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MountainBikers.com – For Sale

Elliot Silver
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Mountain BikerI am looking to sell MountainBikers.com and have reduced the price to $6,300 for this domain name. As I did before, I will lay out the vision I have for a website on MountainBikers.com, which I will have developed should it not sell. If you’d like to buy this domain name at the reduced price, feel free to use my ideas below for your website.

Home page is going to have an image of a mountain biker almost looking like he is jumping through the screen. The background will be dark to highlight the biker, and it will be a bright day. I am thinking about using the photo above with some Photoshop work to make it pop.

The revenue generation areas of the site will be focused on either affiliate links or Adsense focused on mountain biking supplies – mountain bikes, helmets, shocks, seats, tires…etc. There will be a page for each section with commentary about different products and companies.

There will also be a section for mountain biking trips, tours, paths…etc. People will be able to submit articles about trips they’ve been on along with photos of their trips. Flickr photos that have Creative Commons rights will be used as well to keep costs down and interest high.

There will be plenty of videos, such as an Mountain biker commercial from YouTube. Many companies have videos showing their cool mountain biking, and I will put some on the site for brand recognition. I will also have videos of crazy mountain biker stunts and races fom You Tube. This will make the site sticky and encourage return visits. Later on as traffic increases, I will add a mountain biker forum on the back end, further encouraging stickiness.

Check out my previous post about website template themes if you want to give it a go on your own, or you can use your favorite designer.

So there you have it. This is my outline for developing MountainBikers.com should it not sell. The price has been reduced quite a bit to encourage a quicker sale, but if it doesn’t sell, I will build it. The price won’t be lowered any further.

Photo Source: <div xmlns:cc=”http://creativecommons.org/ns#” about=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/episode-one/2195065426/”><a rel=”cc:attributionURL” href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/episode-one/”>http://www.flickr.com/photos/episode-one/</a> / <a rel=”license” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>CC BY 2.0</a></div>

Setting Domain Google Alerts

Elliot Silver
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I’ve discussed why I think its important to set Google Alerts, and I hope you’ve considered the reasons. Not only does it allow me to immediately see breaking news stories related to the domain industry, but it also helps me find articles I may have missed otherwise.

I want to share my domain-related Google Alerts.

Domain
Domains
“Domain Names”
“Domain Name”
Domaining
Sedo
Namemedia
Afternic
“Dark Blue Sea”
Cybersquatter
Cybersquatting
Trafficz
“Elliots Blog”
“Elliot Silver”
ElliotsBlog.com

I have most of my alerts set to Comprehensive as it happens, allowing me to receive them nearly instantly, as they are indexed in Google. Since I get dozens of alerts every day, you may opt to set your delivery to once per day or week. Keep in mind, the more alerts you set, the more emails you will receive.

It’s also a good idea to set alerts for your domain names and websites as well. I have many Burbank, Lowell, and Newburyport related alerts as well.

HTML Website Template Themes

Elliot Silver
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Theme ForestAs you know, I like to build mini sites on my own. It’s probably a big waste of my time to spend a few hours on a mini site that will yield only a little revenue, but I like to build them nonetheless. I suppose that’s one of the nice things about working for myself. It’s probably more cost effective to purchase a website from one of my advertisers, but I enjoy the building process and feel a sense of accomplishment when I finish, so I will probably continue doing them every so often.

That said, I really like ThemeForest.net, which is a website where you can find professional templates in a variety of formats (HTML, Joomla, WordPress, Flash…etc. Depending on your skill and comfort level with development, there is a template for just about everyone. Personally, I prefer the html templates for mini sites, since WP isn’t great just out of the box for SEO and I am not great with the tech stuff to make changes.

Below are a few html templates that I like and will use in forthcoming development projects. They aren’t free, but they are pretty cheap/inexpensive despite looking like an expensive custom template.

Blue Glow Site Template – I like big pictures that rotate because they’re engaging to the visitor. I would probably put 2 large Adsense blocks on the left side – probably one image block and one link block. I will probably use this one for my next mini site.

Furniture Shopping Theme – This one looks like it would be good for an e-commerce site – maybe even a place to sell domain names. It comes in a variety of colors.

Lovely Print Business Template – The simplicity of the layout is what I like. You have a great picture spot taking center stage, but you can also still see the content below, helping with the CTR to your back pages that are filled with more content.

Dark – The color and layout of this make it very cool. You can have a lot of content on the home page, and there is plenty of space for Adsense or other links. Colors really pop on the black background, and it’s very different than most sites.

BlueLight – Many people are now familiar with this because it was created by my web designer and I’ve used it on several of my minisites, including UniqueInk.com and AthensVacations.com.

Multi-Colored Business Theme – This is a very simple design, which is great for a mini site. There is little hassle required to make changes, and it’s very easy to make the simple tweaks. Several colors from which to choose.

Clean Business Template – Less graphics to worry about and no logo in the header necessary. This is as simple as it gets and is ready for you to plug in your content.

