Friday

Get Your Family Domain Name

Earn Money Online - Get Your Family Domain Name

Get your very own special domain name. Ever fancied having your own domain name - such as Wayne.king or even King.Wayne or Wayne.whatever or Wayne.themindboggles ? Well it will soon be possible.

The domain name addressing system is set to be all shook up, as ICANN has voted to relax the rules governing TLDs (top level domains – e.g. .com, .net etc…).

ICANN has approved a proposal by which we could see these changes come into play as early as 2009. One expectation is that companies will use their own brands for domain names, which sounds like a good idea, but who will get .cola ? Pepsi or Coke ? or Doris Cola from Des Moines ? Or the Spanish firm ola.cola ? Lawyers must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of these future .lawsuits.

For individuals to be allowed to register personalised domains, however, they will need to demonstrate technical capacity and the ability to produce a business plan. So I guess that rules out me and Wayne.

Dr Paul Tworney, CEO of ICANN says : "The potential is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the net. It's a massive increase in the 'real estate' of the internet."

So we could also finally see the .xxx domain name extension some people have been campaigning so long for, and which so far has been blocked as it is argued it would encourage pornography on the Internet ! Lol – perish the thought.

Domain squatters, typosquatters and spammers may have a lot of fun of course. I shall in fact shortly be writing an article on exactly why typosquatting is gud !

There is also the question of price, and whether this isn’t just another enormous legalized scam designed to bring more money into the coffers of the registrars. All legal of course, but they are after all creating a product which we have all managed to live without so far, but which will become an absolute must have for the big names. They will be almost commercially obliged to register their brand name in order to protect it from squatters or from the competition.

ICANN hasn’t disclosed a price yet but my guess is that it won’t be $10 a name, which would be the democratic and non-exploitative way to do things. Rumour has it that prices will be over $100,000 – why is that ? And some of the more popular suffixes will be put up for auction to the highest bidder.

You’ve got to hand it to those guys at ICANN – "Here’s some stuff we've just made, you can take it or leave it, but if you want it it’ll cost you $100,000, if you don’t want it we’ll sell it to your main competitor. Your choice."

Tuesday

Googles Matt Cutts SEO Tips

How to Make Money Online - Top 5 SEO Tips from Google's Matt Cutts

Update : Since writing this post my pagerank has been whacked by Google - down to PR0 from PR3 - any connection ? I have no idea. But pagerank is not a particularly iportant factor for online money making

In an interview with USA Today, Matt Cutts from Google gave his top 5 SEO tips for increasing the page ranking of your site in Google.

  1. Make sure you spotlight the keyword you are targetting. This sounds pretty self-evident but if you want to be found for a keyword e.g. SEO Tips you must make sure you include it on the page ! The keyword needs to be at the top of the page, but also dotted here and there throughout the rest of the page. If your niche is how to make money online of if you are selling digital camera accessories , or a plumber in Dallas make sure those terms figure prominently on your site.
  2. Make sure you fill in the tags. Title and Description are the two most important tags because they are what is displayed in the search engine results.
  3. Backlinks are important. You need to get other sites to link back to your site. Also, although this is not included in the interview, it is said to be better if they link back to you using the keyword you are trying to rank for – SEO Tips or make money blogging in this example. So if you want to link back to this post use the word SEO in the link. He did add, however, that Google assesses over 100 factors when ranking sites and backlinks are one of the most important factors. I didn’t know that Google had over 100 factors it considers, but I have been told elsewhere that backlinks are THE most important factor. So make sure you work on getting your backlinks, preferably direct backlinks to your site from a site with a higher PR than your own site.
  4. Make sure you have a blog and that you post to it often. This is one way of getting backlinks. You can use a blog to link back to your site and even that counts for SEO.
  5. Go over to Google and register for their free tools. He recommends that you use the tools over at google.com/webmaster, also that you create a sitemap at www.xml-sitemaps.com, and that you get your business listed in Google's Local Business center (google.com/local/add) – which I will do immediately as I hadn’t heard of that before.

As a final SEO Tip he said to not overdo it. Keywords are important but too many keywords can have negative consequences, and even get your site removed from the index, so don’t fill your pages with nothing but keywords. Two or three times seems to be enough, according to Cutts.

Interesting stuff direct from the horse’s mouth, some of which I knew but some of which I didn’t, so thank you USA Today, hopefully the Business Center suggestion will see me leap to page 1 !

Friday

Euro 2008 Croatia Turkey Live

Online Money Making - Euro 2008 Croatia Turkey Live Online

If you are not near a television you can watch the match between Croati and Turkey live online via sopcast see Free Online Sport

UPDATE :
The Euro 2008 Semi-Finals line-up is now

Germany v Turkey

Russia v Spain - thanks largely to Andrei Arshavin and the Spanish Goalkeeper

Rainbow Bought for $170K

Make Money Online Free - Net Monetization - Rainbow Sells for $170,000

Would you pay $170,000 for a rainbow? Probably not, unless you were on drugs at the time. Nevertheless, despite the terrible economy and falling stockmarkets, somebody paid $170,000 for the domain name Rainbow.com, which goes to show that domain name sales are holding up well despite the credit crunch and high oil prices.

