Conference keynote speakers are always great to talk to. So, I decided to reach out to one of the Affiliate Summit East 2011 ones, Marc Ostrofsky (MO below), and interview him, asking questions that my blog readers may have wanted to ask… Today I’d like to bring you this interview:

GP: Marc, thank you for taking the time to give me this interview. Can you tell my blog readers a bit about yourself?

MO: I love to play golf.  I love to Travel – Italy is as good as it gets for me.  I work out and swim.  I was always into sports – like Racquetball, but as I get older, the athletic ability is like my hair – it’s seems to be going away as I age. I have a lovely wife, five beautiful daughters, two dogs and live in a wonderful home in Houston, Texas.

I also love to teach.  My dad was a professor.  My sister was a professor.  I think I just have it in my DNA.   But first, I had to make money and prove something works – and then teach it.    So I always get involved with a project, company or idea so I can say I actually did it… and that is where Get Rich Click! came from.  My own companies played in many of these games… then I set out and researched for years how others make money online.  Maybe that’s why we hit the New York Times Bestseller list… because the data in that book is real… it’s not made up — I’ve done it and show how so many others have done it.

GP: Your 1999 sale of Business.com (for $7.5 million) got you into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most expensive domain name ever sold. Do you still hold that record?

MO: I paid $150,000, the most money ever paid for a single domain name – just the URL, no website, no income stream, no database… nothing but the URL.  Today, money spent on a Domain Name often brings more than just the URL.  For example Sex.com was sold for $13 million; however the buyers got a domain name, a database of clients, an income stream and a website even if they wanted to redo it.

GP: You’re known for coining the notion of domain names as “Internet real estate”. We all understand that whoever was there first, obviously, grabbed the better “real estate”. Are there any good names left for online marketers to acquire today? And if so, what purpose makes more sense: development, reselling, or maybe reselling the developed “property” at a later date?

MO: Sure there are!  But they might be much more expensive than the original $8 to buy them.

This “Internet” based Real Estate is bought, sold, rented or leased out.  You buy an empty piece of land and build on it.

Think about the similarities. You get a domian name and it’s the same as an empty piece of land. You can buy it, sell it, lease it out (for the traffic it gets) or build on it.  You can put a simple house on (a website) or a giant skyscraper on it (like eBay or Facebook).

The big difference is that the speculation in names, like the goldrush in California, is all but gone.  But, you can buy great pieces of real estate on the secondary market.  There are sites that offer tens of thousands of domain names for sale at prices much higher than the original $8.  Some names go for hundreds of thousands if not millons of dollars.

So you can play in this game for as low as $8 or so.  Or as high as $10,000 or $100,000.  I really do not suggest you do any of this without learning the game and the types of prices that some names command. Great deals are harder and harder to find these days.   I call this the “intellectual property” lottery.  It’s up to your brain to think of the next hot piece of real estate and you may win big.  People speculate on movie titles, the next presidential election.. you name it, there are domain name speculatiors that buy a lot of $8. domain names trying to win the next “bit hit”.

GP: Your newest book “Get Rich Click!: The Ultimate Guide to Making Money Online” has already become the New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Congratulations! What is the book about, and can it be of any benefit to affiliates? The title certainly presupposes this.

MO: Thank you.  We are thrilled with the way Get Rich Click! has been received.  The book is about how anyone can make money using tools from the Internet.  You will learn:

1. How to make money online using just a photo-requiring no money up front
2. How people care making money using blogs, email, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube
3. How you can buy Internet “traffic” for a few cents per visitor and sell it for 5x, 10x and even 25x the upfront amount
4. How to make a full time living from home creating eBooks that are sold by others
5. How to create simple e-commerce sites that make money the same day they’re live
6. Learn the “Lead Generation” business and make money providing leads to other websites.

…and yes, it can be a benefit to affiliates.  We have over 1,100 affiliates who are benefiting from the sale of Get Rich Click!

GP: And talking about earning from the Internet, if you were to name 3 things that anyone can start doing today to make money online, what would they be?

MO:

1. Sell it then buy it.  All you need is a digital camera – or find a photo online of the item for sale.
2. Learn about affiliate marketing.  That is the biggest secret to wealth online.  As you know, Affiliate Marketing means you sell something and get paid a commission for the sale.   For example, you can sign up to be an affiliate of Amazon.com.   The give you a link to Amazon.com followed by your name.   Each time anyone clicks on that link and buys a book from Amazon, you will be paid a commission!  It’s really brilliant.  So if you have a link for my book, and you tell 200 friends on Facebook or via email and provide them with that link, each time someone buys a book you get paid!
3. Here is a great idea.  Many people like to read books.  If you think you can write up a good summary or review of the book, do that.  Then send that review out to all of your friends and put an Amazon link at the bottom.  If any of them like the review and click on the link, and buy the book, you get a commission.

