NAMEDRIVE.COM - WOW.. Impressive

[gemsergio]

hmmm interesting about the standard CPC I moved only a couple of domains and so far I am not impressed but it really depends if the story of CPC is real I moved only a couple of domains for testing one optimized with the Keyword send money with very targeted traffic so far the CPC is 11 cents which is quite low.
Lets wait and see.

 

[strongvis]

Does anyone know who is "behind" Namedrive.com?

Greg Manriquez
Zoot you've probably met him before at TRAFFIC and forgot . . . He was in vegas most recently. younger, brown hair guy with dark black glasses. . . I believe he used to work for sedo too.

I don't quite understand why no one here is willing to show a sample page. That's sort of amusing to me.

 

[NameDriver]

Hello everyone.

I suppose it's time I came out of the closet and clear up what NameDrive is all about.

Some of you may know me from my time on another part of DNForum enjoying attack and counter-attack in the line of fire for another parking provider.

It's good to be back after some gardening leave in which I tried to make some Germans learn how to speak our fair language.

However, it was always clear that I would work for NameDrive since I first became aware of what they were trying to do.

Enough of me. NameDrive was founded by Gregory Manriquez, domain broker and domain guru extraordinaire (this is how I get a raise). We are still a relatively small core of **** serving primarily a European and soon to be a US audience. We are only 1 week old and have already picked up a good amount of customers in Europe.

However, being 1 week old, despite a massive amount of testing, checking, probing, fumbling etc, we are still not running at the 110% capacity we would like. Everybody who has tested with us has loved the high PPC and the functionality of the site. You will notice, though, that I didn't instigate this thread. I can only thank my Scottish friend for his jubilant exortations, but we are still moving through the gears, despite our great performance so far. We want more...
For the uninitiated of you, I will run through what we offer:

- Super high payouts. We have the obligatory Google contract, we are looking to implement so much more. It is ridiculous to think that if your page is getting 1,000 views a day, it can have the same solution to your page that is receiving 10 views a month. We won't just slap a parked page on there and be done with it, we will make the most of your high-performance names. We have been having very interesting talks with several parties looking to get every cent your domains can. We want people to feel that, within the bounds of our contract, they can have a certain degree of customization. We will build a custom portal for any page which we feel is getting suitable traffic and we are looking to implement new, interesting ways to make money from your sites other than the bog-standard PPC. All of this will be under the one roof of NameDrive and changeable at the touch of a button.
- We do not offer a sales platform (shudder), however, we do not see why that should reduce your ability to sell your names. If you are looking to sell your names then, you can have 'for sale' link on there that takes potential buyers to a contact page on NameDrive. You can see this in the top right of www.poiker.co.uk.
- Wait, there's more. We will also be very willing to implement a link to your own sales site so you can use your parked pages to drive potential buyers to your own sales site! Lovely. You can see an example of this in the top right of www.boxedset.co.uk. The link goes to our client's own sales site.

We do, of course have better names parked with us than those two, but I don't want to skew our clients' CTR by directing you to our favorite ones...

Not that I'd really like to, I must insert a word of caution here...
We are new, we are still growing, we are still making our system as kick-ass as possible. We are confident we will achieve this and would naturally love you to test us out, but please don't judge us by what you see now (unless you think we're fantastic, of course). Although we are happy with our system, our member area and functionality, we still feel we can get more out of your domains CTR and PPC-wise, so don't try us for 36 hours and think we're rubbish, because we're not...!
I'm sure you'll look back in 12 months' time and think 'those were the days when ND were small and growing. Look how great they are now...' Hopefully.

To clear up any issues with optimization (which is still being worked-on) and revenue stats, you can have a look at my tutorial in the next post.

Thank you for your time. I know this is long... Feel free to contact me by email on [email protected] and please do sign up at www.namedrive.com and give us a whirl.

We are taking our first steps, we're getting bigger by the day and I hope you enjoy the ride...

Have a great Sunday evening.

Ed from NameDrive

 

[greggish]

Can someone from NameDrive explain to me what exactly the "Billing Method:" field in my NameDrive account is for? I have it set by default now to "Credit Card", but I don't know what it is for. Should I leave it on "Credit Card" or change it to "Account Credit" or "Credit Card / Account Credit"? Totally confused.

 

[NameDriver]

Greggish,

The billing thing is from when we were planning to offer another paid-for service. This will come into being later on, so the billing area stays.

(Don't worry, we're not going to charge for parking or anything, we are simply looking at the prospect of allowing people to spotlight their domains they wish to sell.)

NameDrive mini-tutorial to follow:

Feel free to email me directly if you like.

[email protected]

Ciao

 

[Theo]

Wow that's like the Katrina of all PPC companies :-D Welcome back Ed. Looking forward to the alternatives - the more, the merrier.

 

[NameDriver]

Welcome to the NameDrive mini tutorial.

