Adgator blog advertising

As one of the lucky few to have had and maintained an Adgator account for some time now, I was really pleased to see that new blog registrations were opened up.

Adgator offers CPM monetization which is fantastic for blogs that have high volumes of traffic but best of all, the eCPM is a whole lot higher than the R5 or R10 you receive from most other CPM programs. The eCPM on Adgator is around the R30 mark. That is to say your share of the revenue.

I have been using Adgator ads on cookbook.co.za for a while and I can tell you that the revenue received is an added bonus to the other monetization methods I use which requires no work at all.

Placements are in premium above the fold positions and hence the high payout, so be prepared to sacrifice the top of your sidebar or header ads for the Adgator CPM program. You are allowed up to 3 ad units per page providing that each ad is a different size and are all above the fold(visible to the visitor without having to scroll down)

Adgator serves a combination of CPM ads and CPC ads, the CPC ads are from a link up with Ad-Dynamo so if your CTR(Click through rate is very poor, they will in all likelihood serve more CPC ads.

Like all advertising programs, your blog needs to be at least 90 days old, have a minimum 10 pages of content, original content that is and must not be sexually explicit etc, etc, etc.

Apply for an Adgator account and start earning some hassle free cash.

An end user may want to purchase the domain name for a number of different reasons:

• For a development project, be it for a new business or an existing business
• To benefit from type in traffic in the case of generic product or service domain names
• To prevent a competitor from acquiring the name
• To measure a traditional advertising campaign by directing traffic to a different domain
• To make the brand synonymous with the product or service
• To shorten a long company name, eg: law firms or accounting firms that use names of partners in the business name

The value is determined in the old fashioned way where we have a willing buyer and a willing seller who negotiate a price and conclude a deal. Many potential buyers find it difficult to justify a purchase in the thousands or millions of Dollars range but should remember that thereafter the cost is purely an annual renewal fee of between $7 and $40 depending on the extension.

The End user should consider firstly that the domain name is an asset with a resale value, what value is placed on preventing a competitor from owning the domain name and potentially dominating the space, the value of new customers derived through the domain name and the value of that customer in the future.

When we carefully consider these factors, the purchase price is a lot easier to justify and provides good reasoning for what may initially appear to be very large sums of money paid for domains like Toys.com, Slots.com which both sold for over $5 million, or in the co.za domain space, furniture.co.za at $33 000 or poker.co.za at $45 000.

A domain speculator may have deep pockets and be willing to pay large sums of money for generic domains that will not diminish in value and with the knowledge that at some stage it will be bought for a higher price. He also needs to be forward thinking, attempting to predict future trends, a good example would be 3D digital products like televisions and cameras. Possibly the most important factor for a speculator is to monetize the domain name during the holding period in order to achieve a return sooner rather than later.
Domain name speculation is not to be confused with Cybersquatting, which is:

registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.

Domain names are the real estate or billboards of the internet

This bodes well for all domain investors who were fortunate enough to have entered early enough and snapped up a few choice domains names in the co.za namespace.

A few notable reported sales in recent weeks have been, furniture.co.za at $33 000, domains.co.za at $20 000, slots.co.za at $10 000, s.co.za at $8500, mortgage.co.za at $4920, okb.co.za at $1 100, ouch.co.za at $1050 and tnt.co.za at $1 000. There have been numerous other unreported sales and it is very clear that South African businesses are seeing the internet and the value of domain names in a new light. We have previously reported on other high profile sales like porn.co.za and fly.co.za at $45 000 and $65 000 respectively, two of the highest prices realized for South African domains to date.

For regular reported sales updates please visit DNJournal.com

Read more about keyword domain development and the benefits it has for your online business.

There have been a couple of really good sales in the co.za domain space of late with the leader being Porn.co.za selling at $45 000 and Fly.co.za fetching $5 000.

Both domains are showing parked pages at the moment but will be interesting to watch any potential development of these premium co.za domains.

The co.za domain space is most definitely hotting up with purchase enquiry levels at their highest ever levels on premium and 3 letter domains. Perhaps it is the promise of faster and cheaper broadband or simply an awareness of South Africa as an offshoot of the World cup, either way South Africa domains are receiving some long awaited attention.

