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3 Insurance Domain Names for Sale

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I listed two insurance-related domain names that sold yesterday, and I am listing a few more today:

SanFranciscoDentalInsurance.com – BIN: $1,850
ChandlerDentalInsurance.com – BIN: $650

TempeMedicalInsurance.com – BIN: $650

Buy all 3 together for $2,300. Domain names are registered at Moniker for a quick push. Buyer pays escrow fees if payment is made via Paypal.

Lowell.com Sponsors the Lowell Spinners

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Last weekend my wife, some friends, some family and I went to the Lowell Spinners (Boston Red Sox minor league team) baseball game, as Lowell.com sponsored the Spinners vs. the Brooklyn Cyclones (NY Mets minor league team). I wanted to share this experience (at Chef Patrick’s suggestion) to illustrate how online Internet marketing can lead to offline marketing opportunities.

During the summer, the Lowell Spinners are one of the most popular activities in Lowell. For the past 10 years, the Spinners have sold out every single home game. Lowell.com provides advertising for the Spinners on site, and we also write news articles, such as the one that was written when the Spinners streak was in jeopardy earlier this season.

I was given tickets to last Sunday’s game, and I was able to invite a number of friends and family to watch the game. Additionally, I offered some of the tickets on Facebook and Twiiter, as well as to a local elementary school principal. The objective was to make people aware of Lowell.com at the game, just as Lowell.com helps make people more aware of the Spinners, their games, and their special promotions. During the game, the public address announcer mentioned that the media sponsor was Lowell.com, and it was a fun experience (I love baseball and the Red Sox).

There is much more to geodomain names than simply building a website and hoping advertisers want to buy space on the site. Owners need to become a part of the community and support local events and organizations. To some, a geodomain name is just a domain name, but to the people who type-in that geodomain name, it is a valuable resource.

Keep Your Friends on the Ball

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If you know about a new technology or some other tool that can help a friend or colleague, don’t hesitate to tell them. If your friend resists, but you KNOW it can help them, do whatever it takes to make sure they get the picture – especially if it’s free! I sometimes think people are all as knowledgeable about social media as I am, but my world is much different than the average person in that I am connected online 24/7.

I was a late Twitter adopter, but I have embraced it with for my blog and my developed websites. I believe it’s a great way to communicate, although I am guilty of primarily using it as an outlet to dispense news and links rather than to have a conversation. I have constantly told friends and colleagues they need to get a Twitter account before someone else gets “theirs.”

I saw a tweet from my alma mater today, and I was very proud. Rewind several months to a conversation I had with a member of the College’s administration, who has become a good friend. In fact, he’s the only person I want to meet with when it comes to donations/development, even though its not his role!

Me: You need to secure a twitter account for Muhlenberg – http://www.twitter.com/muhlenberg
It’s available to secure right now, which you should do… you’ll thank me later.
Check Gettysburg:   http://twitter.com/gettysburg
Get on it!!!

Friend: Thanks.   We are re-designing the web site and looking at lots of social media……Twitter is one we are looking at.   Hard to tell which ones will stick and which will fade, but….

Me: The account is free….at least reserve /muhlenberg so when you do decide it’s worthwhile, you won’t have to get muhlenberg_college or something confusing.

Friend: Yes, we are doing it.   Thanks for the heads up.   Social networking and integrating it into pr and admissions is one of the things in our strategic plan. Your wish is our command!   THANKS.

So now my alma mater is communicating on Twitter to people who may be more receptive to online communications rather than mail. My school may have been a bit old school, but it’s great to see them embrace Twitter… and they really are rocking it now – lots of tweets and conversations.

Moral of the story is if you know someone who is a bit reluctant to embrace something you think they need to embrace… don’t take no for an answer   – especially if they are important to you. My only regret is not reserving the handle myself and offering it to them in exchange for a case of Yuengling and some Sweet & Sweaty wings from O’Malleys.

Why I Didn’t Bid on .CM Domains

The first day of the .CM auctions on Namejet closed yesterday, and the auction cleared $500,000. I was not surprised by this number, but I am surprised about how many people seem to be bidding on .CM domain names. My company did not bid on a single .cm domain auction, despite the perceived need to protect a few of my brands.

There is one overarching reason why I did not bid on the auctions. For the past couple of years, Kevin Ham’s company Reinvent Technology has controlled the traffic for .CM domain names via wildcarding after striking a deal with the Cameroonian government. While the domain names were unregistered for the most part, they forwarded to parking pages where visitors could click to other sites, earning money for the company.

