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by on February 11, 2012 Leave a Comment

99 Domain Names Website Case Study – Number 1

You may have seen that I already built a beta website on a domain for this case study on how to make money with Domain Names and Websites. That was a beta that you can read more about if you are interested.

This is the kick-off/real/first Domain Name using the 99 Domains process where I choose a Domain Name and build a website in 99 minutes every day for 99 days – at least that is the goal…

Since I did the beta site and tried to keep timings I knew this first site would probably take more than 99 minutes as I clean up the process and documentation.

What surprised me most was how long the articles are taking to write – about 45 minutes each at this point! This may have to be something I outsource and I am ok with that practice in general, but not for this effort so I’m going to keep writing my own articles for now and if I change my mind I’ll let you know.

The Domain Name…

RefundAnticipationLoan.net is the domain and site I chose for this first 99.

Refund Anticipation Loan

RefundAnticipationLoan.net


The tax year has ended and people are looking to file their income taxes. Many of them will want their tax refund as quick as possible so this one has to be online and indexed very quick. More of a seasonal domain so it may make a few bucks this year and hopefully quite a bit more next year.

The website and traffic analysis

This domain fits my case study requirements exactly in that there are at least 500 and preferably at least 1,000 exact match searches for the keywords in the domain with a Cost Per Click of at least $1.00.

To be fair, there are 18,500 exact searches which is way more than my minimum. Actually, it may be getting to the range of too many as competition from competing sites gets tougher the more searches there are.

Also, the CPC is around $3.75 which is over 3x my minimum. Again, it is borderline too competitive because if I want to drive traffic with an ad campaing it could get really expensive.

Building the website in 99 minutes

Since I followed the process I established in the beta, this site only took about 23 minutes to have up with analytics, a new theme and the basic pages like privacy and Contact form.

Where it fell apart and what is making me rethink my 99 domains idea is just how freaking long it took to write the articles. Granted, I don’t know anything about refund anticipation loans, but wow! 45 minutes went by like nothing – about 60 or 70 minutes to research, write, SEO and format each article… I have a whole new appreciation for copywriters! 70 minutes each is totally unacceptable.

I say unacceptable because for this to make business sense, I need to build the site and have reasonable expectations that I will get enough ROI based on the value of my time and the domain cost to make it worth it. So in this case I’ve spent less than $25 on the domain and renewals, but I’ve spent about 5 hours on the site. I also need to spend more time on backlinking and some more articles so if you count about $50 an hour I will need about $400 just to break even… I am not in business to break even. I guess I could take that money, pay for articles on a few other sites and pay for backlinking…

Guess I need to talk to some people who have helped me out before and have done this successfully over a long period of time…

Back soon I hope with an update.

Filed Under: 99 Domains, Domain Names, Make Money Online Tagged With: , ,
by on February 10, 2012 Leave a Comment

Become an Expert Google Searcher in an Hour – Review

Review and notes on a video I watched recently on how to search google in expert mode. If you think you know how to search well on Google and you don’t use these tips, you’re wrong. These will help you with domains, content and much more! Always applying things I watch and learn like this to domain names and this one is a keeper – here’s an hour of content consolidated down into a few minutes for you to read and apply today.

Stephan Spencer had a nice video hosted over on O’Reilly and it is about an hour long as the title suggests – here are my notes on the video and a link to the book if you are interested in learning more.

Tips, tricks and hacks on how to find stuff in Google

Author of Google Power Search

According to Google, and most experts, many searches don’t find the right answer in the SERP’s – up to 30% and probably more since that doesn’t account for searches that don’t find the optimal answer!

Here’s a little pop quiz to see what would give the best answer to “How many women buy cars in the United States?  What’s the best Google search query? Here’s some possible answers from the video:

The answer is 3 or 4, but 4 preferably because the tilde (~) symbol provides a synonym lookup for the word it is attached to and gives a wider set of results.

5 keys to smarter searching

  1. Cutting Through the Clutter
    • Use quotes for exact phrases for things you want exactly
    • Avoid questions – “how many”, “What is”
    • Singular vs plural – if you think plural, but looking for singular you will get wrong “Templates” vs “Template”
    • Word order is very important to Google in the SERP
    • Boolean logic is very useful -,+,(),OR,|
      • +car gives only results with car and ignores synonyms
      • –car excludes results with that word
    • Search operators like:
      • Filetype:  – this restricts results to a specific file extension like ppt, xls, pdf
      • Site:   – only find/search specified domain – can also specify extension like site:edu
      • Intitle: & allintitle:   – words must appear in title
      • Inurl: & allinurl:  – words must appear in title
      • Daterange:  – only search pages added/updated in that range of dates, but it is in Julian so it is better to use the more options on left.
      • Define:  – get a glossary definition
    • Date based searching – on the left there are “More search tools” option list and use advanced search page
  2. Cast a wider net with synonyms, etc
    1. ~ (tilde) gives Synonyms
    2. * (asterisk) is a wildcard replacement
    3. OR or |  – logical or conditions – either satisfies
    4. ..  used for number ranges 1..10
    5. Related:
  3. Master the google interface including the options on the left side such as date based searches
    • Type in keyword and “I’m feeling lucky” button and  it will go to first result on search
    • Cached version can get you file not found type stuff or if it scrolled off of active page
    • If you wanted images, go to images link.
    • Advanced search page – provides simple interface to many of these options – good to look at results of the engine that creates the query
    • Google Groups – under more – archive of all usenet and google groups postings – some great results in these verticals
    • Forrester research grapevine filetype:pdf – gives you true forrester research documents
  4. Employ specialized search services (verticals such as news, patent search, etc)
    • Soople
    • Google Patent Search
    • Google Books
    • Google Scholar
    • Google Q&A aka instant answers
    • The search box has its own toolbox features
      • Phonebook
      • Calculator
      • Measurement conversion
      • Dictionary
      • Package tracking
      • Airline schedules
      • Atlas of street maps
      • Stock tickers
  5. Assemble your toolbox such as books, references, etc
    • Download and install the Google Toolbar
      • Gives advanced options like PR meter
      • Toolbar.google.com to download
    • Subscribe to Google Alerts – Can specify news results only, frequency…
    • Set your start page
    • Buy a reference book on Google
    • Create a Google cheat sheet
    • Take the GoogleGuide.com tutorial

