Interview with Web Developer and Domainer Tia Wood

 

With todays push on web development for domainers and the decrease in PPC revenues hitting the bottom line of most domainers, finding a web development partner that understands the mindset of domainers is more important than ever.  With that in mind I bring you an interview with Web Developer, Writer, AND Domainer Tia Wood.

 

Tia, you have an appealing array of interests, whether it be music, writing, or web development: your passion shines through. Can you tell me a bit about your passion for writing and music?

Art is a very powerful form of expression especially when the subject has no words that can justify its meaning. For instance: how does one describe love? Or envy? Or human suffering? Some things are best shown in some form. That's why I believe every individual has an interesting story we can all learn from best told via some type of art medium: writing, music, graphic design, photography, philosophy, etc.

This is a personal side of me many people do not know but stems back to childhood. Art is in my blood. I remember in 3^rd grade, I wrote a poem about the Gulf War and was made to read it in front of the entire school. I won little awards throughout my school years for my writing. I write for selfish reasons: to relax my mind and relieve stress. Other than that, I do not care to be famous by it.

Music is the other beast. I always have music playing somewhere: on my computer, in my car or singing out loud. Even my daughter cannot fall asleep without it. Me and her both sing. Even my extended family has some sort of musical ability in one form or another.

Photography and philosophy are my other hobbies. Photography is about capturing perspectives. The same as with philosophy.  

They must feel I'm rude at church because I draw in an art book while the preacher is talking instead of looking at him.  The point is: I do these things and I do them ALL THE TIME whether it is through writing, music, art, graphic design, etc.

How are you so sure that your reality is the correct perspective if you don't try to look through someone else's eyes? I guarantee you it is not and if you neglect this side of yourself you are missing out on the vast understanding that one gains ONLY by learning what others already MASTERED.  

 

Tell us a bit about the process of writing a novel, the focus and dedication that it takes is impressive.

Novel writing is an exhausting process that requires constant care. You have to be interested in writing, for one and interested in your subject. But all it requires is one page at a time. If you write three pages a day, you can work yourself to a novel over time. Write first, edit later. The same goes for those interested in eBook writing.  Or anything else you would like to accomplish. To build a house: lay one brick at a time. To build out your domain portfolio: concentrate on one concept at a time, one page at a time.

 

Not only do you have the ability to express yourself with words, you also have musical talent. What instruments do you play? Do you have a good karaoke story?

I play acoustic guitar. Several of my family members do as well. When I was a teenager, I would sit outside in the Florida night and sing songs I wrote that day. I never formally learned to play but I play by ear. Which reminds me: it's time to buy an electric guitar, lol! We haven't had guitars in the house for awhile and my daughter is old enough to learn. That should be fun.

The word "karaoke" is something close to heart. When my grandfather, Terri, was alive he would take me fishing at the Florida lakes when I was a kid. I suck at fishing but we had fun. On some nights, he would take me to karaoke.  He also played guitar and had an exceptional voice. He would sing songs such as "White Sport Coat" and "Teddy Bear". The first time I sang in front of a crowd was with him at age 11. I sang Boys II Men, "On Bended Knee" in a room packed full of adults. I was a nervous wreck! To this day, I still get terrible stage fright even though I have been told I'm not a bad singer.

 

So your creative side obviously leads to a talent for web design and vision of what a site can look like. How do you approach the start of a project?

In web development, I would say there is a good balance between functionality and graphic design required. However, if a site doesn't function properly, it's just a pretty photo album. What keeps me interested in web development even though it can get fairly technical is the creative approach to solving problems and developing solutions for a client.

Some people overlook the scope of work and vision required that goes into the backend of development. The initial approach is focused on what the individual is trying to achieve with their site whether it be for profit, promotion or data capture. Each project is a different challenge in its own unique way. No project is ever the same even if it's just a Wordpress installation.

 

So, tell us a bit about your domain investments, what extensions do you buy, what's your thought process on buying a domain?

