Here's the The Lowdown
from DN Journal,
updated daily
to
fill you in on the latest buzz going around the domain name industry.
The Lowdown is
compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron
Jackson.
New
Study Provides Good News for Domain Owners Who Are
Developing Their Own Content-Rich Websites
If
you are one of the many domain owners who
have gotten on the "development" train
and started building content-rich websites with
the hope of freeing yourself from dependence on steadily
dwindling PPC revenue, I have some good news
for you. A new
study from the
Online
Publishers Association (OPA), based
on six years of analysis, indicates that
you are moving in the right direction at
the right time. The keyword here is
"content" as I'll show you in breaking
down the numbers from the OPA study.
The
OPA has been tracking where people spend
their time on the Internet and have divided
the various options web users have into five categories:
commerce, communications, community, content and
search.
Commerce would include sites like Amazon
and Ebay, Communications would be
represented by sites/activities like Yahoo Mail,
AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Groups and Community
covers the popular social networking category as
embodied by sites like Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn. Content would include sites
offering any kind of information, for example
the Wall Street Journal, CNN or any of the
millions of special interest sites on the web
and Search, of course, is the sector
represented by Google, Yahoo, Bing and smaller
search engines.
When
you start making decisions on the kind of development
you want to pour your time and money into, it would
obviously be helpful to know where web surfers like to
spend most of their time, so the OPA set out to do just
that. If your focus has been or is on building a content
site, you have identified the "sweet spot"
with respect to where web surfers spend most of their
time.
OPA
found that this year, on average, web users
spent 42% of their time online on content
sites - far more than any other category.
What's more, content's share of the pie has been
steadily growing - up 8% from the 34%
the category had in 2003 when the OPA created
its Internet Activity Index.
Even
more impressive, the average amount of time
individual surfers spend on content sites today
is almost twice what it was in
2003,
soaring from a monthly average of three hours
and 42 minutes to six hours and 58 minutes
(newspapers and magazines, I think we have found
your missing subscibers).
The
communications category was a distant second to content
with people spending 27% of their time there - but
that is a huge fall-off from the 46% that
category held six years ago. You can thank (or blame) the
rise of social networking for that as people now
handle more of their communications through tweets and
Facebook posts. Still, in something of a surprise to me
given how much press social networking gets, people spend
only 13% of their online time on
"community" activity - the same amount of time
they spend on commerce sites (commerce was down from 16%
in 2003). However the OPA just established the community
category last year so we will have to see where it
goes from here.
The
search category brought up the rear, with people spending 5%
of their time on search. However that is a jump from the
3% figure OPA found in 2003.
Take a
look at the OPA's complete
report (illustrated with graphs and
featuring more detailed data) for more on this very
interesting study. It may influence you decisions as
you map out your development plans.
If you
still wonder if it is worth the bother to take on
development in an effort to diversify your
revenue stream, you might want to read
a postRick Schwartz published on
his blog just today. Without warning or explanation,
Google just pulled the plug on his AdSense
account, completely shutting down his revenue stream
from that source after he spent thousands of dollars
on mini-site development.
Parking
and AdSense have been immensely positive things for
domain owners in recent years and I think for large
portfolio owners,
Rick
Schwartz
Google just shut down his Adsense account
they will continue to
be a part of the mix for years to come
- but having all of your eggs in one basket is never
a good idea.
Though it is not
easy, I believe that diversifying into
development in at least one niche area that
you are truly passionate about - and doing
it well enough to attract an audience - is the
key to freedom. It may take multiple tries
before you come up with a winner, but if you are
able to find the right combination, you will be
able to cut out the middlemen, get direct
advertisers and put your destiny back in your
own hands where it belongs.
We need your help to keep giving domainers The
Lowdown, so please email [email protected]with any interesting information you might have. If possible,
include the source of your information so we can check it out (for
example a URL if you read it in a forum or on a site
elsewhere).
