Are You Sitting On A Fortune?

It's every domainer's dream - you buy a name and within a few months, somebody comes along and offers you a small fortune for it because they have an idea to turn it into even more money.

That rarely happens though, at least not to a Mr Average like me.

That's why I tend to develop my names into web sites, usually something that will promote a specific service for which I can get paid loads of money, or I'll put up a site that offers free classified advertising, like on PrivateVilla.co.uk that I mentioned in my earlier post this morning.

Those sites will have Google ads and/or very relevant affiliate programs aimed at the particular audience I'm targeting for the site in question.

They don't earn a fortune (at least not in my case), but they more than pay their way.

Something Interesting Is Happening!

As you know from recent posts here, I've begun to get enquiries (some genuine, some not so) lately, from marketing companies.

The marketing companies are now actively seeking paid links on smaller web sites.

What's promoted me to write this, is an email I have just received from a company representing yet another household name company.

This time, they are asking me to help promote a price comparison engine by advertising on some of my sites in return for money.

They already advertise extensively on prime-time television, in the national press and on bill boards throughout the country, so it's interesting to see that they are now looking to advertise with the little guys too!

Of course, some big name companies have been doing this for years via affiliate networks, but the significant thing here is that they are now shifting towards a direct payment model.

This has to be great news for domainers, particularly those who develop their names.

What it means is that we're no longer reliant solely on Google or Yahoo, who tell us how much we can earn.

It means that we, as web site owners, can keep 100% of the money, instead of an unknown, mystery percentage offered by the search engines.

I don't know what the potential earnings could be, but I welcome the change and hope that more companies begin to realise that domainers really do have a lot to offer.

What I would love to see more of (and what I requested from the company who contacted me today) is white-label affiliate programs with a recurring commission payable on sales.

The adult sites have been doing that for years. In fact, this week, one was good enough to talk me through setting up a CNAME record on one of my sites, so that visitors clicking on their link stay on my site, even though what they are seeing, is actually on someone else's.

When mainstream companies introduce white label versions of their sites, we will really will be in the money.

Things Aren't Always What They Seem

I love reading the emails that make it past my rather aggressive Spam filter each morning.

This morning, I received one addressed to my free holiday property rental site PrivateVilla.co.uk that reads as follows:

Good day :) I'll cut the chase and be straight forward to save you time. I
am working on behalf of a leading mobile phone network provider looking to
promote and source traffic from reliable sites such as yours. I've noticed
that you are running several links in your website and was wondering if
you'd be interested in allowing us to sponsor a simple two-word text link
within your website.

I hope that you're interested and do feel free to contact me anytime
regarding your terms :)

Company Name
Marketing Manager

I did what I always do (being a curious sceptic) and clicked on the email address of the sender to find the domain it was sent from, as I like to know how companies involved in link marketing present themselves to their clients (if they are genuine of course).

In this case, there was no web site, just a root directory telling me that the cgi-bin was only created yesterday.

So I did a whois on the domain and found it was only registered in March. Not to a company, but to an individual.

This email, I assume then, is nothing more than a Spam operator looking to confirm email addresses. I guess that if I'd responded to the email, this particular email address would end up on everyone else's Spamming list and I'd have to start buying all of those enlargement patchs all over again!

Online, you can be anyone you want to be and hide behind a web site, claiming expertise that you don't have. There's a world of opportunity out there for the less than honest.

The great news is that there's a bigger world of opportunity out there for the honest, hard working individuals like you and I.

They Said The Media Picture Is Changing...

I was contacted today by a marketing company who emailed the following:

"While browsing the net, your web-site grabbed my attention and I think that
the content will be of great interest for the visitors of my client's site.

I believe that any car owner should consider arranging car insurance from a
reputable company and feel that your web-site would be a great resource.

My name is [name removed] and I am currently working on behalf of [a
household name company], who have just launched their new web-site [link
removed].

If you have the time, please take a look at the web-site's new
content and design - if you think it would be interesting for the visitors of
your web-site, please feel free to include my client's web-site in the list of
links on your site. If interested; you may use the details as below:

blah blah blah".

