Back To Blogging After Domainfest 2010
I have set a record for myself, I went Tues - Friday of this past week without getting on my laptop. I made attempts at starting to boot up but something else would come up and take my attention so I finally just said forget blogging and doing anything not related to DomainFest for the week.
That said, I am back! I spent most of the day catching up on emails and other tasks that were neglected this past week but I wanted to get a few quick notes and thoughts out about the conference, here we go, random and not prioritized except for the very first one:
1) First and foremost thanks to the dotME team, Predrag Lesic and Natasa Djukanovic were an absolute pleasure to meet and spend quite a bit of time with, with the focus on have on developing full businesses on .ME domains it was great to talk to them about the future plans of .ME and how we will continue to work together, thanks for dinner and a great time!
2) Sitting behind a keyboard it is easy to forget sometimes that there are people that are reading what you are writing that you DO NOT hear comments from or talk to on Facebook or Twitter, I was absolutely amazed at the number of people that indicated they read this blog and it inspires me to keep it up. It also gave me a real indication of the type of content they enjoy on this site compared to what they look for on other sites.
3) Morgan Linton is the king of hospitality, Morgan has become a good friend over the past year and but I came real close to booking a hotel instead of staying with him this time out but that would of ruined the whole domainer pad thing we had going with Chef Patrick.
4) One of the key benefits I got out of the whole thing was meeting with account representatives and managers of services that I use daily. It was great to meet Donny and David from Parked.com, which makes me really look forward to Domainer Mardi Gras (Donny, I am glad I had DomainFest to warm up) and also it was great to meet up with Ted Olson from NameMedia, many great things happening with Smartname.com.
5) Now, I did not touch a laptop much but Michael Berkens should get whatever award could be created for being the most dedicated and active blogger EVER. How this man can keep as many posts coming out at TheDomains.com while attending the conference is beyond me. And to top it off his wife Judy and he are the two nicest and fun people you could ever meet.
6) Having a one on one lunch with Ron Jackson from DNJournal.com is a great experience, it was a great to get Ron's thoughts on what is happening in the industry and where it is going.
7) Although the sessions were great, these shows are about networking. With few exceptions I managed to find time to meet and have discussions with everyone I had on my list to discuss either business with or just general meet and greet type conversations. What was really great was to get some time to talk to those people who I exchange emails with or have talked to on the phone over the past year.
Tony Hsieh from Zappos.com was great, anyone that is wanting to understand how to hire the right people and take care of customers should pay attention. I really do not typically get to excited about rah rah keynotes and theory based talks. Tony is the real deal and it was great to hear his refreshing take. I know most domainers are not trying to build companies with tons of employees, but as someone who has worked in bad examples of companies it was nice to hear thoughts on how to do it right as I am in the midst of it.
9) Sitting in the live auction was great, watching LoanCalculator.com go for 215K was awesome actually.
10) Having a great geo domain development discussion with Michael Castello at the Southern California domainer meetup was great, I had talked to David in the past but this was the first conversation I had with Michael. Good people always willing to help.
11) I was truly surprised to hear the support of most people on how I am going about the geo .ME thing, for the most part the comments were extremely positive (I was curious before I left for the trip if I should wear a flack jacket...).
12) Frank Schilling is a fun guy, witty, was nice to get a comment about my little collection of 25 state .MEs from him.
13) Has anyone found my socks????
14) As many have heard, after traveling for the past 10 years and never missing my wife's birthday I did manage to miss it this week, it was on Thursday, do I need to explain what party happened on Thursday and then explain how wonderful my wife actually is!
Back to real blogging tomorrow. There are a thousand items I could put in this post to summarize the week but I think everyone else has done a great job with the news and no need to keep rehashing it.
Heading to DomainFest 2010
Well, just about got all my task list checked off (translation: honey do list) before I leave tomorrow morning to head out to LA for DomainFest 2010. I am looking forward to the networking at the event. After spending a good portion of my time at trade events in my past life this is the first pure domaining trade event I will be attending.
There are some great sessions I look forward to at the event but I tend to enjoy meeting people and networking as much as learning at these type of things, although I have got to speak and meet on the phone many people I will likely spend sometime with there the real value is in the new relationships that get built.
I also look forward to meeting up with the Southern California Domainers Group as well, they have done a great job getting organized. Once you get a group all headed in the same direction it is amazing what energy can come from that and then everyone becomes more successful.
If you are going to be at the event and would like to meet at some point shoot me a message, would love to say thanks to anyone that happens to read my little blog.
DomainingTips.com Partners With Snapnames For New Years Showcase Auction
DomainingTips.com has partnered with Snapnames/Moniker for a "New Years Showcase" auction.
