Thursday

HOUSE PRICES RISE FASTER THAN ADSENSE INCOME

28 June 2007 - 08:23

House Prices Rise Faster than Adsense Income !

House prices in the UK continue their relentless upward trend, despite expectations to the contrary. They unexpectedly leapt 1.1% in June, the biggest rise since December last year, lifting the annual increase to 11.1%, the strongest in over 2 years.

Interest rates are expected to rise as a result, so sterling has risen back through the $2 level on the foreign exchanges.

According to the Nationwide, June's rise took the price of an average house to £184,000 ($368,000), over £18,000 higher than a year ago, equivalent to an increase in value of £50 a day. "This beats Google Adsense said a spokesman, I recommend buying 10 or more houses and positioning them in prominent spots along the street."

For full article see here : http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2113407,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=24

Have a nice day - I will be away for a few days. :-)


Posted by Domain Guru at 08:23 2 comments

Wednesday

JOHN CHOW CHECKING OUT NET MONETIZATION'S PERKY STATS !

27 June 2007 : 21:25

JOHN CHOW CHECKING OUT MY ALEXA STATS AND A MESSAGE FROM SETH GODIN ! YIKES !

I just thought I'd post this for posterity. My Alexa rank is up 700% over the last 3 months! That's up 2,754,004 places to number 870,523 ! With John Chow at 2,521 I'm only 868,002 places behind, but I am supremely confident of narrowing that gap.


"Hi Old Vic, nice stats!"

I think in fact that John Chow is feeling the heat, 'cause there he is checking out my stats when he came by the other day ! Cool, hi John ! It's a bit like being visited by royalty. I just accidentally hit the print screen button, which is why I happen to have his picture stored on my hard drive.




So after this meteoric rise, I have now set myself the goal of getting above the 750,000 spot before the end of July ! So I will need to come up with a cunning plan, but I've done that before so I am 'zen', as they say in France.

In fact one idea would be to turn this into a bilingual blog. That might help a bit.

I could also mention the visit I had from Seth Godin (yes, the Seth Godin, he dropped by and left a message on my Squidoo post (to which I intend doing a follow-up soon btw, as soon as I get back from my latest trip to sunnier climes).

Anyway interesting times, a visit from Messrs. Chow and Godin in the same week ! Maybe that's the why ny stats are so perky? Hmmmmm.

Qu'en pensez-vous ? (That's French).

Posted by Domain Guru at 21:25 2 comments
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The Meme-o-meter has landed ! A cool widget if ever there was one

27 June 2007 - 18:02

The Meme-o-Meter has Landed


How Cool is this ? A Meme-o-meter. Congratulations to the people at Daylife who have worked with the tech staff at Fortune to come up with a neat widget called the Meme-o-meter.

A Meme is an "idea that circulates and mutates like genes throughout the culture" or "a unit of cultural information that is transferable from one mind to another"

The Meme-o-meter is a "more or less" real-time chart that ranks the hottest memes in science and technology, based on mentions in news stories and blogs (like this one no doubt!).

Check it out and see what's hot right now Meme-o-meter

Posted by Domain Guru at 18:02 1 comments

Tuesday

SQUIDOO BUCKS OR SQUIDOO SUCKS ?

26 June 2007 - 14:03


Squidoo Bucks or Squidoo Sucks?


Squidoo, in case you don't know is the brainchild of Seth Godin, founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry's "leading interactive direct marketing company" which was acquired by Yahoo in late 1998.

He has an MBA from Stanford, and was named "the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age" by Business Week.

According to the Squidoo site "Squidoo is the world's most popular site for people who want to build a page about their passions. Highlight books, blogs, vids, online shops, or just spread the word about stuff you love (stuff you love? how do these 'people' know what stuff you love? - I hate sloppy English - Ed.). Bonus: you raise money (for you or charity) at the same time! It's fast, free, and supereasy."

Squidoo has what they call 'lenses' but what everyone else calls 'pages'. You sign up to Squidoo (free) and make yourself a page using their modules. Each page you create acts as an advertising/marketing space for you to sell stuff which belongs to other people (e.g. Ebay listings). You get a commission if a sale is completed as a result of the referral from your link. There are also Adsense ads. and you get a share of the total Adsense commissions.

I signed up a long time ago, but found the whole site so slow and clunky I decided it wasn't for me. Recently however I read a post on Andy Beard's blog which made me have second thoughts. So I went backto Squidoo (and discovered I had made 44 cents in my absence!) and made myself a couple more pages (sorry 'lenses'). I have since been eagerly awaiting for something to happen, unfortunately I think I must have been shunted off into some backend of cyberspace on Squidoo as there are precious few visitors (6 in total I think) and no clicks on anything.

My ranking has improved, however, my Louis Vuitton page Squidoo Designer Labels is now number 1842 in 'shopping' and my Franck Muller page Squidoo Franck Muller USA is no. 4004 also in 'shopping'.

I have also done some research and discovered that some people think that 'Squidoo sucks', one such person even created his own Squidoo page to let everyone know - Squidoo Sucks - and even Michael Arrington of Techcrunch is fairly negative on the whole venture Techcrunch Seth Godin. So, as far as I'm concerned the jury is still out, I'll give it a few more days to see if there is any change, and to decide whether it is worth investing any more time in it. Maybe you have to wait a while for the surge to happen? Certainly there are people who report positive experiences with Squidoo, but mine so far has been uninspiring to say the least.

