Archive for September, 2008
Saturday, September 27th, 2008
If there is one thing that annoys me more than any other working online it would have to be the bottom feeder scumbags that copy my affiliate sites.
Just a couple weeks ago I was analyzing some numbers for a newish campaign that had been completely rocking. All of the sudden I noticed a small but significant conversion rate dip. With a bit of research I found the reason. A bottom feeding POS had decided to reproduce everything on my site and tweak it just enough that it wasn’t an exact copy. By “tweak” I mean mix up a few sentences, change the color and make the logo fit his domain. Literally a 98% copy. In addition to that he decided to run my exact Adwords copy on all my keywords. Needless to say duplicate ad copy for the same keywords with a close to mirror site is going to lower my conversion rate.
I’m well aware of the saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but it honestly does nothing for me. I literally despise non-imaginative people that stoop to copying other because they can’t come up with an original idea. Regardless of how much it needles me though I do understand that it is part of the game.
To avoid writing a book here I’m not going to go into what my response is to such an action. Instead I’m going to give you all a few tips on how to contain this issue to just one site. You see, if this guy rips my site and turns a profit it is only natural that he is going to try and find more of my work and coat tail it as well. That’s not going to happen.
How To Mitigate the Impact of an Affiliate Bottom Feeder
So what I want to do here is give you some tips to ensure affiliate scum don’t spread to your entire network of sites. As you may know there are numerous ways to find domains and sites a person is associated with. Some of the information points that can be traced include your:
- whois email address
- whois name or company name
- name servers
- site ip address
Your hosting provider and domain registrar can also be used to aid in tracking your holdings.
So, as you all do a reverse look up on this domain over at domaintools.com I can tell you that you won’t find anything I don’t want you to know about. You can probably figure out that my name is attached to well over 5,000 domains but you’re not going to find my affiliate money makers. How can I be so confident of that? Let’s take a look.
Covering Your Affiliate Tracks
Here are a list of tips you can use to ensure an affiliate bottom feeder doesn’t rip your entire network.
1. Use Private Registration
I realize many of you probably don’t like the idea of private registrations but it is very effective as it takes the email and name tracing out of the picture. If you really don’t want to use private registration I’d suggest using a slightly different name (middle name?) and a different email address for your whois info.
2. Use Different Hosting Accounts
This is probably the most important point. Instead of having all your sites on a dedicated server or VPS use a separate hosting account for each of your affiliate sites. I recommend Media Temple, Yahoo or MidPhase. The key here is keeping the name servers and IP address unique.
3. Don’t Link To Your Other Affiliate Sites
I realize there is temptation to cross promote and pass link juice but don’t do it. They will find it.
4. Use Multiple Domain Registrars
This one is pretty paranoid but I do it anyway. The domain registrar isn’t a point of direct tracing but it is information that can lead to more information. I literally have domains at more than 10 registrars.
Taking the time to ensure your information tracks are covered will keep your hard work as safe as possible and save you from a lot more frustration.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 2 Comments »
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
So I live just south of Houston. If you’ve been watching the news you’d know that means I took a direct hit from hurricane IKE this weekend. We were blessed to make it through the storm untouched and even more blessed to be a very small percentage of the Houston area homes with power.
With that said, I have a good amount of roof damage, a fence that blew down, some car damage and a lot of cleanup to do. As a person that works online full time it’s going to quite a juggling act trying to keep everything in the air. No matter who you are sometimes life happens and you get dealt with unforeseen distractions. How you handle those distractions is what matters.
For me it comes down to time management. Time management is a critical skill to any self employed entrepreneur. I’d go so far to argue that it’s one of the required skills to be successful. In situations like I have now it’s not really a matter of prioritizing what I do when between the hours of 7 am and 5 pm. I have to ask myself the same question I did when I was running my sites while also holding a day job.
Where am I going to find the time to do everything I need to do?
This will differ from person to person but in the end some sacrifice must be made. My personal options have always been family time or sleep. Taking time away from my family is never a viable option so for me it’s sleep. Until this mess is settled I’ll be falling back into my routine of old getting up just before 4am and moving to about 4-5 hours of sleep. I wish it were just a case of prioritizing my tasks but there is just too much to be done.
