Smartname Shops Adds Value To Undeveloped Product Domain Names
As I mentioned in my Smartname Content Site review the other day I had also been testing the Ecommerce templates from Smartname.com as well. As most people know the majority of their domains bring little traffic if any (Smartname, in their webinar, shows a 90/10 split), and it is impossible to fully develop hundreds (or even dozens) of sites without a large amount of capital.
Even at 200 to 400 dollars per site it becomes almost impossible for most domainers to justify developing more than a few sites to even a minimal level. Affiliate stores and other rapid development solutions are great, but if you have 1000 product names can you really develop them all?
So, if you cannot afford to develop all of your names but want traffic to them so you can justify holding them what is the answer?
Well, I must say, so far I am really happy with the Smartname Shop sites, although I just started working with them recently so I cannot speak to revenue over a long period of time, I can say that the potential is really good based on the results I am seeing.
Why? Well the sites are ranking extremely well in the search engines, not bad for something that takes less than a few minutes per site to turn up.
Here are four examples:
Yahoo is sending a nice amount of traffic to 3 of the sites now and I expect the same soon for the fourth. I am also seeing terms in Google sending traffic as well for long tail terms and the exact match terms are moving up as well.
Did I mention long tail? That is the trick here, by developing the site you are able to gather traffic from related product terms.
Although the revenue split will not be the same from doing an affiliate relationship direct with someone it is also not reasonable to think you could mass deploy either.
Now, I will say that if a domain name already has traffic I would likely not do this, but if it is minimal or is a product related name that would do well as a shop these sites are well worth considering.
As I said in my previous post, this is NOT A PAID post, this is my opinion and I really like where this is headed. Between this and the content sites I think there is real value being added to domains that previous received little or no traffic. And with the ability to insert your own Google Adsense ads you can also take full revenue from that while sharing the revenue on the products. Not a bad deal.
Bruce,
Keep us posted on your results every month or so. I am in the process of setting many sites up as with with SmartName.
By the way, do you have any sites with Whypark.com and if so what has been your experiences there?
Thanks, Jim
I will Jim. So far so good.
About WhyPark. I know they have some new stuff coming up that is interesting. Right now this is much different than their current stuff so not a direct comparision. I used some of their stuff in the past and actually liked alot and plan on doing a review of them soon too.
I decided to give Smartname a try a couple of months ago & started by testing a number of .Net & .TV domains with search volume but no traffic & a few .COMs. Quite a few are getting traffic they didn’t have before but I cannot find where they rank. Checking several with traffic none rank in the top three pages of Google, Yahoo or Bing. I even checked Google images and no luck. So where is the traffic coming from? Well, the traffic is not converting well and in some cases the RPC is less than a penny so perhaps they are merely bots. Well, a two-word .net has generated $1.83 in earnings. Perhaps I need to better configure the layout & insert analytics.
Leonard,
Much of it may be from long tail terms and not the exact match of the domain name, i.e. if you have hdtv.me then you may be getting traffic from plasma hdtv for sale, etc, etc. That is the beauty of these sites.
Bruce
I have several Smartaname’s Ecomm 2.0 sites too.
Samples:
NaturalSteroids.com & NitroBike.com
Traffic: steady
SE Rankings: good
Revenue: Well…I wish I had better
Hey Bruce,
Just wondering about their customer service. I can’t get them to respond to my application submission nor a question through their contact form.
The same thing happened to me about 6 months ago. Seems to me they aren’t interested in getting new accounts.
Do you have any insight?
I guess they are very selective……
@Todd – I have not had any issues, I typically email my account rep and she has been great. When it comes to getting accounts approved or in process Ted Olson indicated contact him. If you want to shoot me a message through my blog I can help make that contact. In the webinar they recently gave they said they had a ton of applicants right now so reaching out direct sometimes helps.
@Ash – They are, did you get rejected or no reply???
Bruce, when you get back to blogging, an update on your Smartname shops would be very interesting now that a few months have passed.
I recently registered with smartnames and i do like the fact that you can customize many things. I think that with the Ecomm store they automatically deny you for some reason, however when I sent an email to my acc manager she accepted some of them. So if you get denied – just send an email and ask!
Its too early to start talking about revenue but it seems to be better than sedo – for me at least.
Also – madd propz on the BMX freestyle bikes. I didnt even think of that. I miss the days I tore it up with my mosh haha!
Whats great is that BMX Freestyle Bikes site ranks well and is making money! And yeah, miss those days!