Andy Sweet

I don’t believe I’ve ever had a friend come back who hasn’t told me the thousands they made in Las Vegas.  With numbers like that, it’s a miracle that the poor city can stay in business!  It’s not a charity folks!  Do your part and give back!

Well, contrary to popular belief, not everybody wins when they go to Las Vegas. 

The same can be said for domains.  I’m always hearing about the big sales and great deals and it seems like nobody ever loses with domains!  Well, not quite.  I just kind of lost and won at the same time.

I recently had a domain that I bought on the aftermarket for $600 expire.  I never transferred it out of the no-name registrar it was registered at and for whatever reason, it didn’t auto renew.  Point is, I lost it.  It wasn’t about the money, it was more about me losing a domain I clearly had desired enough to buy.

Well, I just got it back.  For $8.  Nobody wanted it and it passed through the expired domain vultures (of which I am one on occasion) and went back to open registration where I picked it up again.

So, I’m not quite sure how I should feel.  I guess I’ll just be happy that I got it back.  I even saved $17 by letting it expire and picking it up at my preferred registrar! 

Filed under: Domains | No Comments » |

Many domainers have been trying out AEIOU.com’s micro-site development as a way to rapidly develop some of their domains and get away from parking.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, a developed site will still get the same amount of direct navigation traffic and now you’re hopefully going to be attracting some organic search traffic, as well.  The cost of an AEIOU micro-site is $250 and the primary monetization option is AdSense.

I figured I’d give them a shot since I’m in the process of developing my portfolio and wanted to see if it was worth the money.  We used my site about South American Vacations for the project.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

**EDIT** - I’ve received several comments and emails all pretty much agreeing with my opinion that the AEIOU site just really isn’t that good.  The only traffic that site has received has been either type-in or referrals from this post.  So, I’m going to begin making gradual changes to improve the content, design and search traffic.  The site you see is no longer the original AEIOU version.

Filed under: Development, Domains | 3 Comments » |

As many of you know, my work is focused on gathering and monetizing traffic. At its root, that’s pretty much what EVERYBODY who does business on the web does whether they describe it that way or not. There are so many ways to accomplish this and I’ve addressed a few of the ways here.

One person I’ve had lengthy conversations with about traffic generation possibilities is Chris Brooks. He’s written some very insightful comments on this blog.

Recently, he told me a competition he’s having as a means to learn more ways to monetize his domain portfolio. We’ve talked about parking and direct navigation, development for search engine rankings, domain sales…. Is there any other way to make money from domains? That’s what his competition is about and he’s going to give 5 of his generic .com domains to anyone that has alternative ideas.

Personally, I think he’s already come up with a fourth way…

1. Park
2. Develop
3. Sell
4. Barter/Giveaway - if parked, these domains might clear their annual registration fee but even if they do, it won’t be by much. There are so many ways to invest that $8 to achieve a better ROI than pure parking. Development is an option but if you don’t know anything about the subject you’ll have to invest time and possibly money to make it pop. You could sell, but I think the market is so flooded with domain sales forums and auctions that unless you’ve got a strong network or know someone to whom this domain would make sense, you’re probably going to have a hard time.

But who would turn down a FREE domain? In exchange, you stand to get some new nuggets of information that can help you with the monetization of the rest of your portfolio as well as possibly giving you new ideas for your business and that information may be worth MUCH more than you’d get from parking or sales.

Check out his domain competition.

Good luck to all.

Filed under: Business, Domains | 1 Comment » |