It’s the TRAFFIC….Stupid!

It's the TRAFFIC...Stupid!

View this photo It's nothing more than the famous shell game and your job is to be trained on what to look for.

There are 3 shells. Shell 'A' contains TARGETED TRAFFIC. Shell 'B' contains UNTARGETED TRAFFIC and Shell 'C' is hocus pocus NO TRAFFIC at all or the quality is so bad it has the same result.

Let's say you buy 1000 visitors and you are willing to pay 10 cents each for a $100 investment. With group 'A' you can close 10 sales and you make $100 per sale. A closing ratio of 1 in 100. You made $1000. With Group 'B' you made 1 sale. A closing ratio of 1 in 1000 so you broke even but you made a customer who hopefully return and that of course has value. Group 'C' of course produced nothing and if you buy it 10 more times you will have nothing 10 more times. Closing ratio is......

So with 'A' your $100 turned into a $1000. RIGHT DIRECTION!

With 'B' you broke even. No direction at all but there could be a CHANCE at some future business.

With 'C' you got the shaft and few even ever know it. So there is ample amounts of 'Shaft' available. Want more? If not....you MUST learn about traffic.

Now this is one side of the equation. The next step is to focus on the website and see if you can increase your closing percentages. If you could tweak it and double the revenue you would create 2 things. Demand for more traffic of equal quality and you would be willing to pay more for it which is why I as a domainer am so interested in this happening. Now be careful. If you buy the traffic under shell 'C' you will be tweaking with no possible way of ever improving it and THAT us why TRAFFIC is the name of the game. Once you truly understand traffic, you can sell virtually anything on the net. So with the widgets.com example yesterday and the traffic illustration today, you shoud be able to clearly see both sides of the equation. If you can see it you can tweak it.

So back to my example....if you double your closing rate and end up with 20 sales and make $2000 for your $100 bill you are likely willing to up that offer and you may up it to the point where you buy as much of that traffic as you can find.

While all that is going on you are still getting the benefit of the customer returning to buy more but you have increased your odds by 20 fold. You are growing your business. You are likely growing your business at the expense of the other guy. And guess what? That is okay!! The bi-product of all this is I have also just given an example of a value of a domain that varies by a HUGE amount when you can match the traffic with the right website. So that is the reason when folks sell a domain based on 'X'....my big question is WHY?
Have a GREAT day!
Rick Schwartz

Widgets.com


Widgets.com is more than a domain name. For today it is an example.

Yesterday I mentioned one of my domains and put a link to it on the lower left side of this page. Widgets.com was a domain I registered back in the 90's and I got it to illustrate the most generic domain describing the most generic of products. A 'Widget.'  What's a widget? It's any silly little item with market credibility that makes a whole lotta money. That may not be Webster's version, but it is how I think of it and I would think others as well. Webster's version goes like this: 'an often small mechanical or electronic device with a practical use but often thought of as a novelty.'

And if we were going to write the definition of widgets today it may be computer related. How versatlie! Which is the exact reason I bought the domain. A generic business waiting to be launched at any moment for any item for any market. And as a poster pointed out yesterday, the results on the landing page don't match what it is folks are looking for. Now I have targeted traffic coming from widgets.com going to an untargeted page. So it is no doubt costing me money. But that is okay. It is like this for a reason. It illustrates why domain owners selling for 'X' are selling themselves short. As time goes on the traffic will become better matched and my example on the next post will illustrate even more. I won't keep this page as it is very long. So future readers are likely to see a different page and some of this may not make sense. But for those of you reading within a short time of writing this sees a great illustration of a domain not being used to it's fullest by any stretch. It isn't even on the first step. But the 250 daily visitors will soon be monetized more effectively. It would be easy to exponentially increase the income, It is fascinating to watch a domain earning pennies blosson and start earning hundreds of dollars raising it's value every step of the way. I'll have more on traffic on my next post and you will see it all tie in. 
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz


RicksBlog.com Grand Opening!!


Happy Grand opening!

 

What? No balloons?? Where's the marching band? When the first mall opened near my home in
the late 50's or early 60's my mother brought home 2 gold fish for showing up during the
grand opening. It's been a long time since that has happened and I am sad to
report I have no gold fish for you today. However I do think I have some gold to
share with you. Gold that will be with you for the rest of your life and gold
that I hope you will share. I don't sell this gold by the ounce. I give it away
by the truck load. We'll just have to agree to meet up on another day for the
fish.