The interesting thing about this, is that he's offered no incentive. No affiliate program. Not even a paid insertion.

Because the company is a household name, he expects that I'll come running to place a link to his client's site and be grateful for the privilege!

The email is an embarrassment in terms of grammar and context. If I was this particular client (bearing in mind their standing), I would be embarrassed to have this clown working on my account.

I visited the marketing company's web site. It says, "The media picture is changing - are you changing too?"

Yes I am thank you, I am getting greedier and more selfish and I don't fall for arrogant idiots who think I would believe that they were just "browsing the net" and happened to come across my site.

Of course, what's really happened is that they've done what REAL Internet Marketers have known about and been doing for several years. Seeking good quality back links.

Pretty innovative approach huh?

I guess he just used software to go link hunting. I have some of that.

The only one I use and recommend now is Internet Business Promoter as it's head and shoulders above the rest and really does work. That's an affiliate link by the way, in case you wondered.

I could have plugged SEO Elite instead, as I own a copy of that too, but since it hasn't worked properly for several months and I can't a useful response to my support tickets, I decided to drop it in favour of something much better and reliable.

Domain Name Renewals Create Opportunity

Just as in the property market, the credit squeeze and signs of recession are creating some opportunities in the domain name market.

I can understand why.

I've just renewed a bunch of domain names this morning and have spent a fair bit of cash in doing so.

These renewals add up and that doesn't take into account any new domains I buy or acquire along the way.

Many people have jumped into the domain market, registering any old rubbish just to get started.

They have played at being a domainer for a couple or years (some more than that) and haven't the avalanche of cash coming in that they expected.

The offers to buy their domains haven't come in thick and fast either, despite their almost uncanny ability to spot the unique opportunity for regsistering a whole portfolio of names like, "this-domain-will-earn-me-a-fortune-because-one-day-everybody-will-want-it.com".

Well guess what?

These are the people who are feeling the squeeze.

In amongst the rubbish, there could be a few gems waiting to be plucked up in the drops.

Personally, I don't bother with the drops anymore. They've become too much of an auction and to be frank, there aren't that many niches that I am interested in these days.

However, for those very few areas I am interested in, I have certain domains on watch. Some of these names are .co.uk and others are .com.

The .co.uk ones make easy pickings for a predatory domainer.

The renewal and drop process is very predicatable, so all I do is watch the expiry dates. I then contact the owners and make them an offer.

In many cases, these people are so disappointed with domain names that they are pleased just to get an enquiry about their name.

Do I start off by asking if it's for sale?

Not a chance. I usually drop them a line (or call them if I can find their telephone number) and explain that their domain name is about to expire.

It's the response I get that determines whether I might be onto something good. You should try it.

Believe me, most won't suddenly go out and renew the name themselves and then stick it in an auction. Many be glad to sell a name that is in the redemption period without having to spend another penny on it. That's how short-sighted some people can be.

The fact remains that a lot of people simply can't afford the renewals at the moment and many have forgotten about the treasures they have lurking at the bottom of their sock drawer!

By the way, I'm not one of them!

Birds of a Feather...

It occurred to me yesterday that I no longer have any close friends in full time employment.

Even those neighbours I've got to know are all self employed.

My brother and sister also have their own businesses.

After 15 years of being in business myself, I could no longer imagine being employed. I think I could even be unemployable.

Something happens to a person who becomes self employed. You don't notice it, it just sort of gradually creeps in and takes over.

I think it happens because a self employed person has to make it in the world pretty much on their own. Independence has its rewards. It also creates its own problems.

Dropping friends along the way is lind of sad, but in many ways, inevitable.

It took me a long time to realise that not everybody has ambition. I thought everyone was pre-programmed to strive for the things they want - and then go out for more.

Being self employed makes you different.

I'm not saying it's good or bad, just different.

Looking at my circle of friends now, I can see it immediately.

If you're considering self employment for the first time, be prepared to wake up one day and realise that you're likely to change more than just your job. You'll be changing your entire life. Things cannot and will not be the same ever again once you make the jump.

