have a full blown dialogue into their operations, etc. This was probably a year or two ago.

When they didn’t get the accounts as promised, they did a chargeback but when I mentioned I’d blow their cover or get lawyers involved… They closed the dispute and said “sorry, please do not do this… and you will not hear from us again” and of course, I have not.

Now don’t think of click fraudsters as Chinese or Russian hackers… Because not all of them are. I know of a few youngsters, your typical American teen-agers who are all about tech shit who make $100s per day however they can.

They basically drive around in highly populated areas looking for open wifi connections. Once they get into one, the click fraud begins. They visit one of their parked domains and click away. The browsers they use aren’t your typical browser… It spoofs the client, version, etc. Basically randomizes it, so you are never leaving any footprints. They drive around for a few hours once or twice per week and they make $1000s collectively. Not bad…

Then there are mailing lists and private forums for people who request favors in the form of clicks… Basically, a click trading market of sort. These people make $50 – $100 max and really at the bottom of the chain. Most of these are 40,50,60 year olds that aren’t very tech savvy but they have found a way to exploit the domain parking system and they do just that. It’s easy money. 10 or 20 clicks per day, only takes 5 to 10 mins and they make enough cash.

There are many other things going on out there which you have absolutely no clue about and you never will unless you open your eyes and start demanding answers. The domain parking biz is full of so many problems… Man oh man… I got out back in 2005 because it wasn’t something I could rely on. It’s just a nasty business with no transparency and way too much bullshit going on.

If I was responsible for syndicated / partners PPC over at Yahoo or Google I’d get rid of the public and open-to-all domain parking channels / companies the first day on the job. They are really fucking toxic…. T-O-X-I-C.

I think it was Frank Schilling who coined the term “pure play domainers” a few years back… Unfortunately there aren’t that many pure play domainers AKA full time domain professionals around that are active in the domaining industry. Many have cashed out or gotten involved with various other stuff in the last few years as things have gotten tougher.

Rick Schwartz is still very much a pure play domainer and active on many fronts, Frank Schilling is another one who pops up here and there… So you are wondering what will earn you this title of a pure play domainer? To me, if you make about 80% to 90% of your livelihood and then some from domains… That makes you a pure play domainer. It’s definitely not easy to get up there, but anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

I see people bitching all day long about a million things concerning domain investing and then getting on Rick Schwartz’ case for being a bit too brutally honest and open… Come on now.. Seriously, like him or not, he is one of the very few pure play domainers around who puts out there good advice day after day and year after year consistently which if you have the ability to digest properly, you can easily run with it and go places…. FAST!

I love Ron Jackson’s DNJournal feel-good industry news articles, Elliot’s and Andrew’s daily industry briefs but Rick Schwartz’ blog is one of the most important domainining resources that there is. This info is coming straight from a guy who has been there practically since day one, tried it all, an insider in every sense and he still continues to make money with domains in new ways and evolving…. It simply doesn’t get any better than that.

So .CO domain registrations are avail for $25 – $30 a pop as of yesterday… A lot less than what .CM went for when they first became avail.

I didn’t spend a single dime on .CM domains because they were just too damn expensive at a few hundreds bucks a pop and a very very risky speculative investment. Now dot CO is a whole different story where it is a lot more affordable… At $25 per registration (thanks eNom) we gave it a go. I also like it even more than .CM because if you look at the keyboard, the “M” can be easily missed and instead you hit the space… Which is fine, because following that you hit enter.

Didn’t target any generic keyword domains because those are hopeless. Only went after potential traffic domains which can hopefully turn in a profit… Sure, most were typos, but whatever… When you are a “seasoned” professional, you can make these moves all day long and still sleep like a baby at night and not have to worry much.

Rick Schwartz registered 100+ domains containing the letters “BP” after the gulf oil spill disaster… Ok, so what ? No biggie… He is a seasoned pro and can risk as much as he wants all day long. He knows the consequences, and even if the worst was to happen… So it happens. He is well informed and can handle it.

Same here with the .CO rush… When we spent the $ we tried to take out as much risk as possible outta the equation when investing in these .CO domain typos. No, I won’t tell you exactly which ones we got or what we did as far as research goes but we had our game plan ready a  long long time ago. It wasn’t a “hey, lets register these domains for fun because I think they can make some money”

So far, it’s been 24 hours and none of the domains are really performing as well as we had hoped… Nothing else positive to report other than a friendly warning: Don’t spend too much $$$ on these if you are not a seasoned pro because you will most likely get burned and there is nowhere to dump these at 50%, 25%  or even 5% of your initial cost.

Yes, it happens sometimes… Google does indeed rank generic keyword .COM domains that are parked. Not all of the domains parked in the world are penalized / banned. Of course these domains only rank for the exact match root keyword. Nothing more, nothing less, since there isn’t any content to draw in longtail traffic.