The top five domain name sales as reported by DNJournal last week were
Rainbow.com $170,000
Sexe.org - $151,400
Cognac - $88,000
Alpari.com $65,000
Katie.com $62,000

Cognac seems to be a bargain given the millions paid for Vodka.com recently !

The top 5 domain name sales so far this year have been
Fund.com - $9,999,950
Datarecovery.com - $1,659,000
Cruises.co.uk - $1,099,798
SkiResorts - $850,000
iReport - $750,000

It’s good to see so many big sales, but a pity that none of them were mine ! I wll be creating a site soon with a list of my names, but in the meantime if you are interested in MasdarProperty.com then get in touch. Masdar is the new environmentally friendly city being built in the UAE and designed to produce zero carbon emissions. Real estate in Masdar and also Internet real estate is expected to be highly sought after.

For further information on domain name buying and selling and how you can make money online from domain names see Make Money Online Trading Domain Names

To open a free account with NameDrive where you can park any domain names you mave have and make money when people click on the ads. placed on your site by NameDrive check out the NameDrive site.

Tuesday

Ebay Alternative Domain Name Auction

NET MONETIZATION - ALTERNATIVE TO EBAY - 2 DOTCOMS FOR SALE - ZUVW.COM and 80796.COM

As I mentioned previously in Live Domain Name Auction at Namepros there is a good alternative to Ebay for buying and selling domain names. Namepros organizes live domain name auctions at very regular intervals. The two dotcoms in the header above are 2 of mine which I have listed in the auction over at Namepros .

There is a very low reserve for a LLLL.com and a NNNNN.com being sold together.

Some background info. regarding the domain names :-

ZUVW.com : is ZUVW ! All the LLLL.coms have already been sold. so they are hard to find at a reasonable price. The Chinese and German markets like Zs and Ws and isn't there a famous Hollywood love-child or tennis player called Zirconium Uranium Venus Williams ?

80796.com : 80796 is the zipcode for Munich and probably has lots of other uses too.

To bid on the domains you need to sign up at Namepros - it's free and there is no commission !

- the auction starts on Thursday June 19 at 6 p.m. EDT and last a couple of hours usually. It's interesting and educational to watch and you get to see what sort of prices domain names are sold for outside of Ebay.





Monday

How Popular is Your Blog?

Make Money Online - How Popular is Your Blog? And How Much is it Worth?

If you want to make money online blogging you may have wondered how popular your blog is compared to everybody else? Well, I've just come across a very interesting site which lets you know how popular (or not) your blog or website is. The site is called DNScoop and it tells you all you'd maybe rather not know about the popularity or otherwise of your blog. Can you handle the truth ? If not then I advise you not to look!

It's very easy to use, you just go to DNScoop and type the URL of your site into the little window and a few seconds later you will see all the gory details revealed. You can also type in the URLs of other people's blogs to see how they rank in the popularity stakes.

For example which is more popular - Problogger.net, DoshDosh.com, JohnChow.com, Engadget.com or BoingBoing.net ? Well according to DNScoop :

  • Problogger is a PR6 with 755,386 links to it, an Alexa ranking of 15,888 (low numbers are better than high numbers), it gets between 500 and 60,000 visits a day (quite a wide margin of error there!) a single link is worth $29 a month and the estimated value of the whole kaboodle is $4,184,850
  • JohnChow is a PR4 with 228,534 links to it, an Alexa ranking of 44,140 (low numbers are better than high numbers), it also gets between 500 and 60,000 visits a day a single link is worth $29 a month but the estimated value of the whole kaboodle is $223,040
  • DoshDosh is a PR6 with 1,104,972 links to it, an Alexa ranking of 15,888 (low numbers are better than high numbers), it also gets between 500 and 60,000 visits a day a single link is only worth $19 a month and the estimated value of the whole kaboodle is $2,175,120
  • Engadget is a PR8 with 12,662,445 links to it, an Alexa ranking of 408 (low numbers are better than high numbers), it gets between the low thousands and 100,000 visits a day they can't generate the link value for the site and the estimated value of the whole kaboodle is $21,523,200
  • BoingBoing is a PR7 with 4,652,899 links to it, an Alexa ranking of 2,552 (low numbers are better than high numbers), it gets between 500 and 100,000 visits a day, a single link is worth a massive $491 a month and the estimated value of the whole kaboodle is $14,228,400

So there you have it. How do you stack up against the big boys ? If you're anything like me you'll be about ready to pack in trying to make money online and get a proper job! Tips for getting a higher ranking? I'm told it's all about backlinks.

Thursday

39DD.COM SALE AT BQB

Online Money Making - 39DD.com on Sale at BQB

Had enough of Ebay's outrageous fees and poor customer support? Lots of people are looking for alternatives to Ebay - in one area - domain name sales - there are alternatives. One particular alternative bqb is interesting because it charges no commissions - compared to anything between 10% and 25% on other auction sites.