I tend to focus mostly on .com. I purchase names based on long term goals and choose those I know I can attack with a business plan. It's too late to buy one word generic domains. Buying for development is how I make up for this handicap.

One of the great things about domaining is you can still choose what niche you want to focus on and succeed. Some may buy for SEO. Others may buy for revenue. It doesn't matter. But focus on something and do that something well.

 

Give us your thoughts on mini sites and mass development.

Mini sites and mass development have their audience but are for a specific type of domain and a specific type of domainer. You should never, ever develop a website you are trying to launch a business with in this method. There are better ways to serve your audience versus slapping together pages so it won't sit empty. For instance, an article I wrote titled "The New Under Construction Page" talks about this. If you want your website to do something other than serve a blank page while waiting for development: COLLECT DATA! Which is more valuable to you: a few dollars from a user you will never see again or a guaranteed contact who is interested in your website? Never sell yourself short for the almighty click through.

 

OK, you gotta give the story behind BulkDevelopment.com. Your focus is obviously on full development. What led to this fun little test?

I'm normally a private, quiet person. But lately I see individuals attempting to provide glorified MFA (made for adsense) sites and trying to claim this method is "web development". While technically it is: these types of websites have already been proven a failure when they were branded as MFA sites. I'm not referring to real solutions that attempt to provide alternatives to domain parking such as MiniSites.com, WhyPark.com and AEIOU.com. I'm speaking about individuals who promote these glorified MFA sites but yet cannot provide real examples of their success.

I realize this was partially my fault because I choose not to educate people for so long. It's my fault and the domain developers like me. BulkDevelopment.com was the silence breaker. Since then, I restructured my main blog at TiaWood.com to further educate domainers on the differences. The response has been fantastic. I want domainers to know the difference between mini sites, mass development and full scale development.

There are great consequences if you don't know what you are working with. What if you under develop a domain? You will miss out on how powerful the domain can perform. What if you over develop a name? You lose money and time. There is no "one size fits all" to development.

 

dnRehab.com and BulkDevelopment.com are both fun domainer spoofs, any other sites of your own that may be of interest to domainers?

In addition to those, DomainIdeaBox.com was created for my personal use but I wanted to share this tool with domainers.  The tool sorts keywords into "data sets" or categories and allows you to generate ideas based on keywords before or after the data keywords. I use this all the time, especially for Geo names. Search results are not saved as I highly value domainer privacy. It's a neat little tool that makes hand registrations easier.

 

Who do you admire in the domain industry and why?

Whew! Too many to name. There are a lot of domainers worth respecting for many different reasons. But Sahar Sarid and Frank Schilling always are at the top of my list of people I admire. How they both entered domaining is inspiring and shows their dedication as individuals.

 

My daughter took a particular liking to one of your client sites: LittleSantaClaus.com. How do your sites perform in search engines? Can you give some examples of results?

It's funny you say that because I actually had my eight year old daughter help me with that site.  She was my critic.

For LittleSantaClaus.com, we targeted particular keywords that were commonly searched: santa books, santa claus wallpaper, etc and have already been indexed for those terms. The site is appearing on the 1^st page under multiple targeted keywords. The development is not complete at the time of this interview. We plan to target the keyword "santa claus" by Christmas of this year.

By the way, those of you with kids should check out the site. It's about a book series called "The Little Santa Book Series: The Childhood Adventures of Santa Claus" written by Sergio R. Rodriguez.  The first book available is called "Little Santa and Snowboy" which is beautifully illustrated by Simon Scales. I'm personally excited about these books because it presents a different aspect about Santa Claus and the character designs are amazing.

 

 

You recently learned you had Hashimoto's Disease.  Can you tell us more about Hashimoto's and how it affects you?

