0 – 20,000 Visitors with no Ads
By Alan on Apr 11, 2009 in Domain Development
Almost 18 months ago we sold the domain mortgagecalculator.net at SnapNames and as a developer I was hoping somebody would buy this to develop rather than park.
This domain is clearly one of the larger mortgage domains and although the mortgage and real estate business is what led me to having great success online the ultimate plan (you know – the dream we all have) had shifted away from the mortgage business since we had wrapped the completion of sales for quite a few real estate / finance sites and cashed out quite nicely (still patting myself on the back for not taking an offer from geosign – those future payments would have been worth as much as a coffee cup, probably less).
We still had quite a few of the big finance names and auctions were pretty hot back then so risking a $59 reserve we threw it up to let the market decide. We got a fair price but for a few months I kept wondering what the new owner was going to do with the domain. As a parked domain it really did not get much traffic but 99.8% of domains never do – even with top keywords like this – so I knew the raw power of the domain would be in development.
Was the buyer going to waste a great domain by plastering Adsense ads all over it?
I waited … I waited.
Finally, he launched a pretty basic site but I knew it was almost SEO perfect with a whole set of mortgage calculators however he stopped there.
Nothing really more.
No ads.
No articles on how to improve your credit or get approved for a home loan.
Just some calculators and a free script for webmasters with … again .. No ads or even branding for mortgagecalculator.net
Like some kind of addict every few weeks I would look up the site and see if anything changed. Nothing – just the numbers kept going up.
Today the website is # 6 in Google with over 20,000 people a month
I am not privilege to his development plan but I truly believe that part of the success was that no Adsense ads are plastered around the site. In fact, the content is precise. Targeted to the keyword, the domain name and limited to what is relevant… but not limited enough so there is no content.
How does he make money?
Who cares – It’s about the long term.
One day I’m sure he will but he built it first and they came. Now he can think about making a few bucks instead of how to get traffic.
Now, if he can only surpass mortgagecalculator.org …. (168,000 visitors)
As for the .com
Much less traffic … and much more Adsense.
Build First – Monetize Later is the key to success on the web, just like it is offline.
Great job.
Elliot Silver | Apr 12, 2009 | Reply
Do you think Google would improve rankings on a site with Adsense, as they will generate more revenue this way?
Alan | Apr 12, 2009 | Reply
I think the theory behind this would say yes but Google’s search product is their bread and butter and by rewarding sites – especially first time sites indexed without backlinks – with Adsense is basically adding a form of arbitrage to the results which in my opinion Google looks at as less than quality information for their users. Google has the ad portion covered in their search results already (Adwords) and their mandate – as Larry and Sergi stated in their IPO statement – is not just about making money, its about providing the most relevant information to users so in theory it makes sense but I’m sure there is more to the Google model than simple math about increasing earnings.
Many sites exist with Adsense in the search results but very few stories are ever told where an owner makes more than a couple dollars a day after launching a mini-site with 3 sets of Google Ads so the growth of these sites with Adsense and little content submitted to search engines is certainly not something that should make anyone jump to develop imo.
I’ve always viewed Adsense as something to complement your site once the content is built – not something to start with. About 6 months ago we launched a site with no ads and now get about 5,000 people a month to it – still a while before we add any Adsense ads if we ever do. There are so many other good revenue models that seem not to be critiqued by Google and the like as much as Adsense imo.
My favorite quote is “Stop thinking in cents. Anybody can make a buck” – sometimes I think many first time developers see the cents and can’t seem to visualize the long term.
Adsense is the pennies in my opinion and this is coming from someone who has made over $1.5 million from Adsense so I should love it but Google can turn on you at any given moment – we have been at their wrath a few times. So the faster you can build content and get indexed the better long term picture – a couple dollars a day to slow that growth is just not worth it imo but hey, its all one big theory that changes day after day isn’t it
Too Many Secrets | Apr 12, 2009 | Reply
Alan,
Nice post. In the ‘competitive’ keyword space that this domain is in, the 1600+ backlinks that they have has a great influence on their rank in google.
But I agree with you, that google on sites is thinking in terms of pennies !!
- Richard.
mtn | Apr 12, 2009 | Reply
You made an interesting comment, “There are so many other good revenue models that seem not to be critiqued by Google and the like as much as Adsense imo.”
Is it your view that an affiliate link to, say Amazon, won’t ‘penalize’ your site rankings as much as Adsense, if placed on a new site within the first month or two?
Thanks for your post.
Alan | Apr 12, 2009 | Reply
mtn,
Yes, I think affiliate links pose much less of a threat to Google rankings than Adsense but when speaking about affiliate links the key is original content.
Many people simply build sites with hundreds of affiliate links to Amazon using copy from product descriptions which is nothing more than duplicate content so it takes skill to use the affiliate links in the right way but if done right I would bet a site without Adsense would rank higher than one with.
As for other revenue models – there are many more than just Adsense such as surehits, leadpoint and more.
I remember Ron Jackson wrote about insurancequote.com and how it was such a great site. This is NOT any kind of diss on the owners of this domains since it is a great site however when you know development, graphic design and the revenue models outside of Adsense this site (as nice as it is) really would take about an hour to create. Of course, writing the content takes time, creativity and research but the layout and revenue model is nothing more than an affiliate program of PPC ads served by surehits – basically another adsense for the newbie.
I wrote an article a while back about how mini-sites (in their CURRENT form) suck and this website is a pure example of what mini-site providers could do but still charge the same instead of churning out sites that all look the same. Many people might think a lot of work went into this but … again, take away the content which IS time consuming … the graphic design and ad code is an hour at most.
Now getting approved and maintaining the quality standards for grade A revenue models like surehits is not as easy as one would think but if you can deliver quality traffic then it opens up the ability to use these fully customizable programs which happen to become part of your site rather than a box of text links to the right. Design wise they look much better and unique and with insurancequote.com I would be willing to bet that the same site with the same content splashed with Adsense Ads all over would never be on page #1 of the results for the term “insurance quote” in Google.
My best advice would be take one of your good domains – build it out using NO ads or affiliate links for 3 months. Just build, build, and build the content for three months – then start adding some ads.
wannadevelop.com | Apr 13, 2009 | Reply
Whoever dropped $30k+ on this name in the first place sure knew what he was doing.
Great SEO case study.
Exact match keyword domain + links = traffic.
http://www.semrush.com/search.php?q=mortgagecalculator.net&x=0&y=0
Robert Schroell | Nov 16, 2009 | Reply
Hey I was looking for the contact information for this blog and was unable to find it. I have a quick question about the blog so i was wondering if some one could contact me about the contact info. My email address is robert@fharesearchcenter.com. Thanks for all the help.