Let me just start by saying although I am not heavily invested in .TV, I believe it is the strongest re-branded ccTLD in existence – Yes better than .CO. That’s why I am starting the .TV Spotlight section of my blog today. I will strive to write at least once a week about exciting news and sales in the .TV space. Here we go!
- Pro.tv and Swap.tv are at auction with reserves met ($x,xxx). Seller James Black also has 67 more excellent .TV domains (most of which are ‘ex premiums’ with standard renewal rate) at auction with starting bids of $1K in the same thread.
- I’ve chosen a product .TV domain of my own which I will be developing into a minisite. PokerChips.tv (still parked until I finish logo design) has nice metrics that I believe will monetize well once I connect with a couple poker chip affiliate programs. I eventually want to serve video ads for clients and I believe poker chips are a good product as any to promote with video. Stay tuned for updates.
- Oprah Winfrey – Yep she’s done with her network TV career after this season. Her next move, online TV! (honestly I am only excited because I believe it’s huge for .TV). The Oprah Winfrey Network recently acquired OWN.tv which currently re-directs to an intro page on oprah.com that gives information about her online TV show that launches 1/11/2011. I believe once the show launches, OWN.tv will no longer re-direct but will be used for the actual show.
- I just watched a recording of MorganLinton.tv from 9/17 (embedded below) and I want to mention an excellent interview he had with Brian Berke, the owner of DomainerMarket.com and DomainStore.tv, both domain sales newsletters. Brian gave some great insight into .TV domains and domaining in general. What I found really interesting during the interview is that Brian has background in the entertainment industry and realized at one point in his career that .TV domains intrigued many of his co-workers and colleagues who work in TV industry. You’ll have to watch the show for more details. Morgan’s interview with Brian Berke starts at 37min 48sec, but if you haven’t watched MorganLinton.tv yet, I recommend watching the entire show!
Yes, .TV has its share of critics but I now have nine search-phrase .TV sites (three .TV geos, three .TV exercise, three .TV pet sites) which rank on page one of Yahoo and/or Bing for their keyword phrases while two other .TV geos rank on page one of Yahoo and/or Bing for the city/state (Florida) combination. Two .TV geo sites ranks on page one of Google for a city/state combination (Florida or FL) while one .TV pet site ranks on page one of Google for its keywords and one .TV exercise site ranks on page one of Google for a number of longtail terms. All of these sites are 16 months old or less with all the geo .TV sites less than a year old.
I have had .COM & .Net sites rank more easily for less competitive terms but geo and exercise sites are going to generally be competitive to rank for anyway. Admittedly, there is still a bit of work to do because most search traffic is at Google, but I would never have been able to acquire these domains in .COM.
I can appreciate the rankings but do the sites generate revenue. Do you have video content on the sites? If so, are you creating content or feeding video ads, as Mike plans to do? The geo domains seem to make some sense.
I have a few .tv domains — parked without revenue and no plans to create any video content of my own so I’m looking for ways to monetize.
GoDaddy seems to discourage .TV registrations with a disclaimer:
“Note: The island of Tuvalu is sinking”
“Recommended alternatives are .com .net .info”
I can’t see the OWN using own.tv as a standalone site when video content can easily be integrated into an already branded .com.
And any products are already being sold on sites like QVC.
Looking forward to more of your posts, Mike. Thanks!
I have noticed that the PPC for geo sites is nice. The key is traffic which comes from ranking well and that will come with age, additional content and quality inbound links. However, many of my geo sites are generating traffic for search phrases related to local parks within those cities. As well, the geo sites are loaded with photos which tend to rank well and generate traffic. The videos for the exercise and pet sites are straight from Youtube. For several Florida geos I have created a quasi-video using Animoto.com & digital photos but most videos are from Youtube as well. Looking at analytics stats one can see the videos do engage the user as they are hanging around a little while and visiting other pages. Eventually I hope to sell ad space to local businesses for the geo sites but one needs a certain level of traffic to sell advertising space at good rates.
Interesting conversation guys. Bobby – I hope you’re wrong and OWN.tv is utilized in the way it should be. I can’t think of a good reason not to make the show stream from OWN.tv. As big as Oprah is it doesn’t matter that the video stream can be integrated into a branded .com.. we’re talking about Oprah here, she could turn anything into a recognizable mark virtually over night.
@ Leonard Britt, thank you for development ideas for .tv!
If you type in stv into Google, stv.tv comes up page 1. It’s Scottish Television, and it has local news for places within Scottland, so people traveling abroad can check the news from their town. It has its own player, maybe some Scottish television. It’s encouraging that it ranks well for US Google. It is a less-searched term. Justin.tv appears #1 on Google also . . .
Nice article, @ Mike Law! How about a post about the effect of the information bar which appears on the bottom of the TV screen when changing channels or checking the info? Branding seems in effect already because of the info bar with the title of the show! The Oprah people are aware of that, I’m sure is the reason they registered, Own.tv. The programming could still be viewed on TV with that great branding tool of listing the title on the info bar. For instance, there is a show called, Pets.tv. It’s not a proper website [yet] but leads to the entertainment company website which lists other shows it creates, including:
comedy.tv
cars.tv
recipes.tv
myDestination.tv
You can watch some of the shows online it seems. It made an impression on me – also, when an infomercial puts the name.tv in the title, and has its page there. It works great! Instead of posting the domain name in one place in a 30-minute infomercial, it’s on the menu bar constantly.
Guess you people discover I don’t have much of a life to be watching infomercials! LOL 🙂
Thanks for the comment Louise! I agree that the popup at the footer of a streaming Internet tv show an effective advertising strategy. I personally find it a little distracting.
Like you though, I hope more and more .tv shows in the future feature their .TV domain (and use it as a brand or standalone site for streaming online tv.
Metal.tv just sold for $16,000!
http://www.allthings.tv/forum/showthread.php?t=70542
Hi @ Mike Law, The “the popup at the footer of a streaming Internet tv” isn’t what I was referring to.
I referred to regular, old-fashioned TV, with a settop box, that displays the channel info when it’s turned on, then when the channel is changed, and every time you press, “Info” on your remote.
Does everyone see the same thing? There’s a yellow band at the bottom that goes away after a second or two, that has the station logo on the left, then the text, KCAL 9, then, People’s Court/Th 5-6:00PM, then more info in parenthesis. If you click the 2nd time, there is more info on the show, the movie, whatever. Movies have a rating of stars. We’re signed up with cable, so all the channels come with it. Do you have it where you are?
Okay, I did a post about what I am talking about, with pic, linked to from my name, above!