In yesterday’s post, I discussed my recent experience using SmartName’s SmartShops to create free e-commerce minisites and gave an example of a minisite I created in less than five minutes, HomeDeepFryers.com.
Today I spent a few more minutes and improved the look of the site by adding a custom graphic header. Here’s how…
1. Creating the header. I’m good at a lot of things, but unfortunately graphic design isn’t one of them. Although I own Photoshop, I used a much simpler program called XHeaderPro to create the header. This program is specifically designed to create headers and comes with thousands of sample templates. I couldn’t find one specifically for Home Fryers, but choose one with a picture of fried food and added the domain and a slogan…
2. Matching the header size with SmartName’s e-commerce template.
After a bit of trial and error, I determined that 1000 x 95 pixels worked best for me. I saved the header in .jpg format and selected a medium compression setting that would look good but still load quickly.
3. I then logged into my SmartName account and edited the Header & Footer section of my HomeDeepFryers.com e-commerce site.
Here’s the updated site with the new header…
Summary
It took about ten minutes to create and upload the header, but I think the time was worth it. From a visitor standpoint, people are more likely to browse and shop from a ‘real’ site than a parked page and custom graphics do a lot to establish confidence and trust in a site.
In my next post in this series, I’ll look at adding custom tabs to my Smartshops site to improve the user experience and attract additional search engine traffic.
Related post: Smartname Review Pt. 1: Using Smartshops to Create Free Minisites
Just opened an account with SmartName last week and have been experimenting with their SmartShops offering. It’s too soon to see revenue or search engine rankings, but so far I’m impressed with the quality of the storefronts it creates.
SmartShops looks to be particularly suited for exact match product domains (both .com and alternative extensions). The main benefit of SmartShops is that it automatically creates good looking ecommerce minisites that look more like ‘real’ sites than traditional parking or Adsense filled mini site pages. Here is an example of a site I created today in less than five minutes…
I like the fact that there are no Adsense ads, so it doesn’t look like a standard parking page. Smartname monetizes the sites using Shopping.com and pays per click (not action). This means that if your domain is highly targeted, you should be able to earn income when visitors browse your site, regardless of whether they make the final purchase online.
As you can see above, my test site allows visitors to browse by price or brand name and hopefully will be viewed as a useful resource by anyone typing in home deep fryers.
Smartshops also offers some great customization options, including the ability to…
With a little work it should be possible to customize Smartname storefronts so that they are useful and attractive enough to be favorably viewed by non-domainers and linked to by related sites. If this is possible, these ’sites’ are far more likely to achieve search engine traction and good rankings for their exact match keywords.
Next step will be to customize a few of these sites and do some basic link promotion. Hope to blog about my results later this week.
Thanks to Bruce Marler for putting me in touch with the SmartName crowd and encouraging me to try out the service.
I just purchased an advance copy of XHeaderPro (being released tomorrow) and thought I would take a few minutes to highlight some of its features. The program is made by the same company which makes XSitePro, a turn key web site building program which sells for $297.
XheaderPro ($37) is a much simpler program which does one thing and does it well - it lets graphically challenged users (like me) create professional looking headers in just a few minutes. It’s basically a turn key web site header designer which works as follows…
- Select one of 5000 graphic templates to start with
- Add text or additional graphics and arrange them in any order
- Add advanced features (e.g. outline, drop shadow, transparency, glow, etc.) by using check boxes and sliders
- Resize the header to match your site or blog and use the program’s example headers to select a final size and quality setting.
- Headers can be saved in JPG or PNG format as well as the programs proprietary XHF format which allows you to edit the header objects at a later time.
Here is a quick screen shot tour I made of my initial experience with the program…
Template selector lets you choose from 5000 templates to start your design
Add text and graphics to your template and select special effects and color palettes.
Resize header to fit your web site or blog template.
Final header can be saved as a JPG or PNG file
Quality level wizard lets you reduce file size of the header without worrying about compression settings.
Summary
In my opinion, the best part of this program is its 5000 graphical templates and the ability to customize them without using additional graphics programs like Photoshop. The interface is quite easy to use and is very user friendly. I have a sneaking suspicion that even a few graphic designers may use this program to quickly prototype headers for clients as headers can be created in about 5 minutes a piece and the quality rivals many of the header template services.
