hi - i am the registered owner of a web address with a funky name and
someone wants to buy it from me and use it for their company. I am not
too keen on the idea of giving up my web address since I have had it
for a long time but I don't use it for much at the moment and I don't
mind if this company rents it from me. But I don't know a) if this is
possible and if it is,  b) how I would do it so that the rent I am
paid is a function of the number of people who visit or use the site.
Is there some "clicker" software somewhere that we could both agree to
use and how would I know if it is accurate. Any ideas gratefully
received. Thanks!

Hello 101606-ga,

Question 1: Yes, this is possible. The important thing for you to do
is to keep control of the domain name registration. Do NOT under any
circumstance put their information in the administrative contact or
any other contact on the domain name. The way you will give control to
them to publish content is to change the NAMESERVER information and
make this point to their hosting provider. They need to sign up for a
hosting account and then give you the two nameservers that go along
with that hosting account. You will then go into your domain name
service, and change the nameservers to point to their hosting account.
When the business contract is over, you can change them to point back
to a hosting account controlled by yourself.

Question 2: The best way for you to view how many hits/visitors the
site is getting is to have access to the raw traffic data from their
hosting provider. Companies like often have built in services with
hosting providers to keep track of visitors and clicks. What I would
do is have this information emailed directly to you daily by the
server, which minimizes greatly the risk of fraud. For good measure,
you could ask to see the monthly data by requesting a user name and
password and making sure that the information matches. Webtrends
generates statistics based on the raw traffic data. If Webtrends is
not available on their hosting account some other similar service
likely will be.

Other solutions that are third party would be: 
http://www.clicktracks.com/
http://www.indextools.com/
http://www.statcounter.com/
http://www.hitslink.com/
http://www.opentracker.net/
http://www.onestat.com/
If you need more suggestions than these, let me know! Also, you can
use a combination of these as well as the built in solution (IE:
Webtrends) to ensure accuracy even more.

I hope that this answer will meet your needs. Please let me know if
you require any clarification and I will do my best to further assist
you. All the best,

tisme-ga


Search Strategy: 

based on personal knowledge
website statistics
webtrends

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Request for Answer Clarification by 101606-ga on 13 Aug 2006 14:01 PDT

hi tisme,
thanks for the answer - just what i needed. could i ask one more
clarification point before i push the "pay now" button (by the way - i
don't see a pay now button, just a rating...does that mean that by
giving a rating i release the funds? hope so)..but that wasn't my
question..sorry.. what i would be interested to know is, can the
clicker software distinguish between a simple visitor to (viewer of)
the site and someone actually entering the site via a password and
doing something on it, like entering data or finding data for which
they themselves pay a fee (the company who wants my website has an
interactive website). the latter type of visitor is more valuable and
i guess the rent for them could be higher.. is the direction i'm
headed with this.
thanks and regards

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Clarification of Answer by tisme-ga on 13 Aug 2006 21:35 PDT

Hello 101606-ga,

You can put the tracking software on several different pages on the
site. In order to track money, you would want to put the tracking
information on the order confirmation page (after payment information
has successfully been processed). Every time a user gets to that page,
the person has received payment, and your tracking code picks it up.
You would know how many times this happened, and it is also possible
for the page to pass along the total order amount variable. This is
the most common way major networks track affiliate orders, which is
similar to what you are trying to do.

Another idea would be to request that they open their books and
possibly pay a percentage of their income. Let me know if you have any
other questions. Yes rating the question closes it.

All the best and good luck with this venture,

tisme-ga