Domain Name Hot Search Tips!

Tip – +”confidential and proprietary” +”do not distribute”
Tip – 2009..2011 to get only recent ones
Tip – related: on a site www.test.com give related sites…
Tip – use this to find creative commons licensed images and use them with attribution
Tip – Can have more results in page with query parameters – switch from 10 to 100 with &num=100
Tip – Can change your location on left side options – specific for geo is great!


You can contact Stephan by emailing Stephan@stephanspencer.com
You can get copy of his original slide deck by emailing admin@stephanspencer.com

Filed Under: Development, Domain Names Tagged With: , ,
by on February 10, 2012 Leave a Comment

Domain Name Trend”ing”

Domain Names are like most any other business area – trends occur and many downright explode. Most blow over quickly, but a few will make it for the long haul.

Domain Name Trending

Tebowing is a good example of this from the NFL quarterback, Tim Tebow. From a simple gesture to a craze where people are posting pictures of themselves from around the world “Tebowing” on a domain started by a Denver fan. I don’t know how much money he makes off the site, but in a second you’ll see why some small portion of trends succeed and some don’t. A great example of this from recent domains is 3D domains – it would be interesting to see how many 3D domains were registered over the last year or two…

So basically for this word trend”ing” they just took a name, added “ing”, associated it to an action by the person and turned the word into a verb. Simple enough, but it has developed into a highly visible mainstream trend of sorts.

After the superbowl, I heard someone on ESPN or the radio say something about Brady choking and then just sitting on the field just “Bradying”. They mentioned you could see a picture at Bradying.com.

Bradying.com

Bradying.com

Someone had already bought Bradying.com and put a site up… I assumed it would be a Pats hater site and maybe that would be how they made money… But it is just a simple site with some ads and not much else. Personally I think they could make more money on the domain if they’d put up some slam articles on Brady or anti-fan site or whatever with ads for stuff like those fathead wall posters of Eli, Brady, Tebow, Brees or Cam Newton. Anyway, at least they did something.

Tebowing.com

Tebowing.com

If you take a look at the two sites you’ll see they were both based off Tumblr, but a lot more work went into Tebowing and since that is a trend that has taken on a persona of its own I think it will continue and at the very least they guy will make some money on it. Bradying not so much. I actually like the Bradying logo and slogan – clever and decent graphics, but unless they do something more with it that will be a low income site. I highlighted some of the better parts of the sites and you can see there was much more thought and time put into developing and maintaining Tebowing.com.

The most interesting part was a Whois lookup… they actually bought the Bradying domain only 3 days after the Tebowing.com domain was registered. I looked at several other domain names with NFL Quarterback + “ing” and they were all taken Flaccoing, Breesing, Newtoning, Manning(I didn’t look for this for obvious reasons or Manninging because one guy’s site had Eliing and Peytoning) – not interested in buying them, just got my curiosity up. All were registered, some by the same person and of course some of the common names or names that made sense with an ing were registered long ago. One person had registered several and had even gone as far as putting simple wordpress sites on there letting people know they were for sale. I doubt they’ll sell, but maybe some end user who loves an NFL team quarterback might want them. Who knows, but it is interesting that almost all of them were registered within a day of one another.

Domain Name Trending

Domain Name Trending

Another example of this is a recent article about Jeremy Lin – the NBA guard making a big splash in his first few games.

Jeremy Lin Linning

Jeremy Lin Linning

The article references Tebowing and that they are just waiting for Jeremy to come up with a signature move or pose to call Linning. Getting that domain may be harder for someone since BuyDomains.com owns it and it has been registered since 2004. The alternate spelling to that is Lining which has been registered and used forever – why? Because there are more than a couple Li Ning’s in the world…

As far as trends go, usually only the first one in who starts the trend and a few who work hard at establishing a brand will ever see any benefit. A few 3d domains will survive, Tebowing will survive, but that is all. If you can get in early and recognize trends before they go mainstream you have a chance to make money on the domains related to them especially for product domains directly related to the trend (3dtv, 3dglasses, 3dcamera…), but don’t waste your money if you are in even a day or two late… too bad I didn’t think about Domain”ing” before Francois… wonder if Domaining”ing” is available? (it is… don’t buy it…)

Filed Under: Domain Names Tagged With: , ,