BankAds.com Launches “Managed Solution for Banking and Credit Card Domains”

I received an email from Sean Sullivan, announcing his company’s launch of BankAds.com, a managed solution for banking and credit card domain names. According to Sullivan, while the industry standard offering is a 70/30 or 60/40 revenue split, BankAds.com revenue share is “well above it.”

I want to share the details of this with you because it looks like it could benefit owners of these types of domain names (I don’t have any, and I have not had the opportunity to personally test it out).

From the looks of it, domain owners don’t have to do much to get their sites launched aside from changing the DNS, which is the same as parking. The gist of these landing pages is to compare credit cards or banking solutions and allow visitors to easily apply for the card/bank account.

The company has two dozen designs, and I am told they do a considerable amount of split testing to keep and tweak the designs with the highest CTR and RPM. In my opinion, the designs are pretty sleek.  There are also widgets available for already developed websites.

From my perspective, one thing to keep in mind is that it’s important for these domain names to receive type-in traffic to be effective (or plan on doing marketing to drive traffic). Since it doesn’t appear that these websites have unique, one-of-a-kind content, they presumably won’t rank well in search engines, especially for competitive credit card and banking terms. Without the search traffic, you’re left with type-in traffic or traffic that is acquired by other means.

Sullivan mentioned something that appears to be unique to this program:

One other feature is that is exclusive to our solution is that should any domain that is monetized with BankAds get hit with a C&D or UDRP notice our in house counsel will defend the domain owner free of charge. Our attorney has successfully defended a number of major domain owners. We honestly don’t anticipate UDRP being an issue at all, as we’re not going to take on TM domains within our solution.  But we all well know, there are companies and individuals out there who will try to take domains unjustly.  So having a great attorney ready to defend a domain when necessary is something that I’m sure will give peace of mind to some of our clients.

You can have a look at some of the websites that are currently using BankAds.com for monetization:

  • BestCreditCardForMiles.com
  • GasCreditCards.co
  • BestCreditCardForBadCredit.com
  • GoldCard.com

Again, I have not tried out BankAds.com and was not paid or compensated in any way to post this. If you try it out, please think about posting your results here to let others know about your experience.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

26 COMMENTS

  1. Elliot,

    I wanted to clarify a couple of things. The rev share split is not 60/40 or 70/30.

    I was referring to 60/40 and 70/30 seem to have been the standard rev share range that most companies offer. Our rev share is well above 70/30. Well above it.

    With regard to SEO, we actually have some options in place to have original content and resources implemented. These include sending out press releases and acquiring links. You’re absolutely right that the sites won’t rank without original content and other elements put in place. BankAds is truly a managed solution and we will review a domain or portfolio of names and then work with the owner to develop a plan of action that is achievable.

    Also Tier 1 Development is not the parent company of BankAds.com, it’s actually Acorius Inc. But a lot of that info is on the BankAds.com website.

  2. I found this to an interesting idea/project I’d may be interested in, but my first impression…errr…

    Just went to the site, and to be honest, unless someone ‘just’ hacked it, it’s pretty bleak looking. An ‘Apply’ panel with 9 blanks to fill in, and there’s ‘no’ description of ‘what’ to fill in. They have navigation buttons/links, but they’re blank and you have to hover over them to see what they say. Can’t say there’s a confidence level of their service at present, based on their ‘present’ website.

  3. Well, I have…

    This credit card online business stuff peaked around 2007-8, CreditCards.com, and a few other dominate this space, this is a good attempt, but doubt it will turn into anything fruitful, the consumer is so damn smart these days.

  4. @ Kevin

    Not sure what the issue is with that website. In any case, the company/program is on BankAds.com but a sample website is on GoldCard.com so you can see what one of the templates looks like.

  5. Always good to see another option in the credit card space. What would be nice to know is through their intitial testing, what kinds of CPM they are getting. At the end of the day, the revenue split doesn’t matter, it what you make that does.