Hashimoto's Disease is an autoimmune chronic illness that attacks the thyroid gland and causes thyroid disease. For six months, I knew I had thyroid disease but recently discovered the underlying cause: Hashimoto's Disease. So basically, one disease caused the other. I have had Hashimoto's all my life without knowing it. It attacked my thyroid over the years until it was no longer functional.

The thyroid gland controls many functions in your body: weight, metabolism, mentality, emotions, etc and produces hormones that control and throttle these functions. With thyroid disease, these hormones are either produced too much or too little (in my case too little) and affect a person in so many negative ways.

I am outspoken about having this illness because of my initial misdiagnosis. This illness causes symptoms very close to bipolar disease. Therefore, I initially went to a psychiatrist instead of a doctor. I was diagnosed and treated for a mental illness instead of a physical illness. I was put on lithium and suffered a month of hell from the wrong diagnosis. It is important for people with these symptoms to seek not only multiple tests but multiple opinions from different doctors.

More information about that story here: Tia's Story

Hashimoto's Disease information here: Hashimoto's Disease Info

 

What projects are you currently working on: personal or for clients?

One project is DrugReform.com that debates the topic of drug reform. This site has an interesting social presentation that allows people to present both sides of the opinion spectrum uncensored. We are focusing on social marketing. It will be interesting to see how this format shapes itself.

Another client project is popular.ME; the first in a series of the .me domain extension I'm developing for a client. This, too, has a social marketing aspect and I can't wait to launch it.

For my personal work, I have a couple sites next in queue: NameHoney.com and HashimotosDisease.us. I don't want to mention the development focus for NameHoney.com yet but it will benefit domainers. HashimotosDisease.us will be an awareness and support site for individuals suffering with Hashimoto's Disease.

 

What do you have planned for the future?

Ah, the future is bright and full of possibilities. Last year, I discovered the power of social marketing. Therefore, I have been focusing more and more on using this type of promotion in combination with development. The projects that solely use this method are almost complete and I'm very excited to explore this further. I have discovered new mediums that even domainers aren't fully aware of yet. I'm terribly excited about it but I plan to take my time to explore them fully. All I can say is: watch what happens next! There will be major contributions to the domain industry coming in the future.

 

Thanks to Tia for taking the time to give her views on Web Development and Domaining!

Interview with Steven Sikes Founder of YouAnd.ME and Domainer

Steven Sikes is co-founder of YouAnd.ME, a rapidly growing online dating site. He is also a domain investor who found domaining almost by accident after offers for names came in after he would purchase a name for a new business idea. After seeing the value of domains he began investing and has recently been successful with his .ME domain investments, but without further ado. Here is Steves interview:

Steve, I have to ask, what drove you to travel around the world at 18 years of age?  That sounds like an amazing experience.

I received an academic scholarship to my university, Vanderbilt, and took high level science classes like organic chemistry, theoretical physics and molecular biology my freshman year; and I'd enrolled at the age of 17.  Like many others in my dorm, I was pre-med.  But I was overwhelmed by the course load, while also participating in intramural sports.  

When I returned home for the summer, I worked as a construction worker and read travel books at night. Books by Graham Greene, Hemingway, Bruce Chatwin, and Paul Theroux.  So I decided to break the news to my parents that I was going to take a leave of absence from the university and that I was giving up "pre-med" to pursue a life as a "writer".  Of course, this was some romantic notion and foolhardy at the time.  But my parents always let me follow my own path, so they agreed and I sold my car and used my summer work money to pay for this trip around the world.   I first boarded a Polish freighter ship in Wilmington, NC and went across the Atlantic and got off in Le Havre France.  The "around-the-world" ticket allowed the passenger to use it within one year, with the stipulation that you had to move forward or diagonal in flight, and never back-tracking.  So I combined this global journey with ship, train, bus and air travel, and the occasional hitchhiking.  All in all, it was a fantastic experience and highly educational.  I definitely made it on less than $10 per day, mostly by living in hostels or camping outdoors and cheap eats.    

Care to share any stories from your travels or any or your other outdoor adventures?

