Type in Traffic - Does it exist on .com.au's?

[Jonathan]

Hi guys, I know this has come up a couple of times before but I just wanted to throw this around again and see what people's opinions are, since the type-in traffic revenue model is so huge in other markets.

First of all, am I the only one who is making SFA from domain parking? I have a portfolio of several hundred .com.au's, with keywords that have a combined monthly exact search volume of well over a million, and I am lucky to get several hundred hits a month, and maybe - in a good month - make $10 from that.

Granted, most of my domains are far from super-premium, but I do have a couple with really high monthly search volume (in the high 5 figures / low 6 figures), and even these ones are lucky to pull in more than a couple of type ins per day.

The bottom line is, while some domainers in other markets make a killing off type-in traffic, it seems totally unviable in the Australian market. I don't see that I have any choice but to develop my domains.

What's your experience? And note that I am not talking about stuff you picked up on the drops that has existing backlinks, as this isn't technically type in traffic.

 

[Shaun]

Hmmm.... It's interesting Jonathan.

I think with Google Chrome there will be more type ins... As you start searching in the search/url bar it predicts the URL for you.

Photographers.com.au would receive on average around 20 type in's a day which is minimal but still something.

 

[DavidL]

I don't think many people make a killing through parking even overseas unless they own thousands of typos.

For real type-ins as you are asking about you'll obviously make more with a .com. Maybe the figures are like this:

Out of the whole global internet there would be 17m people who could potentially type in a .com.au domain (looking at Australia's internet penetration rates - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats6.htm#oceania)

For .com's this is heaps more. US have adopted .com as their default ccTLD so you'd count nearly every internet visitor as a potential .com type-in-er. Say 240m (again using http://www.internetworldstats.com/)

Then there are about 1.5b other internet users around the world. The vast majority wouldn't be as loyal to their local ccTLD as Aussies are to .au so many would type .com if they were guessing a website. Perhaps 75%? This would add another 1.125b to the pool however language then comes into play. Maybe only 25% of these 1.25b speak English so this might add only 280m more potential type in visitors

So, with my very crude estimations, a non-geo specific type in .com might have a potential pool of type-in visitors of around 500m. This compares to 17m for com.au

By this reasoning, even in com you could only expect 30 times the traffic. Your $10 a month would be $300 if all your domains were .com instead.

Sorry I've been rambling a bit and I know I've made some HUGE assumptions but I don't think it's any different overseas - it's just a question of scale. You might pay 50x the amount to buy a com compared to a .au but you only get 30x the traffic so I don't think it's any more viable overseas.

Note: there would be exceptions here and there. Geo's tend to get better type-ins (Don, do you find that?) for example as do expired domains (with and without backlinks) and of course typos and TMs

 

[DavidL]

Also, type-in traffic around the world has been steadily decreasing as users become more sophisticated with their searching. (if you think about it typing in shoes.com.au in your address bar is a very crude way to try & get info on shoes)

I expect the increase in use of all sorts of alternative TLD's has accelerated that trend as people find increasingly typing in the domain doesn't give satisfaction. Eg in the 90's, it was easier to assume .com than now.

 

[soj]

Then again, at the domainers piss up in melbourne the other week, one guy gave us a bit of a talk about parking domains, and the way they will get users clicking on ads more than a developed domain, even a simple minisite plastered with ads. Seeing as parked pages these days are all ads, you give the user no option but to click on an ad, or leave the page altogether, whereas a developed minisite, you give the user the option of reading the content, leaving the site, or clicking an ad. And if you ask me, Ill read the content and leave all day long.

 

[Data Glasses]

what is type in traffic .......LOL

 

[johno69]

whenever i'm wanting to see a website by using a typein sort of method, I type the name > CTRL+ENTER.

Gives me the .com

To me this is a big reason .com has a lot more type in.

 

[jam]

$10 from several hundred hits is poor.
From what I've seen in the forum most of the domains your purchasing are domains with large number of searches with minimum competitors, this is bad for parking as no one is paying much for the ads.

3 of my top 4 earning parked domains and finance related with one click earning $9 in December.


Here are some of my stats to compare yours to.

all domains are .au
for the year 2009.
2122 hits
$178 USD
Out of 38 domains 23 made $0
Top 4 domains earned $154
42% of views are from Australia
41% of views are from US

 

[Jonathan]

I have domains from all sorts of different niches. As you say, some have high volume but are not in particularly valuable niches, but I also have a few domain names with only moderate search volumes and CPCs in the $20-30 range - ie finance and insurance.