If you visit my Squidoo pages the extra visits may improve my page rankings! And if you click on 'favorite' that would probably send them even higher!

If any of my esteemed readers has had any experience of Squidoo I would be most glad to hear of them and any tips they may have. Have a nice day !

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Posted by Domain Guru at 14:03 4 comments
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Monday

How to Obscure any URL and Trace E-mails

25 June 2007 - 02:07

How to Obscure any URL and Trace E-mails

Yesterday I published a post which I entitled Knowledge is Weightless about Courtney Tuttle's excellent blog and what a good thing it is that knowledge is weightless. Well today I have just stumbled upon a site run by a guy in Washington State, who must have six heads! His site deals with stuff such as tracing IP addresses, or obscuring IP addresses to make it look like you're somewhere else (like in the living room when you're really answering the 'phone on the john!) (not), it's full of amazing information about how people mask their addresses so you don't know where they really are, but even better he tells you how you can unmask them and trace them. Very handy for security in chat rooms and spam e-mails ( yes you can find out where those phishing e-mails are really coming from!) .

I must point out at this point that I have only just read his web pages and I haven't actually done the stuff he says, but he seems confident enough. One more disclaimer before I put up the address of the website, I don't know the guy but like I said he looks genuine enough you can check out his home page here - PC Help.org - the actual pages you need to look at are at the bottom of this page.

Some of the things he says :

URLs can be obscured in at least 3 ways:

  1. Meaningless/deceptive text can be added after "http://" and before an "@" symbol e.g. http://7763631671@3468664375/o%62s%63ur%65%2e%68t%6D .
  2. The domain name can be expressed as an IP address, in dotted-decimal, dword, octal or hexadecimal format; and all of these formats have variants.
  3. Characters in the URL can expressed as hexadecimal (base 16) numbers.

Plus you can mix all the above 3 together!

Fascinating stuff but he explains it really well, with examples.

He also says :

"Use of the Tracer sometimes shocks the hell out of someone you traced, who naïvely believed him/herself to be entirely anonymous or invisible. You agree to accept full responsibility for all consequences, including resuscitation of the victim, time wasted convincing the poor sod you're not a hacker, and the slow, painful restoration of confidence following shattered illusions."

He has a program you can download for performing traces, but I haven't downloaded it yet (there's no-one I want to trace) so I accept no responsibility for any consequences that may arise as a result of you downloading his program.

The page with all the info. is here PC Help Obscure

The page with more info, and the trace program is here Network Tracer

Happy hunting.

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Posted by Domain Guru at 02:07 2 comments
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FREE CLASSIC AUDIO BOOKS TO DOWNLOAD

25 June 2007 - 00:55

Free Classic Audio Books

Somebody said they liked getting free stuff so here's some more. A site that has free audio books for you to listen to. All good clean family fun as far as I can see, so you can listen to them while going about your daily business and get yourself the education you never had, or listen to them curled up with the kids at bedtime and give your vocal chords a rest. All you got to do is click on the little icon, you don't even have to register! Couldn't be freer if it tried!

These are just some of the books available :-

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Buffalo Bill by W.F. Cody
etc... etc... - I have removed the rest of this long list as Google is sticking PSAs again and I amwondering if it is because of duplcate content. I sometime sget PSAs on the front page of this blog, but not when I click on the individual posts, if anyone can enlightne me as to why this is I would be very grateful.

The site is called Free Classic Audio Books - have a nice day and don't forget to come back or say hi :-).

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Posted by Domain Guru at 00:46 0 comments
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Sunday

SIMPLIFY YOUR WEB NAVIGATION - WITH CTRL + ENTER

24 June 2007 - 18:50

A cool tip for speeding up your web navigation

Type any word e.g. sharescity (a financial blog :-)) in the address bar then press CTRL + ENTER and it takes you to the dotcom domain.

Why am I posting this piece of information which has been around for years ? Because I just read about it on a blog written by one of the top Internet entrepreneurs, a guy who has made millions from the Internet and it got a lot of 'cool tip thanks' type comments (plus some others saying it was old news). This is not a dig at the guy in question or the people who thanked him for the cool tip, as clearly if you didn't know it, then doing it makes typing in addresses somewhat less tedious. It's more an indication that we may know more than we think.

There's so much stuff I don't know about computers that I would never have dreamed of posting this tip up until 5 minutes ago, but now I have and maybe it will be of use to someone out there !

Type a word in the address bar e.g. geekylvania then CTRL + ENTER and hey presto! Maybe I'm more of a geek than I thought I was!

Have a nice day.

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Posted by Domain Guru at 18:36 0 comments

SEE WHO IS VISITING YOUR SITE IN REAL-TIME AND FOR FREE - GETCLICKY

24 June 2007 - 15:40

GetClicky the Free Web Analytics Tool

Back in March I wrote about the free web analytics tool "GetClicky" here: Clicky The Cool New Web Analytics Tool . I have decided to provide this update as a result of seeing John Chow's video of him watching people log on to his blog in real-time Watching Blog Activity in Real Time GetClicky is a free web analytics tool that has a feature called 'spy' that lets you basically do the same thing, i.e. you can see who is logging on to your site and what they do while they are there.

That's not all it does, it also gives a whole load of information about where your visitors come from (e.g. some commercial site in Indonesia decided to copy and paste one of my articles onto their website so I left them a comment to say thank you - they did put up a link but I felt it was a bit of a cheek not acknowledging who I was.).

