VisitorBid.com failed because it did not make it easy for advertisers to bid on domain traffic. Advertisers did not have the time of day to pick individual domains to bid on.

At Sendori we were able to grow our market because we let advertisers use the keyword lists (and bulk sheets) that they use within CPC networks. The keywords are then used to match domains.

Plus, VisitorBid used client-side redirects which is technically a bad way to approach the problem.

Also at Sendori we created APIs for both domainers and advertisers that helped us scale the market dramatically. There are many other innovations we’ve created which I can’t detail here.

Check this old link http://www.bidvisitor.com/faq.html

Happy to hear your an OpenDNS user. We correct most typos like that, though we don’t correct that one. You’ll note we do provide a spelling correction for it on the page of results, highlighted in red.

At somepoint, it’ll be typo’d enough that we’ll figure it out and it’ll be automatically corrected just like nytimes.xom and 1000’s of other typos are corrected too. My gut tells me not too many folks type nytimes.xim which is why our system doesn’t auto-correct it, but instead just provides the choice.

And our search results are just like Yahoo’s and Google’s, organic on the main area, and sponsored on the right and sometimes in the top rail.

And, wildcarding a user’s typo is entirely different from registering random generic domains and putting up ads. It’s not illegal, but it’s certainly a poor end-user experience and annoying.

People use us because they have a choice — people don’t have a choice (right now) with domain parking.

WOW this coming from someone (open DNS) who serves up yahoo ads on address bar typeos. How is that is any different than a parked domain name serving the exact same ads (even the same source – yahoo) as parked domains??

I am an open DNS user, but think it is a bit hypocritical of you to say you don’t like parking, when your company serves up the same thing.

Example:

As an openDNS user, if i type in nytimes.xim by accident, i get ads by Open DNS.

So you are saying that parking pages are no good, but monetizing typos to the right of the dot are OK? Cmon.

I hope Ny Times IP attorneys don’t see this because you are serving up competitors’ ads on their trademark, Dave.

I support anything that delivers a better navigational experience to users and this could do that. This assumes, of course, that Sendori is restrictive in who they allow to advertise and redirect domains on their service. If someone redirects videogames.com to malware.badguys.rbn.ru then that’d obviously be a bad thing.

I look forward to finding out more.

-David (from OpenDNS)