Regular visitors to my blog will know that I don't really do affiliate marketing, as I have built sites solely to promote businesses – usually my own. Domain development services seem to be based on affiliate programs and I suppose that's a sensible place to start, given that no effort is usually required in order

For around 4 years, I have been a member of VirtualWorldDirect, an affiliate program that promotes syndcated UK national?lottery entries. The basic premise was that you pay to join a syndicate that enters each draw on a Wednesday and Saturday and encourage others to join your network via an affiliate program.?Once you've got enbough affiliates,...

Yahoo! continue their efforts to fail by?confirming the closure of Delicious, their bookmarking site which, I have only just started playing with. Typical of my efforts to stay ahead of the game, I come in several years too late just at the point they decide to call it a day. The reason I was exploring

Sometimes, I wonder why I do what I do! If I need a web site for a small project, I can do it all in a few hours using WordPress and a few plugins. Usually, that works extremely well for me and I can then pretty much forget about the site itself, knowing that it

Ed Kea-Smith of OzDomainer.com has landed the big one and features a postcast with Frank Schilling. For those looking to enter the world of domaining, this is quite an enlightening interview, since Frank explains how he entered the industry by selling off his real estate and ploughing around $200,000 into his new venture after recognising

The only time I ever bought a typo domain was a few years ago after I found myself constantly mis-typing the word asbestos,getting the s and the t in the wrong positions, but the domain never brought me any traffic and so I haven't bothered with them since. Maybe I was the only person afflicted

I've been?building a web site?with a client this week who, as usual started asking questions about search engine placement and what we could do in order to get to the top spot in Google. There's only so much I can do for a small business with only few hundred pounds initial budget, so of course,

As you know, I bought into the LinklLiberation2.0 program this week. Yesterday, I sat and watched the first?11 videos which make up the first week's training and though it introduced me to a few new ideas, I am already doing?some of things that it preaches, which is good, because I would hate to join something

Normally, I wouldn't post up anything that might embarrass somebody, but today I got the kind of approach for a domain that made me stop and look twice. Then it made me laugh. It goes like this: Hi I've just started the purchase of www.technicalrecruitment.co.uk via our service provider 1and1.co.uk I am new to this

Business.com has, for almost as long as I've been active in the domain space, been the one domain that domainers point to in order to justify their belief that that domain names will forever increase in value and that high quality generic names cannot fail to make money. So does the announcement by Dex One,

One of the most frequently asked questions I am asked by customers and business acquaintances when we're discussing online marketing, is, "How can we get the the top of Google"? Naturally, every business owner wants to see his or her site in the top spot for their given search terms, but the reality is that

Apparently, some of the domains built by Epik got dropped from Google recently, which is potentially bad news for them and their customers. I don't know the reasons why the sites got dropped, but the fact that did matters to me and it should matter to you too, if you're involved in any kind of

Running a "proper" company can be a bit of bind sometimes because you have so many idiots and scam artists to deal with. A day hardly goes by without getting a call (or at least an email) from somebody claiming to be able to get your web site to the top of Google, or include

So, you think all the good names are gone? I did too until recently when I began looking to the after-market for a few timely acquisitions. Today, I managed to bag a great name that is so relevant to my core business that it was almost irresistible at twice the price. Luckily, the seller recognised

I've answered a few emails in the past couple of weeks concerning domain development, prompted?by my recent posts about development. At least people are interested in this subject at last! There are some good development services around and a telephone discussion with the founder of one of the best last week, convinced me that there

Last week, in response to my post about development, there was a nice reply from George that said "The problem is how do you develop 1,000 domains in an efficient way? To think that you can create unique sites for all of these is unrealistic, unless you have a very big development team. Most domainers

There's been a fair of talk this week about Google placing less emphasis on domain names in its natural search results and the detrimental affect this might have on domainers and their income. The same discussions have actually been going on for years and in that time, I can't see that the facts have changed

After receiving a number of low-ball for one of my domains, I finally answered an email from one persistent guy who at least had the courtesy to ask the price. The name wasn't for sale, it wqsn't parked and in fact, went nowhere. I think that having a name that doesn't resolve is often better

If you're reading my blog, I have to assume that you will have read Frank Schilling's latest post, after all, his views are more important than mine and he is a lot more successful at domaining than I will ever be. If you haven't read it, you can find it here. It's an important post

Every now and again, usually when I have a spare few hours, I scan my domain name list to find a likely candidate for some development. Sometimes, that development will involve creating a small site with an occasional affiliate link, some Adsense and perhaps even some promotion of a business that's local to me. Usually though, I

I was in discussion today about the subject of development and in particular over-development. It's too easy when developing a domain, to get sidetracked into areas that you really shouldn't be concerned with. I've been there and done it too many times myself in the past. Here's what typically happens. The initial enthusiasm for the domain is so...

