One of the things that I’ve probably overlooked in the past, is the user experience and engaging them in the site.

This time, things are different.

My weekend has been spent putting together instruction videos for my advertisers and incorporating them into auto-responder emails that will be going out once everything is up and running properly.

Here’s an example – I can’t claim that it’s perfect, but it’s still better than any other of the competitor sites at the moment.

The site offers free advertising, so I wanted to create something that wasn’t available on similar sites that charge for advertising, so that users feel that they are being supported.

Each element of the site will have its own instruction video eventually, plus I intend to add more that are to do with promoting advertisers’ own sites, providing them with information that they won’t find elsewhere.

My hope is that it will create a loyalty to the site and add considerable value to their own businesses, which in turn, I hope, will bring more clients to me wanting complex (or simple) web sites building.

I’ve done the same thing with my corporate site (Hollywood Internet Ltd) and have begun loading video tutorials to a private client area, which will give people a better understanding of Wordpress, search engines and other relevant subjects – the things I don’t have time to teach them one on one.

It happens a lot in my world and it’s entirely my own fault, because I love demonstrating what can be done with a web site, especially in terms of business task automation.

Since developing my new business model for the commercial property site and the one that’s upcoming for the tribute act site, I’ve had something of an epiphany.

Part of my new model is to get some web site clients on board and make them some pretty nice sites using Wordpress, or have sites custom-made using the developers I’ve been involved with lately.

I’ve always had difficulty pricing web sites, since they generally don’t take me long and I quite like making them. That’s the problem. Friends and family don’t think I work!

So, I changed how I approach those who ask me for their favours and it’s starting to work.

I now tell them that it takes me several hours to get a Wordpress site up and running, with a unique design (theme) and that this is time I could be using to earn money elsewhere, so it has to be paid for.

I then explain that Wordpress and associated plugins are updated constantly, so there’s time involved each month in maintaining the site and making sure that everything works properly.

Then of course, there’s the hosting etc.

But, my favours extends to doing the build and setting everything up, like email addresses, templates etc., for “mates rates” starting at £99 + VAT (17.5%) and then the maintenance, hosting and updating the software is costed from £19.99 + VAT per month payable on a credit card via a recurring payment, with a minimum term of 18 months, because as they know, you can’t really get a custom made web site for £99.

I’ll change my prices according to the complexity of the site of course, but the model is one I am carrying through to Hollywood Internet, my limited company which isn’t really a company, as there’s only me. But who’s to know that?

The upside for them is that they become a client and get their site supported.

They get to learn how to add, edit and remove content from their sites too, because the client area of my own site has instruction videos that I make myself – and they only explain what I want them to know.

The upside for me is that £19.99 minimum monthly recurring fee across dozens, if not hundreds of sites.

Online, nothing beats monthly recurring revenue.

I’m not a charity and I’ve stopped being an idiot, even for family.

A few years planning, 9 months development and many thousands of Pounds later and I now have a commercial property portal loaded on my server with some dummy data for final testing.

This is the free advertising model I have wanted to implement for so long, it’s now in my blood.

This is where the real works starts though.

I’m offering free advertising to UK commercial property estate agents, that makes the sales job harder, not easier.

People are suspicious of free. They think they’ll have to pay commissions, or that the free advertising is simply a trial offer and then they’ll get sucked into a monthly payment routine.

It needs explaining. The two most frequently asked questions are, “where do you make your money”?  and “What’s the catch”? It’s to be expected and the answer is gloriously simple – I promote my surveying and Internet services on the site.

But that’s only one part of the promotion. The site still needs to generate visitors to the free property listings.

That’s what I’m working on now. Exciting times.

To me it’s a tool that keeps me motivated. By publishing something on this blog, I’m announcing it to the world (well, ok, not the world, but perhaps both of my readers) and that kind of helps me commit.

When I was talking about the skill site this weekend, I knew that the idea was good. I knew it was something I could follow up on quickly.

Just like new year resolutions, it’s all too easy in this business to have ideas and then forget about them, moving on the next great thing.

Skill.co.uk could be a distraction from my other projects.

I’ve spent a day making a Wordpress based site for it and have installed membership software and an autoresponder for handling email communication.

Some people would remain in the planning stage for a few months.

I don’t think I have time for that. I need to do it now, for the sake of my sanity, my ego and my satisfaction.

The thing is, I do have a lot of time on my hands and doing these sites keeps me interested in the technology and ensures that my knowledge grows continually.

