Internet Babel

or “How I Learned to Love Lists”

Now, I’m just guessing here but, if you’re anything like me, then you find “Time Management” easier to say than to do. I have a lot of Web development work to do, plus writing, domaining and managing this and another couple of Blogs and, while I have the best intentions of keeping on top of everything it just doesn’t always work out that way.

What sometimes happens as a result of this is that I get to a point where I’ve just got way too much to do and don’t know where to start – I get caught up in a kind of action-paralysis where I flit around from task to task without really accomplishing very much.

For me, the only way to stay out of such a state is to use lists – but use them effectivley.

A list in itself is of limited value – because you can just keep adding items to the bottom – and seeing a three page list on my table doesn’t make me feel any better or make me do things smarter. So – here are a few home-grown tips that just might help you manage your own time: 

1. Decide on your method/medium: Being old-fashioned at heart, I use pen and paper a lot for my list building. The main reason being that I just find that the act of physically writing the stuff down helps to focus my thinking. You may prefer to use a whiteboard, a text editor or even a mind-mapping type tool.
2. It’s not just a list: Writing down (or typing in) your lists will help you start to organise yourself, but don’t think of it as a ‘single-level’. I create ‘sub-lists’, i.e. lists of smaller tasks that belong under a single heading. You list your ‘major’ items at the top-level, and for each major item you can then create a smaller, more detailed list of individual tasks within that. This helps keep the list size down and allows you to focus on that specific area when you’re creating your ‘sub-list’.
3. Let it Grow: I mentioned ’mind-map’ tools in the first point. Whether or not you actually use one of these, the same approach is very useful in list/task management. So, in practise, I might find that an item on my list spawns other related categories/lists. I just let the list grow outwards as well as length-wise – and then re-organise it later into a more readabe ‘shape’. Yes, I may spend time building and refining my lists but this brings a much greater return in efficiency. Don’t be afraid to let your lists grow organically this way.
4. Know when to stop: Don’t let the list have a life of its own. The list is there to help you work smarter, not to distract you from actually working. You might decide to spend some time each morning on a list, or to take a 30 minute break during the day to revisit it and check progress, but DON’T let it rule your day.
5. Prioiritise: Some items are more important than others. It might be a Client review you’ve promised to do, it could be a contest you need to enter. Doesn’t matter what it is – if it’s important then mark it as such on your list (highlighter, assign it a big red ’1′ or whatever, but do something to make it stand out from its less vital friends on the list).
6. Do Something You Don’t Want To Do: There will always be things you want to put off, it’s natural . The trouble is that the longer these things hang around, the more fearsome they become – they sit there in the back of your mind, nagging away at you. You know that you’ve got to do it, and you know that you don’t want to but it won’t just go away, believe me. So – make yourself do something from you internal ‘stuff I really don’t want to do’ list. Pick one task that you’ve been putting off, and just get it done. You’ll almost certainly be pleasantly surprised at the sheer relief of getting it finished and out of the way.
7. Do Something You Do Want To Do: Go on, give yourself a treat. Put something on the list that isn’t neccessarily the most important thing, but that you want to do. Give yourself a little something to look forward to.
8. Update Your List: ‘The List’ is a living document. Update it when you’ve done something – put a big black ‘strike’ through it (you might want to delete items from your list as you do them – I prefer not to but that’s just my choice). Enjoy the warm glow when you look back at that previously daunting list and see that it’s been reduced to a record of all the things you’ve achieved.

 

So there you go, just a little grab-bag of tips and tricks that might help you in managing your time a little better. They have all worked for me over the years, and god knows I’m not a naturally organised person. Feel free to comment with any little techniques or tips of your own.

Cheers
Dave

As you guys know, I’ve talked before about NamePros and DigitalPoint in relation to picking up Domain names.

Well – browsing NamePros yesterday I came across a ‘for sale’ thread that I thought one of you might be interested in.

This guy is selling a domain AND WordPress Blog. What that means is that if you purchase the Domain name (which still has nearly 12-months left on it) you’ll get the site contents & database as well (you’d then have to find your own Web Hosting and upload the files, DB etc of course).

The domain name itself has good potential (AvailableDaily.com) – the seller has it set up as a ‘special offers’ type Blog but it could just as easily be used as a ‘dropped domain’ service for example. There are a number of posts on there already and it’s got a decent clean theme – with plenty of scope for building on it. It’s only a few weeks old but has a few hundred visits already.

It’s the kind of package that could make a nice base for someone wanting to try out Blogging for the first time or for someone with experience to expand into a new area.

