2010..... "A PPC Odyssey?"

[ComKid]

Looking back on the past year it is pretty apparent from those I have spoken with in the domain industry that in 2009 the pocketbook and revenues took a huge hit with declining PPC profits.

With that said......

Were you effected by the economic downturn, revenue declines or perhaps other industry changes?

What were they?

What did you do to diversify?

Do you see PPC on the comeback for 2010?

 

[Jaco]

I benefited greatly from the discord in the form of buying names from distressed or busted owners. The only "mistake" I made was not laying up enough dry powder over fy's 05-08 to take advantage of the screaming deals that occurred this year. I wasn't nearly as liquid as I would've liked and had to pass up on names- due to lack of funds- that will give me price-point nightmares 10 years from now...

Re: PPC- it has fundamental problems above and beyond just fraud. The ultimate question is- is that model even sustainable going forward?
I doubt it on a large scale, but maybe. It will be interesting to see. It will probably be around indefinitely in one form or another, but I doubt it will continue to be the predicate monetization model for teh interwebz. Banners and direct advertising were jettisoned way too quickly in Bubble 1.0. Expect to see a return, chiefly amongst sites that occupy the best G real estate but still have yet to realize that their serp position and it's lead generation capacity is actually worth more than whatever crap they're peddling on the site...

From an ecommerce perspective, I'm far more concerned with developing % based affiliate partnerships that transact in actual products or services than I am with garbage farming clicks for pennies and nickels. Development going forward in general, PPC has little to no involvement in our strategies. 2010, we're swinging for the fences. Full scale, in-your-face, storm the gates big time, costly development. No landers, no "minisites", no splogs... Meaningful, relevant, full-scale content that takes tedious, assbreaking work.

I spent much of 2009 strategizing and assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of our premium name-platform competition. We're about to rip all their faces off and send their asses to the backwaters of page 3.

 

[enlytend]

From an ecommerce perspective, I'm far more concerned with developing % based affiliate partnerships that transact in actual products or services than I am with garbage farming clicks for pennies and nickels.

I've been doing the affiliate marketing thing for years and totally agree with that. :tu:

There was some reduction and a lot of turnover in my portfolio. I didn't go crazy buying fire-sale domains, but I did pick up some nice drops which will suit me perfectly. I also dropped names which are of no actual use to me - arguably some decent names.

With PPC, never forget that there are two sides to the coin: The publishers (and domain parking) who get revenue from displaying the ads, and the advertisers who are ultimately the source of that revenue. When you see a drop in parking or PPC revenue, look at what's happening with the advertisers.

Advertisers have scaled back - partly because of the economy, but there are other factors. Recently, Google started dropping a lot of people from the Adwords program in a rather "unpredictable" manner, to say the least. As a result, many advertisers are scared to start new Adwords campaigns, are dropping adgroups with mediocre to poor quality scores (advertisers pay more per click for ads w/ low quality scores, which translates to higher epc for that publisher) and are looking elsewhere for advertising opportunities ( = smaller and potentially less-targeted ad inventory).

 

[SpareDomains]

if you can increase your domain sales figures then the parking income reduction doesn't matter too much, increasing sales figures and some development will be my 2010 so honestly I could care less if parking income increases as with it being down it makes some good domains cheaper to buy.

 

[globegenius]

The changes I have made for the new year is to offer better prices for domains to expand HOSTNHUB.com and to capitalize with my own parked pages. I would rather have 80% of click in link revenue than forward domain url's. I'm relatively new to domain selling but not the net. If something does not work then you have to try another. I will keep selling other items on the auction sites as well. Best not to have all the eggs in one basket.

 

[snoop]

Not really sure what is going to happen though the PPC market is heavily cyclical. During the last bust people saw 65%+ declines. Impossible to know if we are near the bottom or not. Certainly things haven't picked up much at a time of the year when it should be seeing strong rises. Having said that at least the market is fairly stable which hasn't been the case for a fair while. I guess the big risk is more of a longer term decline which is a possibility.

Personally I haven't bought a domain in about two years and won't have any confidence in the market until we do see decent growth again. I think if PPC does continue to decline then the current domain market is overpriced. Alot will depends on what happens in the next few months in mind view. If domain industry earnings decline in the face of a stronger economy then look out, you'll see a heap more "diversification" into outside areas. Then again if things have a definate pick up then we'll see money flowing back in (there is a tonne of money on the sidelines in my view).

Regarding development versus PPC vesus affiliate programs it is all much of a muchness and driven by the same factors. Personally I have seen similar declines in affiliate earnings and domain leasing as that seen in parking.

Regarding development very few domainers have had any lasting success with it, the Costellos is about the only one that springs to mind. Alot of the development that is going on now will gradually end up as park pages again in my view. It is one thing to say people are swinging for the fences with their plans and have the answers, it is another thing entirely to make of a success of it and still be doing it in 5 years time.

 

[Ronald Regging]

It's not hard to see that PPC is a dying form of advertising. The truth is, the longer we are exposed to these ads, the more immune we become to them. Hell, I surf the web every day and although there are PPC ads on every site I go to, I really don't even take notice to a single one. I couldn't tell you what they said, let alone have any desire to click on them. I think over the next few years, CTR will continue to decline as well as PPC payouts.

 

[snoop]

It's not hard to see that PPC is a dying form of advertising. The truth is, the longer we are exposed to these ads, the more immune we become to them.

I think this is not true, PPC is one of the faster growing forms of online advertising. It is actual rates that are falling.

...there are PPC ads on every site I go to

Probably says it all. It is as dead as Coca Cola.

 

[Ronald Regging]

You stating that PPC is one of the fastest growing forms of online advertising, doesn't really say anything to it's effectiveness and long term sustainability. And the fact that there are PPC ads all over the Internet also says nothing to their effectiveness. The only thing it really says is that PPC is a common advertising vehicle. We already knew that.

Now if you can show me that CTR are increasing, or ad revenues are increasing, or any other indicator of a healthy system for advertising, then that'd be another thing entirely.

 

[enlytend]

Advertisers are still putting money into PPC advertising - but many of them are moving away from Adwords. See my earlier post in this thread. Since the majority of domain parking is monetized through Google feeds, that's why imo we're seeing yet another downturn in parking.

As for where contextual advertising is heading overall, there should be some "year end trends" industry stats coming out in a few weeks - keep an eye out for them.

My own sites running adsense - I only have a handful of them so hardly a basis for overall trends - the epc has been rising from year to year and is actually up a couple of cents this year. They're content sites which have been online several years, possible that some advertisers are site-targeting them on the content network, which would stabilize the ad inventory.

Affiliate earnings: For me, down in some areas, up in others. The area where it's down is a luxury market (a no-brainer, given the economy), and that's primarily because order sizes are down, not the number of orders. People are still buying things they need, spending money on fun things and making impulse purchases. They're less likely to drop 4 figures on an extravagant gift.

 

[maxeaus]

I think AdSense is outdated and is past it's glory days. I struggle to see why and how people will spend money developing websites when the costs verses returns is minimal.

Of course there is always websites that sell something "real" or offer a "real" service, and i see no failure in this area, but the days of webmasters slaving away to build the Google pyramids seems over to me.

 

[Blake]

I personally have found PPC is a waste of time and effort from my standpoint. I have much better luck using CPA networks as the offers require far less money and honestly users tend to like the offers. With CPA networks I have found success and the revenue I have generated from using cpa offers has shadowed PPC 100x over.

CPA is truly where my business and websites will be branded with from here on out

Some great networks: Copeac, NeverBlue, and many many more