Not only is GetClicky free but it is incredibly easy to install and use, if you have ever struggled trying to get your head around Google Analytics you will be quite amazed how easy web statistics can be! The Clicky people have understood that most people just want things to work and be easy to understand!

It has innovative features like statistics via RSS (they are proud of the fact that they are the only analyzer on the planet that gives you web stats via RSS). It can also distinguish between regular Google search traffic and Google Blog search traffic, and it tells you what keywords people use to find your site. For example the keyword 'domain' accounts for 11% of Gogole referrals to this blog, 'monetization' accounts for 9% and 'ham' accounts for 5% (I assume they are looking for Kevin Ham not a ham sandwich.

The best feature, however, for me was that I can actually understand the statistics I am looking at !

The next best feature is that it's free, if you get less than 1,000 page views per day per site, which I guess means a lot of us. If you get more visitors than that then fear not, they also have a premium service. And you can upgrade if you like after the free trial.

The services are :

Basic - Free, up to 3 sites, up to 1,000 average daily page views per site. Limited feature set.

Paid Services

Blogger - $2.99/month or $19.99/year. Up to 3 sites and 10,000 average daily page views total (between all sites). Includes extra features like RSS feeds, Spy, outbound link tracking, download tracking, IP tagging, IP filtering, and more.

There is also a 'pro' service for $50 a year.

No money or card details etc... are required upfront. You decide after your free trial if you want to upgrade.

When you register, you get a 21 day free trial of their 'pro' service, so you can access all their features and see which will work best for you when your trial is up. Any websites that get more than 1,000 average daily page views will be automatically disabled after the trial has expired if you decide you do not wish to sign up for the premium service.

Finally, and very interestingly for people using the free trial, they have an affiliate program that can earn you money if you refer new users to their service. If you earn enough money from your affiliate account (around $19) then you are signed up for the premium account for 1 year.

So essentially you can keep your free account going and once you have enough affiliates who have signed up (4 should do it) you get the premium account for free (for 1 year). That's what happened to me :-)

Plus, if you write an article about them on your website or blog they put $5 in your account. That only works once I'm afraid!

I really do recommend you have a look at what theyhave to offer. To give their 21 day free trial a go or just check out all the details of what they are offering please click here GetClicky to visit their site, that way I may be able to buy myself a beer! :-)

Let me know how you get on. Have a nice day !

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Posted by Domain Guru at 15:40 1 comments
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KNOWLEDGE IS WEIGHTLESS

24 June 2007 - 01:35

Updated 6 August 2007

I have just been studying Courtney Tuttle's blog Courtney Tuttle in an attempt to find ways of enhancing the monetization of this blog and the thought arose in my mind "thank God knowledge is weightless"! (At least I assume it is, although I haven't actually carried out any controlled experiments to prove the hypothesis.) Otherwise all the stuff CT has in his head would make it impossible for him to get out of bed in the morning. The guy is a veritable encyclopedia, which is why I have shamelessly nicked some of his stuff.

SEO

Not only does he seem to know everything there is to know about SEO (search engine optimization - just in case you know even less than I do) and probably lots of other stuff as well, but he is good at explaining it to novitiates like me. Over the past few months I have read an astonishingly large number of posts about blogging and what you should and shouldn't do, but time and again I have found myself being drawn back to his blog as if by some strange magnetic force! There are lots of good bloggers around but Monsieur Tuttle seems to me to be the most expert at explaining the actual mechanics of blogging.

Today I was reading Courtney Tuttle's Beginners Guide to Top Google Rankings and 102 Ways to Make Your Blog or Site a Back Link Superstar and Get More Traffic Technorati Tags among other things, as unfortunately one things leads to another and you end up reading far more than you intended when you first went there (perhaps that's all part of his plan?).

Here are a couple of short examples of what I mean by useful information (useful to me at least as I still have a lot to learn :-( )

Safe On-Page Optimization Techniques

  • Place keywords in the titles of your posts
  • Make sure permalinks are enabled (permalinks as far as I can tell are just a fancy name for the stuff that appears in the address bar that refers to the articles you write). I hope mine are enabled, but I can’t see any way in blogger of either enabling them or disabling them.
  • Put the keyword in your text and make it bold (which I knew already) but only do it once (which I didn’t know).
  • Use a domain name that has the keyword in it. Well my domain name is netmonetization, so I hope that’s OK, but his domain name is Courtney Tuttle so I don’t know where he’s going with that. This is apparently very effective for good ranking !
  • Use the keyword a few times on the page (I knew that) by which he means 3-4 times, not 20 (good job he specified the number). If you repeat too much you might get banned by Google, which might give you an interesting blog post or two, but not much else !
  • Link to other authoritative pages that rank well for the keyword (I hope that’s what I’ve done here).
  • Use H1 and H2 tags around your keyword, I’m afraid he lost me there! (actually I put h2 around SEO at the top, so now it just looks a bit silly, but I hope that's what he meant).
  • He also says to post in the morning US time as that is the busiest time and explains the importance of using Technorati tags and how to do it, which I haven’t been doing. I have been pinging Technorati, but not been uisng tags, so hopefully there will be some tags at the bottom of this page !

There is a whole load of other stuff on his site, a veritable Wikipedia all of his own, such as his 5263 Words on Starting a Blog which I still have to read, but not tonight thank you very much.