The seller mentioned a BIN (Buy It Now) price of $100 but is open to offers, so you could get a decent deal here. The NamePros thread is given below but please note the following:

• you have to be a NamePros member to view the thread
• it’s your responsibiity to negotiate any sale, perform any checks on domain ownership, arrange payment and site transfer etc.
• i have no connection with the seller (other than asking their permission to post about it here) – I’m posting about it because it might be a good ‘pick up’ for someone.   

http://www.namepros.com/turnkey-websites-for-sale/514727-blog-for-sale.html

Cheers
Dave

 

In one of my first posts after taking ownership of this Blog, I described how the relative search popularity trends for ‘SEO’ vs ‘PPC’ as shown by Google Trends reflected the current economic climate.

I laid it on a bit thick to make the point but the link seemed pretty clear. Jim, from the NetFool, thought I was reading too much into it and that search trends didn’t reflect the economy.

Well they do - to an extent.

If you only look to see what’s Hot in Google Trends at any one time then of course that just reflects the relative popularity of current cultural/social/news topics – but if you narrow your search down to two competing ‘generic’ terms like this and refine your search to look at specific geographic areas then they do give some indication of the current economic state. 

Look again now at Google Trends, compare seo & ppc and look at the 12 month trend for USA, UK, Australia as opposed to say, China (India seems a different case, as SEO has always led PPC there and the pattern seems stable).

The trend I pointed out in my original post is continuing (and in the case of the UK and Australia the gap looks to be growing). SEO is gaining ground over PPC in the main English-speaking ‘Western’ (and European) markets and that’s not reflected (yet) in China. 

OK, I’m not being 100% deadly serious about this - PPC will always be here of course. It’s great for kickstarting campaigns and getting traffic boosts – and the guys with the massive generic domains (Fly.com is for sale at SEDO by the way – be prepared for a 6-7 figure price though) will always be secure anyway. For the rest of us it just reminds us that organic is best.

By the way – Wednesday seems to be the most popular day of the week for ‘SEO’ searches in the US

 

While you’re here – have a click on that nifty little ‘pencil’ in the sidebar – yes, that’s the one, it says ‘Random Post’ on it. Guess what it does? Well – if you click on it, it’ll take you to a mystery Internet Babel Post – it could be one from yesterday or a year ago and it could be about anything – you might find something you missed before. go on…Click it.

  

 

Most people coming to this Blog (and many other Blogs in the same field) are looking for an edge – something that will help them stand out. For the most part we cover broad topics relating to SEO, Blogging techniques and Affiliate matters because the standard thinking is that we want to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

Think Local

Even when we do focus on a niche, its almost always a market niche, so we’re getting (or trying to get) visitors who are interested in a certain subject matter, wherever they are geographically located.

What about we turn that on its head, and aim for a purely geo-based market? and where better to try that than in your own town?

What I’m talking about is making a Local Blog – and not just a Blog, but a Forum and a Directory, a News site or local reviews even.

The Benefits

If you get yourself a good, locally relevant domain name and content that is aimed smack-bang at a local audience – you are going to have a great chance of grabbing visitors and retaining visitor loyalty, because people feel a natural preference for a ’local’ site over a generic one. They have a sense of attachment and that is something you can build on.

What’s more, once you are able to establish a ‘brand’ locally, it will be relatively easy to build on that by expanding the scope of your site/network – and even reproduce it for neighbouring Cities/Towns.

Say, for example, I pick up a domain “BirminghamBuzz.com”, “HotInPerth.com”, “CapeTownReviews.com” etc. (I just plucked those names out of thin air – I don’t know if they have been taken, I’m just using them as an example). I can use names like these to build a very focussed, very targeted niche site.

Aren’t I restricting my potential Visitor Numbers?

Sure, I know that straight away I’ll be ignoring the vast majority of people in the world who don’t actually live in those Cities, but in this case i don’t care, because I know that the people visiting the site will be considerably more likely to be interested in what’s on there.

More to the point, I can sell that ‘exclusivity’ to advertisers – because they will also know that the vast majority of people visiting the site will be those most likely to be interested in their services. That means that they will be guaranteed a better success rate when compared to taking pot luck on some generic term web site.

It’s the Web equivalent of local newspaper advertising – you don’t get so broad a reach but you get a better hit rate.

Getting Advertisers

What it means to you, as the Site owner, is that the normal advertising ‘model’ doesn’t apply. You will have to do more legwork to attract advertisers, as generally speaking you won’t be able to use the usual mainstream advertising/affiliate methods.

The upside (and it’s a big one) is that you will be able to negotiate deals direct with local businesses – you’ll cut out middle-men and, of course,  you will be WAY cheaper than traditional print advertising, which means you could pick up business from people who have previously avoided advertising.

You will probably have to offer ‘loss leader’ or ‘opening discount’ type deals to get people interested to start with but the freedom of being able to work out your own arrangements with local businesses can bring great benefits. Plus, the ‘personal’ touch means that these guys will be more willing to give you a chance -particularly when you can literally drop round and discuss deals face to face.