The trip opened my eyes to the world and other cultures.  When I enrolled back in the university, I had a new global perspective and increased confidence.  After graduation, I worked at an array of jobs - while trying to write novels - a rare wine buyer, free-lance journalist, teacher, football coach at a prep school.  I soon moved to Paris and enrolled in a graduate cinema program affiliated with the Sorbonne. I lived in Paris for over a year and worked a variety of jobs such as an English teacher, a crewman on a boat that went down the River Seine to Marseilles and eventually through the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles, and did some free-lance writing for local magazines and even worked as a private tutor to a billionaire's daughter - and we got to take her dad's private jet to their country house in Ireland where I got to ride racehorses.  Actually, one of these horses was world-famous and won the Irish Sweepstakes and another won Belmont.     

I then lived in other countries - Mexico and Brazil - and lived in the jungles in Chiapas and the Amazon, and settled in for one year living in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. I supported myself there by writing, working on documentaries, teaching and translating.

 You have a wide and varied background, what drove you to domaining and web development?

Purely by accident.  I had returned to teaching at a few universities, and I took a sabbatical of sorts (non-paid) and hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with my golden retriever who died just last year.  I was tired of my erratic lifestyle, so I decided I would start a business, even though I had no knowledge of business.  I read all these books on writing business plans and starting your own business. This was when Silicon Valley was hot in 1998 with all these start-ups.  So I thought I'd use my language-learning and cross-culture skills to start an e-learning company focused on language learning and cross-culture training.  I learned how to file patents and trademarks and I wrote a business plan and put together a team.  Then, right before I received my first term sheet from investors, a major telecom company contacted me and said they wanted to buy my intellectual property (domain names and trademark). I turned them down over a period of several weeks, but then they made me an offer I could not refuse, so that's how I learned the value of intellectual property. So, now when I start new ventures, I make sure we have solid trademarks, domains, and patents.

I'm currently the co-founder of two telehealth software companies and a Web 2.0 overseas adventure living site, and we have world-class management teams (I'm not one, just a founder) and board members.  I've been very diligent about our IP issues - domains, patents, and trademarks.  For one of the software companies, we had to make a very costly domain acquisition because our company name was already trademarked in a country where we intend to do future business.  So we bought the name and filed a trademark, strictly for this country. 

Care to share some examples of your domain investments?

I really stayed away from investing in domains, because it seemed so arcane and I really did not understand it.  I continued to buy domains, really only as potential names for future companies. And to my surprise, I would receive offers for these names from companies worldwide.

Then I began reading the domain blogs and joining the domain forums and I leaned about the value of premium domains, so I started investing in arenas that I liked and considered to be future trends - mobile technology, apps, green energy, clean tech, and Geos.  Like you, Bruce, I love the GEO space, as it seems to be one of the safest paths to monetization. And maybe this love for Geos is related to all my travels and peregrinations.

My domain portfolio is quite diverse - DOTCOM, DOTME, DOTMOBI, DOTORG, DOTINFO, DOTNET, and some names in other extensions.

I buy lots of domains on the secondary market. In fact, I purchased three solid DOTME GEOS yesterday, and I made an investment in premium DOTME names. I've also sold part of this portfolio for low six figures, which covers my initial investment. Many of the buyers were and are end-users who contacted me, and one buyer acquired several of my names and he and I have become good friends, but since these were private transactions, I think it would be better not to reveal his name and/or contact information.

You have cofounded several online businesses, what have they taught you about marketing online?

They've taught me how little I know. I've learned from my mistakes, and that's why I'm so happy that my current partners are experts in this arena. I'm more of an innovator - I actually enjoy creating apps, algorithms, patents, etc - but I'm re-reading SEO for Dummies. My partners have taught me a lot about text, key words, placement of text, etc., and much more. I'm still a novice in this area. 

You have been a big proponent of .ME on Namepros.com, what drove your belief in .ME?