At that point, your goal is to build your mailing list as large as you can so more people get it and more people click on the link to buy!

Another market I can discuss, should there be time, is to talk about lead generation.  On the internet, firms like Colleges, Universities, Insurance firms and Mortgage Brokers pay for leads or potential clients. Here’s a good idea.  Start a website like “Top 20 Colleges in New York”.   Review the colleges… and at the end, put up their “application to apply” to the college. Many colleges pay up to $25 per application filled out!   You just send them 100 applications and they send you $2500.  This is a great way to make money.  It’s not “overnight” but it’s also not hard.  You start by learning about Lead Generation, how it works and which colleges (or mortage brokers) pay for such leads.

GP: What do you think of monetizing social networking presence in places like Facebook or LinkedIn? If one can make money from it, how exactly would they go about it?

MO: Yes. It’s all about having a database of friends, clients, buyers, former buyers and even lists you rent.  A Facebook or LinkedIn list is a list like any other.  You can sell to them as easily as you can to others.  In fact, they trust you which often makes it easier to sell to them.  But be careful not to push them or much or you will lose those friends …quickly.

GP: And my final question to you: on August 21 you’ll be doing the opening keynote for Affiliate Summit East 2011 in New York City. Taken that many of my blog readers will be there, can you give us a sneak peak (or a teaser) on what to expect?

MO: At this time, I am working on finalizing my thoughts and ideas for the speech. However, I am looking forward to seeing everyone there.  Affiliate Summit East is a great place to meet and learn from a variety of people.

Thank you Geno for this opportunity.  Hope to see you at ASE.

We all know the saying “the early bird gets the worm”. Well… when it comes to searching for a good domain name, things are not that straightforwardly predictable.

A few days ago I thought of an idea for an affiliate site. Naturally, the first thing I did after conceiving the idea was a search for available domain names. I couldn’t find a good .COM one. The .NET domain was also taken, and it was only the .ORG one that I could buy. But because of (a) the lack of time to start working on this new project right away (I’ve purchased domains in the past, sat on them for a year, and then, having no time to work on them, released them… and didn’t want this to happen to this one), and (b) the assumption that no one would want the .ORG version anyway, I procrastinated with the domain registration. Next thing I know — the domain is registered by someone else! Yes, the .ORG version that I was certain no one needs!

Immediately after finding this out I tweeted about it, and also posted this on my Facebook wall:

No, this wasn’t the first time I saw this happen. You search for domains, find some good ones, but put the final purchase decision off until tomorrow, but tomorrow some of them aren’t available any longer…

The replies I received on my Facebook wall have clarified many things. Here are just a few of them:

“My understanding is that most registrars have a deal with major domainers: any new domains that are checked for availability but not bought are passed to the domainers. They’re able to keep them for 30 days without paying to see if they attract traffic. If they do, the domainer keeps them. If not, they get thrown back. Happens all the time. If you look up a domain, you have to buy it immediately.” ~ Chris Trayhorn

“Always a great test to see if the names you just researched were magically unavailable moments later. I used to see this at [domain registrar name here] and Chris brings up an interesting point. They are in the business to sell domains and wonder how fast that data could pass to the domainers.” ~ Michael Vorel

“A few months ago I noticed a search in my logs for a domain very near one of mine. Then I was offered that same domain a few days later. Was bothered by email for several days as they thought I’d be interested. After another week it came back to the market and then I bought it.” ~ Herb Breese

“This type of stuff has been happening for years now.” ~ Vinny O’Hare

What Chris Trayhorn is mentioning above is eye-opening to me. He has also sent me a link to an interesting article at CNN Money gives an overview of the tricks that domainers use, as well as the arrangements they have with domain registrars. Here it is: The man who owns the Internet.

It seems that with domains then it’s not the early bird that gets the worm, but the bird that’s faster, better prepared/equipped, and has the right connections.

Lessons learned:

1) When searching for a domain name, don’t use the registrars that are being suspected of special arrangements with domains (not listing any names here, but they are easily-retrievable through search)

2) If you see a good domain that’s available, snatch it! Don’t procrastinate.

Yesterday I discovered a cool tool, tweeted about it, and obviously wasn’t the only one who loved the idea:

So what exactly does Domai.nr do?

It helps you search for domain names, but in a way that’s very different from what domain registrars traditionally offer you. Domai.nr searches for all available domain extensions and shows you which domains are available, and how you can get one associated with your keyword or brand name.

