So a couple months ago I wrote a blog post about how Yahoo’s Domain Service is a Rip Off. Without going into too much detail the bottom line is that I had about 150 domains I have yet to move from Yahoo Domains to my other, cheaper and better, domain hosting companies. Well, back in July Yahoo made the announcement that they are now going to charge $34.95 for renewing domains - an outlandish sum considering every other domain service charges far less. Well, after seeing a couple renews coming up on my charge card for $34.95 I finally took action. The bulk of the Yahoo domains I am moving over to my GoDaddy domains account, their normal yearly price for .com domain is a about $10.50, which is obviously much better than what Yahoo plans on charging me. However, I signed up for their bulk domain discount service which, for $89.95 a year, I get a steep discount on all renewals and new domain purchases. Basically, those Yahoo domains that were going to cost me $34.95 year will now cost me $6.95 - that is a $300+ in savings right off the bat. Plus, GoDaddy has awesome customer service, a full suite of hosting packages and a user-interface that makes domain management a breeze.
Like I said in my previous post I am assuming that this outrageous domain charge is the result of Yahoo wanting to get out of the domain registration business. No one in their right mind would pay what they are charging.
Nothing upsets me more than when a company tries to take advantage of their situation. As I mentioned in my SEO Domain Strategy 101 article, I own great deal of domains - in fact the exact number eludes me but I know it is around 1,800 or so. I have been buying, building and collecting domains since at least the mid-90’s and for a few years in the late 90’s I used Yahoo’s Domain service for most of my domain purchasing and hosting. Even though I have since moved all of my hosting away from Yahoo I still have about 150 domains that are housed and auto-renewed with Yahoo. Most of these domains I have never done anything with or have just held onto since I registered them for whatever reason. Every year I get my annual auto-renew letter, the price usually fluctuates, but it has always stayed in the $9.95 to $14.95 range. Whatever, no big deal since all my good domains are housed elsewhere and I have it on my list to transfer all of my domains to one company (not Yahoo).
Well imagine my surprise when I received the below email from Yahoo this morning. Yahoo is now charging $34.95 for domain renewals. Are you kidding me? $34.95? I am shocked when I see domain renewals costs over $10…$34.95 had me thinking it was an error. So, I proceed to call Yahoo and their helpful customer service staff confirmed the price change that went into effect July 1st. Wow. I am absolutely stunned by this. Anyone with any sort of domain knowledge will say that this is an absolute rip off by Yahoo and will result in a mass exodus of domains.
After digesting this for a few hours I started to think about what was Yahoo’s reasoning behind the price increase considering they are now nowhere near competitive. My first conclusion was that they wanted out of the domain business, so basically if you don’t transfer your domain you would pay 3 - 4 times the going rate Fewer domains, higher profit margin. Hmm, doesn’t make much business sense since the new fee of $34.95 a year per domain would probably not cover all of the domains they ended up losing. My next thought was that they are trying to up sell me different services (like domain hosting and email), that when bundled together would decrease my overall renewal cost - for example, sign up for Yahoo’s $9.95 monthly web hosting and get your domain renewal free. This is a very common practice…however, when you look at the email below there is no mention of any other service. Housing a domain costs nothing except a $.20 yearly ICANN fee and a few bytes of space.
So what is the deal Yahoo? Did some moronic product manager slip this one by while Yahoo has been in chaos? If anyone has any idea as to Yahoo’s logic behind this ridiculous increase in domain renewal fee please share. In the mean time I will be busy transferring my remaining domains away from Yahoo.
There are only few people / sites I truly respect when it comes to digital marketing strategy - ShoeMoney.com is one of them. If you have some time head over there and see what he is all about. Anyway, ShoeMoney posted a video on his strategy of buying sites / domains for the SEO value. Watching his video got me thinking about my own personal domain strategy. For the most part I agree with him, however his strategy is more about volume and timing. Buy a website that has some existing value like great inbounds links from .org .edu, or .gov and then milk it for all its worth - when / if it booted from a search engine go on to the next. Rinse and repeat. This strategy works very well when done right, however I wanted interject my own opinion and strategy on the subject.
First and foremost, I am a fan of buying, holding and using domains of all shapes and sizes. I personally own over 1,000 domains that cover just about any topic you can imagine. Some domains I bought because I felt the value of them would increase (e.g. short .mobi or keyword rich domains) some I bought because they were related to a online business I was building or planning on building and some I bought because I just thought they were cool. Over the years I have bought my domains using every possible method imaginable, the most common being registering expired domains or buying through a domain marketplace like Sedo.com.
So the real question becomes, you have this great domain(s) now what do you do with it? Well obviously building a full website with all the SEO best practices in mind is the optimal course. However, there are many options you have. First, regardless of what you choose to do with a newly acquired domain as soon as you gain access to it have it 301 redirected to an existing domain. This is a point that so many people miss, first why wouldn’t you do it? You would be shocked at how much traffic is generated from the sites that I have 301′d to a live and monetized (which is a whole other topic) domain. Keep in mind these domains offer zero or very little SEO value, the reason being that if they had a PageRank I would build them out in order to maximize their SEO value. So where does this traffic come from? You would be surprised…people typing in the URL, old / random inbound links or any other possible reason. Yes the traffic is minimal from each domain, I would guess each redirected domain drives on average 100 visits a month - yes tiny numbers but times that by 500 domains and you get 50,000 monthly visits…from doing nothing.
Redirecting a domain to a existing website or building it out are only two options. A third option that I try and take advantage of when I have time is somewhere in between. For example, lets say I bought a domain that has some good keywords and a very low PageRank / search engine presence. I would at the very minimum build that out into a blog related to the keywords or low-content site that automatically updates with some sort of content (a couple great tricks out there to pull in RSS content that is spiderable). We all know that search engines love to see fresh content, therefore I always have been in favor of only building a website if I have the time to update or have the technology that meets my needs. My new favorite strategy is building video websites using the YouTube.com API - amazing results. Of course I cant forget to mention how important it is to implement white-hat SEO best practices into every website. The funny thing is, I have had plenty of people contact me saying they want to buy these websites from me…haven’t sold any yet, just waiting on a good enough offer.
Anyway, collecting domains is not for everyone since there is a cost. On average I pay about $8 a year (not including hosting costs) to renew each domain. $8 a year for 1 domain does not sound like a lot but when you have 100’s or thousands of domains the costs can add up quickly. Luckily through my various domain monetization methods (live with ads, parked with adsense, etc) I always cover my costs.
You can watch the full video below or head on over to ShoeMoney.com to check out his blog post.
Starting this October 9th governments and trademark owners can start to register their .Asia domains, sometimes in 2008 .Asia will be open for general registration. ICANN, the over seeing body of the domain names approved the .Asia domain last October. However, do not start building your domain list just yet (email.asia, talkto.asia..I can think of a few good ones), the DotAsia Organization, the regional body in charge of the new domain extension has said they will be limiting registrations to only Asian counties.
When this domain goes live there will be some buzz, if only because of all the talk about the "emerging markets", especially China. But in the end who cares about .Asia? The only way the domain will take off is it if becomes the standard for the region - then we will see a new domain land rush.
For those of you who are serious about buying domains you need to head on over to JustDropped.com. The reason why I like this site is that they offer a wide range of options when searching for a domain. For example you can search domains that are deleted, pending deletion, on a redepmtion period or on hold. You can also build a list of all domains dropping on a specfic day.
I have had some good luck with domain purchases using this service - I still am a few steps back of the big domain players. I thought I had Alt.biz but I was wrong! Want to waste a whole day searching for domains? If so this is the site for you.
