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.

Category: Domaining

Posted on July 6, 2011 | 9 Comments

Happy 4th of July and a Special 40% OFF ALL Hosting Plans from HostGator

Happy 4th of July to all of my readers in America, I hope you are having as much fun as I am up on a lake water skiing and sailing. I am enjoying my weekend and am trying to stay away from my computer as much as possible.

Hostgator is the hosting company that I use for this blog and many of my other sites. I have a babyplan for $9.95 which allows me to host unlimited number of sites on my account. With the 40% OFF for Today only you can get the same plan for only $4.47 a month!!!!

I have had a great experience with hostgator and its the perfect plan for someone who is looking to get started with small development. With other hosting companies I was afraid they would close shop overnight but with hostgator they are one of the largest web host on the internet and will not be leaving anytime soon.

My sites all work well and load up quick. I had an issue last year where many of my wordpress sites were hacked and they removed all of the code for me in less than a day. It is also very easy to add a new dedicated ip address to your account if you want to. Installing wordpress takes only 3 clicks and live chat is open all of the time.

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Happy 4th of July!

Category: Domaining Resources

Posted on July 4, 2011 | No Comments

Google Updates PageRank For the First Time in 6 Months

I was just reading on SEO Roundtable that for the first time in 6 months Google updated their page rank numbers. Google says they have been phasing out how much they use pagerank in their algorithm, but I think that the system still is very valuable. If you name has any page rank that Google's way of doing something right. And if you PR goes up it means you are really doing something right.

This site TeenDomainer just moved up from a PR 3 to PR 4. Many of my other sites that had no PR before now have PR 1 or 2 and some of my sites that were PR 1 moved up to PR 2. I do not have all of my results yet and am running my names through a bulk PR checker as I wrote this. I just saw a parked name that move up to PR 1... Thanks Google!

Like I said before PR does not change your ranking as much as it once did, but it does change what others think of your site and how much you can charge for advertising and links. It also changes how much you can sell a site for.

I tried a few weeks ago to buy some expired domain name with PR and this update looks like it hurt most of the sites PR which is not surprising. A few of the sites that I quickly built out held their PR or only lost 1 rank, but I do not think I will be buying to many more domain just based on their PR.

PR is not something that is impossible to get. Many of my minisites received their first pagerank this update some with as little as 4 pages. All you need is quality content and links back to your site. The sites of mine that gained PR are the ones where I went out and added a few links to them. Even a few (like 2 or 3) low PR links to a minisite seem to be enough to get the site PR.

So who know's when the next PR update will be, so start adding content and building links in time for the next one!

Category: Domain News

Posted on June 29, 2011 | 8 Comments

Does this minisite look like a $1,200 a year site?

People say minisites are dead. I have said some minisites are dead.

Turns out some minsites might not be dead after all.

Take a look at RentaCargoVan.com Does it look like a site the earned $102.92 last month? No.

The site is nothing special, a minisite with a few pages of unique content, custom descriptions, a custom header and Google adsense. I think the site could be earning so much more money using affiliate programs, but I made the mistake and signed up for the Budget rental car program when I meant to sign up Budget rental truck program. So I have applied and hopefully will be able to add the new links to Budget soon. The contact form on the site now goes right to my email and I originally tried to call rental centers and sell the leads, but that was a failure, but it still gets 5+ submissions a day.

Google has made updates, but the truth is that an exact match domain with UNIQUE content can do very well. The domain has 880 exact match local searches, and a cpc of $2.65 not killer stats by any means. The site does not look amazing, but has an almost 10% click through rate. It had 504 unique visits last month with 1,258 uniques.

All of this traffic is from Google, Yahoo and Bing, none from direct navigation. I paid $15 for the name a few months back on a godaddy auction and spent few hours one day developing it out. I have done some social bookmakring and minor SEO onsite, but the site has no amazing links and I really have not spent much time on it with SEO and it is on track to earn even more this month. It gets most of its traffic from long tail searches like unlimited mileage, and one war cargo van rentals.

This is one of my better examples of a minisite that does really well, but I have many that earn steady revenue with adsense, amazon and ebay. A name like this would have made nothing as a parked page and just because of simple development it will earn me over $1,000 this year.

(Click on image to see full google analytics stats)

Since Google's panda update this site has done much better in the search engines and I am loving minisite development post panda. Why? Because I make unique sites that are helpful to users and show them what they are looking for. I think it also scared some people away from minisite development which is fine by me.

I have said for a while one page spun content sites are clearly dead, but unique minisites are alive and well. Next time you go out and declare something dead, you might what to check it pulse first; because to me minisites look healthy and better than ever.

Category: My Projects

Posted on June 21, 2011 | 9 Comments

Some Names to Look at Today 6-16

Today for the first time I even included a few .net I think that there are some really good ones dropping and Shane listed some really good ones today too. I have seen some really great names lately and picked up a few. It seems that people are even looking at these list a little because most of the names get bids or are picked up off the drop, but there are a few that no ones likes once and a while which is ok.

For the question of the day to ponder I ask the old question is it better to have 1 site that makes 100 dollars or 100 sites that make 1. (Personally I would like 10 sites that make $10 if I had to choose)

Domain	Estibot	Google	CPC
OrangeLuggage.com	1230	320
ChicagoSelfStorage.net	1230	480	$17.55
DrugHelp.net	1082	1000	$17.34
CustomCarInsurance.net	1082	260	$34.33
MotorcycleFinancing.net	9963	2900	$3.72
PurchaseFonts.com	590
AutoCollisionInsurance.net	1082	170	$37.24
DeathAttorney.net	44	170	$5.03