It’s interesting to see how long “developers” take when building a site and comparing it to how long it takes me. Perhaps they have more attention to detail than I do – but it’s taken me only a day and a bit to put the site infrastructure in place for skill.co.uk and to do the design bits.

My commercial property site on the other hand, has taken a team of developers since May last year and I’ve still not launched it!

My tribute act  site was due for completion in December, but apart from the design, I haven’t seen a line of code yet.

So who’s distracted? I can’t do anything whilst my development is in the hands of others, so I might as well just get on with something else.

In 2010 my goals changed. I decided to aim a lot higher. Instead of being content with the scraps that fall from table, I’m going to build and own the table.

That’s some distraction!

It’s a great generic name and I envisaged that it would appeal to a training organisation, a recruitment operation or perhaps a skills gaming company.

The price tag was £100,000 firm and I consider that to be cheap, knowing what I know about all three of the industries I was targeting.

As regular visitors to my blog already know, I am presently focused on developing two large sites in niche markets and each one of those sites will bring in further opportunities.

This focus is my reason for reducing my domain holdings.

Today though, after having a discussion with my sister about her own business (which is very successful, but very hard work), I came up with the idea of her teaching others online, with a series of courses that can be delivered weekly or bi-weekly in easy to digest installments on a pay-monthly basis.

That would enable her to slow down and achieve some of her personal goals, but would give her the enthusiasm to keep working, albeit somewhat differently to the way she does presently.

I couldn’t think of a suitable domain name for once though. To be honest, I didn’t want to get involved in anything new, but if you’ve been domaining or working online for any period of time, then you know how enthusiasm can sometimes get the better of you and you can’t help being carried along.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I could use skill.co.uk to sell and deliver the courses, which would all be video based and would teach an extremely valuable and profitable skill.

My sister is living proof – she sells her products into all of the major supermarkets, all from a business that she originally started from home after taking an evening class twenty years ago.

I explained to her that she shouldn’t think small and that I already have all of the technical abilities and tools at hand right now, to create and deliver the courses.

It still came back to a domain name though and I was thinking, “I can’t use skill.co.uk, as the subject matter is too niche”.

That’s when I had my Eureka moment.

If my sister can create a course, then so can anyone else with specific skills and a bit of guidance (from me).

I have a great domain name that can be sub-domained into a complete skills directory – each sub-domain containing it’s own learning opportunities, using experts who are keen to make a residual income online.

Couple that with an affiliate program that pays recurring commissions and you have everything you need to make not £100,000 as a one off domain sale, but the potential for that amount every year, month or even week.

Talk about thinking big!

The content will come from the appointed experts. They’ll have no outlay to make. They won’t have to worry about the web stuff. They’ll have an enormous earning opportunity without any of the financial risk and I’ll simply enter into a revenue share with them.

The spin-off possibilities are endless – I’m thinking products, advertising opportunities and more.

Now I have three projects and I get to keep my jewel in the crown!

That price is too low for this particular name, but if someone is selling at that, then that’s the way it is. Except it isn’t.

Contact by Sedo and myself failed. A Whois search identified the seller and so I called him. He has some kind of answering service, but never returns calls.

Through Sedo, I upped my bid to what I think the name is worth – it was the kind of offer that would get my interest if I were the seller and certainly not what I’d consider a “wholesale” price.

It should have got the guy’s interest, but so far it hasn’t.

Any kind of reply would have been good, but this guy is just plain ignorant.Or stupid.

It’s a pity that Sedo (and other such sites) give up so easily when they can’t contact a seller. It’s more of a pity that they won’t just delete the listing in such cases.

A domain auction or listing site is only as good as it’s listings and users don’t expect or want to get the run around each time they make an enquiry.

The question was, “If you were to go back in time and meet your self. How would you steer him?”

I took all of 10 seconds to think about the answer and here it is:

Hello Chris,

Easy answer to that one.

I’d have told him to listen to the really great domainers of the day – I
knew them then, but thought I knew better!

That alone would have saved me a fortune on hyphenated names and would have
made me a fortune in parking.

Then I’d have said “Have the balls to take a favourite name and spend the
money on developing it to its potential”.

Several years have gone by since I started out and I don’t feel any more successful than I did back then, in terms of raw domaining.

I never did make a pile of money from parking. I have very few one-word generics. I ignored type-in domains – never thought I would be able to afford them if I’m honest about it.

