Need a personal bodyguard [.com]?

Looking through my recruitment and employment domains again this evening, I stumbled upon a pair of names I bought in the after market a few years back - www.personalbodyguard.com and www.personalbodyguards.com.

It was two years ago since I last looked at development, my thoughts at the time beiong to let my son develop them into a temporary recruitment agency in the security business, supplying contract bodyguards.

I remember now what stopped me. It was a requirement to have to register with the Security Industry Association, something that I thought about briefly until another brilliant idea came along I suppose.

I might revisit this one, because we're living in a world governed by fear - and nothing sells like fear!

And Today's Domain Project Is...

Back to my portfolio cleaning exercise, this morning's little sales page project was www.dental-insurance.co.uk, a nice generic, hyphenated key word domain name with an instantly apparent market.

Some people criticise hyphenated names, but I must say that mine have always performed very well and I don't have many regrets about buying them.

My domain selling exercise with these sales pages hasn't been too fruitful yet, but I am still convinced that they will be, it just requires a little patience, since it relies on the right type of buyer coming along - and the only type of buyer I am interested in talking to is an end-user.

The EBay experiment I tried last month was OK, but not outstanding. I guess I proved that I can sell names on EBay, but that's about all. I don't think I necessarily got my "best price" there, but was lucky to have a couple of interested buyers.

Yesterday's domain sale came from a whois search, which in my opinion, is the best type of buyer - they seek you out because they want the name.

The reason I am now posting up mini sites to sell certain domain names is that I want to make it easy for an interested party to know that the name is available. I'm also putting prices on some of them, as I don't want to waste any one's time and I don't want them to waste mine with low-ball offers.

Also, putting up mini sales sites like this, allows me to place a few Adsense ads that bring in a few extra pennies along the way.

I guess I could do that with parking pages too, since most have a "for sale" option, but of course, you aren't allowed to encourage traffic to a parked domain.

... and domain names are still in demand

Well what a day. Not only did I receive a business enquiry, but also a domain enquiry, resulting in a sale of a name in the £x,xxx range.

All in all a great start to the new year and I never even left the house.

The Internet Is Working Again

When you run a commercial web site, and by that I mean with the purpose of selling services to businesses, a strange thing happens at the end of November. The enquiries tend to slow down and stop completely by the end of the first week in December.

The business world doesn't stop for Christmas of course, but individual managers do delay their purchasing decisions until after the festive seasons.

I've never really understood why this should be, because if you're employed to do a job, you should be doing it right up until the last minute of the last day in my opinion, but being a bit of a workaholic, I would say that.

Anyway, the good news is that the festive season is officially over for me, after receiving my first email enquiriy for an asbestos survey at 9:31 this morning and closing the sale at 9:52.

We don't officially restart until next Monday, in common with many businesses, but as I get my emails at home, I can make it look as though we're always working and that impresses clients. I hust stole a weekend advantage from the competition, if there was any.

The patience of waiting for the downturn of December to end is usually rewarded by larger visitor numbers in January.

Looking at the historical stats for IT-Recruiter.com earlier this week, prior to re-developing it into a recruitment service I can offer myself, showed me that January is the biggest month for visitors, generating around 50 visitors per day on average throughout the month.

This might not seem like much, but I don't aim for volume. I aim for relevance.

Businesses are doing the pre-sales research on the net. Are you capturing their interest, or are you giving it away to PPC?

Valuing Your Skills In A Recession

What are you going to do to make money in 2009, when the general consensus is that economic situation we find ourselves in is supposedly going to get worse before it gets better?

Have you given that any thought?

I have. As you've seen this week, I've been busy building new sites related to providing a recruitment service.

If they work in attracting clients as I fully expect them to, I will be charging big fees, just as I do with my surveying work.

The same will be true of all the other sites I'll be building, because there is no point at all in working for nothing.

Yet, that's exactly what many people do when they build sites based on Adsense or park average to crap domain names with parking companies.

One of the reasons (maybe even the main reason) that I haven't looked for clients to build web sites for is that I didn't really know how to charge for the service.

You see, I never set out to be a web designer and I don't claim to have any great skills in that area. (But I do know where I can buy them if necessary).