Do it online and the changes are even more profound.

Imagine what your own friends will say when:

• You have no job to speak of
• You no longer have to commute
• You don't have to get up if you don't feel like it (That WON'T happen by the way)
• You can spend time with the kids or your wife or anyone else
• You can make money passively

Do you think your current friends and colleagues would understand that?

Would they be pleased for you?

Could you explain your new way of life to them in a way that you doesn't appear smug?

Be prepared to make some changes, because if you answered yes to any of those three questions, you're in for a shock.

GET RICH QUICK!

It's Monday morning and I've woken to find about half a dozen new product launch emails in my inbox, as usual, offering me the path to riches for between $29 and $197 per month.

I can see who's going to get rich offering monthly subscriptions!

How come they are all going to close their doors once they reach their magical subscription figure?

Does ANYONE really believe this nonsense.

Why would anyone turn customers away?

I've been looking into that actually and it's not as stupid or suicidal as you might initially think. The "closing the doors" pitch is there to make you join their mailing list when you go back in a week and see a new landing page saying that their membership doors are shut.

There's a vague promise that they might just reopen the doors to a select few later on...

Of course they will. They want our money.

As regular readers of this blog know, I don't buy into anything anymore. If the gurus and marketers want to give me their stuff for free, I'll try it and I'll review it honestly, with complete income figures for all to see.

Funnily enough, ever since I posted my offer here over a year ago, not one of these marketers has had the balls to take me up on it.

Why would they? There are millions of paying suckers out there eager to snap up just about every get rich quick offer they find.

These same people would, years ago, have the ones scouring the pages of the Sunday papers and various magazines looking for the same thing.

Here's a trick to defuse the undoubtedly good sales copy on the various landing pages. Scroll straight to the bottom and click on the link that says "earnings disclaimer". You'll see the real value of what you're about to buy.

Here's One I Prepared Earlier...

Once upon a time on the Internet, it was suggested by a number of marketing guru's that in order to make a quick few thousand Dollars, all you had to do was write about what you know and sell that information as an eBook - using software that they produced of course.

Today, I redicovered an old site of mine that carries one of earlier works - an eBook I wrote about finding a new job.

As I have a strong recruitment and sales background, I felt that I knew my subject better than most and therefore that people would be interested in the subject.

Maybe if I'd have promoted it more, then I could have sold it online.

The problem was that I didn't think people would buy it and so I decided to give it away free and place occasional affiliate links inside the text, just as many Internet Marketers do now.

I didn't earn a penny from my efforts, despite the fact that the eBook was downloaded many times.

Sometimes, just a "thank you" is nice - but sadly, in the online world, even those are few and far between. Rarer than hens teeth in fact.

I'm posting this as a warning for those readers who might feel the need to succumb to the eBook software salesman's pitch.

Grab yourself a free copy of one of my very first forays into the extremely profitable, think yourself rich world of eBook publishing at http://www.job-hunting-tips.com/jobhuntingtips.exe

Just don't reproduce it anywhere - a lot of effort goes into producing unique content!

This is a .exe file that opens the eBook on your pc when you click it - it's perfectly safe and doesn't plant anything nasty on your computer.

Sometimes, it's interesting to revist your older work. I am almost embarrassed by the quality of this thing, but the content is ok and the idea was a good one at the time.

Maybe you just have to be a better writer to strike it rich online. Or perhaps if I'd marketed it more...

Yes, eBooks are the stuff dreams are made from. I even bought the software to make a nice eBook cover. The rubbish I've bought along my journey - I hope you're learning from my many mistakes!

It was efforts like this that convinced me that the only way I was ever going to succeed online was to ignore the experts and just go along doing my own thing - selling high value services that have little cost of fulfilment, just like an eBook, but better.

Domain Name Appraisals

Have you ever triedto sell a domain name?

Some domain name reseller services insist that the seller gets an appraisal or valuation of their domain name before they will list it for sale.

