What I'm up to at the moment

Well here we are again; writing a blog, 18 months on from my first ever one on MySpace.com/internetretailer

Having left Timesonline/The Sunday Times Car Locator after 13 and a half years in July last year, I've since been Marketing Manager for Broadspeed, Affiliate Marketing and Used Car Channel Manager for DriveTheDeal and most recently Regional Sales Manager for Compucars/UK Websites. In January, I will return to a major publishing house when I will officially become Account Manager Online for WhatVan and BusinessCar magazines.

Since having my first website built for me back in '99 domainsunlimited.co.uk - I have registered and owned hundreds of domains. Some have been sold, expired, transferred to different web hosts and some simply renewed. During these period, I have learnt about monetizing domains by domain parking (receiving aregular advertising income from domains) via a variety of specialist companies that will add relevant advertising content relevant to your domain. These are companies specialising purely in this area:-
Afternic DomainHop Domain Spa DomainSponsor DotzUp GoldKey iMonetize Moniker NameDrive Parked Parking Dots SEDO TrafficParking Traffic Valet TrafficZ ParkingSite Fabulous
DotzUp, Traffic Club/Moniker, Great Domains/Domain Spa, Grant Media, Skenzo, NetVisibility, Site Parker, SmartNames, Google Domain Park
Once you register a domain name you can
1) develop it into your desired line of business website or
2) have it forward to another of your domains/websites
3) create a website using affiliate links (selling goods or services from household names or online only merchants) for a commission on a pay-per-click, pay-per-action(sale), pay-per-call, pay-per-text basis or pay-per-lead(sign up) basis.
4) if you are too busy or have no technical knowledge of how to create your own website, you can simply leave your domain parked, (this term has changed from its original term back in the mid 90's where you simply had a holding page, nowadays you can show that your domain is for sale AND make a regular income from it much like owning a property and renting it out!
a) with a holding page from your ISP that your domain has just been registered or saying "under construction" - until your website is ready or
b) why not create an income (monetize your domains) allowing paid for pay-per-click advertising on your domain whilst you decide and simultaneously advertise your domain for sale - this is known as domain monetization.

I have also explored the various Contextual and Monetization/Sales Agencies that can monetize your website :-
serve 200 billion+ ads a month (not typo) make your site a revenue generator. 24/7 Real Media
'96 AdManager helps publishers. Higher CPMs + less unsold inventory. Accipiter
'06 for contextual adverts AdBrite
places ads on own network of premium branded websites in b2b, ethnic, recruitment, shopping & sports. Earn premium amounts from the sale of ad inventory or a min. g'teed rate Adrevenue
AdJug.com
estd '00. serve 600m ads pm to 200+ UK publishers, hi vol brand name sites to good qual small niche market sites. maximise rev's from unsold inventory or a g'teed rate. AdViva
own Affili.net and SEDO Domain Parking. AdLINKTARGET is a unique network of 3000 sites access 75m+ internet users pm across Europe + 10 affinity categories. AdLINK
BidClix
IonSearch bid management tool easy-to-use interface for online marketers Bluestreak
'04 , contextual advertising company Clicksor
monitor competitors' internet ads. view ads from 1k+ sites in 25 markets worldwide. e-Netwatch
sell anything on ebay, trading since 1995 - get others to sign up too and earn from them eBay
Kanoodle
Mirage
Miva
Nixxie
couple of years, contextual advertising Oxado Contextual Ads
advertising monitoring service captures pretty much every advertisement run in the UK in every medium – TV, press, direct mail, door drop, internet, outdoor, radio and cinema. available 24/7 365 days a year. Thomson Intermedia
TroutMedia
VibrantMedia

The various search engines are also looking to attract more users, visitors and advertising revenue so have got in on the game too:-
Ask, Lycos, Google (as well as Mirage and Miva above too)

But by far the biggest impact on online advertising has been Affiliate Marketing.Started by PC Flowers and CyberSex sites back in '94, through Refer-It.com and Amazon in '96 to its current impact in 2006 of £2.1bn reatil sales repesenting 10% of all online sales in the UK (source E-Consultancy). The mechanics are simple:- Affiliates (associates/publishers/webmasters) place advertising links/banners/creatives/stock datafeeds on their websites/email databases from Merchants (advertisers like household names Woolworths, Argos etc) via indepenent or in-house programs or via Affiliate Network (similar to an advertsing agency)

See my separate post on Affiliate Marketing.

There are various ways to make money online, chosing a niche subject that you are familiar with and attracting the most visitors you can by linking, natural (organic) search engine optimisation and undertaking PPC (pay per click) activity over and above your competitors to bring in specifically tagretted visitors - opposed to buying in thousands of visitors that have no interest in your niche and ultimately will not click through on your adverts.