Launch of SlipperyElm.com

Elliot Silver
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76

I promised myself I wouldn’t build any more “mini” sites. I really did, and I’ve basically stuck to that this entire year.

However, a very good opportunity came about the other day, and I had to jump on it. I bought SlipperyElm.com in private via Sedo, and wanted to put a website up ASAP because slippery elm is suppose to be great for colds, and it’s almost cold season.

The term “slippery elm” has 4,400 exact match local searches, which isn’t huge, but when you look at the broad searches, that is people looking for slippery elm products like tea, bark, powder…etc, it’s a much larger number. Even Thayers, the company that produces the most popular slippery elm lozenges, owns SlipperyElm.net.

As I discussed the other day, I used TextBroker.com to write the articles, which I edited a bit where necessary, although there weren’t many edits. I also found a few photos on Flickr (made sure they were free to use). I found a template on FreeCSSTemplates.org, which I modified, and I spent about 3 hours building the new site.

So… now comes a little bit of link building, some SEO work, and hopefully it will rank well. As you can see, it’s monetized with Google Adsense.

When you build your own sites, don’t forget to add a sitemap (freebies at XML-Sitemaps.com or a free plugin for WordPress), add your Google Analytics code, and add the website to your Google Webmaster Tools account.

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.

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.

Sex.com: What Do You Do With It?

Elliot Silver
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14

As you’re no doubt aware by now, Sex.com was recently sold by Sedo for a record breaking all-cash deal of $13,000,000. The domain name has an interesting history and there have been various things on the site.

If you owned Sex.com, how would you develop the domain name? We all know the saying that “sex sells,” but the real question would be how to make money from Sex.com.

IMO, I don’t think people are actually looking to get laid via Sex.com, although they might be looking to get off so to say. To satiate these customers, sex videos would seem to be the answer. However, if visitors are looking for porn, there are many free sites that would directly compete with a porn offering, and monetizing the traffic could be difficult.

Of course it could be a site about sex – tips and toys, perhaps. However, it would seem that would be a difficult way to earn a return on the $13 million investment. There would probably be more targeted domain names that could be bought for much less.

Sex.com has received considerable press coverage, and perhaps that alone would be worth millions of dollars in brand equity. It’s a cornerstone property for sure, but making money seems to have been difficult.

So the $13,000,000 questions is what would you do with Sex.com if you owned it?

Marketing Aside, Behind the Scenes of DomainQuestions.com

Elliot Silver
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2

Let’s put the marketing of DomainQuestions.com aside for a second. Like I’ve shared with my other web development projects, I want to give you a behind the scenes look at DomainQuestions.com to help you with your own projects.

The reason I felt that a site like this is needed is because of the amount of questions I get on a daily and weekly basis related to domain names. Most people aren’t domain investors and their questions can be answered in a number of ways. I felt that I could help more than just the one person asking the question, but others who might be looking for the same answer. I also hope that friends and colleagues in the business will contribute knowledge as well.

In terms of monetization, I have gone direct to the advertisers in lieu of affiliate banners or Adsense. I will be committing my time to answering questions, and the site’s traffic will grow. As a result, advertising on the site is not expensive now and it should be a very good bargain a few months from now, especially for those companies who lock in longer term deals at today’s rates.

I chose to build DomainQuestions.com on a different website than my blog for a couple of reasons.

I want others to answer questions, and I felt that people might be reluctant to do so on my blog. I didn’t want people to feel that this was an extension of Elliot’s Blog, which although it’s a domain blog, is a personal blog. I felt that the branding of the site gives it more of a community feel than my blog might give.

Secondly, from a business perspective, it’s better to have it on its own website. If I decide that I don’t have the time to run the site in a couple of years, it’s more saleable than my blog. I think my blog’s value is tied in with my personal association with it, and while the content may be valuable to someone, Elliot’s Blog isn’t Elliot’s Blog if Joe Shmoe is running it. DomainQuestions.com could be managed by other domain experts and will still be a community site with many different perspectives.

I chose to advertise on domain blogs because I believe they are a very cost effective way to reach my target audience. Not only will I want other domain investors who read the blogs to answer questions, but it would be great if some of the blog owners refer questions they can’t or don’t want to answer to DomainQuestions.com. The more domain knowledge that contributes to the site, the more beneficial it is to the people seeking answers.

You know me well enough to know that I am generally happy to answer questions and respond to most comments, so feel free to do so. If you’re wondering how it was built or the platform, you can check out a question that was asked.

Fox Rothschild Website Needs WWW Redirect

Elliot Silver
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1

The father of one of my best friends was featured in a newspaper article this morning about being a state powerbroker. A couple of years ago at a dinner, I told him he  should own his exact match domain name, so I bought it on his behalf and forwarded it to his attorney profile at Fox Rothschild, one of the nation’s best known law firms.

After reading today’s article, I wanted to make sure that his domain name was still forwarding correctly, and I was perplexed (and slightly embarrassed) when I saw that the domain name forwarded to an error page.  The domain name had previously resolved to his profile, but that was no longer the case this morning.

I did some checking, and it turns out that at some point in time Fox Rothschild stopped redirecting its WWW traffic to the website. Instead of a redirect if visitors forgot the www or if someone linked to the site sans www, all traffic that doesn’t have www goes to an error page that says “The page cannot be displayed Explanation: There is a problem with the page you are trying to reach and it cannot be displayed.”

This is a common error for webmasters, and it’s something we all need to think about when developing our websites. I already added the www to the domain forward, so his domain name resolves correctly now.  Hopefully someone from Fox Rothschild will fix this error ASAP. Time to check on your websites to make sure you’ve got it covered.

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