Their are some great names being auctioned off with many solid .COM, .NET, and .MX domains available with what I would consider low reserves on many.
A few of my favorites are Necklace.net and Armchair.net along with ComputerChair.com.
Take a look at the SnapNames for the New Years Showcase inventory.
Andrei is focused on launching a huge new project, and after going through a launch of my own over the last year I was happy to give his auction some attention to help him get his idea moving.
Happy Bidding!
A Little Bit Of Domaining Knowledge
Earlier this week I had a good friend come by to spending a few hours learning the ropes of searching for domains, where to back order drops, and the other things that I tell people before they even buy their first domain.
It was a great few hours, a few weeks back he had indicated interest in the industry so I focused him on Domaining.com and said read, research, go to DNJournal.com and learn some more and do NOT buy a domain until we talk again.
He did better than most I tell that too, he actually did not buy any domains but he did come in with a list of 25 he had picked out. He had defined what is domaining model would be (revenue from affiliates/adsense) and that he would get to know the ropes that way before going big and spending some real dollars on quality generics for investment rather than just ad revenues.
It was a breath of fresh air actually, he actually had spent quite a bit of time researching and actually did not buy a domain.
But, after I showed him some things he would not of found easily (proper way to use the Google Adwords keyword tool, etc) it opened up his eyes even more. Suddenly he saw the possibilities, since he was not reselling and was focused more on keyword targeted names with reasonable search volume the possibilities opened up even more for him.
He had me review his list, out of his 25 names he had picked out we were able to knock 20 down in seconds but then able to research the last 5 and picked two he would buy and develop.
I left the room for a bit and came back and his exact quote was "This is addicting!", I think we all agree. What he meant was sitting and searching through the GAKT tool can be entertaining, fun, and enlightening while you search for the hidden gem no one has found. I slowed him down and said get moving with what you have and then lets talk again and explained that he should not be like so many others and register hundreds of names before he even has any practical knowledge.
Well, hopefully he stays on the right path, a bit of guidance up front could go along way, he is a super bright guy and I would not be surprised if within the next year he doesn't find a way to turn it into real revenue.
A New Domainer In Training
Been away from the laptop most of the day but sitting here now with a good friend of mine who happens to run the local cycling club. We will be taking over their website but in talking to me and following Twitter he has become very interested in domaining and also monetizing domain names. He comes from a tech and business background combined which I think gives him a leg up.
He will be a "project" for me and I am going to work with him each step of the way, we have already went down the initial things not to do:
1) Trademarks
2) Collecting with no plan
3) Buying 100 names your first month
I will be pointing him to a few posts I have done in the past that outline places to go to research domaining before he buys his first name (follow domaining.com, DNjournal.com, DNForum.com, etc, etc). And I plan on showing him how to use Estibot.com, Valuate.com and others to get data on sites (not for pricing but for DATA). This ought to be a fun little adventure and I will keep you updated on his progress.
All that said, if someone were to come up to you today and ask for advice on getting started in domain INVESTING (not development but investing) what advice would you give them? What sites would you send them too?
Please comment with your thoughts.
What Is A Domainer?
On a post of mine the other day Adam asked an interesting question, basically what is a domainer?
I think there are many people that even buy and sell domains that would have a hard time defining it. And I think even outside of that many people start to confuse domaining with development because in many cases people like to do both, like myself.
My quick answer to the question was:
1 A domainer is someone who buys domain names with the intent to sell them at a profit.
2 A collector is a person who buys domain names with no plan on selling for a profit.
3 A developer is a person who buys domain names with an intent to build a business on them.
It is ok to mix and match #1 and #3 but never #2.
I think this is about as simple a definition as could be said and I actually think there are multiple levels to number 1 and number 2 which I will go a bit deeper into in a later post.
But I thought I would post Adams question here, leave a comment with your thoughts on what you think the definition of domainer is.
Domain Investment New To You – STOP AND READ THIS
In the past several months I have had many friends that have had interest in getting into domain investment. They had heard me talking about various things, whether it be a nice ROI on a domain flip or passive income from domain parking or Google Adsense. It was always interesting to watch peoples minds crank as they started grasping the "behind the scenes" work that happens to bring this little Internet thing to life. How SEO determines who they click on when doing a search. How you cannot just go buy any domain name and expect to have success.
I always enjoyed bringing new people into this industry but one thing I learned is that almost everyone makes the same mistakes. Here is a quick list of the most common mistakes I see from friends who have started dabbling:
1) Trademark Names - This is probably no surprise but it is usually the first thing that I end up explaining after already doing it once or twice.