Some of the reasons I invested in DOTME - it just seemed to mesh with the direction of the web - more personalized and more user-generated content.  I thought the GEOS were great for DOTME  because you could develop sites with reviews, recommendations, etc, and I also invested in DOTME group names such as Teens, Teams, Family, Latinas, Boomers, Baby Boomers, Celebs, as I thought they could be great blogging sites.  I thought diary.me fit the extension well, as well as Hollywood.me and several call-to-action verbs I have like chart.me. 

You have recently had a very successful launch with YouAnd.ME, a tough Niche to crack but you have had success, can you tell us about the project and launch?

The founders and team come from diverse countries and continents (U.S.A, Canada, Europe, India), and we had some solid domains and wanted to start a social media site.  Originally, we were going to create diary software (SaaS) for diary.me, but then we saw all these articles about the online dating boom during the recession,  so we decided to go with that - and we worked a deal for the name YOUAND.ME.  A recent news release states the site YOUAND.ME was started as a way to find ME a date - not exactly true, even though my girlfriend and I did recently break up.

Why has YOUAND.ME been successful to date (pardon the pun)?

• Work, work, work
• YOUAND.ME - the name has been very catchy and it's allowed us to create a brand
• Innovate, innovate, innovate - we keep creating more features, games, widgets, etc
• Extensive and strategic marketing costs and having two SEO experts aboard
• Personalization - engaging our users
• The YOU TUBE videos - seen by over 500,000 persons
• Security - we've invested a lot in creating the most secure social dating site
• Creating a new category - a SOCIAL CONNECT site - which combines dating, social networking and social media and social utility, and we realize this is very ambitious

There have been questions about .ME and SEO , looks like you have succeeded in proving that there is not an issue, any detail syou can share?

We're ranked high in all the search engines. Our traffic was so high that our servers crashed. We're up to about 100,000 page views per day, after launching less than 2 months ago.

We have many mini-sites and we do buy keywords and we also have purchased a number of high-profile dating domains and sites in multiple extensions, including YOUANDME.NET and ONLINEDATE.NET, but YOUAND.ME is the main site. 

You are going to be launching some Apple iPhone apps, facebooks apps, and others, whats your feeling on social network marketing compared to standard online marketing?

Excellent question. I know some "dating" companies have generated more revenues from their apps than their actual sites.  Our apps are very feature-rich, very innovative and we will be able to integrate them into our YOUAND.ME web and mobile sites.  With Facebook, you have a community of 200 million, Hi5 has over 80 million, and the iPhone apps really provide great marketing opportunities as well as revenue generators.  The same for Blackberry Apps, as well as Android, and the entire social networking companies that use www.opensocial.org.  Obviously, these sites and platforms enable you to tap into a large user base - bigger than most countries.  But the caveat - you must have engaging and compelling apps, or they won't catch on and stick.  I hope our apps will.   

One question that always comes up these days is the drop in PPC revenue, how do you plan to combat that in your web development and domain investments?

Another great question I'm not really qualified to answer.  I'm focusing on increasing the value of the company with more innovative and proprietary features, and we also look at indirect competitors who are getting major companies to advertise on their sites - because they've reached the sweet spots - large customer base and the desired demographics.  We hope we'll have 100,000 members on YOUAND.ME by the end of 2009, and at the present growth rate, we should be there.

Per the other domain investments with premium domains, you are right - lots if uncertainty there. It seems for sites and companies to succeed, you will need well-developed sites, a brand, and a tribe (a following).  But what do I know - I went around the world and I still haven't "found" myself...still searching for the answers...and a girlfriend (just kidding) 

 

Thanks to Steve for taking the time to answer these questions!  I hope you have enjoyed his story.

Exclusive Interview with XF.com Founder and Professional Domainer Aron Meystedt

Today I present an exclusive interview with Aron Meystedt, Founder of the super-exclusive XF.com professional domain forum and 20-something year old professional domainer. Aron is owner of several high end premium domain names and a big proponent of developing key domain properties.

