Domainr - blog

Affiliate Programs Need Unit Tests

Kelly over at Hunch has done some investigative digging into one of their affiliate relationships that was mysteriously not converting. Domainr and Hunch share an affiliate-based business model, where both are search sites trying to help people find what they're looking for:

"We signed up to the Best Buy affiliate program through Commission Junction, and tested Best Buy links in several topics for which we already had a history of strong post-click conversions. While CJ’s reporting platform showed nearly the same ad impressions and affiliate clicks for BestBuy as we tracked internally, CJ reported not just a lower post-click conversion rate than we had historically seen, but actually zero. Several more days went by, clicks were still flowing to Best Buy, but they reported zero resulting sales."

"We decided to test this by buying some merchandise ourselves. Two of our employees, on two different days, followed Hunch affiliate links to Best Buy and then bought something. CJ still showed no sales activity. Houston, we have a problem."

Long story short, Kelly uncovered a huge snafu with Best Buy's affiliate service, and Hunch promptly discontinued their relationship with them. While we've yet to do this digging through Domainr's logs, we're curious what we'd uncover. And more broadly, Kelly highlights the inherent need for trust in the system:

"Bottom line: for cpa-driven affiliate relationships to work, there has to be trust and reliability in the system for accurate post-click reporting and payments. So it’s disheartening when even a big brand like Best Buy can have such a complete failure in their affiliate model, as we experienced above."

"One implication of all this: I would gladly pay a 3rd party to conduct “real transaction” audits on the sites with whom I have an affiliate relationship. I’m not talking about click matching, but actually buying a low-priced physical good from time to time (and perhaps then returning it later for a refund). This approach couldn’t be efficiently scaled to take representative frequent samples for a given affiliate, but still, at low volume it could potentially identify the most egregious offenders. Because as we found out with Best Buy, where there was smoke, there was fire."

We agree wholeheartedly. Thanks for posting about your research, Kelly!

Welcome, Smashing Visitors!

The folks at Smashing Mag very kindly mention Domainr in their post about finding, registering and managing domains:

The popular Domainr service comes as easy and clean as it gets. They call themselves a “domain name search engine” and solely focus on the domain search experience. Searching for a domain name is very intuitive and fast indeed. If you found a name you can choose from a list of registrars where you can register the respective domain.

Apart from the standard .COM, .NET & .ORG domains, Domainr’s strength is surely the ability to find domain hacks with exotic country code top-level domain extensions e.g. burri.to (.TO - Tonga), lifestrea.ms (.MS - Montserrat) or cli.gs (South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands).

Domainr makes the domain search process fun and is probably the easiest tool to find creative domain names in 2009.

We're deeply honored—thanks for the kind words!

Registering a .nr domain

Occasionally we hear questions from folks about Domainr's .nr domain, inquiring about the .nr registrar's scary registration process. It's definitely one of the sketchiest-looking webapps we've ever come across, but the process worked for us, and Cameron's described it over on Get Satisfaction. Here's a summary:

1. go through the process on Cenpac's web site
2. wire them the $
3. email them that you've wired the $
4. you should hear back from them (we did) in < 24 hours

Domainr and Design

We recently heard from a Domainr user via email, inquiring about a design technique used to create Domainr's look and feel. If you're curious about that sort of thing, take a look at Randy's writeup:

ydnar.com: CSS Images, Sprites, and iPhone Webkit

Web Worker Daily on domains

WWD has some great advice for folks searching for domains for their projects, and we concur:

"I think that you can take the “get a dot-com at all costs” mentality too far, so you may want to consider alternatives to .com."

Keep Registries and Registrars Separate

CircleID:

"Since 1999, when Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) and ICANN agreed on the separation of NSI's combined registry and registrar functions, the market as grown from about 5 million to over 100 million domain names in the generic TLDs. The registrar companies grew from a solitary one to over 900 (500 active) strong, and retail prices of registrations plummeted from $35.00 per year to an average between $10.00 and $12.00 per year."

Seems like a no brainer to me, then George Kirikos drops more wisdom in the comments:

"The solution is to reframe the issue from the point of view of maximizing consumer benefits through tenders, and ignoring both the registrars and the registries. Indeed, reframed in this manner, the strongest case can be made that there should be no new gTLDs, at least until such time as a proper economic study determines that they would add value for consumers that exceed the negative externalities."

Agreed.

Announcing the Domainr API

Hey developers: check out Domainr's new API, which lets you embed domain search directly in your site. Here's what it currently returns:

• domain possibility: send a string, and Domainr returns domain hack permutations
• domain availability: whether or not domains are already registered
• registration: direct links to registrars so your users can register domains

You can choose the super-simple HTML forms API, or the fancier JSON API.

Domain Hacks Are Short Domains

@domainr:

"Domain hacks are the original short URLs. They’re as resistant to link-rot as the rest, except they cost money."

Lately URL shorteners have been making headlines, and some of the coverage is definitely exciting. This is just a friendly reminder that domain hacks can be inherently short, and you should totally consider one for your site/service if you've got links to track. And for the tracking side, we recommend awe.sm.

Use Domainr to help name your stuff

Smashing Magazine's running a really, really great piece about choosing domain names. It's way more than that though—they're talking about name selection and iteration in a very insightful and strategic way. "Meta," even. Some key takeaways:

• domains can be discoverable or brandable
• names can be assembled in a number of different ways: compounded, blended, phrased, tweaked, affixed, or even made up 
• be mindful of their linguistic essence: what they mean, and how they sound

Domainr's a perfect tool for helping you name things, which is why we built it in the first place.

More Tubes

Domainr's gotten some great coverage recently out on the blogs:

Mind of Michael's 10 Excellent Tools for Picking a Domain Name

"Domainr is an innovative web tool that helps you explore other TLD’s that have made popular websites like last.fm and del.icio.us stand out from the crowd. Of course, searches will also include popular top-level domains that are available."

Bluhalo's Top Web Trends for the Immediate Future

"It doesn’t always have to be about an all singing, all dancing, cutting edge website (of course we love those too), but to quote Einstein “simplicity is the ultimate complexity”. Some of the most successful things online have been born out of the simplest ideas – just think about Google and Twitter! A great site we’ve come across recently is Domai.nr – really useful in a world where it is increasingly difficult to find the perfect domain name."

Benny Ling: "Site of the day."