2) Registering names because they sound cool - This is a pet peeve of mine that seems to continue even after some people know better. I cannot even start count how many emails I have received over the past few years from people sending a name to get my thoughts on it because it seems cool.
3) Registering hundreds of names in their first few months - Nuff said.
4) Leaving their names parked on their registrars default parking - Only person making money with this is the registrar you bought the name through, i.e. Godaddy in most cases.
5) Never listing their names with an aftermarket - I have recently had an experience with one person who had been a "domain investor" for 2 years but did not even know how to sign up for Sedo. Got that fixed but either way, 2 years and could not figure out why he had never had an offer for one.
6) Falling for the domain appraisal rip offs
7) NEVER SPENDING ANYTIME RESEARCHING THE INDUSTRY TO LEARN THE BASICS
This last one is probably my biggest concern. If you are spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to step into something new wouldn't you want to spend a month or so reading and learning about what it is you are stepping into. As much as domain investing is new to most people there are plenty of easy to find resources out there.
Two of the most recent people this came up with had been buying names and complaining they either a) were not getting offers or b) not getting any parking revenue. Now as far as offers, neither person had the names listed with any aftermarket site and as far as parking, if you have not put the time in to research what type of names bring revenue then it is likely that the names purchased will not bring revenue.
With both of these people, after a different but related question from each one I set a rule, I would not answer anymore domain related questions for a month or until they could prove to me they took the time to research and learn and they were not allowed to buy any more domains until they did research, I am sure they did not like me telling them how to spend their money or not to spend money but I was honestly trying to help. There is no quick answer or fast path to success in this domain game. There was a good post at Domainvestors.tv about this today as well.
Now, I did not want to send them off blindly so I gave them a few places to start with their learning, here they are in no particular order:
2) Namepros.com
3) DnForum.com
Now, the question is does it work. Does the tough love have an effect. Well without a doubt I can say in both cases it made all the difference in the world. Within a couple weeks of starting the research one of the people actually had hand registered a name that had dropped recently that is receiving on average a dollar a day in revenue from parking. In the other case the person has been able to register a few names of high quality that are prime for development and are minisites at this point. Both people now focus on domain investments that have keyword search potential and not on names that just "sound cool". Trademark names are no longer an issue and actually ROI on investment is.
I would say virtually all of us made mistakes when we first entered this little world, I want to make sure I help my friends sidestep those mistakes and have as much a fast path to success as possible.
Me in a Bido Chat Wednesday and Random Domaining Thoughts
I will be in guest speaker/chatter on Bido.com at Noon EST on Wed, I look forward to doing this and as a big fan of the Social Auction platform that Bido has created I appreciate the offer from Bido to do this. The timing on this for me is great since I see some opening in my schedule to finally start to work on moving some names, I plan on doing a mix of Bido and some offers here on the blog. Look for a very nice one to come up here on my blog in the near future.
Since I became more involved in the community I find myself less and less on the forums and more and more communicating with people through Facebook and Twitter (or actually with real voices on cellphones, who would of thought). But lately I have found myself naturally using Twitter for somethings while using Facebook for others. I will say I use Facebook more for just posting random things and more day to day personal things since I have more than just domainers that I communicate with there. It is the de facto way I keep tabs on people I have been friends or colleagues with for years but may live on other continents now or other such things, although funny enough I think I talk with my neighbors more on there than face to face, and I actually like my neighbors (Hi Paula and Kimball if you read this through the link on Facebook).
But I find that Twitter is more of a quick hit type use for me and more fun interactions with some business thrown in for good measure (although I do have 2 other Twitter accounts which are strictly business and used for promoting various things on developed sites). Long story short, theres a place for both, I could not choose one and not the other. It is funny though when you are communicating with the same person on both Facebook and Twitter at the same time, has social networking turned us into the ultimate multi-taskers?
Next random topic, I had someone send me an email a couple days ago asking about status on my AEIOU.com minisites and have I turned up any lately. Answer is that the revenue on those sites is far above the parking revenue I had been getting on the names but I have been extremely focused on the business at hand for Missouri.me and have stayed out of much of my daily domaining work until I get some initial items out of the way then I can start to allocate some time. I am big on prioritization of work based on return on that time. Although I will say many of my minisites are very solid earners, the revenue from one customer on Missouri.me far outweighs the work on a Minisite (do not take that as a downer on Minisites, just different businesses). I hope in the very near future to be turning up many again, just gotta get past the next few weeks.
On the minisite note, I have been pleasantly surprised by the payback on the Ebay affiliate ad sites I put up, the PHPBay plugin worked great and has paid for itself many times over the past few months. You might want to check out AEIOU.com since they have an Ebay Commerce package pre-built. If you do not have the time or web development skills to do it yourself it is likely more cost effective to have someone like them do it rather than putting all the pieces together yourself.
