My “Friend” is Ben Franklin. That’s Who”I” Do Business With. Who is YOUR”Friend”?

Morning Folks!!

If your 'Friend' costs you 50% of your earnings, is that a friend? Some, even many, let their personal friendships decide their
domain placements. We all have friends and relationships. Of course you want to
do business with the folks you like and the folks you get along with. Not everything is about money. However, business IS ABOUT MONEY! So my best friend in business is Ben Franklin. Who is yours? I will
defer to his wisdom and his testing ability to decide how and who to do
business with.

IStock_000004647450XSmall IMG_0068 No Room for Family Pic.
Don't let your friends squeeze out your family


One of the things I like to pride myself on is finding out
the strengths and weaknesses of each program out there. I test. I test. I test.
I test a lot. It costs me a LOT of money to conduct these tests. But that is
how you learn. That is how you find your guiding light. That is how you find
out things your “Friends” don’t want you to find out. Most work on a loyalty
basis and not a business basis. It really is a balancing act. But at the end of
the day, Ben Franklin has to be there. For a few points, stay with your
friends. Not worth being a whore for 2%, 5%, 10%. But when you talk 25%, 50%,
100%, 400%, and more, well “My Friends” that is what I call a very COSTLY
FRIENDSHIP! What would you call it? And if you don't believe that the swings can reach those levels, that is because you are clueless and have failed to test to find the truth. It's no big deal to pay money and get laid. It is a big deal to pay money to have a 'Friend'.


So is the well being of your family more important or are your 'Friends' more important? Ben Franklin is laughing his ass off on this one. He says 'Wake up Domainers.' You watched your incomes be sliced by 50%, 75%, 90%. Your FRIENDS have not been sliced that sharply! In some cases they have even had gains. All at YOUR EXPENSE! Some come one come all, defend your 'Friends'. I wonder how many expansion projects domainers have financed? We may be the biggest annonymous angel investors the world has known. Don't tell anyone. Not even yourself!


Have a GREAT Day!

Rick Schwartz




13 thoughts on “My “Friend” is Ben Franklin. That’s Who”I” Do Business With. Who is YOUR”Friend”?

  1. Kevin

    The biggest problem in domaining is there is little if any transparency in the revenue process.
    None of us know what is actually coming in the door from advertisers, because none of our big corporate partners share the gross revenue information with us.
    Can you imagine being in a bricks and mortar business partnership and your partner won’t tell you the sales register totals each day????
    It’s truly outstanding that this practice of revenue non-disclosure permeates such a huge industry and is tolerated.
    Why can’t we be informed of the exact gross revenues our sites are generating for all these big companies and the precise percentages of that revenue we’re actually receiving?
    This is why, if you have the traffic and ability, it’s best to sell your own advertising directly to advertisers.
    For most domainers if they sold even 1 ad a year directly they’d be making more from that one ad than they do collecting the pennies from ppc companies.

    Reply
  2. Jay

    Parking is dead, I have accounts at quite a few places and honestly I think most domains are better at sedo as at least you have better chances of selling a few, I am developing my better domains with ebay, amazon, adsense, cj, linkshare etc… but if it isn’t something I created on my own server with 100% accurate AwStats I’m not getting excited about any parking companies lately as earnings are flat no matter where I go, I really wish everyone would organize and point all their domains to a charity of their choice for a week as without a pullback in earnings that these parking companies and google and yahoo can feel transparency will never occur, 50% or 80% of crap is still crap, own your future, develop your strong ones and sell your garbage, don’t picture a parking company in your future as they are too scared to lose their feed to demand the transparency we deserve, not a partner I need.

    Reply
  3. Helder

    Agree 100% let’s not depend on third parties, whenever possible deal directly with advertisers, have your own clients, etc…
    BTW my friend is Euros :)

    Reply
  4. S.

    Rick, I agree completely. I dare a parking company to let independent outside auditors confirm revenue shares, quarterly. The one that does that will win every domain holder over. They may get a smaller piece of the pie but the”trust” in using an independent auditor will bring in thousands of quality domains and ultimately increase their bottom line. Maybe you could set it up?
    Best.
    Smokeandmirrors.

