Charles Muench
UNLV CS - 641
Dr. Nina Cooper
April 8, 2005
AllPokerDomains.com is dedicated to promoting poker domains available for sale and become the main site and exchange for domains relating to the game of poker. Allpokerdomains.com is a free service for poker domain sellers and sole purpose is to promote the fastest growing and highest revenue business on today's Internet.
Allpokerdomains.com is dedicated to promoting domain names and websites related to poker for sale or trade. AllPokerdomains.com provides a free service to allow poker domain owners a way of promoting their domains to poker to potential buyers.
There are many large domain exchanges on the Internet today. These domain exchanges are so large and have millions of domains for sale, it is expensive almost impossible for domain owners to advertise their domains or target a specific group of domain buyers. Allpokerdomains.com is designed to promote and target domain buyers and sellers in the poker industry. The website will assist poker domain owners in getting their domains for sale indexed in the search engines by creating links to their site as well as dynamic "domain for sale pages" (discussed later).
Online poker grossed over 2 billion dollars of revenue in 2004 and MSNBC expects this amount to double in the next 2 years. Exploitation of poker on television has created a new past time for the world online. The major search engines (Yahoo, MSN, and Google) will NOT endorse online poker or allow Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for online gaming. Thus, poker domains have a much higher recycled traffic or URL forwarding value. Large poker gaming industries allow domain owners to become affiliates by putting banners on their sites or park/forward their domains and giving revenue sharing. Smaller and newer online gaming companies are purchasing poker related domains that get "type in" traffic and forwarding these domains directly to their sites.
The highest bid for PPC on the Internet offered by ROAR.com is poker and averages over $8.00 per click on the highest bid. As a result, poker domains were bought up by domain owners as fast as they could get them (in the last few years). Although there are still some poker domains in the open market, it is still a lucrative business of advertising and marking domains. Note: ROAR.com is an independent company from the major search engines that specializes in gaming PPC.
Some people feel gambling is gambling and you are not going to beat the casino; however, poker is a bit different in a since that non poker players do not understand. When playing poker online, you are NOT playing against the casino but against other players who you can chat with and validate the human interface. Online poker players feel that playing against humans is beatable, not like playing against a stacked deck of the computer. With the combination of the expansion of the Internet, exploitation of poker on television, and the human interface of playing poker against other players, online poker revenue will continue to soar and become the highest money maker on the Internet. As online poker grows the demand for poker sites and poker domains will grow accordingly. Everybody wants to get on the Internet money bandwagon.
The most productive businesses on the Internet will to draw the traffic. Poker domain owner's as well as gaming companies will want to know what domains are on the market and how much they are selling for. As online poker traffic grows, so will the demand for poker traffic and the demand for poker domains.
The home page of allpokerdomains.com will be the main entrance traffic point. It will contain the featured listings as well as special advertisements related to poker. The visitor will be able to browse or search through the site and view domains available for sale.
An alternative way to enter the site is from the dynamic pages that get created and indexed on the search engines. The major search engines do not like domains that have gambling banners or links to online gaming sites; thus making it very difficult to get a high page ranking for a poker domain that is parked/forwarded (with PPC links) or a domain that is website with poker affiliate banners. An important feature of allpokerdomains.com is to create a dynamic HTML page for each domain listed for sale (Note: these dynamic pages are independent of the parked or forwarded page). For example, if a domain is entered into the MySQL database such as MyPokerDomain.com, a dynamic page will be generated with the URL http://www.allpokerdomains/domains/mypokerdomain.html. This dynamic page will be configured by the domain owner which allows them to set keywords and domain attributes. As these dynamic pages get indexed with the search engines, some visitors will enter the site from the dynamic HTML page generated from allpokerdomains.com. From this dynamic page, visitors can be directed to the home page or search other domains for sale. Note: See attached sample dynamic HTML domain for sale page. The home page will offer visitors a chance to book mark this site for later returns.
The main source of revenue for Allpokerdomains.com will be "Ads by Google" on every page generated. Although Google does not endorse online poker, they do offer ads relating to domains and ads relating to Poker Instruction. "Domain Name" advertisements and "Poker Instruction" ads are some of the highest paying ad words by Google.
"Ads by Google" is very smart and searches the content of the page, keywords, and meta-tags on the page before displaying the appropriate ads. When a visitor clicks on the ads, revenue is paid to AllPokerDomains.com. The dynamic pages generated for each domain for sale will have dynamic meta-tags generated from keyword relating to the domain name for sale. For example: a domain owner submits a domain for sale called OnlineTexasHoldem.com. While submitting the domain the owner sets the keywords for that domain to be - poker, holdem, Texas holdem, online, online holdem, and online poker. These keywords dynamically become part of the meta-tags as well as posted dynamically on the page. Thus, "Ads by Google" will display ads related to these keywords. Although there will be words or content relating to "domain or domain names" on these dynamic pages; allpokerdomains.com will substitute jpeg images for HTML text to prevent "Ads by Google" from setting the ads for domains for sale.
The other pages generated by allpokerdomains.com (not dynamic pages) will have "Ads by Google" in the footer section. These ads will be dynamically created and will relate to the content of the page which should be domains for sale.
The domain owners get their dynamic pages indexed and help promote their domain for sale, while AllPokerDomains.com gets the revenue from the "Ads by Google".
As Allpokerdomains.com grows, there will be a charge to have a domain listed on the home or front page as a featured listing. Domain owners will be able to use paypal to have their domain listed for a small fee. As the traffic increases, the cost of the featured listing will also increase.
