Little ad bombs waiting to explode with money

One of the pitfalls to avoid with a new local site is too much spammy advertising -particularly adsense.

It can be a real turn off to readers, particularly when your site is a little lacking in high quality content.

It’s often a good idea to delay introducing adsense or affilate advertising until your site has gained traction.

But recoding hundreds or thousands of pages can be a real pain.

One way round this is to write your pages in .shtml.  This allows you to call on content from external files (rather like php does, but simpler).

You can put your ad code in an external file and put an instruction on each page you want to show advertising to read the contents of that file….it’s dead easy.

When you start out, leave the file with your ad code empty – the file will exist, but will not effect your webpage.  A browser will read the file and then move on to the next bit of code on your webpage.

When you feel your site is ready to display ads, just insert your ad code into that empty file, upload it to your server and Bingo!

Your geo website instantly explodes into life as a little money making machine.

External files are also great for things like headers, footers, navigation and other features that effect multiple pages of a website.

With careful planning, you can insert sleeper files to cover different ad placements on your site, allowing you to tweak the future ad earning performance of your site without recoding hundreds of web pages.

Posted in Geo domain development

Why you shouldn’t call a geo blog a geo blog

One of the best ways of getting visitors to return to you local geo website is to install fresh new content.

And blogging software like WordPress is one of the easiest ways to do this.

I’m currently installing a blog / news / magazine style section on my West Sussex website.

But what should I call it?

Well…according to the Big G’s adwords tool, even for a big city like London, 7 times as many people serach for “geo + news” as they do “geo + blog”.

This pattern is repeated more or less across the board.

So I’ve decided to call the blog (and its directory) news, rather than blog.

Even though this brings you into competition with the news gathering websites, there’s no point in lumbering your site with a term that few people are searching for.

Posted in Geo domain development

Finsbury.co.uk in auction

The domain Finsbury.co.uk is up for auction today at Domain Lore.

G stats:

Global 90,550
Local 74,000
CPC £0.53

UPDATE
The domain Finsbury.co.uk sold for £850

Posted in Geo domain sales

What’s the endgame for your geodomain?

It seems intuitive that UK geo domain are all valuable.

When the heart rules the head, even a mid-sized city .net or .org.uk feels like it must be valuable.

And when the head rules the heart, then it’s possible to argue that “there are only so many city.tld domain names”.  Someone will pay good money for it.

But who?

So what’s your exit route?

Professional investors in small high-growth businesses are obsessed about the potential exit route for each investment.  All that promise and growth means little to them unless it can be turned into a big fat payday.

So what is the exit route for the plethora of parked UK geodomains out there?

For years the bulk of domain sales have been between domain investors, especially when it comes to geodomains.

The bottom line is that the number of well-funded purchasers of UK geodomains are few and far between.

And most of them are domainer-developers, rather than fresh corporate money coming into the sector.

No alternative?

There seems to be little long term alternative for geo domain owners than to start some sort of development of their sites.  While a site like county.org.uk or city.net will attract virtually no type in traffic, a small site will at least make a modest ROI.

And every year a geo domain sits undeveloped, the gap that domain has to make up to the leading sites for that town or area widens.

Banking on a deep pocketed corporate buyers seems to be trusting a bit too much to luck.

Posted in Geo domain opinion

Pontypool.co.uk in drop auction today?

The domain Pontypool.co.uk is potentially up for auction at Domain Lore this morning, in an advanced auction ahead of the drop.

Only one bidder so far.

Google adwords stats:

Local 49,500 local 33,100 CPC £0.93.

Pontypool has a population of 38,000 people, of whom many will choose Welsh as their first language.

UPDATE
Pontypool.co.uk was renewed and failed to drop.

Posted in Geo domain sales

Are the coalition cuts an opportunity for geo domain owners?

One of our pet gripes here at GeoReport is the proliferation of state-sponsored websites.

Every time a council, quango or other state body has a new idea, up pops a new website, generally with an expensive taxpayer-funded design.

Even more annoyingly, many of these sites get instant high quality links from their other chums in the state sector.

Councils, tourist boards and all the well-established state-run sites automatically give them high quality links that are, frankly, unearned.

It’s a state sponsored closed shop.

All change?

But with the proposed funding cutbacks in government spending these sites are going to come under financial pressure.

As I see it, this creates three opportunities for private geo domain owners.

  1. Some state sites will fold, removing some of the competition for some keyword phrases.
  2. Some sites will decline in importance, as the pension-cushioned state webmasters have less time to spend building and promoting new content.
  3. Most interestingly of all, some councils and other state bodies will not have the resources to maintain all the information on their current sites and may be keen to outsource some of their content, including possibly entire websites, to the private sector.

It’s a daunting but exciting possibility, fraught with complication and irritating interference.

Over the next few weeks, as the shape of the public sector cuts becomes apparent, I’ll be trying to assess whether this opportunity is graspable and what problems have to be overcome to make a success of it.

Posted in Opportunities | Tagged as:

About GeoReport.co.uk

GeoReport is a specialist blog for owners of geo domains.

It will have analysis of the UK geo domain industry covering:

  • geo domain development
  • geo domains competitive analysis
  • monetisation of geo websites; and
  • news and opinion about the geo domain industry in the UK.
Posted in About Geo Report