Say, JCPenney wanted to get a short URL (to distribute their deals and promos through social media channels, and Twitter, in particular). We type in JCPenney, and get these results/suggestions:

Wow! There’s actually a two-letter domain available out there! Search for your brand, or keyword(s) too. More than likely you will find a handful of interesting domain names too.

So, how do the owners/developers of Domai.nr earn their money to support such a beautiful service absolutely free of charge? Well, they actually get a commission on every domain name registered. You pay the registrar whatever fee they would charge you anyway, but the registrar pays Domai.nr their affiliate commission.

Obviously the value-added service that this affiliate provides is appreciated by the ~20,000-30,000 unique visitors that they get consistently get every month:

I think this makes a great example of how affiliates can truly enhance merchants’ offers, being compensated through affiliate programs in return.

It isn’t unusual to see the following affiliate paid search policy set out and enforced by a merchant:

In the vast majority of cases the above PPC policy is one of those best practices that every affiliate program should implement. The reason is obvious: such affiliate activity adds no value to the merchant, and serves a purely parasitic purpose.

The sole purpose of such activity is to divert the trademark traffic to go through affiliate links/ads first. This sets an affiliate cookie on the end user’s machine, and should the latter place a sale/lead through within the cookie life duration, the trademark bidding affiliate will earn the commission on that sale/lead [more here]

Now, imagine my surprise when I see the same merchant (whose paid search restrictions I’ve started this post with) having the following affiliates (highlighted) on board:

If you go to page 2 of Google results for the above-shown key phrase, you’ll actually see more of similar affiliate websites — those with keyword-rich domain names where one of the “keywords” is the merchants trade name.

How is this different from paid search trademark poaching? It isn’t.

Looking through the pile of old mail yesterday (the mail that I didn’t need to reply to, but kept for one reason or another) I have found a piece of mail received in 2009 when one of my domain names was coming up for renewal. The letter came from a company called Domain Renewal Group. As I glanced over the text of it, I instantly remembered why I kept this one — because I wanted to blog about it… Here’s that letter:

They were reminding me of the fact that my domain registration was about to expire, and offered to renew it… at $30 a year! Whoa there!! You mean it’s gonna cost me only 30 bucks to renew something that I can renew at $6.99 directly with the registrar?!

Then I tried to Google them, and this company seems to be so popular (in searches) that just upon typing in “domain renewal” Google suggests two key phrases directly related to Domain Renewal Group:

Not exactly the kind of popularity every brand would like, but the second one certainly explain a lot.

I have been recommending affiliates to use keyword-rich domain names more aggressively, and I myself have been experimenting with different types of domains and how well they do with search engines. Today I would like to share with you my experience with hyphenated domain names.

Some are saying that hyphens in domain names are a “no-no” for SEO “because people won’t remember to put them in when they’re trying to remember how to access your site” (not sure where the connection with SEO is though), while others state that it isn’t bad for your SEO at all, and hyphenated domain names do well with narrow search engine searches.

A little over a year ago I registered two domain names: both in highly competitive niches, one – hyphenated, another one – not. The non-hyphenated one reached the #1 position on Google and MSN (it still keeps it with Bing, but dropped a bit in Google) about a month after its registration and loading content, whereas the hyphenated one did relatively well with other search engines, but wasn’t very successful with Google. Here are its current rankings across 6 different search engines:

• Google – not in the top 100
• Yahoo! – #3
• Bing – #8
• AOL – not in the top 100
• AltaVista – #3
• AllTheWeb – #3

Based on this experience, I would recommend looking for a non-hyphenated domain name over a hyphenated one.

If, however, you do decide to go with a domain name that contains separators (such as hyphens or underscores), you want to stay away from underscores. Earlier this year Matt Cutts of Google has strongly recommended hyphens over underscores because at this time, and in case with Google, “dashes or hyphens are treated a separators, and underscores are not.”

Finally, remember that while metatags no longer matter much, your page titles and inbound links still matter a lot.

A merchant has just asked:

I have an affiliate that just registered “trademarknameproducttype.com” and is going to start marketing our new [trademark name] product line. Is this acceptable? I know he’s doing marketing for us, however he’s using our trademarked name.

The intent of the above-quoted affiliate is obvious — to get the traffic which would search specifically for the merchant’s trademarked brand in combination with a popular keyword for the type of product. Keeping in mind that most search engines love keyword-rich domains [see this post and this poll, for example], the above scenario is really no different from trademark bidding in paid search. Just as it is with TM PPC bidding, the merchant should answer the following two simple questions:

• Does this affiliate marketing method add value?
• Can it generate incremental business/sales?

If the answer to any of the above two questions is negative, then there is no reason to allow this in your affiliate program. You also want to spell this restriction out in your program’s TOS.