Times like this make me realize all the make easy money online and 4 hour work week gimmicks really just reduce the amount of “legitimate” competition online. It’s not easy and anyone that says it is would be lying.
Posted in Internet Marketing, Online Lifestyle | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
With 11 posts under my belt here I felt I should give a little state of my blog update as there are already quite a bit more rss readers than I expected.
I’ve published quite a few blogs for affiliate marketing but this is actually my first blog-blog. Besides wanting to share a bit of what I’ve learned over the years I really wanted to start this site to work on my writing. I consider myself a pretty poor writer (I’m sure some of you do as well) and it’s something I want to work on. I know it is going to take study and practice and you are looking at my training grounds. God bless all of you that are subscribing from the start. 
This site is a long term project for me so don’t expect it to go away. In regards to posting frequency you can expect about 1 post per week for the time being. Longer term I plan to eventually work towards daily posts.
I’ve got a lot to share so thanks for visting.
Posted in Misc | No Comments »
Monday, September 8th, 2008
Up until a few months ago I was happily chugging along working in a quiet house every day from my home office. It was a sweet setup that I knew couldn’t last forever. With the birth of our second child my wife decided it was time to hang up the career and become a stay at home mom. In turn, I got my que to exit stage right and find some office space.
I didn’t really think finding office space would be that big of a deal but the process turned out to be a lot more frustrating and challenging than I originally expected. So I figured I’d blog about it to provide some insight to anyone else that is or might be in the same situation.
The process was full of tough decisions and typically ended up with me deciding between least worst. Here are some issues to consider when searching for office space.
- Availability - I live just outside Houston so one would think there would be a nice selection of small office spaces in such a populated area, right? Wrong. Small office space, or executive suites, aren’t that easy to find (opportunity?). I really only had 3 viable choices to select from once I narrowed down the options.
- Distance - The travel time to my new office was the primary factor that limited my options. I was not going to travel more than 7 miles each way. For me the costs went up exponentially past that point considering the cost of gas, mileage on my truck and the time lost in transit every day. The long daily commute was one of the motivating factors to become self employed and I sure as hell don’t want to bring it back.
- Direct Cost - The actual rental cost for many of the spaces I looked at were just not realistic for a one man operation. The majority were easily over $1,000/month. I found most of the services charged for mandatory extras such as copying, kitchen/coffee, conference rooms and a receptionist which I just don’t need. I did find one class A option with a decent monthly rate but there was a catch. If I wanted internet service it had to go through them for ONLY $200/month. NO THANKS. I simply wanted a bare bones “room” that I could get internet access to.
- Equipment Cost - One of the biggest costs in this process was the additional equipment. I use a desktop at home so if I moved that to the new office I wouldn’t be able to work from home. I decided to duplicate my setup in the new office with a laptop and docking station instead of a desktop. Mind you I could have spent less but I’m a creature of habit which meant my dual 24″ HD monitors, Aeron chair and super automatic Capresso coffee machine were necessities. Other items included 2 tables, a desk, lamp, printer, office supplies, cleaning supplies (including a vacuum), mini-fridge and a microwave.
The Result
In the end I found a happy medium for my needs. I found an older office space in a small town less than 5 miles from my house that offered the bare bones “room” I was looking for. I go against any traffic we have and my travel time is just right at 6 minutes door to door. I paid a full year in advance and did some hard negotiations but ended up getting my space for just over $350/month with all utilities included. Here’s a pic I took just after setting everything up.
Final Thoughts
The price of getting your own office space is high. It drives me nuts that I’m spending money every month and not getting equity from it. In a perfect world I would build an office at my home detached from my house. That wasn’t an option now but we’re looking at building a new home soon on some acreage and that would be my plan. I will note that I do feel slightly more productive leaving the house but I’m not sure that outweighs the other costs and annoyances.
Posted in Online Lifestyle | 1 Comment »
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
So I mentioned in my last post I’d give my visitors reason to read my content. Was I able to get your attention? I’m guessing so. Well now that you’ve made it this far I don’t want to disappoint so let me dive right in with all the details.