  6. @ Ron

    We’ve spent what most people would consider an absolute fortune acquiring premium domains in the banking and credit card vertical alone over the last three years. $100 for true premium domains? Unless I have a time machine in the office somewhere, I don’t see that happening.

    I’d also like to let you know that we aren’t actively acquiring domains. However that being said, down the road should a domain owner who has been using BankAds want to sell their domain /site to us or anyone else we’ll certainly look at it. But they’re not required to do so.

    If a domain owner has a super premium and wants us to put serious development dollars of our own into it. Well I imagine we would ask for some kind of right of first refusal to acquire if the domain owner got an offer and wanted to sell. But it isn’t required by any means.

    Nothing will make us more happy than having a client go and sell their domain to an end user for 100X EBITDA. At the end of the day any sale to an end user is going to benefit the industry as a whole. And that benefits BankAds.com as well.

    We are building a solution and company that gives the domain owner and publisher true transparency and insight into their domains monetization.

    If any BankAds client doubts the claims we make regarding revenue share or transparency they are welcome to make an appointment with us and come to our office and I will personally show them the direct revenue data we receive from our partners pertaining to their domains.

    I want to make that crystal clear, they can see the raw data on just their domains. Not the data for any other clients.

    This offer is obviously highly unusual but I’m trying to make a point here. We have got your best interest in mind 24/7 and we have nothing to hide.

    BankAds.com even offers to help assist the domain owner who uses our solution to prepare all of the documents and data that an end user would want to see when considering purchasing a domain / site.

    We can even help connect the domain owner with the right individuals and decision makers who head up acquisitions at significant end user corporations.

    We are also providing BankAds clients / domain owners with protection against UDRP free of charge.

    We are providing a standard rev share split that is well above 70/30, and that is for everyone large portfolio or small.

    We are trying to build a company and service that treats the domain owner extremely well. That is not meant to say that other companies do not. But when putting this solution together the goal from the start has been to try to do everything we possibly can for our clients, even if that means offering things that no other company has.

    If you have great banking and credit card names we would love to work with you and I think you’ll see that we are trying to create the best solution possible.
    -Sean

  7. @Shaun

    Regarding eCPM, it ranges just like with anything else. Domains that have gone from being “parked” to developed sites (like CheckingAccount.com, which is very much what some of these designs are based off of) have had eCPM rates over $600. Other names can range as low as $50. Some very long tail terms has smaller amounts of traffic and revenue but can see absurdly high eCPM rates. But long tail keywords typically do convert at much higher levels.

    But that’s the advantage in using BankAds. Being a managed solution we look for ways to improve each domain continually. For names that don’t have massive eCPM ranges we have other ways to help lift their earnings. Another key point is that like with our own company and our commitment to this industry we feel that having a long term horizon is very important.

    We are just getting started and in a few weeks we will be able to publicly get into more granular detail. There’s so much more that I would like to share, but for now I’ve got to keep focused on bringing on quality domains and working with the owners to extract as much value as possible.

    -Sean

  8. Good to see a niche monetization option like this and hopefully more come out – more likely to see better optimization for the niche than at a general parking site.

    Looking at GoldCard.com, he might want to rethink the main image. The first thing that will catch people’s attention is a woman cutting up a gold-looking credit card…I can see that for a debt relief site but seems a bit backwards for a credit card site.

    Anyways, hope it all goes well!

  9. @ Sean

    I appreciate your efforts and wish you the best.

    As a domainer (Also have credit/banking names), I have the following concerns:

    * How often you add custom content?
    * Do you charge the domain owners for the custom content?
    * V.IMP: How do you avoid the domains getting delisted/blacklisted from google index when they will all use same software and same hosting? It has happned so many times before with many other similar companies.

    Thank you.

  10. @Sean
    There is an obvious cross-browser issue on the clickbank.com site and not showing navigation or form properly. With all the recent exposure I’m surprised this is not fixed yet.. Templates look great but If users can’t even signup… you might be missing out on some good business.