But why do they rank to begin with… WTF? Makes no sense. It’s a good question… Really, it has nothing to do with the parking page setup, or the content on the site. It has nothing to do with how competitive the root keyword is… The most important factor is the incoming links. If the parked domain has lots of “linkjuice” then it can indeed rank at the top on Google.

Just the other day I was watching this music video below with Shaggy in it… Then I went to search for Shaggy on google.com and saw the domain Shaggy.com rank right in the middle of the first page. The domain of course is parked, with DomainSponsor, but it has lots of one-way links pointing to it from some pretty “authoritative” sites so Google takes that into consideration and since it is an exact match domain + has some linkjuice = ranking.

Then I was checking how ForeignAutoParts.com was doing just the other day… A domain I sold last month which is parked. Acquired it for mid $x,xxx back in January…. Was surprised to discover it holding down the top spot for root keyword over at Google and one of the top spots at Bing.com as well.

I get inquiries every now and then from people wanting me to somehow “rank” their parked domains… People wanna drop lots of cash on this stuff, but unfortunately ranking parked pages is a bitch and very hard to do. There is cloaking and other ways to be able to do so if you absolutely set your mind to it, but really, the examples I provided are just the exception.. Not the norm. It does happen though, all thanks to links from the previous lifetime of the domain. ForeignAutoParts.com for example was a foreign auto parts store since 2000.. So it has that going for it.

Most times people’s actions are clear on here… Everybody and I mean everybody taking part of domaining, be it as a buyer, seller or service provider, has an agenda, and they stick with it. But in some cases, I am left scratching my head, thinking… WTF are you doing buddy? LOL. No seriously, it happens in the domain industry more often than in any other industry I follow. Don’t you think so.. Haven’t you noticed?

The domain biz is unlike any other of course… It’s really wacky. Always has been and always will be probably. The industry is a very interesting and unique biz which consists of an extremely diverse crowd. It’s a truly global bunch and has lots of different characters and lots of stuff that doesn’t make much sense happen daily… Day after day after day. It’s just how it is.

So what am I doing here… What’s the purpose? It’s something I actually ask myself often and have to remind myself over and over again, as well as my partners and staff. I am here to do biz, make money you know? …and create some win-win situations, because as service provider, you gotta make sure to do that. I am here to please my partners and paying clients. That’s about it. Really simple.

No, I am not here to make life-long friendships and develop lasting relationships that can blossom into something totally awesome like in the movies. Not interested in having lunch or dinner with you for chit chat. Don’t want to chat on msg’s or phone either about your problems. Sorry, no time. I don’t try too hard to make anything happen. Sure, if it happens overtime, then so be it, that means it was right but as you already know… I don’t kiss ass. I don’t hold anything back either… Never that.

Frankly, I don’t give a shit about you if we cannot align our businesses / interests one way or another and make some money together… I just don’t care about you really. There is a lot of “politics” in this domaining biz, which I take no part of. I am still very bullish on many companies in this biz as well as the future of domains. I try to keep it real, and most of the people we do business with daily through the various businesses we run appreciate that the most.

So what are you doing… Do you have a business plan or a road map to follow? Hopefully you do have a purpose, because just roaming around, won’t get you too far. You gotta have a purpose behind each and every action in order to go places… In the domain industry there are still some undiscovered places and plenty of opportunities for those willing to put in the hard work by staying focused, avoiding all the daily bullshit or at least filtering some of it out and getting the job done at the end of the day one way or another… Through whatever it takes, because that’s what you gotta do to be truly successful

I’ve observed over the past few month’s some of Frank Schilling’s domains being monetized via REVnetics which is a service similar to that of Sendori. REVnetics.com seems to be in beta / by invitation only. Maybe Scott Day or Franky can clue us in and have some good news for us all

You know, I contacted Sendori recently but all I got was a lame automated response and then never even heard back from anybody after sending numerous e-mails to two different people. Talk about crappy customer service and practically a non-existent sales team. Whatever… Their loss!

Also interesting to see all of Frank Schilling’s domains  having a pop-under come up immediately once you a visit a domain such as lmfao.com or tweets.com. I think they have been on there for a while now, don’t even remember to tell you the truth but there is an on-exit-popup that comes up once you leave the domain too. So that is 2 total annoying money-makers.

Don’t even know how often these generic portal types of pop-ups actually display, since almost every modern web browser used nowadays has a built-in popup blocker but I guess even if 10/100  is displayed… That is some additional $$$ opportunities right there and he’ll take it. Wouldn’t you?

Frank Schilling has also been launching his own informational / guide style types of minisites, as well as monetizing his geo domains with 3rd parties such as Octane360 and adult domains with  DomainSponsor…. Staying busy, without a doubt, and trying to squeeze out as much $$$ as possible out of all those hundreds of thousands of domains because PPC parking is still hurting.