- One issue I know you'll ask me about is your revenue stats. They work like this: Due to the increase in click fraud on parked pages etc., traffic is filtered for the first 48 hours. For this time, we show a generic click price. Once the 48 hour period is over, you will see the real earnings on your domains. This may all sound a bit dodgy, but I want to reassure you that this is in no way a ruse. We aim for 100% transparency and, while we are unwilling to give out our exact payout percentage (for reasons already discussed), we will pay out an extremely competitive commission on every cent your domains earn. This means that, depending on visitors' behavior, the same domain with the same keyword may some days get $ 0.10 and other days $0.50 per click. We even had one guy with a $5.20 last week! - not that I want to set any sort of precedent... This is the way the PPC world works and we don't believe in just assigning generic click prices to keywords, we prefer to show exactly what your domains earn - effectively leaving the top limit for each click price open.

- Optimizing with NameDrive is different to what you are probably used to. Here's how it works:
We have carried out extensive tests and it has become clear that the most important part of a parked page are the related searches. That's why you'll find ours on the top left, the most clickable part of a parked page.
The one-click part of our parked pages is generated directly from Google while we allow users to optimize the related searches:
So, optimization is broken down as follows:
Firstly, if you have a name that is easily categorized by google, such as 'html.co.uk', then park it with us, select 'one-click' for the ad type, optimize those related searches and wait for people to click like crazy on the perfect parked page.
Secondly, if your name is not easily recognized by Google 'Where-is-London-on-the-map.co.uk', then we would suggest putting the ads to 'two-click', optimize those related searches and... hang on, the CTR is still amazingly high.
This is because internet users can't seem to get enough of our portals. You may think they look a bit dull, but we are seeing general CTRs over our portals with optimized related searches that you would normally expect to see on a optimized one-click.

I'll leave you to discuss the merits of optimization. I have to say that, unless you're sure that the one-click ads are perfect on your domains, then stick everything on a two-click page, optimize the related searches, and see how well the revenue does.

As I have mentioned before, although we are happy with what we have achieved so far, we are always looking to improve and there will be changes made, revenue will increase. People will be happy.

I would greatly encourage you to test with us and see what you think so far. A few people have tried out their 'underperformers' with us, but we cannot generate cash where there is none, so try out a mid-performing name or two and see how we out-perform anywhere else...

That ends the lesson for today. Let me know, either here or by email if you have any further questions.

Have fun and I look forward to your feedback.

Ed

 

[Theo]

hi Ed - just signed up. I am not sure what category to select for music related domains. Would that be "Leisure/Culture" ?

 

[NameDriver]

Haha. We are just implementing a music category at this very moment! It should be live soon. But for now, I'd choose Leisure/Culture.
I hope you enjoy having a nose around the site.

Ed

 

[Theo]

OK just parked my biggest earner with ND. Looking forward to testing it for at least 2 weeks!

 

[gemsergio]

Does it matter what kind of category do we choose?

 

[NameDriver]

Currently, no, but it will do in the very near future.. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for testing, Radistar!

Ed

 

[GT Web]

If we are going to forward our names...are we allowed to forward them to a certain category page provided the domain is actually relevant to it?

 

[izoot]

Greg Manriquez
Zoot you've probably met him before at TRAFFIC and forgot . . . He was in vegas most recently. younger, brown hair guy with dark black glasses. . . I believe he used to work for sedo too.

I don't quite understand why no one here is willing to show a sample page. That's sort of amusing to me.

Ya Ya....I remember Greg...I think I remember him mentioning something in passing then. I guess I will wait for a few and hear how people like it . Also from the few pages I've seen they are nice and clean but not terribly interesting. But then I am of a different opinion than many of the PPC guys who insit that simple pages convert better. I like them to be somewhat interesting.

 

[GT Web]

what do you consider these:

http://www.poiker.co.uk
http://www.boxedset.co.uk

 

[mike031]

it's good to see a new "player" joining the field... however.. if i was to start a ppc company and i was serious about doing so i would try to make the landing pages as none-ppc-looking as possible to maximize conversions. the current setup/layout is what i would call "standard" and i don't see anything special.... make it stand out and look as real of an actual "destination" as possible to get the most out of each and every visitor.

 

[izoot]

what do you consider these:

http://www.poiker.co.uk
http://www.boxedset.co.uk

Hmm...took my post the wrong way apparently...

I think those are much nicer...there are things I would edd ect ...but overall I think they are pretty nice. I didn't see those links in Namedrivers post until after I posted this.

So don't take that post the wrong way..it wasn't intended as a slam...and cut down on the caffiene

it's good to see a new "player" joining the field... however.. if i was to start a ppc company and i was serious about doing so i would try to make the landing pages as none-ppc-looking as possible to maximize conversions. the current setup/layout is what i would call "standard" and i don't see anything special.... make it stand out and look as real of an actual "destination" as possible to get the most out of each and every visitor.

Mike I totally agree with your post. I almost would like to go as far as seing rss feeds targeted to the domain focus. Some banner ads ... theres alot that could be done to make every domain a destination page. Too much traffic is lost after people just see ppc pages on old sites...why would they ever come back? I think this would make an interesting thread topic in itself

 

[GT Web]

Ira, don't worry, I wasn't slamming you, just wanted to point out that the links were posted...even if they were in a massive sea of text. I can certainly see how they might be missed in the origional post...

 

[izoot]

no worries at all

 

[paradise]

I had a lot of trouble setting up a new account this morning so I submitted a request for help and within 30 minutes of it going in, I had multiple replies helping me out. If this level of "customer service" is maintained, it bodes well for the future. Now to try out some names...

Guy