Google – Shifting Away

Google. The six letters which continually shape the internet as we know it. Whether its reshuffling of organic search placements, random and unpredictable quality scores for Adwords advertisers, searchable email, billion dollar buyouts of companies that seem to vanish or an office complex we all envy (seriously, who would not want their company to have a gourmet chef feed the masses).

No one should be surprised at Google’s latest (re)entry to the world of domain parking but remember that its fools gold to build your business solely around a company who is known for shaking things up for the future benefit of the internet versus the immediate needs of small business. By no means is this bad – we need a leader like Google who will stand up and provide tools and test services regardless of the cost. It is this live beta testing which allows the internet to grow and flourish although it can be a very rough ride with unpredictable and immediate negative effects to even the most well funded companies.

I continually preach about development and how domain owners must branch out and tone their development skills, sit down (away from the computer) and map out a game plan not just based on the hope of future PPC traffic and learn about revenue options outside of search. Too few ever take the advice rather simply enjoy a fleeting thought of how they are committed to incorporating development and education in the months ahead.

Parking providers like DomainSponsor, HitFarm, SmartName, Parked.com – all the respectable ones (and obviously this list is not all of them) have spent millions, tens of millions, developing tools, building software, analyzing data and testing almost every erotic dream any mathematician or analyst could wish for. This data along with the personal relationships built, the human touch, the loyalty to domain owners and the pure love parking companies have for parking itself are far superior to anything Google could ever offer.

But again, the point of this article is not about Domains for Adsense or the future of parking companies – it’s about you and your ability to sit down and think about, start sourcing for and introducing revenue streams outside of the Google channel.

One time income.

I hope most domainers understand that all income from parked pages is a one time check.

How does a one time payment build your business?

No residuals, no customer loyalty, no repeat sales, no upgrades, no special holiday buys, no referrals.

This is what you lose by parking domains.

Domains do not need high traffic to perform, in fact most domains (my guess is 95%) have no traffic but the value is not only in development – its also about getting your face out there. One of the sites we manage gets around 40,000 organic visitors a month.  Last month the site received over 100,000 visitors – a great increase but why?  The site had content another site owner deemed beneficial to his readers (one who happens to own a very respectable blog in the Alexa 100,000) and one day he happened to place a link to our site on his home page. He could have easily added the content himself but since it was already available online he choose to link rather than add. Parking pages will never do this and as each day goes by you lose another chance to build something great.

However, with respect to Google – as much as I never want to see a world without Google I certainly do want a lot of our projects independent of revenue solely based on the master G’s goodwill. It’s my hope that many of you can say the same but if you don’t sit down with a plan how will you ever know?

Holidays are approaching.

Another Year gone by.