Courtney Tuttle is ranked no. 74 in Paula Mooney's latest list of people making money on the Internet Paula Mooney's Rich List or here in my list which shows how many professional bloggers use WordPress and how many use Blogger WordPress or Blogger ? So anyway, as I said at the beginning, check out Courtney Tuttle's site if you still have things to learn about blogging and thank God knowledge is weightless.


Posted by Domain Guru at 01:35 0 comments
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Saturday

FREE EBOOK ON HOW TO BE A CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR BY DAVID PARRISH

23 June 2007 - 21:05

[An update of the earlier post of the same name - due to a slice of spam being dropped in my lunchbox]

Free Ebook on the 'Business of Creativity' (Yes, really free)

Because I love my reader(s) so much, I scour the Internet to find things that are both useful and free for him/her/them/you. Today I was surprised to discover that David Parrish who is well-known as an 'international business guru' has decided to make his book 'T-Shirts and Suits - A Guide to the Business of Creativity' available free of charge online in pdf format.
Why has he done this? Who knows? Maybe he has some evil twisted plan to undermine capitalism? But be that as it may, the book is an excellent guide to creativity, which will be of use to all creative entrepreneurs (or wannabe creative entrepreneurs). It comes in at over 100 pages of well-written text and neat images and is described as ' a practical, useful handbook for creative entrepreneurs to refer to and find information ...... with practical tips about using powerful business ideas in a creative context.'
It is aimed at creative entrepreneurs (you?) and enterprises (them) who are intent on becoming even more successful. The book tells you how to maximize your creative talents, but also tells you how to combine your talents with best business practice.
David Parrish has over 20 years' experience working in creative enterprises. I think it is an excellent decision by him to make his book available for download. Long live the revolution.
So to download the book free of charge (yes really free - not free if you pay someone $30 type free - or free if you sign up with your name address and SS number etc... - just plain old free) go here : MerseysideAcme or here DavidParrish - and click where it says click to download the pdf file - David Parrish also has a blog on his site.

If you read this article elsewhere than on netmonetization .com please drop by and say hi.

Posted by Domain Guru at 21:02 0 comments

SHOW ME THE MONEY - PAULA MOONEY'S MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET LIST

23 June 12:28

Show Me the Money - Paula Mooney's Making Money Online List

Hats off to Paula Mooney and her new improved Internet cool dudes making money list where people who make money online reveal all ! It must have involved an enormous amount of work, but it is much appreciated by the bloggerati throughout cyberspace (I thought I had invented a word there for a minute but I just checked and 'bloggerati.com' has already been registered!)

Paula's list has doubled in size! There are now 120 people on it ranging from the top two, who both make money from domain names by the way, 1. Kevin Ham ($300 million - although not $300 million a year it must be said) for the inside info. about how Kevin Ham made $300 milion see here YouWannaBeADomainNameMillionaire? and 2. Frank Schilling ($20 million - again not annually) to the bottom 118. Fame Fire with $19 (well done for having the guts to admit it but it could prove to be good marketing ploy! (119. and 120. have not provided the info. yet).

To see Paula's complete list you need to go here PaulaMooney - my intention here is to look at one particular aspect which has been bothering me for a while as a blogger, namely WordPress or Blogger? As you can see from this blog I am using Blogger, because I'm a cheapskate and it's free. As I understand it you cannot put Adsense on the free version of WordPress (please someone correct me if I am wrong). But I have this nagging doubt that the 'real' professional bloggers use WordPress and that they do it for a reason. So I decided to carry out the very mundane task of checking out all the bloggers on Paula's list to see which ones use WordPress and which ones use Blogger. Simple huh? But hopefully educational!

Firstly, of the 120 people on the list I have only counted those that appear to be bloggers (i.e. not the websites) - so that is 88 in total.

[NB : Updated 25 June. For some reason I left off Frank Schilling, who is no. 2 on the list with $20m - made from domain names - but he also has a blog]

PM's List No.

Holy moley - that took longer than I thought (several hours in fact) !

Conclusions ? There's an awful lot of creative talent out there !

And the score is ...... WordPress - 68 Blogger - 20 Typepad 1 (a big one but he makes his money from domain names not from blogging I believe)

So almost 3.5 : 1 in favour of WordPress, but it is worth bearing in mind that of those earning $50K or more, 14 are using Wordpress and only 3 are using Blogger.

I don't know enough to say why this might be. It could be just historical, the ones earning the most money may have been doing it longer and they started with WordPress. It will be interesting to see if the Blogger users start catching up (when Paula decides to draw up the new revised improved list!). The majority of Blogger users, but by no means all, are in the lower half of the table.

Please leave a comment if you have an explanation as to why most use Wordpress and not the free Blogger. Also why there is no-one in the list using Typepad?

I will be taking a closer look at the blogs again as there was a lot of information on all of them, and a lot of them are quite candid about publishing how much they make each month. I am particularly interested in those that are not so well-known, so if you would like me to review your blog, please drop me a line.

Have a nice day !

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Posted by Domain Guru at 11:58 19 comments
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Friday

HOW MUCH IS A TICKET TO RICHISTAN ?


22 June 2007 - 14:41

Where is Richistan and How Much Does it Cost to Live There?

If you haven't heard of Richistan yet then you must live in a bucket! Richistan is the "parallel" world where the super-rich live, they are all around you but you don't see them (spooky huh?). To live in Upper Richistan (we won't mention Lower and Middle Richistan) you need a net worth of $100 million to $1 billion. If you are an Upper Richistani, what are you doing reading this blog? The most exclusive residents are the "Billionaire's Club."

