Have You Had an Epik Experience Yet ?

[DnEbook]

I am starting to hear more and more about epik/com , has anyone here jumped in and had a 'epik experience' ? and if so ....your thoughts please

:talk:

 

[garptrader]

By default a domainer has too large a portfolio of domains to self develop a meaningful portion of their inventory. On the other hand the days of acquiring high search volume .COM domains with ease are long gone. So domainers have migrated to alt TLDs with search volume. EPIK's blog provides a great deal of useful info for those new to development but one needs to keep in mind EPIK is not a nonprofit. They have to have a means by which to profit from this venture. How many companies offer the portfolio of services EPIK offers? True $250-$500 per site for fifty or a hundred sites is a much larger investment than those reg fee drops. But how many companies offer similar services? How do their prices compare?

 

[liquidcherry]

By default a domainer has too large a portfolio of domains to self develop a meaningful portion of their inventory.

So according to your book a domainer is someone who has more then 10/20/50/100/1000 domains? define your statement please since i just have a measly PF of 40+ domains and i find your comment rather week, sounds like you are an EPIK employee lol

Cheers

Liquid

 

[DnEbook]

maybe you should start the 'have you had a noomle experience' thread

 

[liquidcherry]

maybe you should start the 'have you had a noomle experience' thread

Why, just because i mentioned it 2 times? There is already an official noomle thread and i don't hang there, the first reply was to rogue b/c of his statement that he has not the time to devel and the second was because of the possibility to add easily a forum to a minisite/parked system...look, i am not against the epik system or them i just wanted to show that there are other options..i am using N. myself for some names i have and don't have the time to develop but that doesn't mean i just use this one system, maybe i will use Epik myself one day.

And the comment to garp was b/c he just said all domainers have large folios what i think is wrong...

Hope that cleared things up a little bit

Cheers

Liquid

 

[randomo]

I have 16 domains with Epik. They've only been there a little over two months, so I doubt they've reached their full potential, and it would be premature to cite revenue figures. However, even at current rates, almost all will earn a lot more than annual renewal fees, and several of the best ones are on track to make low $xxx annually (half of which goes to Epik). None of these domains is a blockbuster; I acquired each of them for low-to-mid $xx.

I know those earnings don't look like much, but it's far better than these domains had done at traditional parking services. And while most of them aren't earning a good return on a $249 investment, I haven't actually needed to spend that money; I've funded all of my Epik development by trading or selling them some of my other domains (you can read about the EpikBucks program on their site).

Frankly, I think that a $249 upfront fee and a 50/50 revenue split is a bit too steep (even though your revenue share increases once you exceed $1,000 of revenue per month). Plus, for that $249, they should be able to provide more polished pages (I've had to ask them to fix semi-literate English-as-a-second-language text on my sites).

On the other hand, customer support is excellent, and Rob Monster himself has been a pleasure to deal with.

So, although it's still got room for improvement, I'm satisfied with Epik's service overall, and I plan to add more domains soon.

 

[chillaxin]

I have 2 would have 3, but when I mentioned the 3rd one was being developed a buyer sent me an offer i couldn't refuse. I have nothing but good experiences with epik. rob answers all my questions and treats me like Im a friend.according to some, I may be overspending but i always feel like I get my money's worth.

 

[mwzd]

Rob is 'A' grade, I don't doubt that for a second, I'm also sure the product will be robust, randomo's comment about content is slightly worrying though.

What I was talking about is the financial feasibility of this kind of deal.

If you order development, you only pay for development, if you do a jv, then it's treated as a jv.

This deal seems too one sided, at least in my book.

There are 1000s of options out there, from free (ok, revenue share) like smartname & bodis, whypark ($10/mo for unlimited sites), noomle (errr.... personally don't like it too much), and commercial solutions including minisites for $20 each, dnf minisites, minisites.com and minisites.pro solutions to name just a few.

