Input Required - Please Add Your Comments

I'm working in Malta at the moment. It's a great little island with very friendly people and of course, the weather is so much better than at home in England.

My wife and kids are coming to join me for a week tomorrow so I'm pretty excited to be seeing them again after a week without them. We'll then fly home together next weekend.

Whilst here, I've been brainstorming some business ideas with my partner, as is usual when we find ourselves away from the day to day distractions of life.

this week, during our lonely evenings, we got talking about the Internet, domains and general money making ideas and our discussions moved along to the kinds of things people will be doing when the global recession finally hits home and their jobs are made redundant, which I for one, fell is inevitable, at least in the UK.

Where does a person who's been in what they consider safe employment for years do when they suddenly find themselves out of work, either with or without a redundancy payment?

I've been in that position myself and I know how hopeless it feels.

We then discussed how, for a few Pounds, somebody can start a business from scratch online, but they would find doing the same thing almost impossible if they were to try opening a traditional bricks and mortar business.

So, we tried a few "what if" questions of our own and one struck home immediately.

We asked, "what if you owned an industrial unit of say, 1000 square feet. What could you do with it to make money"?

We then compared that to owning a domain name.

The domain is nothing without development and the industrial unit is nothing without something in it - it's simply some space, surrounded by walls and a roof.

After several hours, we found that between us, we own enough domains in niche markets to start just about any business we choose.

The same was not true of the industrial unit. In fact, all we could think of, was letting it out and letting someone else use it to make their living.

How short sighted is that?

So, my question to all readers of this blog is, quite simply, if you had an industrial unit that could be used for light manufacturing, storage or distribution, what would you do with it?

I think the answers might be interesting. It's only hypothetical, but as you'll discover, the thought process as to what you'd do with real estate is not that different to what you'd do with a good domain name.

Try it and let me know please.

Australia In November?

The lure of November's TRAFFIC show in Australia was almost irresistible to me. I came close to booking it, but pulled back because when I visit (hopefully in 2009), I want to take the family and have a proper family holiday.

I came close. Afterall, a trip to TRAFFIC is tax deductable and there aren't that many opportunities for domainers to get together in a great environment. And Australia does look fantastic.

Just look at the agenda:

Monday offers three pre-conference activities. Paintball starts the day as you battle brawn and wits to conquer your domain competitors/counter-parts. Zorbing offers the joy of pushing your friends down huge hills in a rubber ball! Or try your luck and see if you have what it takes to be the champion of the course for go-kart racing.

Tuesday night you can shoot down some cold beers and put a shrimp on the barbie during the beach barbecue. While you have a "feed" you can be entertained by fire twirling dancers and live animals - koalas, snakes and a wombat.

Wednesday night the festivities continue with a Gala Dinner featuring an open bar, a five star menu, web development stories, charity auction, and the highly regarded magician comedian Matt Hollywood! Prepare to be amazed by the wit, charm and magic of Australia's greatest illusionist.

Thursday, after a hard day of domain trading and premier auctions, throw on your board shorts and bikinis. Climb on board the fast catamaran and transfer to a private island on the Gold Coast Broadwater. The Fabulous.com Beach Party offers parasailing, helicopter joy flights, jet boat thrill rides, beach volleyball, swimming, Aboriginal dancers, a musical trio, cocktail bar, gourmet steaks & seafood, and ending with a fireworks display.

Friday wraps up the events with a morning start of surfing lessons taught by champion instructor Cheyne Horan, and an animal sanctuary in the afternoon showcasing most every form of Australian wildlife.

In amongst all of this, there will be a domainer show too!

Apparently, there's a small charge for some of the events, but in any event, no more bookings can be taken after 10 November.

If you're planning on attending TRAFFIC Down Under, the conference runs from 18 to 20 November, but you need to book now. More details appear at http://www.trafficdownunder.com/

My own plans for Australia are for next year, as I'll be celebrating a milestone birthday in July.

Maybe I'll drop in on a few of my friends. I wonder if the same entertainment schedule will be available... Perhaps I should schedule in a trip to Fabulous HQ too.

Experiments In Domain Selling

I've been experimenting with a select few of my domain names that I consider non-core to my business this weekend.

Though it's not the best time to sell domain names (when is?) at the moment, I felt compelled to do at least the bare minimum to get the domains noticed.

What most domainers do, is go onto various domain boards and promote the sale to other domainers.

Why would they do that? The prices are always subdued at most forums, simply because the audience is educated in the way of domains and they are not the ultimate end users. Therefore, they will always only pay what they consider to be a "trade" or "wholesale" price.

Everyone selling a domain name therefore, must do what they can to try and add some value to the name they are selling.

Of course, as a seller wishing to reach an end user, the most obvious thing to do would be to call, mail or email companies in the market place relevant to the domain name.

As a sales person with many years experience, the approach wouldn't be at all alien to me, but I don't have time for such things. I have a business to run.

Therefore, I intend to sell those few domain names I would let go in the most passive way possible.

That means throwing up a two or three page web site where potential buyers are likely to stop by.

Let's face it, as domainers, we have all typed in the occasional domain name to see where it goes and how it's being used.

Well business owners do this too. They will type in names, naively believing that they might just be able to catch one on a free registration. (Free as in available, not as in free financially).