Below you will find some very good info to help build your domaining business and some very good tips for both those starting out in the domain business or maybe even for people that have been around the domain industry for years.  His success speaks for itself, I have known Aron for a few years and have enjoyed my discussions with him and have learned quite a bit about the quality over quantity method and appreciate him giving his insight into domaining as it stands today and how he feels it will look in the future.

Enjoy the read below, and thanks to Aron for taking the time out of his day and night to respond, many of these questions were answered and responded to in the wee hours of the morning.

How long have you been domaining, what got you started in this exciting business opportunity?

 It started when I was in high school.  I instantly loved the Internet, and quickly embraced the "global aspect" of it. 

Early on, I told myself "I'm going to use the computer to make money... not spend money."
Like everything else, it takes trials and failures.  I started off selling car audio online.  I found a distributor, bought a domain name, and created an online car audio store.  I advertised a bit and started filling orders almost immediately.  It was so much fun (especially at that age). The Internet enabled me to be whoever I wanted.  My customers didn't know if I was on the 13th floor of a high rise office complex, or if I was a 17 year old kid sitting in his parents' loft I had some success with that little enterprise, I sold the site and business and wanted to move on to something else.

 
For me, early on, it was about sales, not domains.  I wasn't open to any ideas other than selling a physical product.  It wasn't until later, about 5 years ago, that I began to see the enormous potential in domain names.  That's when I started investing in domains and switched my focus from selling products to domain investing.

 What are some of your domain names?

Our company name is XF.com.  From the beginning of my domain involvement, I really wanted a 2-letter.com.  I also own HY.com, which is a work in progress. iBlog.com and iBlog.net are a strong combination that we own and are in the process of leasing.  We ran a large blogging site for a few years, traffic peaking out at about 2 million visitors per month and the Alexa rank near the top 10,000.  We were approached by a company about leasing the domains, and it made sense. March.com Media is a sideline of XF.com.  Other projects include TrafficEstimate.com and ImageSharing.com  (among many others).

You are a big believer in quality over quantity. Has that always been the plan or have you spent time doing tons of hand registrations, etc?

I always strive to find quality in every name.  Please don't misunderstand me, there are tons of good hand registrations out there waiting to be picked up, and someone could certainly have a good portfolio of names for little investment.  This just isn't my model right now. For me, it's much easier to manage 15 or 20 really strong names as opposed to 1000-2000 decent names.  Again, there's nothing wrong with either strategy.  I purchase my names with development in mind, and, if my development plans fail, I still have a strong domain name as the foundation of the next project.  It's similar to a lot on the beach.  It doesn't matter what you build on that lot, you can always tear down the property knowing the value is in the lot itself. 

 What drove you to launch XF.com forum?

First, I love the other forums (NamePros, DNForum, DomainState etc.).  I felt the need to gather the top domain professionals and companies in one spot. We discuss strategies for furthering our industry as well as share networking information.  Most of my members aren't active on other forums, so this gives us all a chance to share ideas and thoughts.  We have strong representation so far from top companies and domain investors.

 How has the launch went?

Very well.  All the members are very receptive to the idea and are appreciative of the invitation (the forum has been "invitation only" to this point). We're limiting the base to a small group so each member can have a voice on the board.

Can you talk about any specific members?

Sure. 

Examples of members include: 

Oversee.net

Reinvent.com

iReit.com

Skenzo.com and Directi.com

Fabulous.com

Bido.com

UPC360.com

Domain Invest S.A.

eCorp

Cybertonic

 and many others.

We also have a few top domain lawyers and many individual domain investors.

It's great to have a personal contact with each of these companies and individuals.

Many of your quality names are developed, what percentage names do you park compare to develop?

In the beginning, I parked everything.  Now, I'm shying away from parking and focusing on developing each site.

I like to treat each domain as an individual "mini business".  Whether it be leasing or developing, I am looking to treat each domain as a small business in itself.