For high value domains, professional development is the only route you should go down in any case. No minisite is going to give the kind of revenue a full blown business would. Minisites are more for helping you recoup renewal and development costs and it shouldn't take 3-5 years to break even on that.

 

[mosilager]

I've talked to Rob myself, and he's an A+ guy, very helpful indeed, and I don't doubt that he'll do his best, the question here is the feasibility of using Epik for your domain development.

Let's forget the amount one spent on the acquisition of the domain (in my case a one word 90,000 exact search domain for over $2,000)....the price I was quoted was $249 set up fee, and another $500 in annual maintenance fee, annual total =$749.

With a 50/50 split, for me just to break even on my initial outlay, I'd have to gross $1,498 annually for me to justify this site being a developmental success with Epik...

 

[Domainace]

I'd like to know what all these options are people are talking about. Everybody talks about alternatives to Epik, but when it comes down actually finding one, I come up empty handed.

All the usual mentions, Noomle and whatever, are not good for what Epik does, ie. self-sustaining product portals with diverse options for the visitor (not just Amazon or one or two affiliate programs).

The only solution that comes close is DataFeedr. At $27/month for one site, that's the price of an Epik portal in 10 months. I know the price comes way down when you add multiple sites, but there's the catch.

Datafeedr is simply a plug-in, all of the work and maintenance is your job. You have to continually update the affiliate feeds, the content and the website itself. You have to manage all the affiliates and payments yourself as well. If you have 10 affiliate programs on one site, and each affiliate has a $200 minimum payout threshold, you have to pull in $2000 just to get paid - whereas with Epik, you get paid monthly whatever you've made. On top of that, the SEO is all yours with Datafeedr. While Epik doesn't provide SEO as a rule, you get the immediate benefit of being linked into the Epik network and the backlinks from that. It gives you something to build on.

I have found, from personal experience, that I don't want to devote my days updating sites devoted to tumble dryers, electric hedge trimmers or other things I'm not all that excited by.

Epik still needs a lot of improvement, but they are getting there - there is motion. I haven't bound a better alternative short of full-scale development, which I agree is the only way to go to get the most from your names. But there are only so many names that I have the time/money/interest in developing.

Another thing is that I don't see Epik sites as a bunch of unrelated mini sites. I may be wrong (nothing new there), but I see Epik as a potential go-to megasite, like Amazon or Wikipedia. Each site is part of the whole. I think Rob sees it this way as well, and he is better equipped to pull it off than anybody else I've seen in this "industry."

For the record, I haven't risked a penny with Epik. I got one site in way back when they were unknown. That made money. I used that money to fund other portals, and used some for domain investments. I have also traded names for development, as others have.

If I had a solid team in Mumbai or Manila, I might try to go it on my own, too. While Epik isn't cheap, it's still the best offer I can find for developing product domains.

And then there is the increased liquidity that Epik is working on, via auctions and swaps, etc.

This thread is interesting, but I am still waiting for someone to actually clearly name an alternative that will give me multiple active product portals without me doing all the work, and that has anywhere near the features of Epik.

There are 1000s of options out there, from free (ok, revenue share) like smartname & bodis, whypark ($10/mo for unlimited sites), noomle (errr.... personally don't like it too much), and commercial solutions including minisites for $20 each, dnf minisites, minisites.com and minisites.pro solutions to name just a few.

For high value domains, professional development is the only route you should go down in any case. No minisite is going to give the kind of revenue a full blown business would. Minisites are more for helping you recoup renewal and development costs and it shouldn't take 3-5 years to break even on that.

 

[DnEbook]

I've talked to Rob myself, and he's an A+ guy, very helpful indeed, and I don't doubt that he'll do his best, the question here is the feasibility of using Epik for your domain development.

Let's forget the amount one spent on the acquisition of the domain (in my case a one word 90,000 exact search domain for over $2,000)....the price I was quoted was $249 set up fee, and another $500 in annual maintenance fee, annual total =$749.