Fly.co.za shows a registration date of 1997-07-11 and porn.co.za of 1998-01-19 back when new registrations were R200 each. That is a long time to wait for a potential buyer but considering the renewal fees which could not have exceeded R700 over the period, is quite a return not taking into account any parking revenue earned during the period.

The Total at 4 September 2009 is 500 751 domains and when we look at the growth in co.za domain registrations since the registry opened in 1995, this shows tremendous growth with close to 80 000 domains having being registered in the last year alone.

CO.ZA Registrations

• 129 369 domains at 2003-06-13
• 225 884 domains at 2006-03-16
• 328 264 domains at 2007-07-06

There are companies that have embraced the co.za domain space and registered or acquired thousands of co.za domains, the most notable being NOKTA, a Turkish company which holds in excess of 3000 co.za domains, and MAXMI, a British company which owns search.co.za.

There are numerous smaller portfolio holders like us at zadomains.com with a portfolio of over 700 generic keyword domains that have a strong belief in the value of domain names to deliver highly targeted traffic and are encouraged by the recent high profile sales of casinos.co.za, blackjack.co.za, super.co.za and many others. There are still many high value sales which go unreported in the co.za domain space including small portfolio sales which include cognac.co.za, bourbon.co.za and others.

It is an exciting time in the co.za domain space with the promise of cheaper, faster connectivity imminent since the completion of the SEACOM cable and South Africa’s increasing exposure in foreign markets.

If we take a look at the sales volumes and prices over the last year, the numbers are quite staggering and those who have invested wisely and had the foresight to hold onto their ccTLD portfolios are seeing fantastic returns. In the weekly report of 19 August 2008, the list of ccTLD sales list over $1000 comprised a mere 24 domains with the highest price being a Polish name, Wczasy24.pl (vacation 24) at $4176

Considering that a large number of sales in the ccTLD arena are for initial registration names, these returns far outweigh any other investment vehicle.

The latest DNjournal table of ccTLD reported sales shows over 160 domains sold at over %1000 with the top price being for Grafikkarte.de (graphic art) at $73,828.

There were a number of co.za sales in the past 2 weeks, which prices I am unable to report at this time. These are, ale.co.za, analysts.co.za, bourbon.co.za, cheddar.co.za, cookies.co.za, euros.co.za, funeral.co.za, hebrew.co.za, hybrids.co.za, inflation.co.za, metabolism.co.za, oncologist.co.za, voyeur.co.za.

There are certain companies quietly buying up premium generic domains in the co.za domain space ahead of the imminent growth in connectivity in Africa.

Should you wish to report a co.za domain sale, please contact us. To view the DNJ archived sales reports, please go here

At most domaining forums speculation is anywhere between $2 million and $10 million with the majority of estimates from experienced domainers being in the $5 to $7 million range.

This is an obvious name for Microsoft to own and one can only wonder what took them so long to make the acquisition. I would imagine Microsoft have been after the name for years and perhaps in these economic times, the price was finally reduced to an acceptable level.

The business that was on office.com has been moved to a new domain with the following notice being placed on the office.com landing page. This would indicate that the sale was for the name only which was registered in 1999.

Office.com, some interesting facts

The current whois shows a creation date of 20-apr-1999 wheras the image below indicates that it was archived as early as January 1998. Whoever had it registered and allowed it to drop must surely be kicking theselves now.

Updated Date: 04-aug-2009
Creation Date: 20-apr-1999
Expiration Date: 20-apr-2019

“Dear Office.com Users,

As you know from the recent email we sent you, we will be transitioning the operation of your Virtual Office account to ContactOffice.com during the next 30 days.

As part of this transition, on Monday, June 29, 2009, we changed email addresses in the office.com domain to ones in the contactoffice.com domain.

To access your existing account, you will now need to log in at http://office.contactoffice.com

As of Friday, July 31, 2009, Office.com will no longer be available so please be sure to bookmark this URL for future use. Also, if you use POP or IMAP with Office.com you will need to change your settings to pop.contactoffice.net and imap.contactoffice.net respectively.