In fact, for years online, I mixed in circles where we’d collectively grumble about people and companies who didn’t “get it”, when in fact, personally, I probably hadn’t got it myself!

Looking back is a horrible thing, especially when you realise that all the help you wanted was there all along and you completely missed it!

Saying that, there are still people on domain forums and reading blogs like this, who still don’t have the first idea. They’re still spinning their wheels and hoping for the Eureka moment.

That moment comes in many different forms.

For me it has always been about development. I never really bought domains that I didn’t think I could develop someday. Maybe that’s been my mistake. Repeated, then repeated over and over again.

But, along the way, I have somehow managed to turn my domaining disaster (for that’s what it is when compared to not only some, but many in the domain game), into a success of sorts.

I hope you’ve been as lucky!

Last year, I was pretty brutal and let around 40% of my portfolio go – either by selling off names at low cost, or just letting the names expire.

Expiry was a great option, because who wants to mess around with transfers when the selling price is low? Lots of effort for little reward.

Anyway, here we are again. Another new year and the axe is being sharpened even more and here’s why – and I could be totally wrong about this.

I now have only 265 .com domains and 567 .co.uk’s in my portfolio and by the end of the year, that number will be massively reduced. I reckon I could do extremely well with less than 50.

The reason is because I will never have enough time to develop that many domains and I honestly don’t believe that people will come rushing to buy names from me at anywhere near commercial prices.

Looking at the market presently, I am concerned that governments will soon start interfering and meddling in affairs that they know little about.

As most of my names are UK oriented, I am vulnerable to anything that UK government does.

What if they decide one day to revoke Nominet’s charitable status and decide that they’re best suited to running the .co.uk registry.

The country (and others) is in a financial mess and all things Internet must be a target for raising tax revenues.

Later this year, phone companies are going to have to levy a small tax on all land line telephones, to help pay for the infrastructure to bring DSL to the masses.

It’s the tip of the iceberg. Why rush to get everyone online unless there’s a nice juicy tax take at the end of it?

What would happen if the price of domains suddenly rocketed to say £100 each? Would you still want a large portfolio and the associated renewal fees?

It might be ok for the prime names, but what about all of those so-so names?

The ICANN price structure that automatically increases each year is bad enough, but there will be increased pressure to increase domain names further – in an attempt to kill off mass registrations by portfolio owners.

That’s why, during the past 12 months I have made a determined effort to focus on my core strengths and throw myself headlong into the development of just two domain names.

There won’t be any more development from me this year – just the two names that I have become absolutely obsessed with recently.

That focus has kept me from switching direction lately and it is the single best thing that has happened to me from a business perspective. It’s also freed loads of my time and I’m back to working just a couple of days per week.

We’ll see what the new year brings, but I know my limitations. This isn’t meant to be negative by the way, quite the opposite. Focus brings more rewards than anything I know.

Yesterday, I got a call from my brother in law, since he wanted a web site for his Spanish Villa that he rents out to tourists.

I considered using Wordpress again, but as he didn’t need anything other than a static site, I fired up XsitePro2 and made him a site from scratch in two hours flat, including header design and all content.

MorairaVilla.info

This is a screenshot of the front page.

The site itself is working perfectly well and my brother in law is delighted with it, though he’s sending me some more content to add later today.

The only problem is the domain name.

He did what many people do when the name they wanted has gone – he looked for the cheapest extension – in this case, a .info name.

Many people do the exact same thing and I fear that they’ll never learn. They assume that because a name they wanted is taken, that they have to go looking for something that’s far from being even second best.

In this case, I spotted within seconds that the .co.uk version of the same name is for sale at Sedo – but that’s all too much trouble for someone in a hurry and for someone who doesn’t really understand the power of a domain name.

Pity that. Now it means having to go into Google tools and set up geo-targeting etc.

Never mind. It was good to get back to grips with XSitePro2 and a delight that everything worked first time too.

I wonder if that will be my last site for 2009?

The start of a new year is a natural time to think about goals, whether it be to make more money, become more productive, lose weight, stop smoking or drinking, do more exercise – you know, because you’ve been there yourself many times, just like I have.

For me, 2009 was pretty good in all honesty. I took stock of what I was doing from a business perspective throughout the year, in what was essentially part of a goal-setting strategy I’d commenced in January.

This goal setting was important because it kept me focused on the things that mattered.

If you’re sat there wondering what you can do to actually achieve your new years resolutions in 2010, take a look at this video. It might just help.