But people who want a web site, don't see beyond design.

They don't consider for example, the search engine optimisation work that's required to deliver targeted visitors.

It can be quite a lot of work.

Then you have to consider what to do when a visitor arrives at your site.

When people visit the sites I make, I am looking for them to take action - either to call me, fill in a form or request some information.

They often do and the reason us because my copy sells.

I've always defined myself as being an Internet Marketer, but I suppose when you look closely, my web sites are just great big advertisements, since their ultimate goal is to sell something. I have actually become a copy writer by default.

In order to build a site for somebody else, I have to not only design it (or get it designed) and build it (or get it built), but I have to look closely at the business too.

I have to understand the sales cycle, how the business operates, what the unique selling points are etc.

It's only then that I can begin to understand their target customer base and get a feelng for how to attract them.

Then I have to know how to sell to them from a web page and then put together the copy that will do that effectively.

All of this involves time and work.

This week I built a few recruitment sites. It took me no time at all.

The reason for that is that I'd already spent 20 years in the industry, so the words came easily and I knew exactly the audience I was going after.

But what if somebody came to me and wanted me to build them a site for their business that could attract relevant visitors and generate new clients. What would I charge?

Well, until recently, I've said no to most requests to do this, unless I've known the individuals well. In those cases, I've either done them free, or have taken a commission on each sale.

This year might see me accepting one or two third party assignments, if they're interesting enough.

I'll charge my minimum day rate of £1000 and I think that's a bargain basement price. Here's why;

We are in a recession and companies want more sales, particularly sales with a low cost of sale overhead, which is most achievable online.

I don't know of many people offering web sites who also have strong business knowledge & experience, SEO skills, copy writing abilities coupled with sales closing ability.

That profile is rare and has to be charged at a premium rate.

Contrary to popular belief, a recession is not a time to cut prices, it's a time to recognise value and understand the type of client you are prepared to work with.

In my case, those clients are rarer than me. I am very selective and don't expect to be doing much web based work for others this year.

My Last Site Of 2008

Another hour's hard work on New Years Eve, in between cooking for tonight's NYE get together with a few friends has resulted in another recruitment name from my portfolio being put to good use: www.professionalrecruiter.co.uk - my aim with producing a number of sites is to attract different types of client.

People do shop around online, but in my experience, company buyers tend to stick with the first site that they like.

Who says men can't multi-task?

Bye Bye 2008 - My Failures, Successes and Hopes

New Year's Eve. I was looking back over the successes and failures of 2008 this morning and am delighted to say that there were far more positives than negatives.

Where I did fail was right at the start of the year - I said I'd launch 3 new sites. They kind of launched, but they weren't right.

One of the three that was more right than wrong is http://www.windowquote.co.uk/ - I've yet to finish it, but I love the concept of it and now just need to re-do the content parts that remain from another incarnation of the site.

Then I'll formally launch it.

The disappointments were http://www.commercial-property.co.uk/ - I just can't get Drupal to work properly. The site needs redoing, simplifying and making so that it will work with those property uploading services that estate agents use to save them having duplicate effort by entering the same information into multiple sites.

I really should have thought of that! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

http://www.tributeact.com/ - that's another Drupal site. I really wanted that one to work - it's only a hobby site, but more money will be spent on the development. I think I'll use DZOIC.com's Handshakes product to do something special sometime in the new year. I really don't get along with Drupal.

The successes were all to do with my asbestos and surveying sites. They just went from strength to strength, culminating in the million dollar click (well, it was half a million, but the contract is being extended).

That was a nice one to land and resulted in several trips to Malta which is a truly wonderful place to work. It's not like work at all.

The end of the year, driven by a failing economy and a desire to create additional income streams has seen my working furiously this week to build some new recruitment sites from which I offer recruitment services.

As I've mentioned on an earlier entry, it came from a realisation that I was wasting 20+ years experience of this industry. I'm still best recruiter I've ever met, so it seemed appropriate to jump back in - albeit in a rather passive, web-oriented way.

I now have 5 recruitment sites up and running, the latest being http://www.short-list.com/ that offers a cut-down version of a recruitment service, but still one that I feel offers the client value for money and something that's required in the industry.