  11. @Steve Jones

    We felt that the credit card being cut up fit well with the copy that is there that’s asking the visitor to get rid of the cards that don’t offer rewards. This site design isn’t specific for gold cards, but I see your point. Nice catch, we’ll adjust it.

    @RK

    Good questions. Because we are a managed solution the first thing we do is work the domain owner to determine what domains we start with in terms of developing them with our solution.

    Some names have will have direct navigation traffic. We will start with those and then populate them with original content on the home page and any interior pages. The number can vary but it is usually anywhere from 4 to 8 pages of content.

    We will add content to the core site and depending on some different variables we will chose whether to add additional content on a regular basis. That’s something that has to be determined between BankAds and the domain owner. We do not have a blueprint that we follow for every domain. Some domains will inherently need more content than others, so in those instances we will make adjustments as needed.

    I know there are some specific details regarding our process that you would like to know, but I’d prefer not to broadcast for competitive reasons. You can contact me and we can discuss any questions you might have.

    But again our approach is not to ask a domain owner to immediately switch DNS on their entire portfolio and push every site live as quickly as possible and hope for the best. Instead we truly do map out a plan of action that will benefit the domain owner and BankAds. We then execute that plan according to what has been agreed upon by the domain owner and BankAds.

    Once a site has been properly launched it is then added to Google, Yahoo and Bing Webmaster Tools. Because at that point we are essentially establishing with the search engines that this domain has now changed over from whatever it was before (parked page or whatever ) to what BankAds has built there now.

    With regard to your concern about sites getting delisted or blacklisted from the search engines because we are using the same hosting and are a managed solution / platform the following is our official response. (Which I’m writing on the fly, but was stated in the interview I did with Michael Cyger of DomainSherpa)

    < We are not going to take any measures to hide or shield our network or business model from the search engines. BankAds is a managed solution that follows the criteria regarding what is a quality experience for a visitor to a website that has been long established by all of the search engines.

    Fundamentally any visitor who is searching for something on the internet and arrives on a website via direct navigation, organic or paid search should find a website that has the relevant information and or products and services that they are looking for.

    At BankAds, we are providing just that, a quality experience. Our sites are specifically targeted to not just have accurate and relevant content as well as esthetically pleasing designs to match up with what the individual is seeking, but advertisements that are for reputable businesses in good standing that offer exactly those specific products and services that individual is seeking. We take great effort in making sure that our solution is in compliance with all rules and regulations for the banking and credit card industry.

    Our goal is to createa managed technology solution that can take a domain from whatever it was previously to a developed site that will deliver a truly quality experience for the visitor. We will continue to work with and seek out guidance and support from our advertising partners, domain owners, the visitors to our BankAds sites and search engines on how we can continue to improve our product.

    That is our core belief or mission statement. There are no short cuts to this. If we focus on creating a quality experience for every visitor to every one of our sites, and abide by the rules established then there should be no reason for any search engine including Google to remove any BankAds managed domain from it’s index.

    I want to note that we were a little rushed with this launch because I wanted to be able to do the interview with Mike Cyger otherwise I would have had a scheduling conflict and it would have been a lot longer before we could have done the interview. But we are just starting the development of one credit card domain and one banking domain that will showcase exactly what we can do. Stay tuned and I will personally be in touch with everyone who has contacted us.

    Thanks,

    Sean

    @ Ze

    Not sure what you are referring to clickbank.com for. Also we don’t have any forms on any of our sites for individuals to fill out information on. Anyone who wants to apply for a card would click on a link and then be sent directly to the banking institution’s website directly. The only form that we have on the site is the contact form that allows parties interested in purchasing the domain to contact the owner directly and or inquire about technical issues. We don’t collect any sensitive data. And the contact form on BankAds.com seems to be working fine, we’re getting lots of sign ups from all browsers and we also have the CS@BankAds.com email address there as well. But I appreciate the heads up regardless.