I first wrote about this subject several years ago, but it seems that some people still don't learn. I know because I get loads of emails from people asking me for my valuation of a domain name.

So, let me say it loud and clear here:

There is no accurate domain name valuation service available anywhere at any price.

The only valuation you can rely on is your own, along with that of a purchaser - when you both agree a price and neither of you feels any remorse, then you've reached the right price at that moment in time.

So what if your buyer goes on to develop the name into something worthwhile and more valuable, making a profit on the deal later on? Sorry, but that's what buying and selling is about.

Consider for a moment that you own a piece of land that's empty. You know that it would be worth a lot more with a property on it, but you can't afford to develop it and you don't have the skills and experience to do it yourself.

In such a case, you'd get what's called, "land value". Someone else will take the risk and build on it, making their profit on their own efforts - nothing to do with you of course.

Another situation with the same land might be that the buyer knows he'll be able to sell it to somebody else to build on, somebody he knows is looking for land in the area. Somebody you don't know.

In such circumstances, you might well feel disappointed and ripped off, even though you haven't been.

The same is true of a domain sale.

Undeveloped, it's just a name and is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it at that time. Tomorrow, you might get a better price. Who knows?

Any value you put on it is purely subjective. If someone agrees to pay your price, fine, but don't fall into the trap of paying somebody else for what can only ever be an opinion, as opinions are the cheapest products on earth. Everyone has them!

With land and property, you can set a valuation, since there is always a basis for comparison.

The same is not true of a domain name since no two names are the same and each will appeal to a different type of end user ultimately.

So, do yourself a favour and never succumb to the snake oil salesmen calling themselves domain name appraisers or valuers.

Newsgroups Revisited

A post on a message board reminded to today of my early days online. It mentioned newsgroups (Usenet), which were the Internet's earliest message boards, a true revolution in their day, but these days little more than Spam based rubbish.

At the time, I was running an IT Recruitment business with brother. That year, must have been 1993 or 1994, we recruited a graduate who was an extremely keen advocate of all things IT.

As we only had a Packard Bell PC purchased on my maxed out credit card at the time, the idea that it could be used to generate fees was more than a little absurd to us.

However, our new graduate (his name is Frank Morris - thanks Frank!), one day suggested that we go online to look for new candidates and to post jobs.

We had no idea what he meant, but trusting his judgement, we invested around £120 on a modem and we bought a subscription to a service called win-uk.net, which we needed to get us online.

The first step was to subscribe to the two previously mentioned news groups.

I remember my brother and I saying, "How does this work Frank? Where do the bloody jobs go once we press send"?

We knew how faxes worked - and they hadn't been invented that long ago. But to post something where there was no paper... How weird was that?

Anyway, we had a quick look at some of the jobs that were being posted on uk.jobs.offered. There weren't many, but I was certain I could write better ones.

The key to a good (or bad) ad is the headline, so we came up with the highly original, "A BAG FULL OF IT JOBS"

Immediately and without warning, nothing happened.

It was 5p.m. and so we went home.

The next morning, I fired up our email account and sat there waiting for our dial-up modem to spring into action and do whatever it was supposed to do.

Message after message came in - they told us to stop shouting. They told us to post only one job at a time. They asked who the hell we thought we were.

And then a strange thing happened.

CV's started arriving. Not just one or two, but hundreds of the things. Applications came in by the bucket load. These were IT people after all. The better ones were looking for new jobs online at a time when most people didn't know what online was!

Suddenly we had access to one of the richest sources of candidates that we'd ever seen. Not only that, but we discovered that people were posting their profiles on uk.jobs.wanted - so we just subscribed and got notified of every new candidate that came along.

Our world changed overnight. The local competition took a full 12-18 months to cotton on.

That single advertisement for a bag full of IT jobs, netted us around £40,000. I've yet to make a better headline - and being honest it probably wasn't even my headline.

Then we got a call one from a guy called Robbie Cowling. He wanted to show us a new service. A web site. We batted his calls away at the time.

Who needed web sites when you could fill jobs from a newsgroup.