The main page for allpokerdomains.com will be the featured listings which should be about the top 50 domains for sale. Users can use different techniques to search for specific domains of interest.
The first and most commonly used search will be the word or string search. This allows domain buyers to search the database of domain names for exact string or words in the domain.
The second type of search technique will be a category search. AllPokerDomains.com will have various categories related to poker such as online poker, Texas Holdem, domain typo's, poker instruction, and live poker. I domain buyer who is looking for specific domains will use this type of search.
The last type of search is a keyword search. The keywords are words that are related to the domain but do not contain the keywords in a domain. I domain owner will use these keywords to help the domain get indexed in the HTML dynamic page.
There will be a page/section that explains how these different types of searches work. Also there will be a page that explains "terms and use page", "about us page", and "contact page".
For later use there will be a link for users to become members, and submit their own domains. If a user submits a domain, there will be an administrative section to view the domains before they get submitted to the data base. This will prevent fraudulent or domains not related to poker being submitted
Afternic.com is a pay service that promotes domains as well as offers an escrow service for domain sales. To post domains for sale you must be a member which cost an annual fee. Members have the option of parking their domains at the Afternic.com servers and member can gain PPC revenue from parked domains. If a user chooses to park their domain at Afternic.com, the landing page consists of a large banner on the top of the page stating this domain is for sale with parking links underneath.
Afternic.com does have category and keyword searches, but the problem is there is just too many domains in their database. A domains seller as very little chance of getting their domain found in the hundreds of thousands of domains in their data base. The best way a domain owner can sell his domain with afternic.com is to park the domain there and hope the person who is interested in the domain goes directly to the landing page and see the "for sale" banner. Afternic.com promotes all types of domains and has thousands of domains but no category for poker. The do have a category for Gambling but it is oversaturated with casino names not related directly to poker. Afternic.com does generate a dynamic HTML page for each domain listed (regardless if the domain is parked on the afternic servers); however, it is a PHP table code extension and does not have key words related in the dynamic page. Allpokerdomains.com does offer keywords for the listed domains which will give a much higher rating in the search engines and offer more search terms for the domain to be found. Allpokerdomains.com does not want to directly compete with afternic.com and try to take away the customers who park or list their domains with afternic.com; but, allpokerdomains.com does want afternic.com customers who have poker domains to list their domains with allpokerdomains.com in addition. This will assist them in getting their domain found in the search engines.
SEDO.com is very similar to afternic.com but has more domains listed with them. SEDO.com is a world wide corporation and been in the domain business a bit longer. SEDO has over a million domains in their data base. It is even harder to find domain owners to sell a domain listed with SEDO.com than afternic.com. SEDO.com also allows domain parking for revenue but does not have a large banner that states this domain is for sale. SEDO.com is a free service and does not charge an annual fee, but SEDO is more geared for parking revenue than domain sales. Again, Allpokerdomains.com does not want to compete with SEDO directly but does want domain owners who have poker domains for sale at SEDO to also have their domains listed on allpokerdomains.com.
Domaniacs.com is a small operation that only is interested in selling their own gambling related domains. They do not allow others to post their domains for sale and they not generated dynamic HTML pages for domains listed. Domainicas.com does own the domain pokerdomains.com and has it forwarded directly to domainiacs.com. Domainiacs.com does not want to compete with other domain owners but they only have a few hundred domains directly related to poker. Allpokerdomains.com will contact domainiacs.com and ask if they would like to post the poker domains they own on allpokerdomains.com but if they refuse, it will not be a terrible loss.
The first step in marketing this site is to build the database of domains. There are very large domain forums where domain owners chat about domains news, buying, and selling domains. Some of these domains forums have thousands of users and many of them have large portfolios of poker domains. As the database gets larger for allpokerdomains.com, more domains will be listed and more HTML extensions will be indexed by the search engines. The more visits to these pages, means more revenue in "Ads by Google"
Allpokerdomains.com all ready has three domain portfolio owners who have over 1000 total domains relating to poker. These domain owners are all ready willing to submit their poker domains in the data base. Although it will take some time to get these domains listed, the database will only get larger as time goes by.
When the database gets to a substantial amount, allpokerdomains.com will use overture for a PPC on the exact search term "poker domains". At this time there is no company bidding on this exact search term so the maximum PPC for that term will be $.10 per click.
When allpokerdomains.com allows domain owners to become members and log in, then the word of mouth will be posted on domains discussion boards. All domain owners are wanting to promote their domains and will not turn down free promotions or free advertising especially when they can get their domains indexed in the search engines.
The initial budget will be only for the domain and hosting fees - $35 dollars for the first 12 months. As the data base gets larger, then Overture will be used to conduct PPC on the exact search term "poker domains". This budget should be $200.00 and should last for a year at $.10 per click on a minimum bid. This will allow the site to get at a minimum at least 2000 hits or about 160 clicks per month. As the site gets rated in the search engines then the average clicks per month should go up substantially. As the number of poker domains grows in the database then the traffic should also increase. If we were to get 500 clicks per month and only 3% click thru on a google ad, then the revenue should be about $30.00 per month. At that point the site will be above breakeven.
This is going to be very hard to fail with such a small budget and such a high demand for poker domains. But we must get at least 15 to 30 click thru per month averaging 1 to 2 dollars per click.
AfterNic.com. Retrieved April 1, 2005 http://www.afternic.com
SEDO.com Retrieved April 2, 2005 http://sedo.com
Google.com Retrieved March 31, 2005 http://http://google.com