User Involvement

As with any other niche, you want to generate and maintain user involvement. And that means you need to do more than just set up a Directory site and hope it takes off. This is where Blogs and Forums in particular can pay off – people tend to feel involved in their community and are often passionate about subjects of local interest. Once you provide a means for them to air their views you will be able to develop a thriving online community, which will spread by word-of-mouth as well as by SEO.

Once a user base is established (with the help of some good ‘start up’ advertising deals and special offers), you can leverage that involvement with Reviews and increased advertising.

What to Do?

So – if you live in a town with a population of say, 100,000 or more, give it a try:

• Register a locally meaningful Domain name
• Start by Blogging about local topics and news
• Identify local businesses (even just start with 2-3) and approach them on the basis that locally targeted online advertising will be beneficial to them (and also much cheaper than traditional methods)
• Be prepared to offer cheap or free advertising to begin with, or to work on a commission-only basis, perhaps using a basic ‘voucher code’ approach
• Approach local newspapers to see if you can get an editorial plug, local radio stations to get an on-air mention (offer some free advertising in return).
• Encourage Comments and set up a Forum  – exploit the fact that many people feel passionately about their town. Publish and encourage Reviews and Feedback. 
• Get some advertiser testimonials – even if you have to pay for them Put them on the site
• Get your advertisers to offer Website specials/discounts
• Maintain Visitor and Click stats if you can – use them to generate repeat business – don’t  be afraid to approach businesses in the same field as your advertisers – let them know just how well your advertisers are doing
• Don’t neglect your usual SEO tasks 

What we’re looking at here is generating maximum benefit from a relatively small user base – we’re not competing on Keywords with a million other sites and we’re maximising the chances of a visitor actually making a commitment to your site/advertisers.

Give it a go…

Cheers
Dave

Time for another (very) quick round up of what’s been going on and what’s coming up, so welcome to the September Babelicious.

There weren’t too many Blog posts that really caught my eye this last week or two but there are a couple of things worth mentioning:

• A nice little piece on Netstrife about finding Clients if you are a freelancer
• Rules on Guest Blogging by Balkhis on TUK
• DigitalPoint long-running thread about paid search  
• Learn about Google Android – it will be big

As far as Internet Babel is concerned, my last post on ‘Big Bloggers’ (or more accurately, a link within it) got Stumbled and sent a major amount of traffic this way – in fact I got 30,000 page views in 24 hours, which is just ever so slightly more than normal I’ve no idea what kind of retention rate I’ll get but it goes to show just the impact even a silly little thing like that can link can have.

Domain wise, I picked up a heap of bargains this week. Made a couple of small sales too but the ones that I picked up have massive potential so there’ll be some exciting developments soon (either in terms of direct flipping the domain or developing sites on them). 

Anyway – that’s it for now. A few good posts are on their way, including part 4 of Domain Flipping, which will deal with the nitty-gritty of buying and selling on the Forums, Business Blogging, time management, some Free Web Hosting pointers and a few neat niche and audience pieces.

Also, just a reminder that the Comment ‘giveaway’ is still on.

Cheers

This is a paid post – I can’t call it a review because the mysterious Mr. Haarg isn’t giving much away at the moment, but he does say that Haarg will be an exciting new service:

Mr. Haarg is working on a new site that he promises will be an exciting development for Bloggers. The Haarg Blog itself is not giving much away in terms of what this wil be but Mr. Haarg is fielding suggestions and guesses as to what will be unveiled.

The large countdown timer on the Home page points to a New Year release for Haarg, and, like you, I can only guess as to what it will be. On the Blog, Mr. Haarg certainly shows a leaning towards creative and media related subjects, with some interesting and funny images – so that might give some clue as to what Haarg will be. There are also some general Blogging and science related posts to be found on the Blog.

Looking around the Blog, there is a little clarification on what Haarg will not be, and a few things that Haarg might be:

• Haarg could be a solution for a real problem
• Haarg could be a new communications medium
• Haarg could speed up several activities
• Haarg could cut the distance between people
• Haarg could be a new language
• Haarg could be a new currency
• Haarg could be a challenge
• Haarg could be a cool gadget
• Haarg could be a new way to write
• Haarg could be a creative thinking tool
• Haarg could be a new content sharing tool
• Haarg could be a new engine
• Haarg could be a new friend

What is Haarg going to be? I honestly have no idea because I don’t know what will be unveiled, BUT he is genuinely trying to generate some interest and interaction with readers so full marks to him for that. Appearance wise, I would prefer the Blog to be ‘toned’ down a little but he’s a got a nice concept going.

Anyway – it won’t cost you anything other than a small amount of your time to go and see for yourself just what Haarg might be….

