If you have not checked it out already you may want to go to About.me and claim your profile. About.me is a service that provides a custom personal profile (example About.me/bmarler ) as well as analytics on interactions with your profile. This is a great use of a Dot ME domain as well, since the profiles

I have bought hundreds, actually over one thousand, keyword targeted articles for websites over the past years and have used various sources but one of the issues typically has been turn around time and at times cost per article. Although I am a fan of sites like elance.com and guru.com, I always found for article writing

Earlier this week I had a few things come up that made me think about some of the failures of small businesses after they receive a new website or start a new social media presence on Facebook or Twitter. I got sidetracked and could not write the post but a very timely post by Mark

After the last week of rants concerning some roadblocks a group in the local Farmington area were trying to put up for Big River Telephone moving to the area I have to give a thanks to the Farmington Press and Daily Journal newspapers. Last week I discussed my feelings on the topic on both my radio

Well, it is that time of the year, and I am not talking about Christmas. It is the time of the year I receive lots of useless paper colored yellow and filled with local business ads. Although I know there are still many people that use the legacy yellow pages people are rapidly moving away

As is being reported by Mashable, Techcruch, and others Google has announced that for a period of two years people purchasing a Google Chrome OS device will receive 100 MB of free 3G data per month. The 3G mobile broadband service will be on the Verizon network. I am sure many will complain that 100 MB

Although our LocalTek team has spent much time taking a look at various ways our local business customers could use Facebook Places and Deals it was not until today that we decided what promotion we would offer once we claimed our Facebook Places page. If you are a local business owner Facebook now makes it easier

If you are looking for a quick and easy to use image editor and do not have the needs of a something like Adobe Photoshop or other full suite image editors you may want to take a look at Aviary.com. I tend to rely on others on my team, and extended team, to handle graphic and

Make sure if you are on Facebook you go "like" the Tablets.com page. Aron Meystedt, owner of domain names such as Copier.com, Jets.Co.Uk, HY.com and other top end domains, has launched a free giveaway of an Apple iPad for every 1000 friends (likes) the Tablets.com Facebook page gets. I have to give Aron credit, we discussed

Even though Facebook and Twitter have been around for a few to several years it has really been this past year that main street small businesses have really started to take notice. As people realize more and more that their customers are not consuming information in the same way they have in the past it

On a lighter note than my last couple blog posts I have to give a shout out to one of my employees, Nick Howlett. Nick is not a domainer but at one point he picked up a domain name that, to be honest, I am not sure I would of given a second glance. The domain

After spending the past few years working on various ways of monetizing product domain names through either Smartname.com ecomm sites, Adsense, or affiliate programs I decided it was time to try some larger dollar affiliate programs. The one issue with product domains is that it takes quite a bit of product being sold to add up

Although the majority of my blog posts are not focused on local Farmington, MO news or stories I could not help to do a post about a local story that is frustrating beyond belief. For a few of my thoughts on this topic that were discussed on my LocalTek Tech Tips radio show this morning you

The company was asking if I wanted to be found on the first page of Google. Did you know you could buy local search engine optimization in a mall??? Since I like to instigate a bit I thought it would be fun to quiz the person in the booth about getting my business found on the first page of Google. My wife thought it best to walk away before it st...

One of the things I see come up over and over (and over) again when people are discussing various domains and developments is that websiteA.com does not rank for the keyword websiteA. This typically shows me that someone is not familiar with the targeted marketing that is possible with SEO, and specifically how important that targeting is now that...

I have been using Foursquare for sometime now and have recently started to see quite a few more people start to join the fast growing social/location based game/app/service. With most of my attention being focused on local search for local businesses and local online advertising on Missouri.me, apps like Foursquare pique my interest and I like to w...

A little over a year ago I quit my what could only be described as a corporate sales job in the telecommunications and mobile space and entered the world of marketing and selling to local businesses in rural Missouri. In the beginning I was a little concerned about being able to translate the approaches that I had used in the past to generating ne...

I spend a lot of time explaining to people that they need to change the way they have been promoting their small business, typically this starts with choosing the right domain name and ends with a marketing model that pulls all the various advertising mediums together. As you can imagine there are times that we explain that certain media types are...

Spending time with local small business owners over the past couple years there is one theme that is constant no matter what type of business. How do I get the most bang for my buck? Most of the businesses want to find away to start working online and promoting awareness of their brand online but typically do not have the time or the ability to ch...

As most of my readers are familiar with, we here at Localtek love to see great uses of a dotME domain name since we have launched our own site developments on them, such as Missouri.me. Well, when I first heard about the movie Despicable Me many months ago and heard about the domain name they chose

Just read some comments over at MorganLinton.com asking where I had been and what was going on with myself and where I had went too. I use to post once or twice a day and I think my last post was in April so I can understand why people would be asking. I have been

As the date nears for next weeks GeoDomain expo the agenda continues to firm up and it is looking to be a good one. If you have any interest in developing your Geo domains into money making properties this show should help you along the way. You can see the agenda here:? GeoDomain expo agenda. I look

Great news for marketing folks that understand the value of the .ME brand, as is being reported on a few other domain blogs such as TheDomains.com and ElliotsBlog.com Yahoo has acquired me.me from the .ME registry. Sedo brokered the transaction between the two entities. This is great news for the .ME extension as it shows continued

