Elliot, just out of curiosity, what is a typical day for you?

This question was posed to me by Ron in the comment section one of my recent articles, and I figured it might make an interesting post. Because I work full time for myself (from the comfort of my apartment), I think my schedule is fairly unique.

Monday through Thursday, I am almost always up before 8:00am either because of my dog or my Wife and I immediately begin my day. I scan through my emails, seeing if Google Alerts brought any interesting headlines – either for my blog or Lowell.com. If there’s nothing of immediate interest, I follow up with emails that were sent overnight.

If there is an interesting domain news article, I will analyze it, do some research, and think about the impact on my business or the industry, and write an article, usually set to publish in the early afternoon. If I find an article of interest related to Lowell, I will either post the full press release (using good SEO so it stands out), or I will post a synopsis of the news.

The difference between my blog and Lowell.com is that I believe I am a domain expert, and I am comfortable discussing the impact of a particular bit of news in the domain space. I am not a Lowell-expert, and I don’t want to write an editorial on Lowell.com that would be inaccurate and show my lack of awareness.

After this, it can be anywhere from 9:30-11:30 depending on the amount of news and emails I have. After this is done, I will spend some time reading a few domain blogs, a couple of domain forums, Yahoo Finance, NY Post, Techcrunch, CNN, ESPN, and a few other select websites. This is both for my enrichment and to see if there’s anything of particular interest for my blog. I don’t like simply writing about domain news here… I like writing articles that I would be interested in reading elsewhere related to domain names or the Internet, and I find that most of the more interesting articles are found simply by reading the news.

I usually have a quick (working) lunch and spend the afternoon making domain inquiries to buy names, contacting potential buyers for my domain names, speaking on the phone or emailing business colleagues and friends, or writing articles for Lowell.com or my blog. I spend quite a bit of time researching domain names, although the irony is that some of my better deals this year have been on names I bought within 2 hours of inquiring and flipped after a couple of emails within a couple days. It seems that I spend much more time writing articles, and in the whole scheme of my business, that is far less profitable – go figure.

Last year, I spent quite a bit of time building websites and managing the websites I already built. Although some of those sites are making money now, I decided that I would stick to my core business in 2010. As a result of that decision, I enjoy having the extra time to research acquisitions and find domain buyers. I am lucky that my domain sales have gone back to 2007-2008 levels, as there is far less pressure on me to generate revenue on my domain investments that did not quickly sell as I had hoped.

Last year I worked much more, and I found myself “spinning my wheels” quite a bit.   This year, I am usually able to wind down in the late afternoon and try to hit the gym for a run after 4pm, depending on the day. Unfortunately, I have high cholesterol due to genetics, so it’s urgent that I keep myself in decent shape and stay fit. When I had a full time job and was managing my business at night, I didn’t work out very much, and it was detrimental to my health. I worked a lot of 16-18 hour days, and I promised I wouldn’t do that this year unless absolutely necessary.

In the evenings after dinner, I usually watch tv with my computer on the coffee table, and I answer emails that come through. I am generally in bed and sleeping between 11-midnight from Monday to Thursday.

Throughout the day, I am always connected via Blackberry. Whether I am at the gym, running errands, or doing just about anything, I am almost always connected to my work. I love what I do, but despite being able to set my own hours, most of my focus is on my business.

I was driving along the Henry Hudson in New York City this afternoon and my mouth dropped when I saw this billboard. Firstly, it’s very cool, especially considering the drive is right next to the Hudson River where Captain Chesley Sullenberger safely landed US Airways flight 1549 in January of 2008.

The real reason my mouth dropped was seeing the domain name Values.com. You see I almost was the owner of Values.com back in June of 2007. I thought I had a deal to buy the domain name, and even had an attorney writing up the agreement when the owner emailed me to let me know a buyer in Germany had offered more money between the time I thought we struck a deal to the time when my attorney was writing up a domain sales agreement. I thought the owner may have been bluffing to raise the price, but surely enough, it was sold to that buyer.

It looks like another organization, The Foundation for a Better Life, is now the owner of the domain name (deal appears to have been done towards the end of January 2009).   The billboard and imagery is cool, but it would have been even cooler if I had sold them the domain name!

As my friends and family know, I can be a workaholic. I love what I do, and if I am not working on my laptop, I am generally on my Blackberry pretty much non-stop, especially during the week. I try to lay off on the weekends, but when I have a big project, I can usually be found working. This weekend is a working weekend, as you will see below in my Saturday updates:

• I’ve been reading about the domain theft and hijacking situation on Domain Name Wire and Patrick’s Blog. As a friendly reminder, there are a few companies that offer extensive protection against domain theft like Name.com featuring a security key fob. I wrote an article about domain security last July, and you may want to check it out to see what some companies offer.

• After a couple of months worth of work, Lowell.com has been re-vamped and re-launched with the help of Mike McAlister of Six One Five Design. Businesses will now be able to sign up, create listings, and pay on their own, much like I have successfully implemented on a couple of other websites. There are still a number of links that aren’t working and things that need to be fixed, but it’s almost there. If you have a few minutes and check out the site, please let me know if you see any bugs (I know the site is running slowly right now).

• I want to send a BIG THANK YOU to Tony Kanakaris of eCyberMedia.com and SocialDomainers.com for making a $500 contribution to the Ronald McDonald House for our 5 Boro Bike Tour. Not only is this the largest contribution to date, it also put us over our $2,500 goal. The Ronald McDonald House does some great things for children with cancer and their families, and they can use all of the funding people can contribute. I think Karen and I may raise our goal since some friends and family haven’t contributed what they pledged in private.

• If you are celebrating, I want to wish you and your family a happy Easter. I hope you are able to enjoy the holiday with family and friends.

Yes… another April Fools’ Day post, but this one has a twist. The “You’re” to whom I am referring in the title is actually me, and the things below are some of the foolish things I’ve done recently (that I can remember). This isn’t the typical attempt at humor post that most others are trying, although Rick’s new venture is hularious (.com).

• I bought a targeted keyword geodomain name on Snapnames over a year ago and never changed the DNS. I just realized this last week.

• I kept complaining about how TropicalBirds.com was not making much money, but then I worked with Craig at WhyPark, and it’s now making 1.5-2x what it made per day on Adsense. We’re not talking big money at all, but it’s bigger money. More on this to come, but after around one month of the same site with different monetization strategy/feed, I am realizing that I left a couple of nights in New York City on the table in earnings every month for the last year plus.

• I stopped invoicing   my hotel advertiser on Lowell.com in January because I was hoping the new site would launch in mid February or early March at the latest, and I was concerned that they would be upset paying for a banner on a newly launched website that wasn’t the exact same as the current/old site. Well, as all development projects go, my design requests grew, and we’re now in April, and the old site is still up, so I lost out on two months of payment… again, not a whole lot of money, but a couple of nice dinners.

• I spent a lot of time building my own mini sites, and when all is said and done, I shouldn’t have been so cheap and left the work to the professionals. Even if the results were equal to mine, it wouldn’t have been a waste of my time.

I am sure I’ve done more foolish things than those listed above, but I can’t really think of others off the top of my head right now.

What foolish things have you done that you’d like to share?

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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House