Anyway, we didn't know what a web site was at that time.

Robbie's business was (and still is) called jobserve.com - eventually we joined and it did make us a lot of money. It made Robbie a fortune - and all from a portakabin at the bottom of his garden. I remember having to FAX our jobs to his staff so they could then enter them online each night...

How times have changed. I could put up a fully featured job site with everything that jobserve has got in less than a day now - but I could never replicate that success.

This post is dedicated to Frank and Robbie - Frank for introducing me to the net and planting a seed and to Robbie for showing me what can be if you just grasp the nettle and go for it.

If only I could turn back the clock a little...

The £250,000 Click!

Today, I finalised my largest ever contract from a single Internet enquiry. The initial value for supplying services is £250,000.

I have to do some work, as the contract is to conduct a few hundred asbestos surveys, but it's in a lovely hot country, where I can take my wife and kids for holidays at the same time.

Remember, with services, there is no product and very little overhead.

I can also do the work at any time I please, so it really is a wonderful contract to have secured.

To think, I only do that work to get me out of the house and to keep me sociable!

It all came from a click on one of my web sites and ours was the only company asked to quote by this particular organisation.

This goes back to copywriting and targeting the words precisely for a particular audience.

Still I see too many companies concentrating too hard in the wrong areas.

Instead of gently building interest and trust, they simply try and tell their visitors how great they are. Their web sites are online brochures. Brochures don't sell. Can't sell.

My approach has been to give away information via an autoresponder. In this case, I supplied sample surveys, information I wrote myself about the asbestos regulations and what's invoved in conducting the survey.

It's amazing to me how many people in business fail to explain what they physically do for their clients. I have yet to find another surveying firm's web site that actually tell people what happens when they are onsite. As that's the services that's being paid for, it's a pretty obvious thing to include.

That information is sent by email over the course of a few days and in that time, the person charged with gathering the information is usually sold on the service.

Bear in mind though, that the person tasked with getting the information isn't always the buyer.

That's why I try to empower that person with more information that they could possibly need. They then do the pre-selling for me so that all I have to do is agree terms.

The last email in the sequence usually asks what they thought of the information and if there are any other questions they need answering.

You know you have got an autoresponder set up correctly when people send replies!

If you've ever bought anything online from one of the myriad of gurus (I wonder if the collective term could be called a gaggle of gurus), or joined their mailing lists, they usually just tell you how great they are and push their back-end products. Relentlessly.

I've never liked that approach so I do it differently.

Instead of writing about what I (or the company) can do for them, I simply explain what needs doing and why. It's all written in a completely independent and objective style that doesn't even talk about what we can do for them until perhaps the very last paragraph.

Maybe that's just a British sales approach. Sure, I ask for the order and I ask often, but not in an "in-your-face" type of way.

If I'm ever affected by the recession that's coming, maybe I'll trn my hand to consulting or copywriting for services businesses - the market must be enormous.

At Last! Parking For Adult Names

Not many domain blogs mention the "Adult" world, even though many domainers started off making their money with adult oriented names.

In the earlier days of the Internet, it was possible to get a great adult name, point it fdirectly to an adult site and watch the money come in from sales commissions.

But, as more adult sponsors entered the market, things got ugly. It was hard to know the good from the bad and there was a lot of distrust.

With normal mainstream domains, there are many ways to earn from your doains - anything from pay per click parking, pay per click development (Adsense) and full blown development of sites.

In adult, the choices are more limited. Full development is impossible without expensive content and good quality, honest adult sponsors are harder to find.

Google and most other ppc providers won't take on adult names. It's strange really, because as an advertiser on Google, you could actually buy adult keywords - and they're not cheap.

So, it was good to see the launch this week of Maxxximized.com, a pay per click program designed especially for adult names.

Adult isn't a dirty word online, it's a reality. People are looking for adult content and if you have a name that generates clicks, the Maxxximized.com program pays 90% of revenues.

Press Release Rejected On Basis That It's Rubbish

I tried an online service this week.

The promise was good - the company concerned would write and distribute a professional press release for about £200.

