Subscribe

Home Blog Page 1372

Testing Domain Name Parking Companies

Elliot Silver
-
6

Just about all the domain names I own that get type-in traffic are developed. As a result, I don’t do much parking. Well, I do park a lot of domain names, but 99.9% of them don’t make much money, and I don’t even consider PPC a revenue stream for my businesses. For years, I’ve been very happy using Fabulous for parking, and I still am happy – especially with their great customer service.

However, I’ve decided to do some testing. Generally, when I buy a domain name, I park it for a few days or weeks while deciding whether to develop or re-sell. More often than not, these domain names generate some money because they are better than the standard inventory of speculative domain names I own. I would usually add them to my Fabulous account and the default nameservers would automatically send the traffic to Fabulous.

During the past couple of domain conferences, I’ve had the chance to speak with Sig Solares, CEO of Parked.com, and over the past couple of years, I’ve spoken with a number of happy customers of Parked.com. I haven’t heard a bad word about the company, and it seems that people are very happy working with Parked.com and it’s knowledgeable and friendly account team. With that said, I am going to be doing some testing of their platform over the next few months to get to know the company better and to see how my domain names do with them.

If I had relied on parking revenue as even a small source of my income, I would have been testing already, but I don’t so I haven’t. However, I like what I hear about the team at Parked.com and their company, and I am excited to give them a try as I continue to acquire domain names in the aftermarket.

Internet Commmerce Association Benefit Auction

Elliot Silver
-
0

During today’s live Domain Roundtable auction, 10 domain names will be auctioned to benefit the Internet Commerce Association, and all proceeds from these 10 domain names will be donated to the organization that represents domain owners. These domain names were donated by a variety of individuals and domain companies. For those who are not in attendance at the show, bidding can be done online at the Aftermarket.com website.

ICA Auction Inventory:

–       Castaway.com
–       ParkingShare.com
–       SecureWeb.com
–       Deployed.com
–       Slices.org
–       LikeHer.net
–       SleepSafe.com
–       HolidayLoan.com
–       PlasticSurgeryWebsite.com
–       [TCI domain coming soon]

ItalyHoliday.com – On Sale

Elliot Silver
-
11

Like I did with TobagoVacations.com, I am offering ItalyHoliday.com up for sale before I begin developing it. Although we in the US are more inclined to say “Italy Vacation,” elsewhere in the world, a Holiday is a Vacation, and many people search for a great Italy holiday when they want to visit Italy. If ItalyHoliday.com doesn’t sell this week, I plan to build a larger mini site using the same template (in green) as I used for my Tobago vacation domain name.

NAME IS NOW SOLD.

Find a Top Web Designer

Elliot Silver
-
3

I am lucky to have found a great graphic designer who has helped me with a number of projects over the last year and a half. I initially found Mike after holding a logo design contest at 99Designs (formerly part of Sitepoint). I wrote a creative brief, added a cash award for the winner, and somewhere around 15-20 designers participated. It turned out to be much easier to find a designer than I initially thought it would be.

I would like to suggest another way to find a great web or graphic designer using 99Designs as well. Search through either current or past design contests, which can be found on the home page. Many of the top design contests have dozens of designers, all of whom submit one or multiple entries. You can search multiple public design contests to see which designers seem to have a style that you’d like for your project.

You can then look at the profiles of your favorite designers, and see what other contests they’ve entered and recently won. Additionally, many designers have their external portfolio website listed on their profile, allowing you to contact them outside of the 99Designs website. You can also send the designer a private message via 99Designs asking for a price quote for your project.

If you prefer to keep things more trackable and on site, you can set up your own design competition, and using what I suggest above, send private messages to the designers asking them to participate in your contest. 99Designs is a great site to find designers who will compete to complete your website design project.

Monitor Your Adsense Ads

Elliot Silver
-
0

When developing a website, I really like to use Google’s Adsense. Not only can I customize the ad units to integrate into my website, but I can also use graphical banner advertising, which not only generates revenue, but it helps give the appearance that advertisers want to be advertising on a particular site. Technically, they may not know they are advertising on certain websites at the time, but they are able to block them if they don’t wish to advertise there any longer.

One drawback though is that certain advertisers, who may have opposite beliefs than your website, can still advertise on it. For example, on a religious website, a website that is owned by a group who has conflicting beliefs can still place advertisements depending on the keyword match they are choosing. These links can take visitors of your website to another site, potentially angering the visitors, especially because people don’t always realize how Adsense works.

A website owner is able to block certain urls from appearing, however, there may be hundreds of different website urls with the same message that want to advertise, so it can be a never ending battle. That said, it’s very important to monitor your websites to make sure objectionable advertising isn’t being displayed. While the ads don’t violate Google’s TOS, it could violtate your own site’s standards.

Make a 1,000% Profit

Elliot Silver
-
18

The title of this post isn’t what you generally expect to see on my blog, but I found a way to make 10x my investment in a short period of time, and I want to share this because I don’t think it’s a limited opportunity. What I am going to share probably won’t work for everyone, and it won’t work all the time, but I can tell you that I did this before, and I did very well.

Snapnames and Moniker have made it very easy to list domain names for sale on Snapnames. The problem many people have is registering domain names that other people want to buy. Sure, I can go ahead and register 1,000 new domain names and put them up for auction right away, but if nobody wants them, I’m basically out $8,000.

With Snapnames’ new interface, I can see what people are bidding on or buying in real time, and frequently, I can spot patterns that can help me buy domain names that someone else is looking to buy (and is willing to pay a premium). Using this information, I can register domain names that are essentially part of the same pattern, and offer them for auction. Assuming the buyer has a special alert set for that particular pattern, I can auction it for a $79 minimum bid, just like many other auctions.

If I paid $7.50 for the name, and I sell it for $79, I’ve made 10x my money (minus the 20% commission). If I do this with 100 domain names, I can make some decent money relatively easily.   If I do this with 1,000 domain names, I can make some very good money.

Of course there is a risk to this – in that the buyer may not be buying anymore or may have only been searching for a particular type of name on a random day, and I’ll get stuck with the names. However, I personally believe it’s worth the risk, as I basically only need to sell 1 in 10 names to break even, and my leftovers can be sold in bulk or at a loss – either way I’ve already broken even.

You may be asking yourself if I’ve done this, and I have and I’ve had pretty good success.

Again, there is no guarantee with this whatsoever, and you obviously need to know what to buy and what not to buy based on perceived needs of buyers. Sometimes patterns may look obvious, but they aren’t, and you can get stuck with the names. However, with the chance of making 1,000% profit, it may be worth the risk, and when I did it before, I did very well.

1...1,3711,3721,373...1,547Page 1,372 of 1,547
© Newspaper WordPress Theme by TagDiv