Doesn't seem to make much difference.

Who do you park with, and don't you find it unusual that 41% of your views are coming from the US, since I assume we are talking about .com.au's?

 

[Data Glasses]

i regged idn blogger/com and the next day got a $4.50 click , nearly paid for itself , as for aussie names forget parking income is my view , dont buy if you want parking revenue

 

[jam]

I have domains from all sorts of different niches. As you say, some have high volume but are not in particularly valuable niches, but I also have a few domain names with only moderate search volumes and CPCs in the $20-30 range - ie finance and insurance.

Doesn't seem to make much difference.

Who do you park with, and don't you find it unusual that 41% of your views are coming from the US, since I assume we are talking about .com.au's?

I park with NameDrive, who do you park with?

I find it very unusual that 41% is coming from the US, no idea why...
All domains are .com.au

 

[Jonathan]

Agreed Spacey, the end goal for pretty much every domain I register or purchase is development, but of course the lazy side of me wishes I could just sit back and let the money roll in.

 

[Jonathan]

I'm with Why Park.

I dunno, something really doesnt sound right about those figures Jam. Not saying you are making them up obviously, just don't see why you would be getting type in traffic from the US - makes no sense to me.

Are you sure the domains in question have no backlinks? And what kind of exact monthly search volume do the keywords of your best performing parked domains have?

 

[Honan]

Has anyone tried above.com ?

 

[jam]

I did submit most domains to various bookmarking services, just used some software to do it automatically. This would have been done a few years ago.

Yahoo says the top 4 have a total of 1 backlink.
The domains names are type in keywords, exact monthly search volume is poor, except for one which is a trademarked business name which would be mostly type ins.

I'm guessing some of the traffic is not type in, but my reason for posting was that the income your generating was poor for the amount of visits.

 

[Jonathan]

Ah I gotcha...

On the boomarking stuff, what's the software? Do you need to create an account individually with each service? Kinda in the market for something like this, because doing it manually is such a hassle.

 

[marketingweb]

Hi Jonathon,

With the social bookmarking stuff, most semi-legit type programs (fully legit doesn't really exist on this topic) you have to semi-manually create all the accounts. Most will take you to each signup page and enter standard data you have input, you just have to check, add anything else it is asking, solve the captcha, and hit submit. Even doing this is a breach of some social bookmarking site TOS's and doing it fully automatically would definitely be a breach of all.

There ARE a couple pieces of software that do similar sort of stuff fully automatically including solving captchas in some cases, and creating accounts, for both social bookmarking and blog commenting. These WAY too far into black hat world for me and I am very much NOT recommending going down this path as I think there is a bit potential for being banned in Google. The two I know about (again I am NOT recommending using these and have never used them myself, just read about them) are called XRumer and SEONuke - there may be others also.

Back to the slightly more legit software, once you have accounts set up (a big task trust me), things are semi-automatic and can be easily done as a run. If anyone would like to discuss this with me further, please PM me.

Matt

 

[djuqa]

I find it very unusual that 41% is coming from the US, no idea why...
All domains are .com.au

I don't find that unusual with my sites. Com.au's have just as much chance of getting highly ranked positions on Google as my .info's, .org's and other NON .com names
Indeed I have a couple .com / .com.au pairs that the .com.au outranks the .com on a search from the USA .
That is yet another reason I consider MOST .com.au's are UNDER-valued compared to similiar names.

 

[Jonathan]

We're talking about parked sites...

 

[djuqa]

We're talking about parked sites...

Err so am I. .com.au's Parked, developed doesn't make a difference.
I have on several occasions advised clients with parked .com names to BUY the .com.au because of the missed traffic.

My own ORIGINAL home site was originally a .net as the .com was already regged

I had to buy the .net.au because clients continually advised me they tried to contact via contact page on the .net.au in error.

When I finally secured the .com, the same situation required me to acquire the .com.au

Today 90% of all traffic type-ins is to the .com.au NOT the .com.

50% of this traffic is NON aussie

Web surfers are getting more savvy about .ext's especially a PRIME cctld like .com.au
Why is it that people still act surprised that com.au's get traffic.