By Charles L. Harmon
Due to my other Internet activities I had relegated my hundredsof domain names to a low priority and seldom gave them muchthought. The exception was for some minor research for topics tocreate websites for a small number of domains. Fortunately, aregistrar who caters to those with many domains managed most ofmy names. Part of their service is providing a number ofstatistics on each domain name. In addition, the names (URL’s)host a directory website where I can make a few cents (if I’mlucky) if visitors to the website click any of the links.
A few days ago I decided to take a quick look at some of thosedomains. I had a new idea for a few possible websites and wantedto see which ones were getting enough hits to warrant furtherconsideration. As I created a report showing traffic on some ofmy domains I was amazed to find one of my domain names had a lotof impressions (website page views). Where normally that namehad a few impressions each day it had several hundred that dayalong with several dollars of profit where there usually wasnone.
That was the first time I had noticed such a drastic change inone of my domains in such a short period of time – one day. Theprevious day there were the normal few views and no money to bemade from that domain name. I asked my co-worker if he heardanything in the news involving video games since the domain nameshowing unusual traffic was related to video games. He said no,he had heard nothing. Since he was a thirty-something and wasusually aware of such things I first thought it might be just anaberration, but it was unsettling nevertheless. As a stock andoptions investor, I am very familiar with the effects of news onthose financial instruments so news was the first thing to crossmy mind that might change the activity on a domain name so fast.
Later that evening, right before turning off my home computer, Ithought of that domain name again and took a quick glance at itsstatistics. Wow! There were a lot more impressions and many moredollars showed as profit off that surge of hits.
About that time my son, nineteen and an ex video game fanatic,who was in Korea (I was in Southern California), came on andsent me a message via Instant Messenger. We conversed a shortwhile then I asked him if he had heard any news about Xboxbecause by then I was suspecting something big must have beensaid in the news related to that specific video game platform.My domain name XboxStars.com was going wild with hits, comparedto its usual half-dozen hits or less each day. He said, “Dad, Ithink they announced they are coming out with an Xbox 2”.Immediately I knew that was why my domain was getting so muchaction. It was reacting to the news! Maybe even over reacting.The news had probably been released that day. I never really sawthe actual news related to that announcement, but I laterchecked some of the video game sites and their forums and therewas lots of talk about Microsoft’s announcement related to Xbox2to have some games created in Japan and speculation that someversion or prototype of Xbox 2 would be at a well known gameconvention the next week.
I followed the impressions and clicks for the next few days andsure enough, the action had it been graphed, would have lookedlike a huge peak, rising very high and then falling like a rockin just a matter of a few days. Until that day I had neverrealized a domain name could react to news. Here is how itplayed out.
Date Domain Impressions Earnings 02-25-05 XboxStars.com 1 $00.0002-26-05 XboxStars.com 1 $00.00 02-27-05 XboxStars.com 4 $00.0002-28-05 XboxStars.com 1 $00.00 03-01-05 XboxStars.com 261$97.77 03-02-05 XboxStars.com 483 $30.33 03-03-05 XboxStars.com404 $28.15 03-04-05 XboxStars.com 569 $22.05 03-05-05XboxStars.com 2 $01.22 03-06-05 XboxStars.com 4 $00.00 03-07-05XboxStars.com 4 $00.00 (as of 03-07-05 9:00 am)
I had noticed some domain names had ups and downs before, butnever associated that with potential news affecting the domainname. One especially, but with not so pronounced activity, I dida cursory check on, and found out the name is related tofootball. Although initially the name Insidend.com didn’t soundrelated to a sport I guess the “inside” and the “end” could beconstrued as being related to inside linebacker and end zone,defensive end, or tight end, etc. That’s a far stretch, but thenagain football is an extremely popular sport and is often in thenews during football season. Whether or not football isaffecting this particular domain remains to be seen, but nowI’ll be on the lookout for such possibilities when I registernew domain names or see huge changes in activity on any of mydomain names.
I had better do some follow up research on other domain namesthat seem to have a lot of fluctuating activity. Take a hintfrom my experience. If you have any domain names that could besubject to reaction to news events you may be able to plan astrategy to capitalize on certain events depending on thecircumstances. This could be especially profitable if you areselling something on a website with such a name.
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