Rev2.org

Simply put, a domain is a website address.  When someone decides to develop a website, generally one of the first things they do is register a domain name.  The domain name tends to be something unique that reflects whatever the website is promoting.  Once registered, the domain name belongs to that person for as long as they continue to pay for it.  Once registered, the URL will be pointed to a dummy page and parked until the website is developed.

Sometimes URLs are purchased with the sole intent of parking them to make money as an advertising site.  This type of domain development and monetization is called domain parking.

Domain Parking

Domain parking allows a URL owner and/or third-party to use a dummy page to create revenue through advertising.  There are two levels to domain parking: one where the URL owner does not receive a portion of the revenue and one where he/she does.  For the URL owner, the latter is often the more desirable option.  For many, this is the way in which the monetize their site.

Because domain parking does not generally provide a high-level of revenue per URL, people who use parked domains to generate income from advertising usually register hundreds of URLs for mass domain development.  Most of these URLs, if not all, will have a common theme and point to one place specific to that user’s domain development and monetization scheme.

The Decline of Domain Parking Revenue

Domain parking relies on two sources of traffic: 1) search engine results and 2) key-ins.  But in the past few years, Google has made changes that place both sources under threat.

Search Engine Results

For this, Google’s ranking criteria has become more stringent.  To ensure that a user lands on a legitimate seller’s site, they look for: 1) level of content, 2) how often the content is updated, and 3) whether the site has the ability to sell products – i.e., a shopping cart, BBB seal, accepted credit card list, etc.  Parked sites don’t have these things.

Key-Ins

Key-in traffic doesn’t rely on search engine rankings, so in 2008 Google announced that advertisers could opt-out of ad sites (seen as poor sources).  With advertisers being able to choose not to pay for clicks made from parked domains, revenue from these sites has greatly diminished.

Developing Your Domain to Increase Traffic

To increase revenue from domain parking, sites nowadays need to be more developed.  Search engines are looking for content, so it is content that ultimately needs to be provided.  For maximum traffic, the content must be relevant and rich in keywords.

The easiest way to ensure keyword-rich content is via news and reviews from outside websites.  RSS feeds are perfect for this.  For instance, using the keywords “PS3”, “Sony”, and “PlayStation 3”, the parked page would perhaps include a search module presenting current news and reviews relating to the PS3 next to a featured product module, which is showing images and links to associated PS3 and related-product seller sites.  People looking for PS3s would find the parked site and if/when they clicked, a commission would be earned.

So I was sitting in my room listening to my random mix radio station on Slacker.com, when all of a sudden, I had the urge to listen to Regulators (by Warren G).  Typically I would have to head over to the Amazon MP3 store or wait until the song plays on my random radio station.  I was too impatient for that.  Enter Songerize.  Songerize is as simple as a website can be.  With Songerize, users can play a song by entering the artist and the song name and clicking play!  It really is as simple as that, no registration, no searching, no BS.  This is great for those moments where you need a song fix, or want to play a certain song for your friends.

Songerize isn’t really a new standalone service.  Songerize is a simple interface for the popular SeeqPod.  For those of you unfamiliar with Seeqpod, it is a search service that indexes publicly available playable content from around the web.  Seeqpod will search out and play audio, video, and podcasts.  I definitely recommend giving both services a try.  This is how accessible music should be these days.

GoldMail, a service launched last November, is a new messaging platform combining text, image and voice communication.  GoldMail allows users to create “talking slide show messages” in 3 steps.  First, a slide-show of sorts is created using photos, images and documents uploaded from a computer.  Next, users can record a voice track over the slide-show to explain or enhance the show.  After that, GoldMail  provides a link to send via email, instant message, or to post on a website or blog.  These multimedia messages can be used in a wide variety of unique ways.  Possible applications include sending personal messages with voice to loved ones, posting to a blog, and sending a marketing clip to customers.

This new approach is meant to make newsletters and other text messages more memorable and exciting.  Guy Longworth, CEO of Goldmail, explained the strengths of GoldMail to Forbes.com:

“Voiceover messaging signals the next iteration of messaging which — in the urgency to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime — has become a predominantly text-based communication format lacking the true meaning and understanding that only the human voice can communicate.”  He continued… “[t]he clarity and emotion communicated through speech is what makes a GoldMail voiceover message resonate with people.”

 GoldMail offers a free version which should suffice for the vast majority of users.  This limited version does show ads, but does allow for unlimited views of the message.  A more full-featured version is available for $10 per month for the average user.  The registration process is tedious, asking for occupation, country, postal code, and requiring a password with a number and a letter (people, please let me create an insecure password if I want).  Although GoldMail does offer a different form of communication than typical email, you do have to download their software for this to work.  I would prefer a web-based solution with a more simplified registration process (or none at all).  I do like this service, and I see quite a few potential uses for this.

To see examples of multimedia messages using GoldMail, click here, here or here.

Other commentary on GoldMail:  WebsiteGear, Linqa and Dean Takahashi.

