Monetizing single characters

[burnsinternet]

Can we really monetize single character domains or are they just trophies?

It drives me nuts to see a domain get 200 views per month and zero clicks. I have tried portal pages, popular keywords, expensive keywords, and magic spells. I am lazy and do not want to 'develop a site around' the character domains. I tried that once, too. It was a lot of wasted effort.

Does anyone have any practical advice, half-baked theories, or guesses?

[domainguru]

Funny you should mention that, I just noticed today my thai characters get quite a few visits but not a single click. So no advice from me

[blastfromthepast]

Here's an example.

Russian single letter.

182 views so far this month (for 12 days).

European Keyword set to "авто". Automobile. 171 hits. Nine clicks. $.05 PPC.

Other regions Keyword set to "domain name". 4 North America, 6 Asia, 1 other, 0 Latin America, hits. 0 clicks.

[domainstosell]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

Here's an example.

Russian single letter.

182 views so far this month (for 12 days).

European Keyword set to "авто". Automobile. 171 hits. Nine clicks. $.05 PPC.

Other regions Keyword set to "domain name". 4 North America, 6 Asia, 1 other, 0 Latin America, hits. 0 clicks.

That's great info, blast. Does anyone else have info or advice on high-paying and high-conversion keywords in various languages?

[Rubber Duck]

Single characters seem to be a bit of a tough call. They get lots of visits but CTR are low in my experience.

[burnsinternet]

Just keep trying unrelated keywords, I guess? I guess that raises a whole new discussion about the best keywords for the best languages. Any takers...

[blastfromthepast]

Originally Posted by burnsinternet

Just keep trying unrelated keywords, I guess? I guess that raises a whole new discussion about the best keywords for the best languages. Any takers...

Let's keep this thread focused on single characters and why they don't currently monetize and how to get the most out of them. Finding the right keywords for regular generic domains is easy enough.

[burnsinternet]

It sounds like they are the same topic. Use the best generic keyword for that language, if all else fails?

[blastfromthepast]

Originally Posted by burnsinternet

It sounds like they are the same topic. Use the best generic keyword for that language, if all else fails?

Well, no. Because we have indeed tried the best generic keywords, and they don't monetize well. What we need is some understanding of single character monitization.

However, in the ascii world, there is no such thing. So the owner of d.com can't help us here, because d.com doesn't exist.

What we do know is that two letter ascii domains have been bought out by large companies for presumably a fortune, depending on when they bought them. http://ml.com/ is a good example.

Some two letter ascii domains are still owned by amature end users from the very early days of the net and are not monetized at all. http://zz.com/ is an example? Or not. I'm not sure.

[domainstosell]

That's a good point. I guess I bought a few single-character domains because of the rarity. I was thinking more long-term, in that, if I had a 2 letter ASCII.com right now, it'd be worth some $$. That gives me hope that single-character names will be worth even more down the road.

That's also why I grabbed single numerals when I could find any available (and there weren't many left by the time I learned about IDNs). I was able to get some single numerals in Persian and Bangla.

I mean, if you look at ASCII domains, it is pretty amazing (for example):
"9" gets 155,312 OVT and "9.com" gets 1,247 OVT - There is no 9.com!
"m" gets 533,688 OVT and "m.com" gets 2,491 OVT - again, no site!

It would be great to get a nice conversion rate and some monthly revenue, but again, I bought mine as an investment. I mean, how much would Yahoo! pay for y.com? How much might Yandex (for example) someday pay for Я.com (I don't own that, by the way - hopefully the rightful owner is OK with me using the example)?

[blastfromthepast]

Let's try this psychological marketing research approach. Ask 10 of your coworkers or friends what they associate with the letter M. Not what comes to mind first, but what they think M truly stands for.

Я is an actual one letter word in Russian. It means I. However, would the letter I be associated by an English speaker with I the word or with I the Internet?

This topic needs further investigation.

[burnsinternet]

My co-workers don't speak Greek, etc. I'll have to rely on research, I guess.

[Armadillo]

I have the word "I" in Hindi xn--i1b1g8c.com (मैं.com) but don't get that many clicks on it, about 14 in two months. I also have "from" xn--12b4a.com (से.com) which is about the same. I don't know if they are so low on hits because they are in Hindi or what, but I got them because they look nice and easy to remember too.
It might be a good idea to think about why a person is typing in the letter/character as a domain name in the first place. I have never thought to do it myself.

Armadillo

[blastfromthepast]

Originally Posted by Armadillo

It might be a good idea to think about why a person is typing in the letter/character as a domain name in the first place. I have never thought to do it myself.

Exactly. This is essential for single character domains because it isn't obvious.

[domainstosell]

That's why I like numeric single characters, because you can usually find something to associate them with.

For example, I think 0.com would make a great Directory Listing site, like a Yellow Pages, because when I think 0, I think of dialing the operator...

[idn1234]

A single character domain could be letter,
number or symbol-based.

A symbol domain is easy enough to monetise;
i've done it with very good results, you simply
select ascii keywords that describe the symbol
in the best way and settle on the best performing
keyword/s.

Letter, or number-based names are in my view
something else as they don't necessarily imply
a meaning. I have the french accent 'o' domain,
for e.g., and have always had a shopping related
parking page there - it gets quite a bit of traffic but
doesn't convert at all well and, in the absence of
relating it to a cute branding concept, I really have
no idea what term/s to relate the name to).

I think when doing this parallels must be made
between ascii and idn... If there is no term/domain
relationship in ascii then there won't be in idn either.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by idn1234

A single character domain could be letter,
number or symbol-based.

A symbol domain is easy enough to monetise;
i've done it with very good results, you simply
select ascii keywords that describe the symbol
in the best way and settle on the best performing
keyword/s.

What symbol domain? How do people actually get to the symbol domain? By copying and pasting?

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

Single characters seem to be a bit of a tough call. They get lots of visits but CTR are low in my experience.

Yes, that's why when RD said that kana has good traffic, i agreed, except the traffic is "revenueless".

[idn1234]

Originally Posted by touchring

What symbol domain? How do people actually get to the symbol domain? By copying and pasting?

No, by typing them in to the keyboard directly
(i'm not talking about dingbats, where you have
to enter Alt+xyz or whatever to access the name,
I am saying you enter the symbol just as you would
with a normal letter or number i.e. the symbol is
displayed on the keyboard itself).

[burnsinternet]

The only people I can think of that would check out a single letter domain are other domainers. Using 'domain name' as a keyword never worked for me, because those folks probably already have preferences for registration, hosting, etc. I don't have any idea why anyone else would type in a single letter .com.

To solve the problem of monetizing that traffic, the question is: Who would type in a single letter .com or why would anyone type in a single letter .com in any language?

[idn1234]

Originally Posted by burnsinternet

The only people I can think of that would check out a single letter domain are other domainers.

To solve the problem of monetizing that traffic, the question is: Who would type in a single letter .com or why would anyone type in a single letter .com in any language?

Yes, domainers do account for some of the
traffic but there are many people who type
in single-char names out of curiousity. Unlike
direct navigation traffic that we normally see,
e.g. someone typing newhomes.com to try
and find a site about 'new homes', single-char
traffic is not clearly defined - the only thing we
may know about the user is that they are curious
and are perhaps technology minded (they have
IE7 or other browser don't they!)... that is true at
least for single-letter or number domains.