Monetization strategies?

grcorp · Dec 9, 2010

New years' resolution. I want to actually do something with my domain names.

I've been considering the Adsense route. Well aware that it's the most widely used strategy. Would go as far as to say it's the norm.

However, I dug deeper into where money changes hands and applied the AIDA formula.

Attention = User sees ad
Interest = User is interested in knowing more based on what the ad said
Desire = User wants to go through with the proposal presented by the sales page
Action = User enters credit card information, thereby making their desire fulfilled, and the sales bar on my clickbank account a little wider

So, I thought to myself, why not display clickbank ads of my own, rather than low-paying ads from adsense and having to give google a cut?

After all, the only reason somebody would pay for an ad on google is to get someone on their site and eventually make them money, right?

So, essentially, I'd be cutting out the middleman - twice.

Google for taking a cut on the ad revenues, and the advertiser for paying google (inherently, me) less money than what they're earning as a result of advertising (unless they operate at a loss).

It seems simple... but online advertising has been established for a very long time, and I have a feeling that my strategy is missing something. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it.

What am I asking?

a) What are some monetizing strategies you guys use/know of besides adsense and affiliate ads?

b) Poke some holes in the strategy I just described. I know there are holes pokable/pokeable (my spellcheck didn't accept either spelling :undecided: ), as it seems too simple to work.

INFORG · Dec 10, 2010

The most profitable from a percentage standpoint can definitely be cutting out all of the middlemen and selling your own products and services. I don't think most domainers would dispute this premise. But, here is where we, as domainers, lose it:

1. We like the action of quick money, quick flips, low effort highest return.
2. Developing our own ideas takes - effort+knowledge+patience+money, and we don't always have a sufficient amount of each.
3. We aren't all "people - people" and some of us wouldn't be good at dealing with actual customers

I'm trying to move more toward the micro-business ecommerce sites, but it takes quite a bit of effort and I lose interest quickly when working on one site (see numbers 1 and 2

)
Another concept I have been toying around with for monetization is "lead generation". Selling leads gathered from a website to actual brick and mortar companies - needs to be a higher priced item/service, and your leads need to convert well. Also, a lot of time spent in garnering your lead customers.

PapaStiz · Dec 10, 2010

You hit the nail on the head, 2gajgops.

Which provider are you using to sell leads?

INFORG · Dec 10, 2010

PapaStiz said:
You hit the nail on the head, 2gajgops.

Which provider are you using to sell leads?

I'm selling leads straight to businesses myself. I'm not going after typical lead markets - more along the lines of gathering leads for local and regional businesses. As a theoretical example, a website where people interested in converting their tub to a shower can ask for more information, and then I work with local businesses that do tub conversions and sell them the leads, so they can follow up or send an information packet to them.