MintEmail is a fantastic disposable/temporary email service offering a great mix of functionality and simplicity.  Similar to other disposable email services, MintEmail provides visitors a temporary email address they can use to register for email-spamming sites.  However, MintEmail has added some great features that  make the site much more user friendly.

First, MintEmail automatically copies your new temporary email address to your clipboard as soon as you visit their homepage.  Although this may seem like an unnecessary feature, it is a definite time-saver.  This also ensures that your email address is entered typo-free.

Second, MintEmail loads new messages without a page refresh.  For users, this means that you can open MintEmail in a tab and wait for the title of the tab to show the new message (similar to Gmail) instead of having to wait and refresh the page constantly.

Third, MintEmail automatically clicks confirmation links for you.  Once you set up a temporary inbox, you can send most confirmation emails to your inbox for confirmation without having to visit MintEmail and click the link.  Genius!

Fourth, MintEmail provides email forwarding.  This allows users to set up an inbox that forwards directly to your real email.  The lifespan of your inbox is adjustable as well, so you can use the same inbox for many months without having to re-enter your settings.

Rarely does such a simple and straight-forward service offer so many useful new features.  MintEmail has made site registrations 100% less annoying.  Bravo!

Mint is a personal finance manager created by Aaron Patzer.  According to Aaron, personal finance can really be reduced to three basic principles.  First, spend less than you earn.  Second, make the money you have work for you.  Third, plan for the unexpected.  The Mint.com crew have taken these ideals to heart and have designed a very useful free service.  Mint is nothing new, having been awarded the TechCrunch40 Best of Show award and having received at least one large round of funding.  I am reviewing Mint now because I was seriously disappointed the first time I used Mint to organize my finances.  After a few months of fine tuning, Mint has created a much more useful and entertaining product.

Interface
The Mint interface is divided into 5 main tabs. The overview tab shows you your account balances, your cash vs. debt status (very useful), any alerts (like overdue payments), and a graph of your budget spending.  The transactions tabs shows a detailed list of each transaction and includes the merchant name, category of the purchase and the date.  Each transaction category can be changed, because by default Mint will choose the wrong category sometimes.  The spending trends tab generates a colorful graph of your spending and lets you know just exactly how much you spend at the different categories.  This tab also provides detailed information on other categories like gas spending so you can track how much you spend each month.  The ways to save tab provides you with offers that will help you save money.  This is also how Mint has decided to monetize the service, charging businesses to list their offers here.

Security
The fifth and final tab asks for bank account information.  This is where Mint  gathers the transaction data for each account you wish to include.  This raises some important security issues, so I’ll walk you through some of the security measures Mint employs to make your data safe.

First, Mint does not gather any personally identifiable information to set up your account.  An email address, password and zip code are all that is required.

Second, Mint does not see your internet banking passwords and no Mint employees or potential Mint hackers can see your bank passwords.  Mint works with Yodlee, a well established online finance company which is audited by the FDIC, the OCC, and the Federal Reserve.  All data transferred to Yodlee is encrypted at the 128-bit level, and all data communicated between Mint and your browser is encrypted at the 128-bit level as well.  With these measures in place, Mint may even help make your financial life a bit more secure with the addition of the alerts you can set up for very large purchases.

Conclusion
Like I mentioned earlier, I was disappointed with Mint the first time I tried the service during beta.  I recently gave the service another try, and I am 100% happier with its performance.  Mint provides great tools for monitoring spending, and the interface is much more accessible than desktop solutions such as Quicken.  One of the main problems with Mint has been transaction categorization mistakes.  This seems have been addressed, with the majority of transactions correctly categorized.  For those that are still incorrectly categorized or not part of a category, users can quickly correct the mistake by changing the category for all transactions.  The spending trends display also is very useful.  Through Mint, I have learned that I need to eat at restaurants less, and that gas purchases take up a large part of my budget.

For many, Mint can provide a great set of tools for managing finances and for finding ways to save money.  I give Mint two thumbs up and recommend giving it a try.

HelloTxt is “an aggregate of microblogging services through which the user can insert their messages on all main microblogging services in a simple and simultaneous way.” What does all of that mean? For users of Twitter, Jaiku, Yappd, Meemi, Beemood, and Tumblr, managing multiple microblogging services can be a hassle. HelloTxt centralizes the insertion of messages to these services, saving many trips for the microblogging addicts.

As explained by the developers of HelloTxt, having to visit numerous microblogging services diminishes some of the advantages of the services. Namely, updating your status is time consuming, and the information you provide is not as timely for your readers. With HelloTxt, a single message will reach the different services. All login information and messages are encrypted, so you can feel safe using the service.

The site is very clean, well organized, and does not provide an over-abundance of features. Registration is required, but the registration is well worth it because users don’t have to keep track of all of the usernames and passwords for the microblogging services after they are entered for the first time. According to Mashable, Pownce support has been delayed because of load time problems. Users should also be aware that HelloTxt is missing mobile phone support.