Google Opens up Adsense for Domains! In an announcement today, Google have declared that they are opening up their Adsense for Domains service to all publishers (starting in North America later this month). See the official Google blog for more details – Extending AdSense for domains to all publishers.
What this effectively means is a traditional parking service directly with Google instead of through third parties like Namedrive, Fabulous, Sedo etc.. Whilst at first glance this might seem great news for domain owners (after all, cutting out the middle-man should mean better revenue share), it’s important to consider that the volumes that parking companies enjoyed will no longer be able to be used to negotiate with Google.
Individual domain holders will have to literally take what they can get. Revenue shares from parking companies and Google themselves have long lacked transparency so it’s always been impossible to work out who gets what. However, using arbitrary figures, the following example illustrates how the dynamic may change:
Currently:
A domain parked with Namedrive
Advertiser pays $1 for his click
Google takes $0.60 cut
Namedrive take $0.15
Domain owner gets $0.25
Future:
Domain parked with Adsense for Domains
Advertiser pays $1 for his click
Google takes $0.70 cut
Domain owner gets $0.30
So it’s all good, domainers get a higher revenue and everybody wins! But what happens in twelve months when all the parking companies have closed down and Google decides they might like to squeeze a little more revenue and take an $0.85 cut. Who is in a position to argue with the big G?
What’s needed is transparency – more than ever before. This could not only destroy the parking companies but severely put the squeeze on domainer’s incomes. The other obvious way to approach this is to redouble efforts to remove the reliance on parking. Development, monetisation via affiliate feeds and sponsorships all help to alleviate the dependence on Google. We’ll be publishing some articles shortly covering the many varied options for website development and monetisation.
Thanks for reading,
The Netfleet Team
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