Richistan is also the title of the book by Robert Frank which tells us everything we ever wanted to know or didn't want to know about the super-rich. It's a fascinating tale about basically simple folk who just happen to have enormous amounts of money (a bit like the Clampetts in fact) .


"Howdy".




And what do Richistanis drive ?





Well, Maybachs apparently.















And they also don't wear Rolexes (ugh!) (as you can seee from the photo) - they go for Franck Muller's at $600,000 a throw. Check out Franck's elegant timepieces here Franck Muller make sure you click on one of the photos and scroll your cursor over the watch !


And how did they get their ticket to Richistan? Well, lots of different ways apparently. Ed Bazinet, for example, (what you mean you never heard of him?) got rich making little ceramic villages with light bulbs inside them ! mmmmmmmmmmmm light bulbs. So there's hope for us all. Simon Fireman did it by making inflatable pool toys!


One thing Richistanis seem to have in common with each other is that they are feel they would be more secure if they had double the money they have already got! Isn't human nature odd?


The book gives a fascinating insight into what awaits us :-) if you want to buy it please do it here via my Squidoo page Squidoo and we might meet in Richistan one day!








Posted by Domain Guru at 14:40 0 comments
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TRAFFIC LIVE DOMAIN NAME AUCTION UNOFFICIAL PRICES OBTAINED

21 June 2007 - 00:33

LIVE DOMAIN SALES RESULTS FROM T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. were having their live domain name auction today in New York here is part of the unofficial list of the prices obtained (or offers refused/passed) - many thanks to Elliot over at TopNotchDomains for listing all the results as they happened.

There were 218 names in total, I have only included the ones over $100,000 here, for the full list see above at TopNotch. The biggest single sale as far as I can see was CreditCheck.com at $3,000,000 followed by seniors.com at $1,800,000.

Lots of names were not sold as the seller thought the price was too low - e.g. ethanol.com at $600,000 and slots.com at $4,500,000.

It is worth noting that all the big sales (over $100,000) were dotcoms.

Sold for over $100K

38. Seniors.com - $1,800,000
45. CreditCheck.com - @ $3,000,000
55. CarSales.com - $400,000
78. Lips.com - $135,000
97. Bulk.com - $100,000
100. Locals.com - $250,000
106. MegaYachts.com - $150,000
128. Note.com - $115,000
144. Text.com - $300,000
147. Psychologists.com - $160,000
155. Blogging.com - $135,000
157. Bald.com - $400,000
179. Charters.com - $140,000
180. Cardiology.com - $550,000
198. Spices.com - $220,000

Seller Declined Offer over $100K

24. Six.com - Pass @ $1,000,000
25. Scotland.com - Pass @ $3,000,000
35. Scores.mobi - Pass @ $115,000
36. Planet.com - Pass @ $350,000
37. PressReleases.com - Pass @ $2,500,000
23. AutoClassifieds.com - Pass @ $135,000
42. EC.com - Pass @ $250,000
43. Ethanol.com - Pass @ $600,000
52. Union.com - Pass @ $185,000
53. Stuff.com - Pass @ $1,500,000
54. Slots.com - Pass @ $4,500,000
66. Draw.com - Pass @ $1,000,000
70. InternetRadio.com - Pass @ $225,000
71. Commodities.com - Pass @ $1,750,000
72. Elections.com - Pass @ $600,000
81. Student.com - Pass @ $3,000,000
82. PuertoRico.com - Pass @ $3,500,000
85. HY.com - Pass @ $100,000
86. Fitnesscenter.com - Pass @ $125,000
99. NewYorkRealty.com - Pass @ $120,000
101. Dollars.com - Pass @ $700,000
102. DSL.com - Pass @ $1,500,000
109. HorseRacing.com - Pass @ $4,500,000
110. Gin.com - Pass @ $250,000
111. 401kPlans.com - Pass @ $250,000
113. TGP.com - Pass @ $225,000
114. InsuranceRates.com - Pass @ $150,000
119. Dermatology.com - Pass @ $4,500,000
129. Cats.com - Pass @ $2,000,000
130. Naked.com - Pass @ $1,500,000
137. MartialArts.com - Pass @ $600,000
145. Menopause.com - Pass @ $1,500,000
146. ComputerEquipment.com - Pass @ $110,000
156. Auction.com - Pass @ $4,500,000
159. OBGYN.com - Pass @ $1,000,000
171. Rollercoaster.com - Pass @ $100,000
172. Tourist.com - Pass @ $750,000
173. Whiskey.com - Pass @ $400,000
188. How.com - Pass @ $600,000
189. Bourbon.com - Pass @ $300,000
205. Racism.com - Pass @ $125,000

I will be studying the list carefully to determine what sort of names to try and buy in future, it seems like som epeople have a lot of money to spend! Happy hunting !

Posted by Domain Guru at 00:32 0 comments
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Thursday

Derren Brown NLP - Messing with Your Mind

Be Careful What You Wish For

Derren Brown is well-known on TV in the UK. If you are interested in selling stuff to anyone watch carefully how he convinces this guy about what he really really wants. Fascinating stuff.

