Kim Jong-Un Site Goes Viral
As you may have seen in the news lately Kim Jong Il the ruthless leader of North Korea died a few days ago. What you may not have know is that there was a very popular website named Kim Jong Il Looking at Things. When I heard the news of KJI's death I realized that the website will have to stop because they will be out of pictures. Then I realized that there will be another leader of North Korea and being the domainer that I am, I quickly registered Kim Jong Un Looking at Things.
I then had my wisdom teeth removed and was stuck in bed all day with nothing better to do so I built the website, and people started to visit it. The theme is from Themeforest and all I had to do were a few simple modifications and upload a few plugins and the site was live in an hour. That's the glory of wordpress.
The first day I had it live it had over 700 visits in half a day, then yesterday it had well over 2,000 visits and over 3,000 views and today looks like it is going to be another record day.
To generate traffic I submitted the site to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, posted it on my Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus account. On Facebook my page currently has over 1,600 likes and growing. On Twitter growth has been slow with over 1,000 followers but no real interaction. I also commented on a number of blogs and new stories about the original site which drove some traffic.
But now I stand at a cross roads. What should I do with the site next? There are not too many pictures of Kim Jong Un left (hopefully they take some more soon) and I do not want the site to die out. I am not even a very funny guy so I think that I might be leading the site to its own death myself. I thought (and still debate) putting the site up for sale on Flippa or eBay, but I have no idea what to value it at. Obviously it has some worth with the traffic and could have much more as it grows.
For now I am going to keep looking for more pictures and a way to get the site to really take off. I am also running a photo caption contest on the site where I am going to give out cash to the top 3 people who send in a photo with a funny caption. I know it is very close I just need a little boost. Take a look at the site let me know what you think and have a great day!
*Update Just got an email from a visitor who said he just heard about the site on 102.9 The Hog in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
TeenDomainer Does College and Domaining
It's been the busiest time of my life, but I can now say I am done with my first quarter of college. I am in Atlanta at Emory University having a great time, the only issue I have is my lack of time for domaining. Midterms, parties, and sleep now take up a huge chunk of my time. I am also on the cross country team (which is now ranked number 1 in our south east region) which takes up a few hours every day in addition to all of the school work and other clubs I have become involved with. But somehow I still find a little time to keep up with the industry which I love.
The great thing about passive income is that while I have had less time my passive income from my minisites has gone UP! Some of the updates I made in the summer have help increased ranking and conversions. Less time more money! Imagine that. (Take a look at the ranking for spypen.net) ((number 1 or 2 on google!) Right now I am trying to go around to my top sites again and update them so their ranking does not fall off. This is why domaining makes a great college job. You can put in what time you have. While I have been in college the end user emails trickle in and advertising request do the same, and every month I collect my checks to spend on fun.
I am not as concentrated on buying drops or selling names as I once was; I am now going to build out many more of the names I have been waiting on to develop because of the success I have had with my current minisites. I have also found some great new tools and tips that I will be sharing with you because I know from my own sites that development is a great way to go if you do it the right way with the right names. I plan on trying to blog a few times a week to keep you updated.
Other than that I am living the dream up at school enjoying what I am told will be the best four years of my life!
Summer Recap of My Internship at Domain Holdings Building Minisites
This is a copy of a Post I wrote for the Domain Holdings Blog.
This summer I had the amazing opportunity to start working at Domain Holdings. It is an experience that I will never forget and I am so grateful for the time I spent working as a member of the team at DH. To my current clients, fear not, I will still be handling ministe development and consulting for DH remotely from up here in Atlanta.
My main focus this summer was to assist with the rollout of the Domain Holdings minisites offering. Domain Holdings already offers rapid platform development – DomainPower – for larger portfolio owners and premium development for killer category names, but did not have a solid middle-tier option. Minisites fit perfectly between the two ends of the development spectrum. While a minisite is not the perfect solution for every name, there are many domain names that can utilize a minisite to increase their value.
Over the summer, Domain Holdings clients ordered hundreds of minisites and I had the unique perspective to pour over hundreds of data points and see what types of names people were building on and what was working on a macro level.
Why do people like our minisites?
With a Domain Holdings minisite, clients get a custom WordPress theme and unique content on all of their sites. The domain owner also keeps 100% of the revenue and can use their own Ad-Sense or affiliate accounts. Domains can be hosted on their own hosting account, so they don’t run into problems with having too many names on the same DNS. Finally, the WordPress sites are easy to customize and update.
