FAQs

So who are you guys?

We are a team of marketers, Domainers, and entrepreneurs with extensive experience in domain monetization and mass website development. Click here to read more about our leadership team.

Can you explain the Left of the Dot concept?

In brief, we provide a platform for small businesses to build out fully-functional ecommerce websites—as our name states—to the “Left of the Dot”. An example of such a LOTD domain would be MyRanch.Beef.com [note: this client and domain is one of our beta customers].

The concept works for any quality generic domain, but is especially powerful for Geos, professions, or category killers. Examples of which might include: Luxury.Villa.com, Tours.Oahu.com, or California.Beef.com.

It is hard for those of us immersed in domains and the Internet every day to believe, but many small businesses still do not have websites. When they decide to finally “take the plunge”, they start looking at the obvious domain names. If they are a lawyer, they may directly navigate to Lawyer.com or Attorney.com to see if it is available.

As a portfolio holder, you probably receive frequent inquiries that start with “I see that you are not doing anything with your name, I am a [insert profession], and I would like to buy it from you for [miniscule amount].” While laughable, every single one of these inquiries is an opportunity to build recurring revenue with Left of the Dot.

As a case in point for the domain mentioned earlier, Beef.com, there are more than 860,000 cattle ranchers in North America today, many of whom are looking to build websites to promote their products direct to consumers.

So how do I make money?

LOTD has brought together two key monetization elements: an advanced website development platform and a group that really understands and has access to premium advertising feeds. With these elements and our considerable domain experience we are able to provide certain Domainers with stable, recurring revenue that surpasses those achieved via Domain Parking.

LOTD “Marketing Names” are leased to the end consumer at a price agreed with the domain owner (typically between $25 and $50 per month, though some premium Marketing Names are much higher). We typically share revenue with the domain holder 50-50 on any recurring sub-domain revenue, any advertising revenue, or on any revenue made that is “site-specific” (e.g., a commission on the sale of a villa as is the case for Villa.com).

LOTD also markets into the domain using online and traditional means. This marketing promotes sales of the leased sub-domain while generating additional revenue via targeted advertising. This revenue is shared on a case-by-case basis with the domain holder.

However, the real revenue comes in from taking an asset that is valued as a domain name and turning it into a real business. Your real web business will trade at a multiple much higher in value than the domain itself.

What do I get for giving up 50% of the revenue?

You get the infrastructure that surrounds the platform, a fully-built out website on your root domain, and the sales and marketing support to build out a real business. For the small business who leases a Marketing Name, they get access to either a website builder to build their own website, domain pointing to point the Marketing Name at an existing URL or directory listing (or external website builder), or a 1-page landing page to be used in your marketing and sales campaigns.

With our platform, all customer support, billing, and technology is provided. This means that all you do is sit back and make increased amounts of profit from your domain.

And of course, you get to own the majority of a real business rather than a domain name.

Will LOTD definitely increase my revenue?

A few of us involved in LOTD used to manage one of the largest domain parking services out there. Back in the day, our clients made a lot of money from Domain Parking, and while this money has retrenched in recent years, good quality generic domain names still make good money.

As we learned in domain parking, if we can’t increase your revenue you wont stay with us. We understand the need to perform, particularly with valuable, premium domain names, so we will strike a deal that works for all parties and measure ourselves against the agreed performance targets. You will know how we are performing and we have a nice alignment of self interest.

What commitment is required on my part?

This is negotiated on a case-by-case basis as it depends on the lease terms that you want to offer. Contact us to learn more specifics.

Can I set the Terms & Conditions for my domain?

Yes, we can impose specific terms and conditions on each developed or leased Marketing Name and will agree these with the domain name owner. This may include stopping the domain from being used to display adult content or other content deemed inappropriate.

What we have recommended is as follows:

  • Provide clients with a minimum of ninety (90) days written notice of any service discontinuation. Prior to such notice being granted, you would provide us written notice equal to one-hundred and twenty (120) days for any service discontinuation.
  • Once a service discontinuation notice has been issued, the domain is restricted from accepting new customers whose term ends after the date of service discontinuation.

Our platform has the ability to set billing to occur monthly, quarterly, or annually (with auto-renew). If it is your intent to part with the domain being monetized in the near future, it is recommended that only monthly leasing be enabled. This would allow the service discontinuation notice to be shorter (though this would impact conversions and sub-domain sales).

Will this impact my SEO of my root domain?

Compared to a parked domain? Absolutely. Your domain will be built out with unique content. This alone will be improve rankings.

Will link juice be passed back and forth between the leased domain and your root property? Good question and this is something that we hope to be able to answer during our Beta testing. So far the results are looking very positive with higher Page Rank and Quality Scores being achieved. There was an interesting comment that came out recently, indicating that sub-domains is an effective strategy for SEO (as described by Matt Cutts to HubPages) after the release of Google Panda.

We have known for a while that having a keyword match as part of the root domain or sub-domain is good for SEO, and after a discussion with Left of the Dot at the DOMAINFest conference in Santa Monica (Feb. 2011), noted SEO Guru Bruce Clay said to the audience of domainers assembled, “It is only a matter of time before having a city name as a sub-domain or as part of the main domain becomes a critical factor in ranking.” We figure this is a good sign.

What domains do you accept?

At this point, we are only accepting a few domains as part of our beta program and all of these are evaluated individually.

How do you know if this program is right for you? Do a quick search to see the number of people who have already registered www.______YourDomain.com. If there are a lot of these, then submit it to us for consideration.

For example, there are more than 4,500 active domain names that end in “_____Beef.com”

OK, I am intrigued. What do I do now?

You can contact us via this website and we will reach out to discuss the suitability of our system for your domain.

You can also follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our blog, and we will keep you updated on our progress.