A Little Background
In early 2000 there was a buzz surrounding the growing popularity of domain names as “online real estate” and I wanted to know more. I had just graduated from college and was already looking for an exit to the corporate world. I thought domains might be the answer. I got my start by heading over to the early Afternic chat boards. A few days later I dove in head first and registered some of the worst domains you could imagine racking up over $750 in registration fees in the process. After taking inventory I realized I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing and decided to join some of the new domain forums to learn more. Forums such as DNForum, DomainState and later NamePros are where I started to learn how the domain game really worked which lead to everything I do today. I was only able to sell a few of my original names and the rest went to the expiration pile. I took a pretty big hit for a poor kid right out of college and was very cautious with my domains moving forward. While my portfolio held between 100-200 in 2006 when I got back into the game most of my domains at that time were earmarked for development. One thing that stayed constant through those six years was that I never stopped reading and learning.
The Accidental Challenge
I’m really into finding my angles through data research. I primarily do keyword research to optimize my sites for search engines and find under served affiliate niches. In early 2006 I got my hands on a monthly dump of the overture keyword search tool. I found this data fascinating and ran it through several tools I use including Luc Lezon’s Domain Research Tool. I ran a list of Overture searches that ended in .com (and other extensions) through the tool and noticed many of the domains being searched didn’t resolve to anything. Many were typos of big sites which was to be expected. What I didn’t expect to see was the large number of generic domains that weren’t being monetized in any way. It looked like a nice opportunity but I was really busy working on developing my sites so I put it aside in my “maybe later” bin.
It was July of 2006, at that time I had a site that catered to the teen crowd and I noticed a lot of my incoming searches included the word “bored”. It got me thinking about a possible offshoot so I went looking for a “bored” domain. After an exhaustive search and several offers I landed Bored.org for $800 (Not near the original asking price but I’d just left an office job of 5 years as a buyer/negotiator which helped). I didn’t have immediate plans for the name so I parked it at my Sedo account. At one time it was a site so I expected a little traffic but I got a lot more than that. Not only was there traffic from incoming links but direct type-ins as well to the tune of about $12/day in parking revenue. I knew the domain was nice but I’d stumbled onto a real gem. This got me thinking….
Around the same time I had read a handful of posts on the domain forums where people were claiming domaining for big bucks wasn’t possible any more and the days of a new guy making a living in the industry were gone. I knew all this “missed the boat” and “woe is me” whining was Bull Shit. So much so that I decided to pull my domain opportunity out of the “maybe later” bin and make it a personal challenge to prove the naysayers wrong. I decided I would start by flipping Bored.org to give myself a bit more purchasing power. I posted the domain at DNForum with a few weeks stats and had the name sold for $16,000 the next day. It was time to get started.
(Note: I’m only going to disclose the name of my first and last sale as those were the only names publicly reported)
Turning Potential Into Profits
With $15,200 of extra padding to my domain venture bankroll I fired up DRT and began to pinpoint all the potential buying opportunities. My basic assumption here was that if the domain did not resolve there was a chance the owner did not understand the full value of the domain or the traffic it was getting. My goal was to find generic .com/.net/.org domains that were on my overture list and negotiate purchases at a price I felt that I could immediately sell for at least 3 times more. Less than two months later I had spent my full $16,000 domain bankroll on 10 solid domains and had some good traffic and parking revenue coming in. To get a premium return I sat on the domains for about a month to get a decent history of parking earnings. It was right at a month when I stumbled across an opportunity I could not hold back on. I found a two letter .com (WT.com) listed on GoDaddy’s TDNAM marketplace for $100,000. The 2 letter .com sales at that time had been rising significantly and all of the good letter combos were well above the $100,000 level. I was confident I could get the name for less so I decided to put my newly acquired set of domains up on DNForum with the goal of flipping my $16,000 investment into at least $90,000. Three days and a bit of a bidding war later I had a deal sealed for the 5 of th 10 new names at $90,000. I had no time to celebrate though. There was another deal to make. I got in touch with the owners of WT.com and had an agreement to purchase the name for $75,000 before the wire from my earlier sale had even cleared my account.