Oh, one last thing, thanks to Chef Patrick for giving a shout out in his news video a few weeks back when I made the leap to self employment. Its was a huge step and I appreciate the support from everyone in the domaining community. For sometime I had been talking about my love for Geo domains, well when you take something you believe in and go with it usually great things happen.
Biggest Decision of My Life – Thanks to Domaining
OK, so the title may be a bit dramatic but I truly feel the decision I made a few weeks back and executed this morning may be the most important decision I have made outside of children and marriage.
Today I walked away from a six figure income at a leading technology company to focus on starting my own business. After 15 years in the corporate world it was time to take that leap and believe in the possiblities of what I can create and what has been created over the past several months. I could tell for sometime that I had really lost the passion for next generation telecommunication networks (I had been involved in carrier class VoIP networks all the way back in 1996 at ATT) and my heart just was not in that piece of the communication world.
As many of you know I am a big fan of Geo domains and believe now is the time to act to create a business to take advantage of the shift to "hyperlocal" search that we all have seen as part of the domaining community. Back in December I had an idea for a business model that would allow for certain customer types to be targeted more effectively than they have in the past and along with some other services would create an online marketing solution for small businesses that could not be matched by other media and technology companies.
Initially I had planned to stay in the shadows a bit and let my business partner work the sales front and I would provide technology and marketing vision and drive the company from that side while I worked a rather demanding full time job. It would not be possible to provide much time to this endeavour and it was only fair to the company paying my paycheck that I gave them full effort on a daily , nightly, every minute of the day basis.
After the intial alpha launch of our site the intial reaction and success showed that we were onto something that would scale well and create a solid revenue stream for the company rather rapidly. But at the same time, once you see the possibilities you see that committing yourself fully could make the business much more than if you focused only part time.
So, after a few months of very deep soul searching I realized, do what I love. If you work on what you enjoy you will be successful, although there will be stress starting a business (Although strangely I feel none), at the end of the day the freedom and fullfillment you get from creating something and watching it grow is so much better than the daily corporate grind. We have only been operational for a short time but the experience of watching customers react in such a positive manner is that much better when it is something you created (with a team, and never forget that).
Thanks to the domaining community for giving me the ability to create such a business. The support and advice I have received from the domaining and development community has been great.
Lesson learned here, develop, develop, develop, find an idea that is interesting and works from the business side AND that you will enjoy and good things will happen. Find a hole and fill it, provide solid service at a fair price. People will buy.
It is a GREAT DAY!
Yahoo Search Results Matter For My Minisites
I very seldom focus on checking my Yahoo search results for my various minisites and developed domains and spend the majority of my time verifying Google search results. I have found that recently Yahoo has been showing certain minsites of mine in the first page of their listings causing a measurable increase in traffic and revenue.
One example of this is my site PensacolaBeach.me . Pensacola Beach is a popular tourist destination in the Florida panhandle. I knew the SEO for anything related to it would be tough up front but have had some success with certain targeted terms but did not expect to rise to the front page of Google (or Yahoo for that matter) for quite some time for the term Pensacola Beach.
I had noticed that mid last week the traffic had went up and that revenue from Google Adsense was also increasing. I took a look through my Statpress statistics and also my Awstats details and figured out that the term Pensacola Beach had increased in the common keywords driving traffic. Looking at referrers Yahoo was now referring a solid amount of traffic. I then went to Yahoo (really cannot remember the last time I used Yahoo for a search) and found that indeed I was in the first page of listings for the term Pensacola Beach.
This is good news for a few reasons, the obvious is that the SEO work that has been done for long tail terms has also paid off for the primary term I expected to wait longer for results on (I just started the development in January). Also, for you .ME fans, with the results I have had so far I cannot complain about developing this on the .ME extension (more details coming on .ME and SEO in the interview I am posting Monday).
I know that it comes to no surprise to anyone that Yahoo matters, but as much time as I spend focusing on Google search results and placement I really found the amount of revenue and traffic increase I received interesting and actually worth spending sometime researching in future developments. For those that fall into the same camp as I have in checking Google only, you may find it worth the time to spend a portion of your effort verifying placement in Yahoo results as well.
On a side note, I am now only 2 sites away from having all my minisites moved over to my HostGator account. After much pain at my previous hosting provider (outages, changed configurations, DNS issues) all while paying for a VPS I have successfully moved to a HostGator reseller account and have had better performance and the support has been great.
Yes, anything ad you see on this site for HostGator is an affiliate but when it comes to hosting its gotta be right. If you are looking for a good provider or just starting from scratch you really cannot go wrong with them.