For new users looking please visit us at http://office.contactoffice.com to register for your free subscription.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless as possible and are working hard to minimize any inconvenience these changes may cause. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me by email at tom@contactoffice.com or by telephone, toll free, at 1-866-675-1776.

Sincerely yours,

Tom Graham and the Office.com Team”

Seacom will certainly deliver faster internet speeds to foreign hosted sites and a cost reduction but the level at which the consumer will experience it will not be as impressive as the numbers being bandied about. The connection speeds between South Africa and continental Europe will increase substantially so if you are sending data a colleague in Germany for example, both the cost and speed of this transfer will be dramatically better.

Some service providers are taking a fairly maverick approach to increase market share and have reduced prices by as much as one quarter as in the case of Wireless G. Over the next 12 months it is expected that pricing will be halved in as much as you should receive double your cap for the same monthly subscription. This is one area where South Africa and Africa as a whole are way behind the rest of the world where data caps are seldom imposed.

Seacom will arguably have its biggest impact in the telecoms market in the short term by making intercontinental calling via the internet a viable reality. South African businesses have been overcharged for International calling for many years and the prospect of reducing International calling costs by more than half has seen Samsung telecoms launching a VOIP product in South Africa that will not only reduce calling costs but will bring video conferencing to the fore in many South African businesses operating Internationally. The costs saving advantages of high definition video conferencing are many, not least of which is the ability to hold virtual face to face meetings without the need to travel. This benefit is particularly interesting in a world where carbon emissions and mandatory carbon reporting is making business sit up and take responsibility for their effect on the environment.

For more information on the Samsung range of VOIP solutions please contact ITEC Corprporate Solutions
For the co.za domain space, Seacom will have a very positive impact. There are currently many businesses not making active use of the internet as part of their business strategy and as access to the Internet becomes more prolific throughout Africa, the demand for good domain names will certainly increase. I have written about the proven value of solid generic keyword domain names before and have little doubt that the value and traffic to these domains will be significantly impacted in the very near future.

Memorabledomains.co.uk has produced a very well researched paper on the effect of a generic domain on the performance of these domains in the search engines as well as the effects of an adwords campaign on the overall campaign performance. The research shows real examples of the effects and shows without a shadow of a doubt that a company that uses the exact match in the domain name to the product or service they are selling or promoting, that these websites perform significantly better.

Memorable Domains goes on to highlight companies in the UK that accept these facts and when seen in conjunction with the companies that get it list produced on this site, the value of generic domain names is highlighted even further.

The one area that is becoming more and more prevalent as the Internet begins to impact more and more on our lives is the creative use of niche sites operated by the companies that have a clear web strategy, to build opt-in mailing lists and drive traffic to their offers.

ZAdomains.com has a portfolio of generic co.za domain names that are available for development and invites companies to contact us to discuss the best possible uses of these names.

Many co.za investors will have been contacted over the past month or so since the ccTLD auction promoted by Rick Latona a legendary domainer. The Auction produced some impressive sales in most ccTLD’s with .de and co.uk leading the way.

This has of course highlited the ccTLD market with investors realising that there are still many fantastic opportunities with the exceptional returns potential experienced by those who held their .com portfolios after the .com bubble burst in 2001.

There are a few holders of co.za porfolios which extend to 1000 + domains, most of which are foreign companies, German, Turkish and British. These are very small holdings compared to the same companies and other individuals who hold portfolios of many hundreds of thousands of domain names.

We are confident that with the imminent improvement in bandwidth, capacity and cost of connectivity being promised by the connection of the SEACOM cable, internet usage will increase dramatically in South Africa and hense the value of good domain names will increase in value significantly.

Uniforum today shows registrations bordering on the 500 000 mark which, when we look at the registration numbers history has shown huge growth in the last 2 years and the trend is likely to continue. Premium domains have all been registered and the resale market is set for healthy growth.

At November 1995 – registrations commenced

At 16 June 2003 – 129 369 registrations – approx 1400 registrations / month

At 16 March 2006 – 225 884 registrations – approx 2900 registrations / month

At 6 July 2007 – 328 264 registration – approx 6400 registrations / month

At 16 July 2009 – 490 115 registrations – 7000 registrations / month