    Reply
  5. UFO

    Well, when the market is dominated by large player then you aren’t going to get a hugely competitive price.
    In terms of the lack of transperancy, I really think something is up. I am sure if you look at Googles publicly stated annual reports you’d get some clues and then triangulating that against DBS payouts (stated as a function of their receipts) and you’re own knowledge… then you’d think its about 20%.
    I do actually think payout ratios are also correlated with a quality score, as I have noticed PPC increase when a site gets closer to the first page on Google SE listings. I think there are definite bandings.
    Also, Google can pay low as it has more publisher capacity than advertisers and reducing publishers (through paying as low as possible) is a favourable outcome as any reduction in capacity simply increases keyword bidding prices, elasticity of returns is constant.
    Long run parking is dead except for large scale aggregators, the future is websites and Google may in the future use its”quality scores” to simply pay out near Zero to low score or parking type”websites”.
    Nb: Here in Britain the evening standard newspaper (print version) is going”free” to compete with web based content. Hence everything is moving to the internet model. Print will be dead soon.. and the TV media within the next 5 years?

    Reply
  6. business opportunities

    business opportunities that require minimal start up cash, I have great news. Find the best business to start for less than $100 right here! Before we take a look at my top pick, let’s examine the #1 factor for successfully starting and growing a small business

    Reply
  7. william

    Hey smoke and mirrors we r here domains come alive, williamblairpinc. Just say we can do better u keep all your revenues!!! Peace Rick send us an email and lets make history!! wm

    Reply
  8. Jamino

    Parking companies have to hit certain tiers of revenue with their upstream providers in order to be rewarded with a higher level of commission they can pass on to their partners. This means that the older parking companies with the majority of domain traffic already have a bit of a monopoly going on, making it impossible (well, VERY HARD) really for any of the younger companies to compete effectively. The younger companies end up giving away up to 95%+ of the revenue just to get a look in. Unfortunately, most people are stuck in their ways and would rather stay with Company X. It pays to remember that Company X doesn’t have to compete, so its revenues can be decided arbitrarily.

    Reply
  9. Gene

    As has been said before, partnering with legitimate (capable) folks is the way to extract maximum value from your domains. I know of no one who clicks on a parking page link, but I’m sure some still do. Mini-sites also have no real attraction to visitors unless real time is spent developing relevant content.

    Reply
  10. jeff schneider

    Hello Rick,
    Timing is everything and today marks the end of this bear market rally we have been in. Ben Franlin if he were alive would be getting into cash as soon as possible.
    The next downleg of this Secular 5 year bear market will be quite nasty. It is advisable that knowone have more than 5% investment capital exposed from this point on. Of this 5% left in stocks 98% of all companies shares will struggle. The only company that I am advising my clients to hold is Starent Networks. Its the only company I am remaining with through this down leg.
    If you own banks take profits immediately and avoid the group for at least 2 years. Do not underestimate the bite of this bear. Hopefully this will help some of your followers.
    Gratefully, Jeff

    Reply
  11. Dave Wrixon aka Rubber Duck

    Bad time to be backing Ben Franklin in my opinion. The dollar is about to disappear down the toilet.

    Reply
  12. Kevin

    @ Dave W – The dollar started it’s descent down the toilet in 1973 when Richard Nixon took the Dollar off the Gold Standard which meant it was no longer backed by Gold, and just a government bogus promise.
    If anyone has a lot of physical or assets in US cash right now, get it the hell out of there and into gold or another safer currency. After today’s info that Oil might no longer be traded in dollars, it’s all downhill from here like an avalanche for the dollar.

    Reply
  13. Dave Wrixon aka Rubber Duck

    @Kevin,
    This is a complicated subject, and in my opinion the idea that currency needs to be backed by Gold is extreme and would be very inefficient and bad for the economy. If you want to get back to the time when all currency was fully redeemable in Gold you actually have to go back to 1650. Prior to America coming of the”Gold Standard”, that amount of backing was so inadequate that America would have immediately run out of Gold, if the people had started to ask for redemption on mass. All currencies are to a degree a question of confidence, but it was Greenspan that turned the Dollar into a Ponzi Scheme after regulation was loosened by Reagan. Fiat currency is essentially backed by the tax base of the Sovereign Government(s), i.e. the wealth generating part of the economy, as opposed to GDP, which is a complete Curate’s Egg.
    If you are buying Gold, then go only for physical Gold.”Paper Gold” has similar weakness to the dollar in as much as the paper is only partly covered.
    As far as the dollar is concerned, nothing will improve until America starts living within its means.Simultaneously expanding the money supply whilst increasing government debt is a recipe for disaster.
    America needs to be increasing taxes and reducing spending particularly on the military. And yes, that does mean that the US economy would contract significantly, but that is perhaps better than complete implosion. Remember the USSR imploded not because it didn’t have the military technology. It just simply could not afford to maintain its military infrastructure.

    Reply

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