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Writing Good Content is Time Consuming, But Here’s a Tip to Get It (Cheap)

Elliot Silver
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People always ask me how I find time to write articles on my blog as well as articles on my various websites to keep them up to date and driving traffic. For my blog, it’s pretty easy. When I was in an office with co-workers, if I saw or did something interesting, I would jump over to their office to discuss. Since I don’t have co-workers any longer, I use my blog as an outlet. Writing content for my blog is pretty easy.

However, writing good content for my other websites is not as easy. Although I enjoy some things related to the topics at hand, I am not familiar enough about all of them to write good content. On my geodomain names, I frequently publish press releases or articles that were submitted by readers. This is easy enough, but it doesn’t happen enough to keep the website updated with a variety of interesting information.

One thing I’ve been doing successfully on DogWalker.com would be easy enough for others to do and I want to share this (not unique, but good) idea. When people sign up for listings, I thank them and offer them the opportunity to do an interview or submit an article on any dog-related topic. This has been a big hit and is greatly appreciated. The articles are posted on the DogWalker.com Blog.

Surprisingly, many people have articles they’ve written but haven’t published online yet, and they are very happy to share them.   I have articles on a range of topics either published or scheduled to be published in the coming weeks. There are exercise articles, tips for training dogs, an article about how to help dogs who are afraid of fireworks…etc.

I have been posing the articles and linking to them on Digg and Facebook, which helps drive more traffic and awareness. In addition, a couple of submitters have posted links to the articles on their websites. It’s really a win win for all parties. Since I am using WordPress for my platform, publishing the articles takes under 5 minutes each, and the benefits are considerable.

If you operate a website where you have advertisers – especially small businesses, you should consider offering to feature your advertisers in a guest article or interview. It adds good content (for free) and can help build your relationship with the advertiser while bringing more traffic to your site.

Why It’s Bad Not to Respond to UDRP

Elliot Silver
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7

A few days ago, Mike Berkens reported on the UDRP decision for 7Days.com, a decision that went in favor of the complainant. The owner of the domain name did not file a response to the UDRP, so he couldn’t present his case for ownership. I think not responding to a UDRP is bad for a couple of reasons (unless you are advised by a legal professional that not responding would be in your best interest).

First, you don’t have an opportunity to defend your ownership of the domain name. You’re letting the complainant make its case and aren’t able to rebut its complaint. If the submitted evidence is enough for a panelist to make a decision in favor of the complainant, you could lose the case pretty easily.

The second reason may be less obvious but could pose a future threat to your business. Not even considering that a UDRP loss can be used by a future complainant to show bad faith on other domain names, it could also show others that you are a sitting duck. A non-response could encourage other companies to file UDRP cases for other names you own, believing you may not defend your rights to own other domain names, possibly making their chance better.

Whether you decide to hire a lawyer or not is your decision to make based on the strength of your case, value of your domain names, and/or financial situation, but I don’t think not responding is for the best (unless under the advice of an attorney, which I’ve heard about). If you don’t care enough about your domain name to defend it, perhaps you can just give the name to the company to get them to withdraw the UDRP.

How WhyPark is Saving Me Money on My Google Adwords Campaign

Elliot Silver
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7

A few weeks ago, I wrote about using WhyPark in a SEO play, and I want to share how this is working and how it’s saving me money. I bought several City DogWalker.com, City DogWalkers.com, and City DogWalking.com domain names and put them on WhyPark. I added a couple of links and on a few of the sites, I added a unique article. That’s all I did, and in total, it took somewhere around an hour to set up about 17 websites.

The purpose of this test was more for search engine optimization purposes, but I noticed another benefit that might have an even more valuable pay off.

I was going through my stats on DogWalker.com, and I saw that one of the city WhyPark websites has referred 13 unique visitors in the last 3 weeks. The site is in the top 10 results in Google for “city dog walking” and “dog walking city” and it ranks higher than the main website for that search. I know 8 visitors isn’t much in the whole scheme of things, but I want to share why I think it’s something you should find interesting.