Apparently they use professional journalists to write the release, because of course, they know what editors are looking for.

By implication, that means that the customer gets a snappy, easy to read release that will hit the desk of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of editors in industry specific publications. A release that is so good, that editors will find it irresistible.

If only.

I got the draft release back yesterday and was so disappointed, I told them I'd write it myself and leave the distribution to them.

Honestly, I really should have known better than to trust someone else to write something that I consider important to the business.

I'm not the only one though. One of my sites, www.cover-letter.co.uk attracts quite a bit of traffic. Surprising amounts really.

One day I received an enquiry from somebody wanting a cover letter for a new job. That person was an English teacher applying for a position with a private school.

You'd think with her English degree and several years experience that she'd have been able to handle that. I don't have a degree. Nothing even close. They weren't necessary to a 16 year old in 1976 - not when there jobs to be had and women to chase!

Anyway, at least what I delivered worked. She got the interview.

With the PR company, I wrote my own release and will just leave the distribution to them.

I could have used PRWeb for less money, but I needed a distribution source in the UK. I hope I picked the right one. Can't help but worry somehow. First impressions and all that...

Original Content

How hard is it to write original content?

Personally, I find it pretty easy. I just think and type as I go, usually without any preparation and the words appear magically in my head.

I then read back what I have written, probably rearrange one or two sentences and upload the new content to my server.

Content is the one thing that will separate your web site from anybody elses. It's also the main component needed to get search engines to visit your site and determine how important it might be to their own users.

The more important a search engine views your site for a particular subject, the further up the rankings you will go.

Given that most webmasters want people to visit their sites and actually read what information they post to their sites, how come so many refuse to produce their own content?

Many webmasters these days simply want to create sites in order to generate income from pay per click affiliate programs like Google Adsense.

In these cases, where volume of pages is the order of the day, the webmasters think that it simply isn't worth their time to create their content, so they do one of two things:

1. They visit article sites to use other people's content or
2. They outsource article writing to places like India and let someone else do the work

These strategies are ok on the surface and let's face it, if you need 100 articles in a hurry, it's quicker than doing them all yourself.

The problem is of course, that the same content is being used elsewhere on other sites, yes, even when you subcontract the writing.

The outsourced writers can do the work cheaply because they are simply grabbing articles themselves and re-hashing the words, but inevitably, they will leave in a percentage of the original content, which could get your sites penalised by the search engines.

If you have hundreds of site, simply because you wanted to do something with your domain portfolio, you can get away with this approach, as one site amongst hundreds probably doesn't matter a great deal.

When you are building a site that matters though, you should never, ever use articles from article sites and you should also never outsource the writing.

In order to be successful, a web site needs to have some character and that chracter can shine through in your writing. The way you make your offer to your visitors, the sales call to action, the way you communicate - it is vital if you are to create any trust and get people to buy.

Throw up regurgitated content and your visitors will spot that you're a phoney.

I write all of my own content these days. Having experimented with articles from article site, I know they are not for me. (Though I'll write for article sites - that's different)!

It is time consuming to write something useful and interesting, that's probably why most blogs fail - the owners lose interest and can't think of anything to write.

I've been writing content for a long time, because it comes naturally to me.

Some examples?

Well, recently I've been having to learn some new skills to expand the surveying practice. This is in the area of Energy Performance Assessments for commercial buildings - so not the most interesting subject in the world.

So, I've been taking elements of it and writing about it - the bits I know about. I need to educate my clients.

Here are a couple of examples for you, just to show you what I mean. Two sites, same subject matter, different words!

Energy Performance Assessment For Commercial Buildings 1

Energy Performance Assessment For Commercial Buildings 2

Those individuals whop know a bit about SEO will know exactly why these two links are on this post and why they are worded the way they are. It's all about deep linking.

You see, a blog, whilst imparting useful information, should also serve to help the writer. What you've just witnessed is a top SEO trick and it's one that I hope you'll digest and use to your advantage - but use your own content and don't tell anyone who might be a commercial energy assessor!