I have decided to give them a try and have listed two of my domains for sale there 39DD.COM and MAVEQ.COM

39DD is of obvious interest to people interested in things that end in DD and would make an excellent site for those with the skill to make an interesting graphic site !

MAVEQ is a Klingon word meaning ritual dagger and is also the name of a Klingon scoutship. It is also of course a good pronounceable brandable LLLLL.COM - so check out the BQB site

Monday

Amazon's Kindle E-Book Reader

Online Money Making - E-Book Readers - E-Paper and Amazon's Kindle

For research purposes I am investigating the field of e-book readers, e-paper and Amazon's Kindle. Amazon's Kindle is a much improved version of previous e-book readers and is beginning to make inroads into the mass-market for e-book readers. I shall be providing more information on my research into e-book readers here E-Book Readers

Sunday

Euro 2008 Germany Poland Live

Online Money Making - Germany Poland Deutschland Polen Polska Football Euro 2008 Live on Internet TV



Information on how to watch Euro 2008 and Germany Poland Deutschland Polen Polska online on Internet TV - see - freeonlinesport.com

Friday

SERPENTS.TV FOR SALE

Online Money Making - SERPENTS.TV DOMAIN NAME FOR SALE BY AUCTION


The domain name SERPENTS.TV is up for sale by auction on Namepros. Serpents, apart from the obvious meaning of serpents, is also the French word for snakes, so Serpents.tv would make an excellent name for a site devoted to Serpents or Snakes. The sale is just for the domain name.

Wednesday

HillaryKlingon.com

Online Money Making - Domain Names

HillaryKlingon.com

Hillary is Clinging On

Out of respect for Hillary Clinton and her decisions to cling on and on for as long as it takes, and in given my burning desire to make money online I thought today I would register the domain name HillaryClingon.com which would have been a nice typo for HillaryClinton.com. Unfortunately somebody got there before me, so I decided to register the correct spelling HillaryKlingon.com - which is a typo for the incorrect HillaryClingon.com .

I could have gone for HillariousClingon.com or even HillariousClinton.com and I still might! - I night even develop it into a witty spoof Startrek Klingon convention site. Do Klingons have elections ? I doubt it.

Tuesday

Domain Name Auction at Namepros

Online Money Making - Live Domain Name Auction at Namepros

One alternative to Ebay and their exorbitant rip-off fees in the domain name auction world is Namepros. Namepros is organizing another of their regular auctions of domain names.

The domain name auction starts at Thursday 6 p.m. EDT and if you want to bid on a domain name or two you will no doubt have to register beforehand. Apart from that the auction is free and as far as I know there is no commission to pay.

There are hundreds of domain names on auction, particularly lots of short 4 letter .com names - such as ZUVW.COM which is one of mine - which may be difficult to find elsewhere as they have all been sold already and the only place you can find them is in the aftermarket at auctions like this.



Monday

Israel.com Not Sold

Online Money Making - Israel.com Sold (Not)

In my post this morning - http://www.netmonetization.com/2008/06/israelcom-sells-for-588-million-usd.html - I stated that the domain name Israel.com had sold for $5.88M well it turns out this was incorrect - the news site I got the 'news' from in fact made a mistake - it turns out the name is still for sale, although all the surrounding publicity may help find a buyer - it would appear that one of the stipulations is that any buyer be pro-Israel (which makes sense as the guy who bought it initially bought it to prevent it being misused)

Israel.Com sells for 5.88 Million USD

Online Money Making - Israel.com Bought for $5.88 Million

If you are looking for an online money making system - consider domain name trading.

UPDATE : This story is incorrect (2.6.08 - 2 p.m. New York time) apparently someone made a mistake - the Israel.com domain name has not been sold - but it has got a lot of publicity

An unidentified buyer has bought the domain name Israel.com for $5.88m.

The domain name has been on auction since May 23rd with a reserve of $5.5m. At the moment Israel.com is still a parking page with the Israeli flag and ads. relating to Israel. No details of the design of the new site have been announced.

The domain name was originally bought by Joel Noel Friedman, a Jewish American, back in 1994. Freidman was surprised the name was worth so much, and he originally registered the name as he was afraid it would be misused if it was registered by someone else. He decided to sell it as it is now Israel's 60th anniversary. So he’s obviously got a business head on his shoulders.

Domain names can sell for big bucks – pizza.com recently sold for $2.6M, the person who bought it back in 1994 paid $20 for it. The highest price ever paid for a domain name was $350m for business.com which was bought by RH Donnelley the publisher of Yellow Pages.

If you buy a domain name, or if you already have a domain name you bought a while back and are wondering what to do with it, you can always park it for free with a company like NameDrive. Namedrive will put ads. on your page and each time someone clicks on one of the ads. you can get a small amount of money. If you’ve got a good name it can bring in a lot of money over time.

For more information about making money from domain names see Domain Names