I recommend looking at the live samples for all of these themes before you decide to buy. Check out each of the template pages to make sure the back pages are formatted in a way that you like. For some templates, I only use two or three of the template pages because the other pages aren’t set up in a way that is useful to me.

Be mindful of your revenue objectives for the site, and determine how you can integrate your revenue-generation tactics. Think about where you will put Adsense blocks, banner advertisements (for affiliate links and direct sales), and how you can add shopping widgets and other ecommerce functionality.

Twitter Programmer & Designer Wanted

Elliot Silver
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I have what appears to be a small project, and I am looking to find a Twitter programmer and/or designer who can make it great. I don’t want to share the domain name that this project will reside on yet, but the scope is similar in nature to AthleteTweets.com and CelebrityTweets.com.

I need a site where I can aggregate a large number of Twitter feeds. Design is key because execution isn’t so difficult with Twitter’s API, and someone else could duplicate it, although they won’t have the great domain name that I have! If you know of someone who might be up for a project and wants to quote it, drop me a note with a link to previous similar projects.

Long Term Domain Holdings

Elliot Silver
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FAUWhen you’re investing in a speculative domain name, keep in mind that you could have your money on the sidelines for a long time. If you are paying registration fee, it’s not a lot of money to worry about. However, if you buy dozens or hundreds of domain names at registration fee, or if you buy a domain name for a lot of money, it could be burdensome.

This morning, I was reading an article in CNN about researchers at Florida Atlantic University who are currently in the early stages of attempting to generate power from the Gulf Stream. The project uses ocean turbines much like companies harness wind power with wind turbines, and if it’s successful, there could be many ocean turbines installed underwater throughout the world. Fellow domain investor had learned about this potential power source and registered OceanTurbines.com nearly a year ago. Smart thinking!

The only downside is that the article said “If the pilot program is successful, it could take another five to 10 years before the technology can be implemented.” In speaking with Stephen, I know he has a number of similar domain names – like SeaTurbines.com, and his company is all over the solar business. Stephen knows his names won’t be worth big bucks for a few years, but his well-capitalized company is able to hold out and wait for the value to increase.

If you are buying speculative domain names or an expensive speculative domain name, it’s important to realize that your money could be tied up in these domain names for a long time. You need to figure out whether you can afford to hold out or not. I know a lot of people own portfolios of these names, and each year it becomes harder to renew, but they do it because they’ve already figured the previous years are a sunk cost and don’t want to lose their investment.

If you are going to need the money in the short or medium term, perhaps it’s not a smart investment – even if you think it might be the next big thing. Every days something new is the “next big thing,” and you can go broke pretty easily if you are always trying to register everything related to it.

Sunday’s Quick Thoughts

Elliot Silver
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Red Bellied PiranhaHere are some quick thoughts on this nice Sunday. I hope you enjoy the last day of your weekend! Rest up for a successful week.

When you’re buying domain names, you should check to see if there’s a website developed on the domain name. I get annoyed when people email me asking if I would sell “the domain name Lowell.com” or another one of my developed websites. Clearly it’s not just a domain name and if I get annoyed as a domain investor, it’s probably going to annoy people who have businesses on their domain names.

I want to welcome LuxuryNames.com as a new header banner advertiser. Take a minute to sign up for their newsletter. The company owns great domain names such as PrivateAirplanes.com, HomeInsuranceRates.com, MicroLenders.com, and many other great names and you want to be subscribed when they offer names for sale.

I think it’s great that guys like Mike Berkens and Rick Schwartz write blog posts many times per week. These guys have sold incredible domain names for large sums of money, have deep portfolios with top domain names, and they could be sitting on the beach or playing golf all day. I don’t always agree with everything they say, but their posts make me think about this industry and my business, and I really appreciate their willingness to share with us.

When you develop a website, it can take a long time to start seeing results. As mentioned before, I’ve been blogging for over two years, and I am just starting to generate a decent amount of revenue. Likewise, Burbank.com has been launched for about a year, and traffic, revenue, and advertising inquiries are up quite a bit in the past few months. Developing a business on a domain name isn’t easy, but it’s a great way to increase the value and generate revenue over the long haul.

I just bought RedBelliedPiranha.com and RedBelliedPiranhas.com, and I am psyched to create a mini site for one with a forward of the other. As you can probably tell, I like building mini sites that have vivid pictures. I haven’t done much CTR testing with Adsense, so I don’t know if the theory about having an ugly site leading to more clicks is accurate with mini sites, but I enjoy searching for cool photos.

Speaking of mini site testing…. has anyone tested design layouts for increased revenue/click throughs? I’ve wondered if someone has tested layouts, images, content length…etc to find the “perfect” mini site. This is something that would be very interesting to me. The website would have to have enough traffic to make the results statistically significant – and it would probably have to be done using several mini sites over several months with a straight up A|B split. I would be happy to post results here for others to see if the test is legit and not just a sales pitch.

Red Bellied Piranha Photo Source:

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