Real Success
with
RealNames

The Bottom Line -- the Long Term

"How do I get my money's worth?" Here's the wrap up...

---A---
Pick the right words (related to your product, high popularity, low RN dilution, and unlikely to be "sold out").

---B---
Stuff at least two of your keywords into a RealName.

---C---
Write a good description that will "get the click" to your site.

---D---
Experiment and negotiate to get the best RealName possible. Remember, you're a customer now!

---E---
Start with just one RealNames... your very best effort. If it goes well, grow the program.

---F---
Try to guesstimate the likely "Return on Investment."

First, estimate the traffic that your RealName will bring you. Then multiply by your Conversion Rate and Profit-Per-Sale. Does this produce at least $500 of profit? (What's the point of losing money?)

Example...
"Penny Gold Penny Stocks Book and Mining Investment Advice"

Here are the GoTo stats for the SPECIFIC words in the above RealName (the non-specific will have too many RealName competitors and the visitors will tend to be less targeted -- so I ignore these, even though they will bring some business)...

Word Searched	#/month
Penny Stocks Mining Gold mining Gold stocks Investment Advice TOTAL	2721 1556 691 73 637 5678

According to WebSnapShot.com, AltaVista does roughly two-and-a-half times the number of searches as GoTo.com...

http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/searchengines.html

So that makes a total of 5,678 x 2.5 = 14,195 requests per month.

According to DoubleClick, AltaVista generates 35 million searches per day. And according to RealNames, AltaVista generates 2 million clicks per day on that link that says "Click here for a list of Internet Keywords related to ...".

So when someone looks up "penny stocks," there is a 5.7% chance (2/35) that the searcher clicks on the RealNames link that will then expose PennyGold to that person.

Let's assume that the average user only clicks on one RealName after arriving there via AltaVista. That means you should divide the 5.7% by the number of other companies who dilute you, allowing also whether you appear prominently or not in the results.

Allowing for the number of competitors for each of the above words in my RealName, I'll estimate that my new RealName will have an average 1-in-5 chance of being clicked AFTER the searcher gets to the RealNames listing by clicking on that link at the top of the AltaVista results page.

So, let's calculate what I expect RealNames to deliver...

... 14,195 x 5.7% x 0.2

That results in 162 visitors per month. If you convert 1% of visitors into sales, and if you average $100 per sale, your $100 investment at RealNames will return $162 per month, almost $2,000 for the year. Not bad at all!

This is rough, of course -- but it's a starting point. Yes, you'll actually get some extra traffic from other sources.

But AltaVista will be, by far, the #1 source. And don't forget that other companies will compete by adding similar generic words onto their names AFTER you buy your RealName, reducing your expected return.

So, allowing everything else to cancel each other out... all in all, this little calculation is a pretty good estimate.

Here's my recommendation...

Each $100 RealName investment should return $500 PER YEAR. Or don't bother.

Follow this and you should do well, in the short-term.

Long-term, though, RN worries me.

The sale of "generic" words is disturbing. It may be good business for them, but you have to judge whether it makes sense to buy words that are likely to get sold, decreasing (or totally eliminating) the value of your RealName.

Also, if the Search Engine partners *all* decide to return *exact* matches only, RN becomes worthless -- so watch AltaVista.

Remember this -- no one looks for *you*, unless you're Microsoft. When you buy a RealName, you're really buying the "generic add-ons." If the engines don't deliver on that, and if not enough people use an RN-equipped browser...

... ya got nuthin'!

One more thing...

Over time, more and more companies will buy RealNames. So more and more results will turn up for a word like "penny stocks," diluting the value of your RealName because of the lower chances of getting the actual click to your site.

With all these trends, the time will come when RN may simply not be worth it for "the little guy."

And one more thing...

Three different RealNames support staff all said that the way to use RealNames is for searchers to find the exact match... that buying RealNames with "generic words added onto your company name" is the wrong way to go.

Since that's the only way to go for entrepreneurs and small businesses, I can't help but think about poor Abe's Software all over again. Be careful... don't depend on a generic word that is likely to get sold.

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