At the moment, I am running a Google Adwords campaign, and I am paying between $.75 and $1.50 per click. The domain name cost me $8.00 and it wasn’t too expensive to open an upgraded WhyPark account. The 8 visitors would have cost me around the $8 registration fee.   Should this domain name refer 8 visitors a month on an ongoing basis, the click value alone is just under $100 in a year. I think the domain names would also be valuable to a local dog walker, but why would I sell it if it’s providing value to one of my websites?

I am not sure whether this is an anomaly or a sign of things to come, but it’s interesting to see. I have different inbound links for each of these “mini sites,” and they are placed in different areas on the sites. In a few months, I will do a more thorough analysis of the traffic, click throughs, and referrals, but it’s something I am tracking and it’s a good sign. A number of the other sites are also sending some traffic, but it’s just one or two visits per site.

Larry Fischer and Leland Hardy Featured in New York Daily News Article

Elliot Silver
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I woke up to a Google News alert this morning with the title “Three Businessmen Quick to Jump on City Domain Names.” I nervously awaited as the site opened, fearing a negative article about owning city .com domain names.

The article interviewed and discussed Leland Hardy who owns NewYork.com, Larry Fischer who owns Queens.com with Ari Goldberger, and Kevin Cahill who owns StatenIsland.com. Although there isn’t anything really groundbreaking in the article, it was interesting to note that Cahill became a real estate agent as a result of owning StatenIsland.com, and he said he’s made $100,000 from the site.

It’s always interesting to see articles like this appear in the general news.

Blocking Farmville on Facebook

Elliot Silver
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3

I recently posted a comment on my Facebook wall about blocking those annoying Farmville posts that seem to frequently appear on my wall, and judging by the messages sent by friends on and off Facebook, I thought I would share how I did it in case you don’t know.

When someone posts something (whether it’s Farmville, a Facebook game, comment, or other Facebook app), if you hover over the upper right side of their post, a “hide” button appears. When you click the hide button, it gives the option to hide the person or the app they used. When I clicked the comment related to Farmville, it allowed me to block all Farmville comments from anyone that uses it.

Another friend pointed out that if you want to unhide a friend that you hid previously, go to the bottom of your wall feed and click on the edit options button.

I know this isn’t related to domain names, but I am sure there are plenty of people who would like this information. I am glad I learned how to do this, otherwise the next step would be to block these people.

WristletPurses.com Vs. WristletPurse.com

Elliot Silver
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22

I was bidding on two domain names this week on Snapnames – WristletPurses.com Vs. WristletPurse.com.   Both domain names had relatively little bidding until the final day. WristletPurse.com ended a couple of days ago and WristletPurses.com ended today.

Neither domain name was especially interesting to me, but it’s a product (and a plural) so I figured they’d probably be worth a couple hundred dollars or more to someone.   I locked in both bids, and I wasn’t surprised when I was outbid on WristletPurse.com. I was very surprised when I saw the final price was $1,450.

With the singular auction done, I figured I didn’t have a chance at the plural, so I left for the airport without even looking at my Snapnames account. I logged onto the Wifi network on Delta, and I was even more surprised to see that I was the winning bidder on WristletPurses.com for under $100.

Doing some quick research, here’s a brief comparison of the two terms:

Wristlet Purse – 33,600 Google results (lots of advertisers)
Wristlet Purses – 40,300 Google results (lots of advertisers)

Wristlet Purse – 3,300 Google exact match monthly searches (US)
Wristlet Purses – 720 Google exact match monthly searches (US)

Clearly, people are searching more for the singular but in my opinion, it doesn’t really justify such a huge price differential. When I see a name sell for over $1,000, I know there has to be a pretty good reason. However, I don’t understand the reason for such disparity between the two domain names.

What are your thoughts on the price differential for these domain names?

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