The program is scheduled to launch tomorrow morning and will be selling for $47, however I was able to purchase a discounted copy ($37) this afternoon by visiting their site and clicking on their ‘free trial’ button. This presented me with a ‘Download FREE Copy’ screen. After entering in my contact info I received a screen which gave me the discounted $37 offer.
Relationship Disclosure / Hype Warning: I’ve been an XSitePro user for several years and am a member of their affiliate program. I’m a big fan of their software, but think that their sales pages are a little long and are written in a typical Internet Marketing sales page style. That said, both products are first rate.
Available Names
The following exact match domains are available for hand registration and can be registered with any registrar. I have included the Valuate.com appraisal for each domain.
My favorites are…
- AdjustableDoubleBed.com, $8 CPC (product example)
- CSSForms.com (good for setting up a resource site like this)
- WebFilterSoftware.com (great name to set up an affiliate based comparison site like this
- AccreditedMastersPrograms.com ($9+ CPC good for minisite or use this site to set up a directory of schools and monetize with featured listings)
- SmallBusinessGroupInsurance.com (good for minisite or resale to end user insurance agent)
Domains for sale
I’m also selling the following 3 domains today…
1. StoneOutdoorFireplaces.com ($200) - Valuate.com appraisal of $750. 1000 monthly searches on Google at $1.37 CPC. Example of Smartname Smartshop above. I’m also including this spreadsheet of potential end users which can be used to resell the name. In addition to end user resale, this name can be monetized by using an automated ecommerce solution like Smartshops or even a simple Amazon Astore.
2. SportsMP3Player.com ($400) - Valuate.com appraisal of $3300. Receives (12,100 broad / 1,300 exact match) Google searches per month with advertisers paying $2.70 CPC. Ideal for SEO or SEM purposes and can easily be monitized via affiliate prgrams from most electronics retailers. This name can be purchased immediately via this Sedo Link.
3. MultifunctionInkjetPrinters.com ($500) - Valuate appraisal of $930. Receives (2400 broad / 480 exact match) Google searches per month with advertisers paying $11.45 CPC. I’m also including this spreadsheet of end users who have recently advertised for this term. In addition to end user resale, this name can be monetized via Adsense or affiliate revenue. To purchase, visit this Sedo link.
To ensure an immediate purchase, make sure your offer meets the asking price listed on Sedo. Any offers under asking price offers may be sent to public Sedo 7 day auction.
That’s it for today. If you are interested in receiving future available domains…
- Subscribe here to receive 2 minute advance e-mail notification of available names.
- Follow me at @DomainTweeter.
- Since many names I post receive simultaneous registrations, you may want to use a fast registrar and have your billing information pre-programmed. Or use a program like Roboform to fill in your information.
Also, if you’d like to see some of my favorite domaining tools, checkout my new DomainingMindmap site.
Available Names
The following exact match domains are available as of the time of this post for hand registration and can be registered with any registrar. All have Valuate.com appraisals of over $500 and are suitable for development or resale.
1. NappyChangingBag.com - Valuate appraisal of $1400. Product examples. Notes: Would be a great candidate to list on BargainDomains. As you can see in the above graphic, since it meets their requirements ($1000+ appraisal with sufficient search volume, the ‘Sell It’ button will let you immediately list it there.
2. CeramicBracelet.com - Valuate appraisal of $960. Here are some product examples and a list of manufacturers.
3. WirelessComputer.us - Valuate appraisal of $730. 1900 Google searches per month at $3.21 per click.
Auction Picks
I also wanted to include a few interesting auctions I came across this morning..
1. DoubleBeds.com (Godaddy Auctions) - Valuate.com appraisal of $60,000 - current bid of $501. This phrase receives over 14,000 monthly searches on Google with an average CPC of $1.59.
2. WallRacks.com (Godaddy Auctions) - Valuate appraisal of $6,000 - current bid of $15. This phrase receives over 18,000 monthly searches on Google with an average CPC of $2.27.
That’s it for today. If you are interested in receiving future available domains…
- Subscribe here to receive 2 minute advance e-mail notification of available names.
- Follow me at @DomainTweeter.
- Since many names I post receive simultaneous registrations, you may want to use a fast registrar and have your billing information pre-programmed. Or use a program like Roboform to fill in your information.
Also, if you’d like to see some of my favorite domaining tools, checkout my new DomainingMindmap site.