Posted by Domain Guru at 22:23 0 comments

Sahar Sadir's Tips on Choosing Domain Names

21 June 2007 - 21:06

This post follows on from my earlier post about Internet TV and DomainNames- it concerns Sahar Sarid. You may not have heard of him but his story is one of those rags to riches stories you usually only see in Hollywood. He is now extremely wealthy apparently (I haven't actually seen his bank account so I have to take that on faith) and he made his money in the 'domain name' game - you can see his whole rather unusual story here (would you leave a message on a blog asking complete strangers to lend you $3,000? Well he did, and yes someone did - DNJournal. But, no, I won't, just in case you were wondering :-).

He now has a blog and he has just posted an article on it in which he gives his tips on how he chooses (or used to choose) his domain names -TheConceptualist - alongside the usual advice about using your common sense he mentions a place called archive.org which I had never heard about, but which is very useful for finding the history of a domain name and what sort of site it used to be, so that if you find what you think is a good name you can look it up to see what sort of life it had in the past Archive.org. I thought the old websites would disappear, but it seems they are still there floating around cyberspace.

Sahar Sarid's blog (see above 'the conceptualist') is like an encyclopedia of domaining, I strongly recommend a visit.



Posted by Domain Guru at 21:05 0 comments
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Domain Names Interview on Online Financial Web TV

21 June 2007 - 15:25

Domain Names on Financial TV Channel

While wandering through DNHour.com - an excellent new 'digg-style' site devoted to the domain name industry I was directed to two excellent sites.

The first is a financial site which shows TV interviews online with people who have something to say (hopefully). The site is called videoplayer.thestreet.com and is free to watch, being financed by wonderful adverts and now that I too am an advertising mogul I suddenly find them fascinating! mmmmmmmmmmm adverts.

The interview in question was with Geoff Hampson the CEO of Communicate.com about 'making money from the domain name industry'. There's gold in them thar domain names! The interview is here : TheStreet

Domain names are often sold in auctions, sometimes for very big bucks. You can see the actual bidding history for videosurf.com here, VideoSurfBids how much would you have paid for it?

You can also make money just by 'parking' a domain name with a 'parking company' - to see how much some people make each month click on the cunningly disguised affiliate link below (if you sign up with them free of charge I may one day make enough money to buy myself a beer !) NameDrive - for example, the guy who registered statebank.in (not me) is getting around $30 a month for doing nothing. So domain names can be profitable, I've got to admit I ain't cracked it yet, but I do believe there is a lot of potential to be exploited. For more info. on money from domain names see here : DomainNameMillionaire

I will deal with the second site I mentioned in a subsequent post, as this is getting rather longer than I had intended! Have a nice day.

Posted by Domain Guru at 15:24 0 comments
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Tuesday

Make Money Online Playing Videogames!

19 June 2007 - 13:56

Make Money Online Playing Videogames !

Every gamers dream surely? If you're any good at videogames this could be your chance to make some dough. Skillground has a site where you can download games for free, sign up for a premium account or a free account then match your skills against other players and, if your good enough, take their money off them! The better you are, the more money, how meritocratic is that? No more leaving things to chance, just get good and win!

SkillGround has "reasonably decent games, a matchmaking service to arrange games with other people, and the opportunity to gamble on your performance" what more could you want?

The full description is waaaay too long for me to put it up here but check out these two sites if you're interested Skillground and EuroGamer

I might even have a go at the free stuff myself to see if I'm any good. If anyone makes any money please let me know and tell me how you do it!



Posted by Domain Guru at 13:56 0 comments
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8 Top Tips for Choosing a Perfect Domain Name

19 June 2007 - 00:31

Eight Tips to Help you Choose the Perfect Domain Name

Phillip Davis of Tungsten Marketing recommends the following 8 steps for choosing the perfect domain name (see MSNBC ) - I can’t say I agree with all his 'steps' but some of his ideas are certainly useful and given his experience in the industry worth giving serious consideration to.

1. Start the search

Hmm hardly brain surgery but OK let's not be churlish – he suggests DomainTools.com as the best place to start looking. The site will also offer alternatives if the name you want is already taken.

For pre-owned names he recommends Afternic.com, Sedo.com and BuyDomains.com. Such names can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Finally, SnapNames.com has names that will be expiring soon that you may be able to pick up on the cheap.


2. Get the .com extension

Fair enough, I do agree - .com is still by far the most widely used extension and the one people type in naturally. But you could also register the other extensions .net. .eu etc… to prevent competitors getting them. Also don’t forget the new extensions .mobi and .tv which are growing in popularity


3. Be creative

One-word domain names are either gone or very expensive. So consider choosing a common name plus an ending, such as:

Group
Inc
Agency
Systems
Global
Solutions
Media
Medical
Tech
Capital

Good advice and it would be easy to think of other examples to give you good two-word domain names, such as my own favourite "LondonCentral .mobi"

4. Combine evergreen words

Combine simple words with an ‘evergreen’ word that makes the name stand out. The examples he gives are BossMark.com, KoreOne.com, TeamLogicIT.com and BrightHire.com. Evergreen words he cites are :-

Star
Mark
Point
First

5. Use a phrase.

Don’t overlook short phrases such as SeaOfDiamonds.com, ILoveCrabs.com This approach does require a lot of thinking and digging but can prove very worthwhile. More good advice although I would suggest this more for people intending establishing a business than for 'parking specialists'.

6. Invent new names.

Why not? It's good fun, it's cheap and it could become a world leader. The most obvious example of this is Google but Mr Davis also cites the all-natural bug spray company Skedattle.com and a web-based IT company which his company branded as Graynium.com to highlight intelligence and insight.