To get an idea of the kinds of increase in numbers, here’s an example. Our co-founder Chad Folkening had us build out 30 minisites and we were able to increase traffic by nearly 40% and revenue by 13.5% over parking.
After looking at all of the data here are two types of names that seemed to work well as minisites.
Poorly Converting Parked Names
The first is parked names that get traffic, but do not convert well. For example, on Nanotechnology.com we were able to increase revenue by 900% and bring in over 50% of the traffic from search engines. The reason for the increase is because a minisite will be able to provide relevant ads that parking feeds simply cannot.
Longtail Names
The second group of names that do well as minisites are longer domains that get no traffic while parked, but do get some searches. In the Google keyword tool, the numbers that seem to be working well are from as low as 300 up to about 2,000 exact matches. It does depend on how competitive the category is. The more competitive means a higher CPC, but it is harder to get ranked. If the area is more competitive, it just means that some link building or more content will be required to rank.
We built out a few different sizes of sites over the summer to fit all different markets. It has been said before and I will say it again, content is very important. The more you have the better off you will be. We start with a minimum of four articles and can go up as high as a client requests. Using duplicate content will not help your site in the long run.
If you think you might have some names that will work for minisites, I would love to take a look at them and give you some feedback. Email me at Brian@domainholdings.com.
Later this week I hope to write a post about how the start of college at Emory is going! (hint hint college is a blast!)
First Look at Google+
I just got on my Google+ account for the first time and I would have to say that I really like it. I am a huge google fan and use many of their products like gmail, calendar, and now music too. It does feel a lot like facebook, but right away the big differences were the circles or groups. When you go to add a friend to your network you pick which one of your circles to add them too. Facebook has tried something like this but it really has not caught on. Google+ makes it so easy to sort your friends. For me I have High School Friends, I will soon have College Friends, then Domainers, Family and other Friends and there is no point in my posts about Domaining to go out to my school friends and Domainers do not need to see the pictures of my party last weekend.
Then when you go to add a friend you can select where you want to put them for example here are my circles so far. It really is nice and easy to add poeple to.
One of the last things I saw was that there is a place where it shows every site yo have hit the +1 button on. It will be interesting to see if this ever comes to be a nice traffic source. On a site with thousand of +1 hits I could see that there would be some nice quality traffic but we will see.
Overall I really like the new gooogle plus and I think it is different that facebook, will it take over instantly no. But because google already has so many products people use on a daily basis I think that Facebook should keep its eyes open when it sleeps at night. The challange will be getting people to switch over from Facebook and I do not know it that will ever happen, but I think that many people like myself will not split time between facebook and plus. Right now I might only spend a little on plus but over time it could slowly hurt Facebook.
I do have a few invited left, so I willl offer them to the person that offers to trade me the best domian. 
Why I Stopped Contacting End Users
End user sales are what every domainer dreams about. When I began in the domain industry I would pick up names for $10 and then try and pitch them to end users. I would try and sell them from $250 to $750 and I made sale and a little bit of money this way. I then used that profit to buy other domains and develop other names out.
A few months ago I sat down and decided to refocus my attention domaining. I was spending too much time trying to find names to hand register and then emailing potential end users. I still pick up names I just do no actively pitch them to end users anymore. I have two main reasons for this change in actions.
The first it that there is not enough time in the day anymore. If I had a few more hours in the day I might still send out the emails but right now with everything I have going on it is not worth it. I think that right now there are some great buying opportunities and that because I have developed sites that bring in revenue every month I have money to acquire names with. Right now, I do not need to spend my time selling it is better spent developing or buying names.
The second reason is that when you approach an end user most of the time you are going to get a lower price than if they came to you. Like Shane always say be an unmotivated seller. If you do not make it seem like you are looking to sell you can ask for a higher price.
I still am listing my domains for sale with godaddy and other sites, and I am also looking at outsourcing end user emails for some names and I need to see if it will be worth it for me. The truth is that I will still contact and end user once and a while, but it is no longer a main part of my business plan. The lesson I learned here is that like any business the domain industry is always changing. When I started domaining my $500 end user flips were a large part of my business now I try to spend more of my time on development. You have to sit down and see if what your doing with your names is worth the time you are putting into it.
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