TextBroker.com: My Secret Weapon

Elliot Silver
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33

The biggest problem with owning a number of websites is writing content for them. Content is what drives traffic, and traffic is generally the key driver for advertising, and you need to have fresh content for SEO and to continue to drive additional traffic to your website.

I’ve used Elance for copy writers before, and I’ve also hired them in private from posts on Craigslist and on forums, but I have been MUCH more satisfied with the work from TextBroker.com. They are fast, they aren’t too expensive, and most importantly, they are proficient. You also don’t have to worry about hearing excuses from copywriters about why their work won’t be on time.

I’ve probably had about 300 articles written by TextBroker writers for my websites, and I’ve only needed to have two re-written. One of those articles was because I had a fairly lengthy article request on a topic that was pretty small, and the writer rambled…  I can’t say that I really blame him for that though.

The only time I won’t use TextBroker.com is on my blog. It would be difficult for a copywriter to have expertise on something specific like domain names, and I think if I posted an article that was written by someone else, the grammar and tone might give it away. I suppose that’s because my blog is more personal than my other sites, and it has readers know me personally.

TextBroker.com charges somewhere between $5.00 – $10.00 for average size articles of about 200-350 words that are written proficiently. It’s a privately funded, venture-backed company that TechCrunch recently covered.

If you need website articles written, I would recommend TextBroker.com. In fact, I had 10 articles written for SlipperyElm.com in less time than it’s taken for the domain name to be transferred to Moniker.

Would gTLDs Survive and Thrive Without Domain Investor Support?

Elliot Silver
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15

It’s widely believed that one of the reasons that the .CO Registry launch was so successful was due to the financial “support” of domain investors who purchased a great deal of .CO domain names.

Some investors bought domain names for development, and others bought them for speculative reasons. I’ve discussed at length the reasons I think .CO makes sense, so I will spare you those details, but I think the money that domain investors spent was a big reason for the very successful launch of .CO.

That brings me to ask this question: Would new gTLD registries survive and thrive without the support of domain investors?

I am sure companies that want to run registries will look at the .CO launch and maybe even .MOBI launch results to model out the potential for their own registry. Should domain investors not heavily invest in every new gTLD, one can assume these modeled numbers will be way off. If that’s the case, the ability to survive on much less cash flow could be compromised.

My gut says that with the considerable costs of applying for a gTLD, cost of legal defense related to trademark holders, and the expense of marketing the gTLD to a non-domain proficient audience (businesses in the local markets of geographic gTLDs), it will be difficult for new gTLDs to thrive without significant investment from domain investors.

Do you think a new gTLD would survive and thrive without investment from domain investors?

Consider Adding Simply Hired’s Jobamatic on Your Website

Elliot Silver
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14

These days, it seems that a lot of people are out of work and looking for jobs, no matter where you live or in what the profession. On my geodomain names, I have been using Simply Hired’s Jobamatic platform for quite some time, and it is earning a couple hundred dollars a month in incremental revenue.

Take a look at http://jobs.lowell.com for example. There are job listings all over the Greater Lowell area, and I earn revenue when someone clicks on a job listing, and I earn even more revenue when someone posts a job listing (which doesn’t happen as much as I wish).

As you can see, the landing page integrates well within my website. My developer used the CSS and design from my site and plugged it into the back end of Jobamatic, so it fits nearly seamlessly. The one thing I couldn’t do is have a rotating banner on the Job board because it wouldn’t let me install an ad rotator, but that’s not such a big deal to me. I was also able to create a subdomain (jobs) and use a CNAME record so the url looks like you’re still on Lowell.com, when in fact, you’re on the Jobamatic site.

On the homepage of Lowell.com, I also added a widget that shows several job listings in the area, and when people click on those, I get paid, too. I think this is key with the economy in the tank because people are looking for work, and I am giving them work opportunities – it’s a win/win situation.

Because of the benefit to site visitors and financial benefit, I am looking at integrating Jobamatic into my non-geodomain names as well. For example, I am going to do it on DogWalker.com pretty soon, since there seem to be a lot of people looking for dog walking jobs.

If you haven’t checked out Jobamatic, you might want to do it, especially with the economy in the crapper.

This is not a paid post (I don’t do paid posts) nor is there any affiliate link.

