Take More Risks

I’m gonna be merging this website in with my portfolio in the next few months so stay tuned for some proper updates!

Google Trends Hot List

I’ve found this is useful for acquiring names of people who are currently in the news. The problem with registering these names is that a lot of people are in the news for a week and then are never heard of again! Through this site I’ve only found one domain name of value and that’s Justin Tuck.com, who is a footballer in the NFL. The crap thing is I might run into issues with copyright or intellectual property rights.

If you land a popular persons name, it’s probably best to develop a fansite dedicated to that person on it. Having the .com domain will definitely add value to the site.

Popurls

This site is an aggregation of most of the popular technology blogs on the Internet. It’s great for finding generic technology names but again you have to careful to avoid registering trademarked domain names. If you keep seeing a new technology popping up such as UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC’s) it’s worth digging deeper for shorter, long tail keywords. For example run a query at Wordtracker Free Keywords for UMPC and see what comes up.

As I speak on the 1st of February umpcmediaextender.com is available. Even though the term only has 14 daily searches, this volume is likely to increase, especially if UMPC’s continue to grow in popularity. You should check to see if this is currently the case over on Google Trends.

It seems as though UMPC as a search term isn’t growing that much, so umpcmediaextender.com probably wouldn’t be worth registering.  Although you never know!

The crap thing is that most of the popular generic search phrases are registered by the big fish. They normally have access to software that uses the Wordtracker API to reel in most popular names. Notice how I say MOST.  By thinking outside the box you can easily land yourself some hot generics.

It’s just about persistance and having a positive attitude !

God.

If I read another article about how to write “the perfect title” I’ll cry. Honestly.

Fuck me.

I think it’s important to know the exact reason behind building a website during the design process. This is especially important if you’re building low-quality niche websites that don’t have a purpose other than to serve as Made For Adsense (MFA) pages.

For example I built Jesus Illusion during the summer of 2007 for seemingly no reason at all. My initial intention was to monetize it through Adsense, but due to the risque nature of the content I was unable to do so. In the end, I’m left with a site that’s basically worthless and I’ve no real intention of updating it.

So from now on I’m gonna put a bit more thought into planning the site’s purpose before even registering a domain. I feel quite ashamed at the amount of money I’ve wasted by buying silly names. At one point it was almost an addiction! Nowadays I’m much more restrained. I’ve went full circle and become very conservative about business as the negatives have been outweighing the positives. I’m determined to keep at it though and to maybe even try to post here again a wee bit more regularly!

I’m gonna let all of these domains expire…….Tragic.

I’ve really missed blogging to be honest. I’ve missed all of this stuff! I’ve just been so busy with college it’s unreal!

I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought most of the names in my Dynadot account. Was I high? Who knows.

Anyway registering them proved to be a great waste of money. I didn’t have an end user in mind for any of the names which is why I didn’t sell any of them (except json.info). Nowadays I’m a lot more conservative with domaining. I only buy names after thinking about what I’m gonna do with it for a while.

I really shouldn’t have spent the $2000 I earnt from the Fart Noises website in such a stupid way. Everything started to fall apart just after that. I quickly developed a serious addiction to the Xbox 360 I bought, which was effectively cured by my nephew who snapped the DVD tray right off of it!

But yeah, I should have invested that $2000 into my sites. I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way. But now I’ve moved on and I’m ready to do it right this time.

Before making any investments on the web it’s important to sit down and consider the alternatives. It isn’t wise to use all of your money to finance one idea (unless it’s a really good one of course).  Nor is it smart to buy the first website you see. You need to develop a plan for that website before you make an offer. If you can’t imagine what you’ll do with it then it likely has no future in your hands and you should look elsewhere. The same thing applies with domain names. There’s no use in thinking that a name is good unless there is a potential buyer.

I’m finally moving to a VPS after thinking about doing it for God knows how long. Spent most of this week selling some of my smaller websites on Digitalpoint and it has went pretty well. So far I’ve used the money mainly for hiring copywriters for a few of my other sites. I’m not gonna buy any new sites. I’ve wasted a lot of money buying pages on subjects I know nothing about. From now on I will invest my money into my own project ideas. And I have a lot of them. I just can’t create them at the rate I think about them.

Things are going pretty well at the minute although I’m spending a lot of my time on final year uni work. I’m actually enjoying this year so far. It’s been cool.

I’m gonna move this blog over soon to the new server in a minute so comments will be disabled until then. Although this place is something of a ghostown since I haven’t updated regularly in about 60,000,000 years.

If you remember in November last year I unsuccessfully attempted to create 50 sites in 50 days, with each earning $1 a day. I’ve been thinking more about why this failed recently and it’s because each site wasn’t based around a long-tail keyword. Instead most of the sites were band pages which never would’ve got any exposure because of the competitiveness of the band names as phrases in the search engines.

Now if I was to try this again I’d first make sure I was targetting a primary keyword which is easy enough to rank for and which would produce 10-20 visits a day for that phrase alone. Then I’d set about creating a blog with 5-7 pages/posts of unique content, insert the Adsense units and then guage the popularity of the keyphrase by my earnings in the first month. I’d then focus more of my attention on the sites that show promise over time. This is what I’ve been doing so far with Ouijaboard Online, which after a week is earning over $1 a day.

The plan is to create around 10 of these sites over the next month, which can then be developed more if I decide to.
I logged into the Digital Point forums too for the first time in ages over the weekend. Gonna sell off a few of my old sites and acquire 1-2 established sites over the next while.

This website was born on this day exactly a year ago. I don’t know what else to write. I’m finding it pretty hard to get back into the ways of Web Development. It just doesn’t interest me much at the minute. Yet at the same time I don’t do anything during the day. This is shit. How the fuck do you pull yourself out of a rut? Could anyone point me to a post offering practical advice on how to “Stop Scratching Your Balls And Actually Do Some Work”?

I’m going on holiday on Monday. Hopefully I get mugged or something. Or at least kicked up the ass. Something to kickstart me, y’know?

Question and Answers time!

Q : What took you so long to update the blog?

A : I couldn’t be bothered really. I lost all interest in blogging and making money on the net. This isn’t new news!

Q : Is it true you tried to sell this site?

A : Yes it’s true, but thankfully the bidder pulled out!

Q : How much for?

A : For a shockingly low amount considering how much love and hate I’ve put into creating these posts.

Q : So really why are you back?

A : I’m back to reclaim this blog as my own. I’m not a whoru (remember I can’t say THAT word!) and I don’t want to be. I set this site up to start with to keep tabs on how I was progressing with money making. Somewhere along the line I lost myself.

Q : Rumours are circulating around the Internet that you became an alcoholic, is this true?

A : I’m from Belfast, of course I’m an alcoholic.

But yeah, here we are again.