    Thanks,

    Sean

  12. @Sean
    I made a comment earlier about your site showing blanks to fill and no descriptions of what to fill-in, and some other issues. Upon further checking, it appears that (at least for me) using different browsers on different computers gives different looks of your site. You may want to see if this is so for you too.

  13. This looks good to me but before i come to any conclusion, i would like to have a test. I have applied five of my domains

    AmpleMoney.com
    AmpleMoney.net
    AmpleMoney.org
    AmpleMoney.de
    AmpleMoney.co.uk

    If no sale for sometime, i will get the potential result detail.

    Thanks

  14. Thanks for posting this Elliot.

    Always very nice to see new solutions.

    Every new company has a few bugs, and most seem to have more than what I am seeing with BankAds.com, so it looks fairly promising.

    One thing that is missing though is your TOS. It is not on the site or after submitting the contact from.

    Also, when are payments made? How? Minimum payment amount?

    .

  15. @ Nacho. We’re NET 30. Minimum payout is $50. We’re posting a TOS and electronic sign up form on the client side of BankAds.co
    We’ve got a lot more coming down the road, we’re very excited to share all of the features with the domain community very soon.

    @ Peter. We have CPC ads for banks and credit cards that are not powered by either Google or Yahoo. Some of our site designs do integrate Google Adsense, but not every domain will be matched up with a design that has it. We split test to see which domain will do better (overall). An example of a design featuring banking CPC ads along with Google Adsense is http://www.BestCreditCardForBadCredit.com.

    We have some additional monetization streams that we will be integrating soon as well. We think we have a great product to bring to market now, but in 60 days we’ll go from BankAds 1.0 to BankAds 2.0 with a lot of new and great features. Our goal is to roll out new and innovative product developments every 60 days. Lots to look forward to for sure.

    Regarding minimum requirements. We prefer that you have domains with a good amount of type-in traffic or that are a keyword match for a highly searched term. But they need to be directly related to credit cards or banking products. At this time we do not offer anything that is a monetization solution for bank loans, but we’re working on it.

    I am going to post something up on T1D.com this week that will go over things in more detail.

    I kindly ask that everyone remain patient with us and understand that we’re a managed solution that has to build and deploy these sites in a thoughtful and well planned way. But we will get to everyone who has domains that are a fit for our service.

  16. @ Sean

    Thanks for answering the questions, I have few more as follows:

    1. Is there any cost to domain owners (now or in future)?
    2. Can we stop using your service if we are not happy?

    I have a list of banking and creditcard domains ready to be sent to you but just want to make sure that I understand your program properly.

    Btw, your whole site bankads.com is blocked as “advert” by some companies’ filters.

    How do we contact you….from your site contact form?

    Thanks.

  17. Good to see more revenue possibilities for finance domains. I know that creditcards.com has offered some some “partnership” opportunities but have not looked into it myself. I have a couple of good credit card domains that I would’nt mind monetizing or selling out right GraphiteCreditCard.com and WorldPointsCreditCard.com Wonder what other good options there are for finance domains?

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

2024 Global Domain Report Released Today

0
The annual Global Domain Report, produced jointly by InterNetX and Sedo, has been released and is now available to download at no cost. The...

Grok Knows .com

5
Grok is a generative AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk's company, xAI. Grok has been promoted within the X / Twitter ecosystem, and X...

Dynadot Now Offering Cryptocurrency Payments

1
Dynadot just announced that it now offers customers the ability to make payments using cryptocurrency. The offering is made via Bitpay, which supports more...

Sedo to Host .AI Auction

0
.AI domain names have become a popular topic of late. Some of the most popular domain industry auctions these days are the monthly expiry...

Scaffolding Company Gets Industry Matching .com for Under $50k

0
Sedo’s Senior Broker Dave Evanson reported the sale of Scaffolding.com yesterday. The domain name sold for $46,666, and it was the largest domain name...