With one entity controlling many of the domain names that are now up for auction, it wouldn’t make sense for me to bid on them, as the deck would be stacked against me. If a particular domain name generates revenue from significant traffic, I would imagine Kevin’s company could bid on it up to its value based on a revenue multiple. It wouldn’t really make sense to bid more than the person who has all of the analytics and would presumably be able to monetize it better than almost anyone.

The argument could be made that the traffic is more valuable for lead gen than PPC. However, I am sure Reinvent did what they could to monetize it as best as possible. Additionally, around 20% of the traffic to my brands with the most type in traffic (my blog not included) comes from type-ins. If just a tiny amount of the traffic was lost due to typing in .CM, it’s probably a very small number, and not even worth the annual renewal fee.

They have some of the smartest people working at the company, and I wouldn’t want to bid against them when they know much more than me. It’s sort of like playing poker when your opponent caught a glimpse of your cards.

Contributory Trademark Infringement Ruling Could Impact Parking Companies

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Mike posted an article about a case that I read yesterday regarding Louis Vuitton being awarded $32 million in damages from two hosting companies that were found guilty of Contributory Trademark Infringement. The companies had apparently been informed that there were counterfeit goods being sold on websites it hosted, but it did nothing:

“In awarding the damages, the jury agreed with Paris-based Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A.’s claims that the defendants knowingly allowed several Web sites they hosted to sell products that infringed Louis Vuitton’s copyrights and trademarks.”

When I first read the Computerworld article, my thought was that there are probably some domain parking companies that are nervous about this. At least two large parking companies have their operations in California, and they would presumably be held to the rulings of the U.S. District Court in the state of California. Further, one could believe that any company doing business with California residents could potentially be held liable for Contributory Trademark Infringement if they are doing anything to help monetize a trademark infringing domain name.

A parking company that provides PPC landing pages for hundreds of thousands of domain names could be in a similar position as the hosting companies in this situation. There’s no way to monitor every single potential trademark violation on all of the domain names it helps monetize. It will be even more important for them to look into every trademark infringement email notification they receive.

Getting Great Content & Copywriters

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Yesterday afternoon, I discussed the importance of having good content on your websites. It will drive traffic to your site via search engine, and it will bring visitors back if your site is a good source of information to them. After all, people primarily visit a particular website to learn something or to get information, and if the information proves to be faulty, there is no incentive to return.

When building a website, one of the most challenging things is writing all of the content, as there can be dozens or even thousands of pages of unique content that’s needed. To do this, I’ve used copywriters in the past, I’ve written my own content, and I’ve also hired an expert for something that required current expertise. Depending on the website, you need to determine who should write your content.

To find a good copywriter, you can start with a Google search for “copywriter” and contact some of the leading companies that offer copywriting. It’s better to get a quote for all of your articles at once, as you will get a better price break for more articles. You can also search sites like Guru.com and eLance.com to find professional writers. I found a couple of writers simply by posting in DN Forum, and I was satisfied with most of the work.

You might also look around the industry/community in which you are writing the content to find an expert. Some people will charge a considerable sum of money to write articles, but there are also people who are willing to write articles in exchange for advertising, and some will do it for a link back to their website. It’s important to negotiate everything beforehand and make sure you are getting unique content that’s free to use and distribute on your site. If information is very technical or is difficult to come by online because of frequent changes, you may be better off working with an expert in the field.

Choosing whether you should write the articles or not is a personal decision based on the amount of time you have to do research and write the articles. If you don’t think you can write quality articles – especially if you need a significant number of articles – it’s best to outsource them. Hypothetically, if you are paying $20 per article that takes you 2 hours to write, isn’t it worth paying someone else $10/hour so you can do other things? You can always revise the copywriter’s work if necessary.

One concern that people have (myself included) is that the content is passed off as being unique but is really copied from another source. Copyscape is a service that allows people to search the Internet for copies of text. You can also search Google for random “quoted snippets” of the article to make sure that it wasn’t lifted from elsewhere.

Here are a few tips to getting good content for your websites:

  • Ask for samples of work and references. Ask the owners of the websites where the samples are from if they would be willing to provide a good word for the writer.
  • Have the copywriter write the first article at no cost to make sure the work is up to your standards. Address any grammar or colloquial issues ASAP to avoid disappointment.
  • Ensure that the copywriter has the capacity to do all of the articles you need in the time you need them. There’s nothing worse than getting a great article and moving forward, only to find out that the writer can’t do them all and starts to take shortcuts on the rest.
  • Don’t ask for all of the articles at once to make sure the writer doesn’t get off track. It’s easier for the writer to correct the issue on the first few articles than to go back once theyre all done.
  • Make sure the copywriter provides the source of information for all articles for your records.

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