Occasionally, they will find a site that says "For Sale", or perhaps is a PPC lander with a for sale notice on it. They might even be interested enough to enquire about the name.

But let's be truthful here.

Most such visitors won't have pockets full of cash that they are intending to splash out on a domain name.

Quite the opposite is true actually. Most are what car dealers would call, "tyre kickers" - people who would enquire about the price and then fall off their chairs at the suggestion that a domain name should be worth anything more than three figures - low end three figures if my experience with some are anything to go by.

So, I've started launching the occasional mini site designed to capture search engine traffic as well as type-ins.

The strategy might not work. I don't know.

But, I see a top search engine position as infinitely more valuable to the uninformed business owner, than a natural type-in - simply because most business owners don't understand the concept of the type-in name. I'm not 100% sure I do at times!

Therefore, I intend to get a few names well placed with unique content and then add a nice sales page for the domain name.

The prospect (I hope), finding my new domain in a well placed position in Google, will begin to understand the value in the domain name - and at the same time, be blind-sided by the good search engine position enough to get his wallet out.

I've added sales pages to the sites to try and help convince visitors that the names represent good value.

On some, I've put an asking price. Others I have not. The prospect's valuation might be higher than mine. His need for the domain greater perhaps.

As I said, it's an experiment. One that is also being tried by my friend Owen Frager, with the imminent launch of his site, GrandNames.com, where he's going a stage further and employing his superb SEO skills to promote names other than his own to a wider audience in a very similar fashion.

If I was going to recommend an SEO expert other than myself of course, Owen would be the only name on my list.

I bet at this stage, you're dying to know what names I'm promoting in this way?

Well, ok, here's one I did earlier and that's all I'm showing: this one id related to UK Tax Rebates - I think it's pretty good.

Invest in Yourself

Times are hard, banks and even countries are failing. Experts are appearing on news programmes explaining how everything has gone wrong in the world of finance.

Where were they when the banks were flouting sub-prime mortgages to people who couldn't ever afford the repayments?

Mortgages became the junk bonds of the 1990's.

Don't t hey ever learn?

Now our pensions are at risk, all because the banks couldn't follow the very rules they expect us to live by!

Are domains a safer bet?

To be honest, I don't know. Domain names can be lucrative, but I think it's what you put into the name that counts.

That means investing time and effort, which for a domainer is difficult, simply because a typical domainer has the attention span of a gnat. It's one project today, quite another tomorrow.

That means that in order to make any real monewy, the domainer needs to concentrate and focus on one or two names.

Not many of us can do that.

I do believe though, that domainers have a unique opportunity in being able to create something out of nothing.

The future of business is online. If not as an online business, then at least as a way of building an effective shop-front.

Now is the time to invest in your beliefs, as the rest of the world struggles and even fails. Now is the time to take those ideas that you've been having for the past few years and actually go out and BUILD something great on your names.

That's what I am trying to do. I'll be investing heavily in myself during the coming months. I hope to make my partners and I some serious money. Time will tell, but I can't trust anyone else, especially bankers, to do it for me.

BANs and Other Scripty Things

Driving traffic to your web site or domain is one of the more tricky and time-consuming elements of any online marketing strategy.

Many domainers and marketers jumped on the bandwagon of BANS - "Build a Niche Store", which essentially builds a site based on a particular niche, by scraping content from sites like eBay.

For example, say you owned the domain name "cheapcellphonebatteries.co.uk" (which as at the time of writing was unregistered and available), you might load up your BANS software and create a niche store selling nothing but cheap cell phone batteries.

In order to get your content, you'd simply enter the details of the products you wish to sell on your site and the software would automatically load and update all auctions relating to cell phone batteries on eBay - or any other auction site that you might use.

You'd then add in your Google Adsense, Yahoo or other pay per click ad code and upload your site.

The problem with this is simply that any template driven software system that takes the work out of webmastering is likely to leave a great big visible footprint that Google can spot a from mile away.

It seems that BANS bubble is about to burst. Google have indeed cottoned on to BANS software and in typical fashion, have decided that it's on the undesirable side of the fence, along with just about anything else that is capable of earning a webmaster or domainer revenue from little effort.

Ebay too seem to dislike the practice of domainers and webmasters from actually profiting from their affiliate programs and have been expiring affiliate sites since around August. See this thread on the Ebay forums.

As regular readers of my blog already know, I don't really participate in many affiliate programs and certainly steer clear of the cookie cutter web sites that will earn me money in my sleep.

I do have a Google Adsense account and it earns me a few extra dollars each month, though to be honest, the amounts have been declining for many months now, as I don't update the sites on which I promote the program that often.

BANS sites are actually a great way of promoting products, but like anything else, the key has to be using regularly updated, original content in addition to showing the products available on the auction sites.

It seems that you should also, where possible, amend the templates that come with the BANS software, including if you can, the names of css files.

Google and Ebay know what they are looking for, so your job as a webmaster, is to make sure that they don't fins it on your site.

Though I don't use them myself, I would do if I felt I had relevant domain names and enough time to devote into customisation of the scripts and preparation of original content.

However, my question as always when these software products come along is simply, "could I make more money by promoting big ticket services that I can provide myself or for people I know?"

The answer to date has always been a resounding "no".

I know that flies in the face of the typical domainer approach of earning a passive income, but to be honest, I like working a little for my money - it makes me feel fulfilled.