Like many others, I sat in my office yesterday and watched the live domain auction at TRAFFIC Dublin. I love what TRAFFIC has done for the domain industry, but the auction? It was embarrassing. There were a couple of hundred or so domain names that went under the hammer and I have to say, some of the

My presentation at the MeetDomainers show in Manchester this Friday was going to be all about using domain names as niche marketing tools. Sadly, I have had to pull out of that, which is a pity because I was looking forward to meeting some new and not-so-new friends there and I'd begun an experiment last

In amongst all of the excitement of the past week, it's almost possible to forget about all of the other stuff that continues to happen. I've sold a couple of domains, brought in some nice surveying work and a site I built for my son to promote his extension planning service (www.extensionplan.co.uk) has brought him two

Finding end-user buyers for domain names isn't easy and often involves a lot of time and work, the two things most domainers like me try to avoid. If you think about we're selling, it makes a lot more sense to let the potential buyer find the name they want, rather than go out in search of

Do you have a great generic domain name that would be ideal for an end-user company? If the answer is "yes", but to date, despite your belief in that name, you haven't had a flood of offers coming your way, then you have three choices: Contact a broker Get real Start selling A broker, if a real domain brokerage actually

Judging by the email offers I've received on some pretty good, keyword domains I've received this week, I can confidently state that the sob story season is now upon us. I've received no less than three offers on domains this week and every one of them provides a reason why the potential buyer can't pay the

My business model has never been about selling domain names, but rather than letting certain names expire, I recently added a few to Sedo just to see what happened really. In each case, I included a low buy it now price. These are names that would otherwise have expired, so there was little point in specifying

As a domain developer, I have tried to concentrate my efforts on building my sites with the aim of selling services that I can complete myself, or act as a sales agent, facilitating a sale rather than just providing a sales lead. There's a huge difference, which is why I command much higher commissions than

I don't really use Google Adwords or other pay per click advertising in my own business and generally don't click on sponsored listings when conducting searches, unless the advertisement is spot-on for what I'm looking for. In fact, I'm almost blind to the sponsored listings, as I just naturally veer towards the natural search engine results. This...

Over the past couple of years, one domainer has provided me with more input and help than any other. We've never met, though we have spoken on the telephone a couple of times. That domainer is Owen Frager. Like myself, his approach to domaining is more geared towards marketing than it is domaining in general, since

I've been booked to speak, along with some other better known UK domainers, at the forthcoming "Meet Domainers" show in Manchester on Friday August 27. Until now I haven't attended any of the usual domain conferences because I don't like being away from the family for several days at a time. Meet Domainers also caused me some...

Being a domainer has to be one of the most frustrating occupations of all time. If you're anything like me, you have tons of names covering a wide range of markets and niches, all ripe for development of course and all names that could really dominate their market, given some time and some investment. And that's the

At last! Wordpress 3.0 has been released. I've been waiting for this for a month now, since I first saw reports from beta testers about the new functions and capabilities. Rather than try it our on a large site like this one, I'm building a brand new site this morning, which itself is a bit of an

Since moving 99% of my development efforts into Wordpress recently, I've been busier than ever revisiting some old sites that do OK, but that I feel are now in need of a revamp, not only in terms of the look and feel, but also in terms of the technology employed. Wordpress has provided me with so

When I first started blogging, I used Blogger.com as my hosting platform. Within a few days I realised that unless I changed my entire web site, that I needed to host the blog myself, which Blogger allowed me to do without too much trouble. The problem I had at that time, was that I couldn't get

After watching a client send out a mass email to contacts in his Outlook address book yesterday, informing everyone of his new web site and email address, it occurred to me that many people (him included), still don't quite know how to do things correctly. How many times have you received an email that's not actually

If you?re working online and trying to build a mailing list or communicate directly with potential customers, the auto-responder is one of the most powerful tools available to you and now costs so little, that nobody has an excuse not to use one. I first learned about the auto-responder more than 10 years ago, when the

This is only the preview for a work in progress, but is a great example of using relevant domain names to promote other people's businesses. There are lots of businesses that simply don't have the know-how to promote themselves on-line and that creates opportunities for domainers or affiliates who are sick of being screwed by the

I've been going through my domain name portfolio again this week. Even though I've been carefully pruning it for the past year and getting rid of the junk (we all have it), there are still a few that I'm not quite sure about and these will likely be disposed of in the coming weeks and

Once upon a time, long long ago, I was a recruiter. I stopped doing that kind of work in order to pursue my on-line ambitions, but since I knew the industry pretty well, I bought lots of recruitment oriented names, my theory being that I could always sell any leads that came in, or if the

Well, I knew I wouldn't make it beyond the weekend without buying the pro version of Animoto, the video editing service. At $249 for a year, the price is a bargain and I couldn't resist it, but as usual, I immediately started making videos for other people rather than for my own use. Realising the error of

Around 18 months ago, I bought an Apple iMac. If I've turned it on more than once per month since then, that's about it. I bought it so that I could do easy videos, but the fact is that I just don't like it very much. I like Windows and I like PC's. For a while

My eldest son is now employed by my asbestos surveying business and at the same time attends university to study for his building surveying degree. He works in my business partner's building surveying office, along with three other young and hungry surveyors. Whilst all are paid quite well, they like to do occasional "foreigners" – that's...

Domainers are getting more inventive with their marketing, but strangely, their inventiveness uses old technology, like the mail service in order to get their message across. In the past couple of weeks, I've received two postcards and a letter offering me the opportunity to invest in different domain names. So far, the domains in question have all...