I hope so anyway!

The thing about doing things online is that everyone can see what you're up to. They can see your failures and pick apart your business model. Maybe refine it, make it better.

I don't mind that at all. I'll put myself out there and let people criticise because most of them don't really understand what it's all about.

As I have said previously, it's not always about the money. It's just waking up, getting a call and being able to think, "Wow, this s**t actually works"!

It's a brilliant feeling to get a call from one of your web sites. When you think about it, we're all just advertisers - except on an even playing field with the big boys. We just have to out-smart them in order to keep the dollars / pounds etc on our side of the table.

What could be more fun really?

By the way, if you are based in the US and would like to do something similar to what I'm doing with my recruitment names, I have US-Recruiter.com available for just $500.

If you want it and have a Paypal account and idealy, an account with Fabulous.com, please contact me using the contact form .

Musings on 2008

The end of 2008 is nigh and big name banks and business are falling apart around our ears.

This week alone has seen the collapse of three national retail chains in the UK and so the face of the High Street looks set to change forever.

Soon we'll be dealing with just two or three mega retailers. It's our own fault, we've let the likes of Tesco, Sainsburys and Asda (Walmart in the US) come in and wipe out all of the independent traders in exchange for a few cheap items these giants use as loss-leaders.

My work in building and asbestos surveying gives me a different insight to most, because I only work with commercial property portfolios and more often than not, it's owned by pension and investment funds.

The knock-on effect of these large retailers going under is that our pension funds will suffer further as the High Street empties of the big names and the large out of town retail parks become waste lands containing nothing but large empty sheds.

No rent for the landlord means a further fall in property prices and that means a drop in return for the investors.

The investment companies are ok though, since they took money up-front in sky-high fees right at the start of the investment cycle.

I do wonder about how this will all end and can't help but look at the opportunities it might create.

As our choices of where to shop diminish, is there more opportunity created for the specialist retailer? Could that retailer's niche be replicated online?

I think in certain cases it can and already is. But we must all be aware of the threat from the supermarkets, the very organisations who have already stolen our slower pace of life and killed communites as they've decimated our High Streets.

We're fast moving towards doing everything online. The supermarkets aren't ignorant to this fact and have been gearing up for it for years.

Their own sites contain everything from every day groceries to electrical and gardening items. Some are even offering estate agency services and insurance policies. How long before they try to become our legal advisiors, or our doctors?

Nobody is safe from the onslaught.

Except those who wish to take responsibility for their own futures.

The Internet offers so many opportunities that it would be difficult for any organisation to take a market leading position in everything.

Specialist niche markets in either services or physical goods is, in my opinion, the safest way to ensure that you can make a sustainable living online.

I say sustainable because I have seen so many shifts in the online world since I started way back in the 1990's that many people who stated out doing ok, suddenly found that their business models didn't work any more. There were too many unseen threats.

One of the businesses I was involved in for a few years suffered continuous attacks from legislators in the US for example. It was an adult oriented site (not pornographic though) that relied on membership subscriptions paid online by credit card.

On several occasions, we had to change card processors because of stricter regulation. You can only do that so many times because each time you do it, you lose a chunk of your customers forever.

On another occasion, I was selling an eBook I wrote about search engine optimisation. I wasn't a massive seller, but it did ok. The credit card processor was again US based and one day, I received an email informing me that in order to get my money from them, I'd have to enter into a class action, which presumably, is still going on. I lost every penny that the eBook made, since I had never drawn it down.

But, just as there are pitfalls in the online world, I do believe that there are many more opportunities. It's simply a case of recognising them when they come along.

It's scary, but I'm quite looking forward to 2009 and I wish you all the best for the new year too - maybe it won't be as tough as long as we keep looking forward and avoid the doom and gloom merchants.

Remember, the begative is always stronger than the positive, so in 2009, get rid of your negative friends.

Another Distraction Another Dollar

I woke up early this morning with an idea in my head.

Though I've often discussed how I got started in doing the stuff I do, I've never really put anything together that explains everything and shows how it can be done.

I've wanted to, but I suppose I've had a nagging doubt that people wouldn't be that interested. After all, who am I?