He says to make sure that the name can only be spelled one way or capture all possible misspellings and redirect them to the main domain name. This seems to me to be nigh on impossible and he seems to be ignoring the fact that in the UK and elsewhere words are often spelled differently than in the US – for example 'graynium' in the UK would be 'greynium', 'skedattle' is 'skedaddle', 'harbor' is 'harbour' etc…

7. Run a legal search

A piece of good legal advice this. If you find a name, see if you can register the trademark for it. For this you need to go to http://www.uspto.gov/. But if the name doesn't show up you are not necessarily in the clear. A business may operate on a state or local level and not appear in the uspto database. Do a Google search too, this he says will "provide a good indication if someone is using the name or something similar" but in this case the name would not be available anyway.

Also he says you need to check it with your lawyer or an online trademark company such as TMExpress.com. More good advice no doubt, but at some point you’re going to have to stop checking!

8. Hire a specialist

Only if you have deep pockets I would say and if you can do this then you can more or less ignore the first 7 ‘steps’. Mr Davis says a specialist can "create an entire brand identity that includes a matching tagline and logo artwork" and he advises that if you are looking to build a "substantial internet presence", then the specialist is worth the money. If you need a specialist then you need look no further than PureTungsten - a bit of free advertising there for Mr Davis but only fair given that I learned some useful stuff from Mr Davis’s article.

Posted by Domain Guru at 00:31 0 comments
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Monday

My Journey Through Haloscan and Trackbacking Hell

18 June 2007 : 18:30

How to Trackback using Haloscan (if you're lucky)

[P.S. - I'm putting the PS first as a warning - apparently I have done it wrong and will probably need to re-install the previous template as Haloscan removes all previous comments and the dofollow tweak. So don't do what I did]

After my previous post - DoFollow - I received a comment from Andy Beard recommending that I start trackbacking. So, being the adventurous sort, I thought "hmmm maybe I'll go to sleep instead" but I didn't! I read up a load of stuff which confused me even further about trackbacks, apparently Blogger is not particularly trackback friendly, Wordpress is better they say, then I zoomed over to Haloscan - Haloscan - and did what they said using their 'wizard' (ezpz) and now I see 'trackback' proudly displayed at the bottom of my posts (hooray). [Not any more - I have reverted back to the none trackback version. An interesting two hours nevertheless !]

So now it's there what does it do? Or what do I do? Well, I stared at it for a while and then decided to try and trackback someone, or something, following the instructions I found buried in the Haloscan forum. The person I have chosen for my experiment is Paula Mooney (no doubt she will be delighted) for the reason that she left a comment on one of my posts a while back and she seems a nice person :-).

So I'm going to follow the instructions and find out if anything happens.

First "find a post you are interested in" - ok here it is PaulaMooney'sMoney - then find where it says 'trackback' url - well I had a good look around and unfortunately it doesn't or at least I can't see it if it does - so I'll just use the regular URL - then login to Haloscan and do the business.

(10 minutes later)

Well, needless to say, that didn't work. Haloscan gave me an error message, it seems the URL was all wrong, so as I can't find a trackback URL at Paula's place, I'll give Courtney Tuttle a whirl, 'cause I know he has a trackback URL.

(10 minutes later)

Well that didn't work either, but I persisted and tried Andy Beard instead. I found an article I liked the look of - ABConversionTechniques
- and noticed that the trackback URI was the same link with /trackback tagged on the end so I used that and, lo and behold, much to my amazement, eureka! I got the 'success!' message (well done me) - so what was wrong with Paula Mooney's and Mr Tuttle's links ? I don't know, maybe it was me?

So now I have sent my first trackback and I feel much better for it. I highly recommend the experience! I don't know what good it will do but Andy Beard recommended it to me, so on his beard be it!

I suspect he will soon notice my trackback, as I think that's half the idea of the whole thing.

Posted by Domain Guru at 18:30 4 comments
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Bloggers - get on the Do Follow D-List - no more no follow please

18 June 2007 - 12:33

Do Follow v No Follow

I've been reading a lot lately about 'do follow' which is basically the opposite of 'no follow' - you remove the 'no follow' instructions from your code and any comments then somehow miraculously result in links (you can tell I really understand what I'm doing here!). Anyway I removed the 'no follow' instructions from the HTML code so hopefully any comments will result in links for the commenter (if I'm talking nonsense could someone please comment and let me know - Thanks!).

Instructions here from the surprisingly non-hirsute Andy Beard - AndyBeard or for more general optimization tips see here : SEO

I also copied some stuff from Courtney Tuttle and posted a link (I think)

This DoFollow Blog list is courtesy of Courtney Tuttle and was created originally by Coleen as the D-List. - so maybe I'm now on his D list

Thanks also to PaulaMooney

Posted by Domain Guru at 12:33 2 comments

Sunday

DNHour a NEW 'Digg-style' website with all the top news for the domain name industry

17 June 2007 - 13:47

DNHour - a New 'Digg-style' Website Domainers

An excellent new site has just been created for domainers and anyone interested in making money from domain names (not by me I hasten to add).

The site is called DNHour and is based on Digg. People put up posts relevant to the domaining industry and other people vote on them. The idea is not new of course but I don't think that will hamper it at all, as people are familiar with the format and there is a lot of interest in domaining in general. According to the owner Al, DNHour is "A Digg-style type of news portal for the domain industry. Remember, this is a 100% domainer-powered news content site" it also has areas for listing domains/websites for sale, domaining tips etc...