 

Some may call my gold "Fools
gold." They are entitled to do that. But I will tell you that they were
wrong about yesterday, wrong about today and the evidence shows they
will be wrong about tomorrow as well. My mission is to begin the conversation with those outside the
domain industry as to why domain names are an important part of any marketing
strategy. Perhaps THE single most important part. It is the foundation of what we do. I
will ask folks to leave their prejudices and misconceptions about domain owners
at the door because we have NUMBERS to talk about. Stunning numbers compiled
over more than a decade and while others were swept out of the game during the
collapse, we as domain owners, survived and even thrived. So domain insiders
please stand by. I will need your assistance presenting those numbers. Then we
will compare those numbers against traditional parallels.

 

The first few posts were an attempt to lay a foundation. A
starting point. I hope folks that come here for years to come read these initial
posts first as it will help to explain where I am coming from. I hope folks will
point others here that need to quickly get up to speed about what a GREAT domain
name represents. I will try and define what a GREAT domain is and how to spot
them.

 

I hope you will allow me to continue to lay this foundation
over the next few weeks before I attempt to address current conditions and where
I see us all in the next 10 years. This blog is not for everyone. Believe me I will say something that you won't agree with and
is gonna piss you off. So what do you want me to do? Not tell you what I truly
believe? Sugar coat it? BULLSHIT you?

NO WAY! You get it direct and unfiltered
and if it provokes a passionate debate, then the GOAL should be find the best
answer and look at as many possibilities as possible without getting stuck in
the gunk. I believe good people with good hearts will find common ground even when they disagree.

Life is all about making good decisions. Lee Iacocca said something to the effect that if you can gather 75% of
the facts, you are in a position to make a good decision. I have used that as a
rule of thumb for many years. I think EVERYTHING in life is based on EVERY
decision we make. The smallest decision can be the biggest and vice versa.

 

What I hope to accomplish is let you see what makes me tick so
you can see what I see. Let's be blunt. 6 billion folks on the earth and only a
few hundred really saw this incredible opportunity that is now a worldwide
industry and growing under the radar faster than anyone has any idea
of.

 

It's about saying out loud what you dare to believe and dare
to dream and dare to achieve. So much of all of our successes comes from how
deeply we believe in something. Passion without being obnoxious. All I can do is share
what I see, why I see it and what I saw in the past that has unfolded like a
well thought out portrait and why that is directly realted to the future.

 

I came to the net and domains with a 20 year plan. That always
raises some eyebrows. But it was with this 20 year plan in mind that I have
always moved forward. That plan is now more than 50% complete. All I can say is
I underestimated just how big and important the domain channel would become and
how fast that would happen. It's also frustrating as hell that it moves so slow
on a daily basis. My mission has been to accelerate the inevitable because our
time here is short and undefined.

 

So I hope you will bear with me as I try and paint a picture
that folks from every corner of industry can come to and grasp and understand and respond
and embrace. I hope folks that need a fast track education on domain names will
be pointed here. It's free for anyone that wants to listen and see what I see.

I
promise to shorten these posts once I create the foundation I think
it will serve us well for years to come. But one last thing. If you look
to your left you will see some of my domain names and websites. I think it will be fun to change
the last domain from time to time. Today's domain is "Widgets.com."
Today it is a parked page. The power of a domain is that tomorrow it can be
anything I want it to be and the flow of fresh new eyeballs that come
there every day will just see something else. There is obvious room for VAST improvement on widgets.com. But that is a domain to be developed on another day. Today's domain is RicksBlog.com and I want to thank you for coming!

Have a GREAT day!
Rick Schwartz

Domain King announces Blog

Good evening folks!!

In 1999 I started a blog. It wasn't called a blog then. It was/is called a "Chatboard" and I started posting about domain names in 1999 on my own chatboard.  As early as 1996 on other chatboards. Then one day blogs came along and what I had been doing for 9 or 10 years became all the rage. So I think I will enjoy this updated format and my wish is for me to say something that changes your life. Changes your life in a profound way.

 

In a few days I will start a blog. It won't be updated everyday. Only when I have something I think is useful to say. So stay tuned and in the next few days I'll see what I can build and how I can present it to you in an exciting manner! Plus I'll ruffle a few feathers and mix it up a little bit. We'll expose the cons and let you know the real skinny on payouts. Pissing folks off is my specialty. It's easy to do when you stick to the numbers and the numbers don't jive with what they say or what they promise.

I am a "Numbers guy." One quote I am famous for is "Numbers I trust, people I don't." A 9 is a 9 forever. There is nothing we can do to change a 9. It is not my 9 or your 9, it is just 9. So we pay attention to the numbers and eliminate the bullshit.

So stay tuned . This blog will launch on Monday April 9th and maybe even sooner! I will share what little I know. It may be what you already know, but you also may find one little tidbit that can change your life. I am out to have life changing things happen here for those that take the time to THINK, READ and STOP.

Rick Schwartz