Then I began thinking about some of the eBooks and courses I've read and in all honesty, I don't think I have ever seen what I do described anywhere else.

I do follow a bit of a unique and lonely path. I think others are now coming to the same realisation that they need to keep more of the money that's on the table too. So maybe the time is right.

Try explaining to people that you buy domain names, build web sites based on other people's businesses that you know little about, generate traffic and then sell deals back to them - it's not easy to describe at a party!

Come to think of it, it sounds a bit pie in the sky. And that is exactly what somebody said to me once, when I first started out. Oh how I laughed, though I was squirming on the inside and full of self-doubt. I never could take criticism.

But, that's what I do and it's a different development route to the one most people take, so this morning I started work on my latest project, a publication that explains what I do, how I go about it and how it all culminated this year in a Million Dollar Click.

Not many people have had one of them I suspect.

As I was writing, I began to see that such a publication can't simply explain how I did it, it also has to contain elements of how the reader can do it too.

The idea is growing. I knocked out 16 pages in a couple of hours this morning and I've barely started.

If I can maintain my interest, maybe I'll even get round to finishing it and launching it on an unsuspecting public.

Alternatively, it might never see the light of day.

Appraisals, valuations and other such quack stuff

The domain blogs seem full of posts about valuations lately and I'm pleased to say that there's quite a lot of optimism about, in amongst the normal doom and gloom.

For years I have been advising people to steer clear of domain valuation services and I am going to repeat my advice now, while the subject seems to be gaining some momentum.

Any domain valuation is only an opinion.

There is no such thing as an accurate domain name valuation and I know of no domain appraisal service that is worth paying for.

Domains are not governed by the same supply and demand rules as say real estate is, because each and every domain name is unique.

The potential use for each every domain name is also unique. Not only that, but it's unique to both the seller and the buyer in that the original registrant might have a completely different view to it's potential use than the eventual buyer.

Therefore, it is up to each domainer to set their own value and hope that it can be achieved in the resale market.

Higher values can only be achieved by attracting end users. Domainers don't usually pay big money for domain names. They expect to pay less because they think they know the market better.

They don't actually know the market better at all, they just think that because they own a portfolio of their own that it makes them a trade buyer.

If I were to approach anyone with a view to buying a premium, one word domain name and explained that I am a domainer and a trade buyer, do you think that would make the seller offer me a discount?

Would the seller be happy to sell to me at a much lower price just because I know a little about the industry?

I doubt it. I certainly wouldn't if I were selling.

I set my own valuations on my own domains (and only on my own domains).

Sometimes, that might be a high valuation based on what I believe the domain could generate in income and sometimes, I'll value a name low based on whether I would want to operate in that business niche or not.

This week when I sold a batch of names, I sold them for just £60 each. It won't set the world on fire, but the alternative was to let them expire, since I was not going to renew them. So, my calculation was simple. Cost or renewal against immediate sale and releasing some capital.

On the other hand, I was approached about a one word domain name. I placed a figure of £10-£15,000 on it. Not because I feel it's worth that for a name, but because I know what it's capable of generating in the right hands.

The buyer didn't agree with my valuation (do they ever?) and walked away. However, he did discuss our conversation with others in his industry, which prompted a couple of calls from two of his competitors!

A deal still isn't done and probably won't be, but I have just lit the blue touch paper as far as domain names in that particular industry is concerned and people are talking about it - in particular, my one word domain name.

It'll be the talk over dinner tables for a few days or weeks, how this bloke in Birmingham owns a domain name he's doing nothing at all with, but is asking for 15 grand (They'll forget there's a range from 10-15).

Somebody, during one of these discussions, might think that there's an opportunity at £10-15K, whilst all his cheap skate competitors are snoozing. Such a purchase might make him look like a big shot.

Maybe he'll come and offer a lower figure like £5K - and you know what? He'd get the deal and his friends would think he'd stumped up £15K - and that would make him a bigger player overnight.

So you see, valuations mean nothing. They never will.

Cash is the only true valuation and if somebody isn't prepared to stump up the cash, then the valuation is meaningless.

Remember though, that domaining isn't really about buying names for peanuts and selling them for a fortune - that's just speculation. Domaining is about creating value and then somehow realising that value through revenue generation.