The other excellent thing about the site is that it is just starting up, so you can be among the first to post there, make some new friends and maybe have some influence on how the site develops. One extra bonus, Al says he is "planning to start a contest for Top DNHour User soon...do check back for the latest on this. (any suggestions on this will be most appreciated)...Budget is $200." So another reason to get involved (money is always a great motivator!)

Just in case you are not familiar with what domainers do, they buy and sell domain names, sometimes for just a few hundred bucks, sometimes for many millions - diamond.com was sold recently for $7.5 million, topix.com went for $1 million, realestate.net went for $300,000 - for a list of all this year's domain name sales check out DNJournal

For other articles about domain names and the money to be made check here YouWannaBeADomainNameMillionaire or here SeriousMoneyFromDotMobis

DNHour looks like a great idea to me and I'm sure it will soon be popular with new and experienced domainers, you can check it out here DNHour.

Posted by Domain Guru at 13:47 0 comments
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Saturday

Top 20 Make Money Online Sites - An Update

16 June 2007 - 18:06

Make Money Online – Top 20 Sites – Update

Back in April, after reading an article by dotcom mogul John Chow, I decided to draw up a list of the first 20 sites listed by Google when you type in the words “make money online”. The reason was that John Chow had decided to try and get to number 1 in the Google rankings, which he achieved. However, when you type in “make money online” now (16 June 2007) Mr Chow doesn’t show up until page 4.

It seems that Google is a fickle beast. John Chow himself wrote a post about losing his number 1 spot back on 4 June JohnChow, it seems he managed to regain it, but now he appears to have lost it again (tut tut). His advice is to become well-acquainted with Google’s WebmasterTools my advice is that he should take his own advice! ;-)

I thought it would be interesting to see what changes there have been to the top 20 make money online sites. The first thing I noticed was the large increase in the total number of sites Google found (although this seems to vary depending on the time of day you look!). Back in April there were a total of 1,410,000 pages listed when you searched on "make money online", today that total is 1,780,000 i.e. an increase of 370,000 pages or over 26% in two months! Or about 6,000 a day! (Don’t you just love statistics?) Maybe that is the John Chow effect?

So without further ado here is the new revised and improved list of top 20 sites, along with the previous ranking in brackets (can someone please tell me how to create a table?).

1. (1) http://www.bidvertiser.com

2. (6) http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/

Very professional looking blog by Alan Liew apparently, with articles and ads. But a bit impersonal

3. (7) http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/ -

Interesting blog by George Manty with plenty of articles and a “be a guest blogger” spot

4. (8) http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/homebasedbusiness/a/makemoneyonline.htm

Lots of info. looks quite interesting but I still think it’s written too small

5. (16) http://www.successwithauctions.com/

Not just about auctions – has all online money-making opportunities – interesting survey and SEO articles

6. (9) http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/02/22/10-new-ways-to-make-money-online/

Lots of stuff again and comments – but some of it actually sounds like ‘work’ ! yuk

7. (-) http://www.justmakemoneyonline.com/

Interesting place – will take a closer look

8. (3) http://www.problogger.net/

Highly successful and well-known – interesting stuff, but I find the colours a bit strange!

9. (10) http://www.doshdosh.com/

Interesting blog with an ‘anime’ theme by a guy called Maki

10. (-) http://www.makingonlinemoney.com/

A general site with short auto-generated (?) articles, by a guy in the UK

11. (5) http://www.squidoo.com/supermom_in_ny/

Supermom scoured the Internet for legitimate money-making opportunities and has listed them on this Squidoo page - well done Supermom

12. (-) http://ez-onlinemoney.com/

Impersonal looking website of articles with a blog down in the corner

13. (11) http://www.team-schuman.com/

Slick looking but not captivating

14. (4) http://rsstoblog.com/

$247 for a software package – mmmmm software

15. (-) http://www.bidvertiser.com/bdv/BidVertiser/bdv_publisher.dbm

2nd Bidvertiser page – I should display more Bidvertiser ads!

16. (-) http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1042-top-ways-of-making-money-online/index.htm

101 ways of making money – long list but interesting and amusing

17. (19) http://www.43things.com/things/view/123501

Part of a site called 43things – still too complicated for my old brain

18. (17) http://www.incomemax.com/

A directory of directories of directories with ads. – only for the desperate or the dedicated!

19. (-) http://www.affilorama.com/

Courses for $29.95 or $37 - yummy

20. (13) http://blog.usweb.com/archives/a-website-dedicated-to-helping-you-make-money-online/

Lots of dead links and most recent article was Jan. 2007 – but still in top 20 ! C’mon John you can beat this deadbeat!


So there it is. Big loser seems to be Mr Chow who is off the radar at number 40, also Problogger who has slipped from 3 to 8, Supermom down to 11 from 5 rsstoblog down to 14 from 4 Big winners Alan Liew (6 to 2) and George Manty (7 to 3), successwithauctions (16 to 5) and justmakemoneyonline (from nowhere to 7!).

Once again, after the top 10 the sites become distinctly less interesting. I’ll be having a closer look at the ‘big winners’ over the next few days to see if I can pick up any useful tips (like how to create a table!).

Posted by Domain Guru at 17:43 9 comments