For example:  TrafficEstimate.com  is a good site and useful tool for estimating the traffic to big domains and sites.

I am currently selling ad space on this site and plan to treat TrafficEstimate.com as a little online business.

 I still have many names parked, but all will be developed, in time.

Development offers more creative options for monetization and the ability to grow your domain asset.

What are your thoughts on the decrease in PPC revenues, how are you working to overcome this?

It bothers me and I know many people are struggling.  However, since my focus isn't on PPC as much as development, I feel confident in the future.  If my revenue was solely based on PPC, I'd have a knot in my stomach...

I'd encourage all domainers to attempt development, even if it's with a small 3 page information site.

Development is very tricky and it's certainly not as easy as some make it out to be.

However, putting up a mini site with useful tools and articles is simple.  You can always monetize with Google Adsense, affiliate ads and CPM banners.

Some of your sites are pretty high traffic (iblog.com), how have you managed to stay focused on domaining and manage large sites? Any tips?

Honestly, it's been tough.  I start at 8AM every morning and usually have to pull myself away from a computer about 1:30AM. It certainly takes a daily effort to do ANYTHING the right way. 

For coding and development, I outsource most of it.  Even if I can do it myself, I'd rather focus my attention elsewhere. I feel my time is best spent managing my domains and looking for new opportunities as opposed to doing development work that you can hire out for $10 an hour.

What are your thoughts on domain investments outside of .com, you own jokes.mobi?

I believe greatly in other extensions.  Just look at the success of .co.uk and .de.  There are huge sales every month.  .com is certainly the top dog, but there is great value in other extensions.

As far as .mobi, it's still a possibility that it could take off.  There are many great .mobi's in development. Some names really fit the mobile extention well:  Horoscopes.mobi ,  News.mobi, etc. Anything that fits on a small screen that a user can navigate easily.

This is why i bought JOKES.mobi.  It was simple to develop and simple to use.

It's text only.

I wouldn't spend my life savings on .mobi or .tel or anything else, but it's good to diversify and buy a few other extensions.

Your thoughts on domaining in the next year, next 5 years?

Please don't rely on parking to be your sole source of income.  I see models changing from cost per click to cost per action.  As the economy crunches, so will advertising budgets.  Companies are going to need to see results from their advertising dollar as opposed to leads.

Develop.  Put up a small site, try to grow traffic and monetize that traffic.

Any tips for new domainers?

Starting out, you need capital.  Therefore, you're going to have to turn over some names.

When I started, I knew I needed a base of capital to buy premium names.
I didn't have that huge chunk of money, so I bought some cheap names and sold them.
Then bought some more expensive names and sold them. Eventually I built up enough capital to buy all the names I have today. (I don't finance my domain purchases).

Secondly, as stated so many times, is development If you have a great name, you'd be cheating yourself if you didn't at least attempt developing it out.

Finally, and I know this sounds cheesy:  Don't be afraid to fail.

I have had so many horrible ideas I can't even count them. However, it only takes one great idea or one "home run" sale to change your life.

Stay focused, build up your capital, develop when you can and if you have a great idea, go for it.

Why have you stayed out of the spotlight while acquiring some quality premium names?

 I feel I have been very blessed with my success thus far. I know it sounds cliche'd but any success I've had to this point has been a gift from the Lord.

I try to stay out of the spotlight because I feel that I haven't accomplished anything on my own.  I've truly been blessed.

 I certainly made some great contacts early on, who really helped me a lot and now I feel like its time to help others be successful

Although I try not to share any intimate details of my life, I am always available for help or an opinion.

I can be reached at XF.com and I'm one of the few people that replies to every email (great or small) and will give an honest opinion if you have questions.

 Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts Bruce!

Great Interview from Aron, hope you enjoyed the thoughts from one of the up and coming domainer pros you can email him at the email address listed on the banner below, let him know I sent you.

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