With a 50/50 split, for me just to break even on my initial outlay, I'd have to gross $1,498 annually for me to justify this site being a developmental success with Epik...

Why do you need maintainence ? the set up fee is one off , i have two sites and i have paid under $500, they do the hosting and after i return the outlay it becomes profit

i believe long term it's better than parking , fancy that some one goes to my site and they can buy something instead going down the endless cycle you find on parking pages

 

[mosilager]

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have used the word "maintenance", I was quoted $249 set up fee + $500 supplemental SEO budget per site!.

Why do you need maintainence ? the set up fee is one off , i have two sites and i have paid under $500, they do the hosting and after i return the outlay it becomes profit

i believe long term it's better than parking , fancy that some one goes to my site and they can buy something instead going down the endless cycle you find on parking pages

 

[DnEbook]

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have used the word "maintenance", I was quoted $249 set up fee + $500 supplemental SEO budget per site!.

i don't think the seo package is required if you are willing to do some article writing, blog linking and adding some links to your own sites to the epik sites, so basically after you achieve your money back you have a store that they host , i still think worth a try , good luck

 

[newshunter]

Incidentally, epik(.)com appears to be up for sale at sedo.

anybody who knows anything more around this?

 

[DnEbook]

old listing ?

 

[nucleotide]

rob monster is the fastest email responder i have ever seen.

 

[NameClerk]

I'm sure the Sedo listing was probably just an oversight. It's no longer there.

 

[mosilager]

Epik failed!....

I thought this was a very domainstryker.com/epik-com-stats, and goes hand in hand with what we are discussing here....

 

[Steven]

I thought this was a very domainstryker.com/epik-com-stats, and goes hand in hand with what we are discussing here....

Very interesting...

Looks like I'm going to have to forgo having an EPIK experience.

Thank you for sharing.

 

[mwzd]

I thought this was a very domainstryker.com/epik-com-stats, and goes hand in hand with what we are discussing here....

Yeah, very interesting, wonder how many people here even have the quality of names mentioned that do make money.

This bit was especially interesting:

6,031 Epik powered domains generated 173,727 visitors which clicked 49,871 times to bring in the whopping earnings of $7,481.95…

So, who is to say that six months from now every one of those domains won't be a lot more profitable?

And who's to say that they won't be a lot less?

it is not possible for them to base their profitability in a growing network from sites that have not even been given time to surge in the rankings.

You're never going to rank extremely high for competitive terms with these sites for the most part. If you think otherwise, you're in for a surprise.

 

[robmonster]

Perspective on Epik -- from Epik

Good thread here.

A few thoughts:

- While Epik is not perfect, I think the value proposition is pretty hard to beat. I have built many online businesses. Epik is the type of solution that I wish existed when I was starting out in domain investing. It would have saved me a lot of money. We have determined what works, and are scaling and replicating what works. This is not theoretical. It is practical and applied.

- Domain Development is not an event. It is a process. The process is one of continuous improvement, both in terms of tuning implementations on platforms but also in upgrading platforms. The recent announcement of full eCommerce is a great example. Once an affiliate site has significant traffic, it makes sense to upgrade it to full eCommerce. However, before then, a site with significant organic traffic is a good candidate for sale to an end-client.

- There are a few other established players in domain development. Some of them use communication techniques that go beyond being creative. My advice is simple: don't treat all opinions as equal, and do your own homework. If you talk to actual Epik Developers, I think you will find a surprisingly high level of enthusiasm.

- The actual data that is cited below about total network revenues is factually incorrect. We have debated about whether to expose the site stats. While we are a fan of transparent reporting, selective scraping of the Portal stats pages provides an incomplete picture -- in this case, the revenue numbers are low by a factor of 5. While we have nothing to hide, we are also not in the business of having data selectively presented by people with agendas.