Just added Drop.com.au to my domaining mindmap after reading today’s post by OzDomainer . This is a domain space I’ve largely overlooked, so I thought I would spend a few minutes to see if I’m missing out on a lucrative market segment.
I started by looking at some of the recent .au sales listed on Drop.com.au…
| carparts.com.au |
$18,011 |
| printing.com.au |
$9,221 |
| motorhomes.com.au |
$5,556 |
| currencytrading.com.au |
$5,205 |
| livemusic.com.au |
$4,501 |
| financialadvisor.com.au |
$3,889 |
| audiobooks.com.au |
$3,501 |
| motorsport.com.au |
$2,531 |
| windturbines.com.au |
$2,001 |
I’m not too familiar with .au pricing, so I ran the list through valuate.com and came up with the following…
Next, I wanted to see more aftermarket sales, so I used a few of the historical pricing resources from my mindmap.
I started with one of my favorite resources, NameBio.com which I use frequently for .com valuations, however it only contained the following 4 .au sales….
It’s always good to try a few different tools, so next I used DomainTools historical pricing tool which located the following high dollar sales…
Summary
Based on my quick research, it looks like there are some interesting opportunities in the .au namespace. If you’d like to get involved, Drop.com.au offers drop catching memberships for a one time fee of $250.00 AUD with a no-catch no-pay guarantee. They also offer an aftermarket auction membership for $9.95 AUD.
I also came across DNTrade.com.au, a domaining forum dedicated to the .au namespace.
As with any namespace, before making significant purchases, you may want to investigate development potential including current search demand and CPC for .au businesses as well as possible monetization options (as they are likely to differ from US based businesses due to shipping concerns and other factors).
Finding additional domain tools
If you are interested in seeing some of the other tools I use to find, develop and monetize domains you can explore my Domaining Mindmap here.
Snapnames showcase auction ends tomorrow at 3:15PM EST. There are currently 24 domains with bids, but as usual expect most of the heavy bidding to occur in the last hour. There have already been several good posts about tomorrow’s auction (TheDomains,TeenDomainer), so I thought I would take a different approach and sort the dataset I analyzed using Valuate.com/Estibot.
9 Domains with PageRank 3 or Higher*
- DomainStats.com - PR6
- Marshall.com - PR5
- Coast.net - PR5
- HomeSchooling.com - PR4
- Joker.org - PR
- APW.com - PR4
- MYBP - PR3
- Jacob.com - PR3
- HFC.net - PR3
* Using PageRank data from Estibot. If bidding, be sure to doublecheck to make sure PR is genuine. Also wanted to note I’m receiving Google security messages for the first two domains mentioned.
Domains with bids lower than their Valuate.com appraisals
- woodshutters.com 10,000 current bid 63,000 valuate appraisal
- swf.net 2800 12000
- weak.net 2100 5400
- ppc.info 1271 3500
- 3x.org 1000 6100
- t4.org 1000 1600
- ilovenyc.com 775 920
- redlips.com 625 6500
- ticketplus.com 380 1300
- crispyduck.com 350 1900
- forextradingtool.com 325 23000
- cuteboy.com 325 7800
- badloans.org 325 1800
- hotjobs.in 300 3000
- advise.in 240 3000
No reserve domains with Valuate appraisals of $1000 or greater
| Domain |
Valuate appraisal |
| shortsleeveshirts.com |
28000 |
| forextradingtool.com |
23000 |
| associatesdegree.co.uk |
18000 |
| flannelshirts.co.uk |
7700 |
| stretchmarkremoval.co.uk |
7200 |
| exerciseplans.com |
7000 |
| samedayloan.net |
6900 |
| movethis.com |
5200 |
| onlinemastersdegrees.net |
4000 |
| kingbeds.net |
3000 |
| selftanner.co.uk |
2500 |
| 49r.net |
2300 |
| l50.net |
2200 |
| clinch.org |
2000 |
| crispyduck.com |
1900 |
| smallrug.com |
1900 |
| badloans.org |
1800 |
| electricbicycles.de |
1800 |
| londonrentalcar.co.uk |
1800 |
| dchr.com |
1600 |
| dieselfuelfilter.com |
1600 |
| motorcyclefinancing.org |
1400 |
| nylimoservice.com |
1400 |
| tennisshops.com |
1400 |
| ticketplus.com |
1300 |
| dmox.com |
1300 |
| straplessgowns.com |
1300 |
| 40yearloans.com |
1200 |
| freshwaterpearlbracelet.com |
1200 |
| nvoc.com |
1200 |
| foldupbeds.com |
1100 |
| athleticwalkingshoes.com |
1000 |
If you are using Google’s keyword tool to check keyword demand, remember that by default it checks the previous month. Since demand for many items spikes in December, using this tool in January can provide greatly inflated results.