I have had a very large amount of people using the posts that I had previously did concerning How To Create A Facebook Fan Page and How To Set A Facebook Page Username. I thought I would do a quick post to give new readers and followers links to the previous posts rather than sending

People like to say "Isn't it great when a plan comes together?", well in the past few weeks every time I feel like the momentum has hit a peak I continue to be proved wrong. Sometimes that really is not a bad thing. Since we started bringing on more resources and starting making plans for the

We have had quite a few seminars in recent weeks in various parts of the state of Missouri and during these seminars I ask several different questions related to technology usage. Some of these are about local search and print media trends but many are around social media and how it relates to how people

One of the great things about the seminar plan that we have used here at Localtek and Missouri.me is that it allows us to get direct reaction from customers, consumers, and local government officials. This can really work to your benefit if you are developing a geo domain as a vote of confidence from local

I have to admit, I have an addiction. No it is nothing that will cause me to drive drunk or have to go to rehab. But instead it is a game that ties together two of my favorite things that fit right into my businesses forte', social networking and location based services. The game is Foursquare. I

Well it is official I have booked my hotel and travel for the trip to New Orleans for the Geo Domain Expo April 28th through the 30th. I am really looking forward to this conference as it hits the core of what we as a company do and that is develop geographically targeted domain names. With

One of the strange things about starting a company is that you soon find out that your own corporate site tends to take a back seat to customers and to direct revenue producing properties. I must admit when we first launched Missouri.me and Localtek I had a "It won't happen to me" attitude about our own

I know the blog has been a bit quiet this week, we have been heads down on strategic planning meetings all week long (I remember hating when people scheduled week long meetings before I owned a company, now look at me doing the same... Live and learn). Anyway, I must say thanks to Andrew Allemann

As we ramp up our sales staff one of the things we find quite often in the interview process are people with great marketing knowledge, personality, and even business knowledge but sometimes are missing something that can, at times, be hard to determine in the interview process. Something a bit more intangible. The ability to

It is ironic that I am likely the last to post a story today about Symbolics.com, I was with Aron Meystedt the day he bought it and had a very fun dinner with him tonight after a very fun and crazy day for him. As most have heard today is the 25th anniversary of the

This was a very busy week for Missouri.me / Localtek. We had seminars in both Park Hills and Chamois, MO and had a great time meeting with members of the business leadership in Cuba, MO. I wanted to say thanks to all those who spent the time to listen to what it takes to succeed

Big congrats to my good friend Morgan Linton for the launch of ccTLDInvestors.com which will be a great new blog focused on investing and developing ccTLD domains. As someone who has developed and has invested in a few different ccTLDs I look forward to seeing what Morgan has in store and actually look forward to

What a week, this is one of those weeks where I had a thousand ideas for blog posts then everything became a whirlwind and it became heads down and focus time. First off we got confirmation on a top notch customer we had been working on and they actually purchased a multitude of services and advertising

As a believer in .ME and someone who has actually spent time with real people other than those in our industry talking about the extension I can say from first hand experience people get .ME, and more important remember .ME. And as such I was happy to see the .ME team announce an auction being

One of the frequent conversations I had at the domain conferences was about developing websites. Due to the Missouri.me launch and some of my other projects many people had questions about how to develop the sites, tools used, where we get content, etc. I am always happy to share as much as I can but

Anyone that pays any attention to the search engine optimization world knows that real time search is a hot topic and Google is getting VERY good at picking up on trends and enabling their scrolling news section in the middle of their normal search results. The part that many people miss is that social media streams

Wow, was just watching the Hawaii Tsunami coverage on CNN and Fox News, one thing that caught my eye was the CNN Internet/social media guy talking about a great site that came up called HiTsunami.info. Normally you see some types of domainers try to take advantage of a natural disaster such as this but in this

In the past several months I have spent most of my time focused on the bigger business we are growing rather than flipping domains and growing my traffic domain portfolio. Typically this would mean sales have been few and far between and admittedly for a couple months there were fewer than typical. But, in the past

Well, in the past week or so the options for domainer forums and hang outs has increased by two. Everyone seems to have their favorite forum and it becomes a religious discussion many times on which is better, who is better, blah, blah. Looks like a couple folks decided a couple new options were needed, with

It seems I have been in a conference blur the past few months starting with Affiliate Convention and ending with Domainer Mardi Gras but one that I am hoping my schedule opens up for is the GeoDomain Expo. My life/business revolves around Geo domains so this conference is one that truly interests me. From talking

We domain investors tend to not talk about the domain names we have acquired in our blogs but one that I am happy to talk about and discuss why is WirelessISP.net. The Wireless ISP business is set to boom even in this down economy due to the 7.2 billion dollar stimulus package the government is allocating

As I mentioned in my Smartname Content Site review the other day I had also been testing the Ecommerce templates from Smartname.com as well. As most people know the majority of their domains bring little traffic if any (Smartname, in their webinar, shows a 90/10 split), and it is impossible to fully develop hundreds (or

In the past two days I have had multiple deals come from multiple customer referrals. To me this is the best advertising you can possibly get, and I sell advertising. This also means as a business we continue to turn a corner into a phase of having both active feet on the street as well

While at DomainFEST last month I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ted Olson from NameMedia/Smartname.com. Ted took me through the new content site solution that Smartname has put together for domain names that currently do not have large amounts of type-in traffic but may still be great names. After taking a look I was