- On pricing, we generally charge a setup fee of $249. It is possible to get as low as $175 with volume orders. You could easily spend this much on design and graphics alone. With Epik, you get a turn-key site hosted for perpetuity, with continued improvement. SEO is included. For very competitive categories we sometimes recommend a supplemental SEO budget. This is entirely optional and usually not required.

At the end of the day, Epik is sharing a solution that we could equally choose to only power our own domains. As it is, we turn away more than 90% of all domains submitted for the simple reason that we don't want folks to waste their money developing names that we don't think can be successfully monetized. On the positive side, once we agree to work on a domain, wwe will continue to work on any site that we take on until it makes money.

If folks have questions, I am known to be pretty accessible. Email: [email protected]. Skype: robertmonster. I will also be at TRAFFIC-Miami where we will be running SwapFest #2 on 10/20.

 

[snoop]

Good thread here.

A few thoughts:

- While Epik is not perfect, I think the value proposition is pretty hard to beat.

According to those stats people are paying $249 for development that on averages produces about $19/year for them. After paying an $8 reg fee they won't be seeing a profit for 22 years. How is that a value proposition that is hard to beat? Most are obviously losing money on this system.

The actual data that is cited below about total network revenues is factually incorrect. We have debated about whether to expose the site stats. While we are a fan of transparent reporting, selective scraping of the Portal stats pages provides an incomplete picture -- in this case, the revenue numbers are low by a factor of 5. While we have nothing to hide, we are also not in the business of having data selectively presented by people with agendas.

If the stats were wrong and you had nothing to hide you'd be releasing the "correct" data. Of course the guy has an agenda, he runs a similar service with a doubtful value proposition as well. But that isn't to say that what he is claiming here is wrong. It is often a competitor that comes out with this kind of thing...who else would bother?

 

[robmonster]

@snoop - you might find this analysis useful:

http://www.epik.com/blog/how-long-d...gnificant-organic-traffic-for-a-new-site.html

Unlike parking, development is not static. In fact, on parking, traffic usually DROPS over time. However with development, traffic INCREASES over time. We have seen this pattern on a fairly consistent basis.

For calibration, the vast majority of these sites are under 3 months old. We are also pushing a lot of sites live ahead of the start of the holiday shopping season. As such, the AVERAGE site age is getting YOUNGER.

These sites are designed to recoup their cost within 1 year, and are priced accordingly. Within 90 days, the site should be be out-earning what it was making on a top parking platform. That seems to be the pattern.

Last but not least, we encourage site owners to sell their developed/ranked sites to end clients in parallel to managing the ongoing organic traffic growth. A 5-10% sell-through rate makes sense though we recognize that many folks are dyed-in-the-wool buy-and-hold.

Hope that helps.

 

[snoop]

These sites are designed to recoup their cost within 1 year, and are priced accordingly. Within 90 days, the site should be be out-earning what it was making on a top parking platform. That seems to be the pattern.

Rob, crunching the numbers on those stats, of the 6031 names the number that are on track to make $250 in a year ($10 gross per week before rev share) is 108 names. 108 out of 6031, that is 1.7% of names. So unless 98-99% of names on your system are new I don't buy the above.

 

[garptrader]

Snoop-EPIK's platform is no more than a year old & I would bet the overwhelming majority of sites are under six months old. I have one site whose traffic more than tripled in the few months AFTER it completed its one year anniversary. Another site had very little traffic for nine months or so & after 18 months is now on pace to reach 2500 monthly visitors. However, I will say that domainers need to be very selective about which domains they decide to develop because it is one thing to have a reg fee or backorder investment in a domain but completely another to start investing $250-$995 each for a couple dozen sites where the revenue is PPC based and is shared 50% with the developer.

 

[clarew]

they have a lot to prove.

I figure forget about the guarantee , getting money back. If Epik goes under you can't collect. Which will happen if their business plan goes bust. We have to wait and see.