For example, I was just checking availability for ‘chocolate gift tower’. Google’s keyword tool showed 720 monthly searches in December. However, expanding these results by selecting ’show all columns’ reveals that the term gets about half that amount of searches on most month’s of the year.
I decided to purchase ChocolateGiftTower.com anyway, but now realize that demand for this product won’t really begin to ramp up until the second half of the year.
I’ve been working on a few new projects (which I hope to blog about shortly), but since it’s been a while I wanted to post a short pre-screened list of available exact match domains with search demand. I’ve used Valuate.com to quickly summarize demand and CPC and have linked to product examples where possible.
All are available as of 3:45PM this afternoon.
Product examples:
Domain notes:
- The .net version of OnlineDistanceMBA.com is a live site (lead generation).
- BusinessPhones.us is available (even though Valuate.com says all extensions taken)
- One of the .com domains listed above has a developed site using an IDN (co.nz)
Additional Names for Sale: I’m also offering the following names today via Sedo.
- CheapMobileContracts.com - now in Sedo auction here (ends 1/21). Multiple extensions registered with Cheap-Mobile-Contracts.com a fully developed site. Very low reserve considering CheapMobileBroadband.com sold for $4,900.
- TeterboroNJ.com - exact match GEO name for Teterboro, NJ. Valuate.com appraisal $890, Estibot $12,000
- SecureSSLCertificate.com - $6.83 CPC. Good for minisite or review site. Many targeted affiliate programs (Netsol, Geotrust, GoDaddy)
That’s it for today. Most names posted go within minutes. If you are interested in receiving future available domains…
- Subscribe here to receive 2 minute advance e-mail notification of available names.
- Follow me at @DomainTweeter.
- Since many names I post receive simultaneous registrations, you may want to use a fast registrar and have your billing information pre-programmed. Or use a program like Roboform to fill in your information.
As always, any feedback / comments appreciated.
Just got around to taking a look at Rick Latona’s new auction platform, Latonas.com and like what I see. Here’s what I think he is doing right…
1. I can see important domains stats like cost per click (CPC), exact Google searches at a glance for each listing.
This is a big time saver. If I’m considering bidding on a keyword name, the first thing I do is run it through Google’s keyword tool to see search demand and CPC. Thanks Rick for saving me some time. Hopefully, this will encourage better quality listings and bring back some frustrated buyers - no more researching hundreds of names only to find out that 95% of them have no real demand.
2. Listings and descriptions can be easily scanned from the main auction page. Much nicer than hoverable popovers or small description links that most buyers never click. It’s always surprised me how many auction platforms bury descriptions a level or two deep and make it hard for sellers to highlight the benefits of their domain and buyers to learn about each domain.
3. Descriptions seem to be more metric based and less ‘fluff’. Don’t know if this is a result of system programming or good human editing, but many of the domain descriptions are actually helpful (e.g. number of incoming links and pages indexed by Google). I know these factors can change quickly when a name changes hands, but they can contribute to the value of a name and are good to be aware of.
4. Nice look at feel, including a custom graphic for each name. If a name is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, it’s probably worth having a graphic artist spend a few minutes making up a good graphic for it. The only place I have seen this before is at DotSauce’s AQDN.com. It’s nice to see a major auction platform include this and is a very nice touch.
Suggestions
I know the site is still in beta mode, but here are a couple of features I hope they consider adding down the road…
- Simplified view - I like the detailed info, but some might find it useful to have an option for quick summary view. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to cut and paste all domains listed on a page to quickly plug them into other services like Valuate.com.
- Ability to export - The ability to export auction data to .csv or excel format might be helpful for some advanced domainers who have their own tracking systems.
- Advanced search capability - As a big keyword domainer, I would love to have the ability to search for specific demand/CPC/etc. E.g. list all .com domains with a CPC over $2 and more than 5,000 exact searches per month.
I think it makes good sense to test the platform out with a lower volume charity auction and wish Rick and Whypark the best of luck in this week’s auction. If you are interested in trying out the system or bidding in the auction you can follow this link.