Some of you may or may not know of Richard Gabriel… He recently sold Call.com for $1.1m, DropShippers.com for $1.5m, Auction.com for $1.7m and two other mega-sales in recent years which have gone unreported: Hgh.com for close to $6m and PlasticSurgeons.com for a cool $18m.

Who the hell would drop $18m on a domain that valuates at only $87,000? LOL… That is pretty crazy, right? No. The company who acquired PlasticSurgeons.com is noneother than Moxy Media aka Tsavo aka SWI aka like a million other things… I lost count. It’s impossible to keep up with their entity names becuase they seem to re-structure and so on every year or less… I wonder why

They needed the domain for their newly launched venture called ExpertHub. I’ve wrote about them before over a year ago over at WannaDevelop.com actually. All I can tell you is that… They are an interesting bunch with a fascinating history that have been around for a while who do a lot behind the scenes and fly under the radar as much as possible, hence the millions of different names they operate under and many divisions.

Moxy Media received $160M in funding from AmericanCapital.com back in early 2007. American Capital is a publicly traded private equity firm and global asset manager with $14 billion in capital resources under management. So few month’s later, loaded with all this money… Moxy Media / ExpertHub shelled out lots of cash for quite a few category killer domains.

I am sure PlasticSurgeons.com wasn’t the only ultra-expensive domain, but all of the biggest domain deals always happen behind the scenes and almost always go unreported. I just so happen to stumble across Richard Gabriel’s domain portfolio website and the prices for the marked sold domains were right there. Great!

Anyways, a few month’s ago ExpertHub.com was acquired by Internet Brands who is a huge player in the vertical media / community niche… They have over 100 unique properties and do close to $100 million annually in revenue… How much did they shell out for ExpertHub? We don’t know, but definitely in the low-mid 8 figures I’d say.

So you gotta wonder… What is the REAL highest price paid for a domain ever? $14m and $18m is a lot of money, without a doubt, but I think there have been even bigger deals over the years. Frank Schilling has put out a nice post recently which explains… “The World Changes But Domain Names Stay The Same” and he’s so right.

Values of category leading domains in health, finance, entertainment and few other “easy and big money” niches will always increase, today, tomorrow… Next year, the year after that, etc… and if they are put to good use thanks to proper development… Cha-ching $$$$$$

Holidays and extended weekends… Ahhh These times, my friends, is when you can make 10x and 100x of what you normally earn easily… All in a matter of days.. Yep! Even most people who make their living online take weekends and especially the big holidays off, which means… HUGE OPPORTUNITIES!

I already know that somebody is going to step up to the plate and go at it hard… No no, it won’t be me, but there is always a couple of people who come through because timing is just right. It’s perfect actually. You can win auctions for some killer expired domains with little to no competition…. We’re talking about absolute STEALS.

Back in 2004, I went month’s without going out on weekends, and as for holidays… Forget about it. Hell, I lost track of time… I wasn’t even aware what day it was really, because every day for me was auction day…. And every day had the same ol’ routine where you research domains and research some more. All I did was buy domains and flip them… Non-stop.

I have since retired from the daily hustle and grind, but I tell ya… These are the times when you want to take advantage of because really, they don’t come around that often. Those who plan and execute carefully will always come out on top. I wish you all a happy holiday and much success… Go get em you…. Stryke gold

I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries from existing clients and potential clients as well asking me about the ContentMinisites.com offering… Why is it so cheap, is it any good, etc. Well, I’ll just let the following screenshots / results do all of the talking and just summarize things real quick once and for all because somebody has to.

As you can see, the very first example domain I used is banned over at Google and only one or two of the actual “content pages” are indexed at the other two engines, Yahoo and Bing.  If you also visit the site itself, Google AdSense ads aren’t displaying either. I highly doubt any traffic is being generated, and obviously no revenue earned.

Why all these problems? Because the content is not unique. It is scrapped / syndicated from 3rd parties. The search engines do not like these sites, and why should they? There is nothing special or unique about them whatsoever and besides MFA (made-for-adsense) sites are so 2005. That is when they were hot. These days, they are not. They are old news, and only get you in trouble as you can see.

So sure, the price for 1 of these “content minisites” is dirt cheap, only $49 and with 10 the price drops to $34 or 50 – 100 as low as $25 or $19 per site… But really, it’s a waste of time, money and resources. I don’t understand for the life of me, why would somebody buy one or 10 or 50 of these sites.

Don’t believe what I say? Visit all of the homepage showcase / demo sites… Query them in Google and the other two search engines as well. There is your answers, my friends. I could go on and on about this stuff, but there really is no point. The results are all there for you to examine.

These content minisites do more harm than good at the end of the day and you couldn’t even pay me enough $$$ to put up any one of these on one of my own domains. Nope! Not $10, $100 or $500. They are no good unfortunately and not sure why they are even being offered for sale. Two words; buyer beware.