Quickie Lesson for Noobs: How to Choose 'em

Focus on geodomains

[Webwork]

If you are going to play in the geodomain world what's the principal "signals" you should check for?

In other words, when targeting domains what are the top 2 - or maybe 3 - attributes, circumstances or characteristics you should examine?

My "signals" are

1. Population of the geodomain target
   
2. Search frequency for commercial terms related to that target
   
3. PPC value of those search terms
   

I ALWAYS go BIG. Biggest States. Biggest cities. Highest search volume. Highest PPC.

Exception: Very high PPC value commercial term with likely enduser interest due to very high converted lead value. Think: lawyers, insurance, real estate.

So, what are your signals?

Why?

[IanTurner]

Number of language speakers (providing you are buying for the native language).

Number of registrations in that geo location.

PPC providers in the geolocation.

[Webwork]

Hmmm . . . Perhaps I need a sharper lens to examine the PPC to geolocation issue? I've pretty much relied on a gut check about "the wealth" of certain locations to support inferences about PPC, competition, etc.

Pricey? NYC, Chicago, LosAngeles, etc.

Less pricey? I'm not gonna say 'cause I don't want to offend any of the cheap . . . err . . nice folks who live in the less costly areas. ;P

[IanTurner]

I think your geolocation is slightly more finely tuned than mine - I was looking at cctld level and global tld in different languages rather than areas within a particular country.

Though that does give me another thought - perhaps I should be looking at relative currency strengths and long term trends in this arena.

[Webwork]

The nice thing about trends is that if you can spot them "before the masses" there can be a nice return on investment.

I picked up a few domains connected to babyboomers and their parents a few years back that have been increasingly productive. One small cluster is throwing off about $25-50.00/day, parked, and I'm sure I could do better "going direct" (selling leads).

Of course, there's only so many hours in the day. Plus I'm no Spring chicken anymore, least not one of those who can run unceasingly on cans of "energy drink". And . . then there's the matter of spending a few more hours than I wanted to today working on an ftp issue, learning all manner of useful cough cough stuff about Apache's various flavors of ~embedded ~"firewalls", iptables, flushing . . .

Who was it that said webdev is easy?

No one that I know. ;P

[edited by: Webwork at 11:02 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2008]