Sending Traffic to a Parked Page is Against Terms Of Service

Elliot Silver
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25

One of the primary reasons pay per click advertising payouts are down is because of click fraud. This happens when a website or domain owner either clicks on the pay per click links on his website or parked page, hires someone to click on the links, or someone else clicks on pay per click links in order to make the advertiser pay for this traffic.

When a domain owner has pay per click advertising on his or her site using Google’s Adsense or a domain parking provider, it can be tempting to click on some of the ads or ask friends to click on them to generate revenue. Some may justify this to themselves somehow, but any way you slice it, clicking on PPC links on your own website – or encouraging others to do it for you – isn’t legit.

Domain parking companies have the difficult task of determining what is a legitimate click and what may be click fraud. For this reason, most parking companies don’t permit people to send traffic to parked domain names.  In fact, it’s a violation of the Terms of Service for most (if not all) domain parking companies to send traffic to a parked domain name.

Here are a few examples:

Parked.com TOS states that traffic can only come from “type in (direct navigation) traffic and  existing search engine results/expired traffic.”….    “All other types of traffic including bought traffic, traffic driven by PPC campaigns, traffic directed from hyperlinks are not permitted.”

Domain Sponsor TOS: “Publishers may not generate traffic to their website or our links by any of the following methods: listings on newsgroups, bulk e-mailing, icq postings, IM messages, chatroom/irc postings, iframes, zero pixel frames, hitbots, clickbots, spiders, cgi-scripts, JavaScript, DNS hacking, spoofing or pharming, cache poisoning, any toolbar or downloading of any computer software application (“Downloadable App”), altering an End User’s host file to point another domain to a Publisher’s domain, PTC Programs, click farms, via cellphone messages, online viral media, other online incentives, media advertising of any type, any promotion of a domain, including, but not exclusively, communications or press release with a media outlet or organization capable of public communications with the intention to create an interest or drive traffic in a domain, or any other similar method.”

NameDrive TOS: “Traffic promotional methods not allowed include, but are not limited to:    Blog sites / forums, TGP Gallerys, bought traffic (PTR/PTC),    Arbitrage traffic driven by PPC campaigns (Adwords etc.), traffic directed from hyperlinks etc. are not permitted.”

One other reason why it’s not legit for domain investors to send traffic to a parked page is because it can inflate a domain name’s traffic numbers illegitimately. Click fraud aside, if I encourage you to visit one of my parked domain names, and I later sell the domain name while providing traffic figures, would you be pissed if you were the buyer?

If I purchased a domain name believing that it received thousands of visits a month, but it turns out that was only due to the fact that the previous owner was illegitimately sending traffic to the parked page, I would be pissed and would probably take legal action.

No matter how you look at it, intentionally sending traffic to a parked page isn’t good for the domain industry and gives everyone a bad name.

Create a List of Keyword Domain Names in Excel

Elliot Silver
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15

I’ve often searched for available keyword domain names in bulk using a keyword list and Microsoft Excel. I appended .com on to the end of the keyword string and then pasted it into a bulk domain checker at a domain registrar like Name.com.

Here’s how to turn a list of keywords into a list of domain names:

1) Paste keyword list into Excel workbook Column A
2) In Column B enter .com and copy it all the way down to the last row where you have something in Column A
3) In Column C, enter this function: =concatenate(A1,B1)
4) Copy cell C1 and paste all the way down to the last cell where you have keyword and .com
5) This may or may not be necessary depending on where you take the list, but since column C is still filled with functions, Copy all the cells in Column C and Paste Special as “Values”
6) Copy list in Column C and paste it in the Bulk domain checker

Reminder: American Express Small Business Saturday

Elliot Silver
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3

In case you haven’t heard, American Express is having its first Small Business Saturday on November 27, 2010 (tomorrow). If you shop in-store at any small business in the US and spend at least $25, AmEx will credit your account $25.

Before shopping, you will need to enroll your American Express card on the AmEx website. This can be done up until tomorrow, but you should probably do it ASAP so you don’t forget, and because American Express warns that enrollment is limited.

It doesn’t look like American Express has imposed a lot of rules or fine print on this offer:

Eligible merchants include any independently owned small businesses that accept the American Express Card.   Purchases made online, at large, national chains, at franchised business locations and at government agencies are not eligible.   Prepaid, corporate cards and ExpressPay transactions are not eligible.

It’s too bad you can’t shop online for this special promotion, but there are plenty of small stores in my neighborhood where I shop, and you can be sure that I will be supporting one of them tomorrow as a result of Small Business Saturday.

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