All of this happened in under 6 months and I needed to take a step back before deciding what to do with my new gem. After having my wife/accountant review everything (and paying taxes on my profits) it looked like holding the name for at least a year to get the long term capital gains discount was going to be the play unless someone made me a big time offer. That is exactly what I did and just a few months ago I put WT.com up for sale. Finding a buyer in the six figure range proved to be a bit more of a challenge but the buyer did eventually come and a sale was made at $192,000.
I’ve added a time line image below for the visual folks.
You might note that I have “and counting” in my title. That and counting is the result of the other 5 names I didn’t tell you about and the $15,000 difference on the sell prior to the WT.com purchase. The other names were sold as well and several generations of flips later I’m now sitting on a portfolio of over 5,000 domains (note: many are regs and lower priced local verticals, my new love).
Can This Still Be Done Today?
Yes. That said, it would be much toughter to do the EXACT same thing I did right now. I believe the Overture search data I had was from the last month the tool was online. If you really wanted to try though Quantcast has their top million site rankings here (10mb zip). I’m sure that list has some nuggets in it although I’ve yet to take it out of my “maybe later” bin. Regardless, I will say that the best time to buy is when money is tight so if you have funds right now and you want to play the game, make a move. The opportunities are all over the place.
Moving Forward
So that’s it. The BEGINNING of my story. Almost seems too simple right? Believe it or not most success stories are. Just put in the time and effort and you’ll be rewarded.
Aside from HOW I pulled this off I think the value in this post is that the money is in seizing the opportunities you find (even the accidental ones) and executing them with a unique angle. When people say something can’t be done take that as a challenge and find a way to prove them wrong by taking a different path.
I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did please subscribe to my RSS feed for more to come.
Posted in Domains, Making Money | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
Do you brag about your online successes? Should you?
Over my years of work and study online the art of bragging is a marketing skill I’ve found to be quite overlooked. While it has not been my bag I’ve seen the technique give online personalities meteoric boosts to the point of making them online superstars.
As unnatural as it might come to some of us bragging is a marketing tool that does a lot more than provide an ego boost. There is a lot of noise on the web and people looking for information need a way to filter that information. Those who are able to successfully boast about themselves and their accomplishments create instant authority and give a relative base as to the value of their information.
As the title states bragging is an ART. Not everyone is good at bragging. In fact, the delivery and tone used to highlight ones accomplishments has an enormous impact on it’s effectiveness. It drills down to the fundamental rule of knowing your audience. Should you convey your message in a Subtle manner? Cocky? Matter of Fact? Nonchalant? No one should really know better than you but if you aren’t sure play it safe and go with a subtle approach. You might not get the recognition you are looking for but it’s better than turning readers away by coming off as too cocky.
I’ve already mentioned here that I’ve enjoyed my success with a low profile so needless to say I’m not well versed in the implementation of bragging online. I’ve studied it and watched it work time and time again but never put it to use. With that said, It’s time I get in the ring. If I don’t share my accomplishments you have no basis to value my content which means I might as well be any another Make Money Online / Internet Marketing blogger (that probably doesn’t make more than $100/day) to you.
Stay tuned. 
Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Monday, September 1st, 2008
On the heels of my cookie tracking concerns with IE8 and my call for more cookieless affiliate tracking I’d like to point out a program that does it right.
The Best of the Web offers an affiliate program for their product that uses a direct link referral based tracking method. This method is easily the best way run an affiliate program today because it not only eases some of the affiliate tracking concerns but it also gets the program direct links with juice (assuming people like me don’t nofollow them).
As an affiliate used to long string parameter links the idea is a little head scratching when you first see your affiliate url is a direct link. In reality the method couldn’t be much simpler. All you have to do is claim a site you’d like to promote from and you’re set. This is done by verifying ownership through a meta tag or file upload similar to Google’s Webmaster Tools. Once your site is claimed all tracking is done via click-through referrals which means the affiliate doesn’t have to worry about any cookie stealing or blocking. Easy enough right?
Affiliate Managers please take note.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing, SEO | 4 Comments »