Like me, you’ve probably sometimes wondered just what it is that makes Shoemoney, ProBlogger, John Chow etc. so different from the rest of us. So I decided to take a closer look at their recent posts and content, compare it with some of the mid/low level type MMO Bloggers around and see just what their trick is.

 

What it isn’t

Well, for a start off I’ll tell you a few things that DON’T make them stand out from the crowd:

Content and Originality?

No – looking through Shoe, ProBlogger and John Chow Blogs recently I can’t see much that I couldn’t find on Net Fool, TUK or a lot of other Blogs – and to be honest Jim and Jason do it better in many cases. Looking on the ‘Big’ Player Blogs I see the same recurring subject matters of ‘content’, ‘getting subscribers’, ‘distractions’ etc. 

They also have a high proportion of posts where these ‘top Bloggers’ talk about each other and tell you all about the conferences and expo’s they’re going to be guesting at…yep, really useful.

Like everyone else much of the remaining Blog content is made up of paid reviews, affiliate promotion and general internet/SEO chat (apart from the annoying but probably lucrative restaurant reviews of course).

Grammar?

Nope – the standard of grammar is poor – their stuff doesn’t read particularly well. I’ve seen a lot worse for sure but this isn’t premium quality copy by any stretch.

Posting Frequency?

Partly – Shoe, ProBlogger and John Chow are all averaging 1-2 posts per day recently, which is about as much as you’d want, otherwise you’re just padding your Blog out.

 

So – what is it?

OK – so they have a flashy skin (nice new look John), good prizes and a lot of good ads, but there are a few main reasons they are where they are:

They’re Big, of course

One thing that makes them big is the fact that they are big – it’s a self-fulfilling thing, because nothing succeeds like success. People want the kudos of being associated with them and therefore want to link to them. Like Doug said in his interview, these sites have thousands of backlinks and eager subscribers because of who they are, not just what they provide. Advertisers and others see a success story and link to it or advertise on it for no other reason than that.

That means that there was a ‘tipping point’ somewhere where these ‘elite bloggers’ graduated to a higher level – either through pure ‘money power’ i.e. a straight purchase of links/traffic, use of contacts in the business, link-bait, luck or (more likely) a combination of all of the above.

The point is that once you’re at this level its easy to stay there – you just keep churning out the same old stuff and keep patting your mates on the back – and as long as you don’t really screw up there’s not a lot that will drag you back down. Hey, if he charges $500 for a review post , he MUST be good eh? 

Value Add & Stickability

What you’ll also find on these Blogs, and this is what keeps a lot of people coming back, are the value-added features, such as Job Boards ($50 a month to post a job anyone?), Forums, Chat, Blog networks plus the E-Book purchases and regular comps of course.

These guys know that posts alone aren’t going to keep a visitor on the Blog, particularly when the same stuff is on a hundred other Blogs – so they diversify and put features on the site that are going to make people WANT to come back. In that way, they’re more like a ‘portal’ than a pure Blog.

Visitor Retention

They sign them up and keep them coming back. Big FeedBurner numbers speak a thousand words, and they’re sexy advertiser-bait as well.

Interaction

Active and lively commenting keeps things fresh. Just looking over recent posts, ProBlogger’s averaging 20-30 comments per post, Chow 40-50 and ShoeMoney is way up around the 80 mark and more. Threaded commenting is great as well.  

 

What to do?

OK – here’s a few things we can try that might help us get promoted into the Premier League – in addition to the core requirements of creating quality content and doing good SEO:

• Diversify & Value Add – This is an area where all of us can learn. Put a Marketplace, Jobs Board, Forum on your site – find some kind of service that’s going to make real visitors want to come back on a regular basis.  
• Build Subscribers – Regular incentives for subscribing, regular incentives for staying subscribed. Offer individual sign ups for different services, and make those lists contribute to the overall subscriber numbers. Create Newsletters. 
• Interactivity – Keep your comments areas active. Deeplink to recent and not so recent posts to kick-start some up to date feedback. Hell, open up a chat or shoutbox area, or show how many people are currently online.
• Help each other out – the top guys have their clique. We should also be doing the same. Keep visiting the mid and low level Blogs you like and spread the love. If you see something you like. comment or post about it.
• Posting Frequency – You have to keep adding content, but find a level that suits you. Don’t just churn out rubbish because you think you have to. When you get an idea, turn it into a draft post, and aim to have a few drafts that you can return to and get ready for publishing when you have a little time.
• Give practical advice – if you have a good result, tell people about it but more importantly, tell them how you did it. Don’t spoon-feed them though – it doesn’t have to be a step-by-step guide, just give them enough information to let them work it out for themselves. 
• Go off-topic occasionally – most normal people have interests outside of Making Money Online, and they have opinions. Every so often, throw in a little off-topic post that might grab some interest from outside your normal target market.
• Act Clever – analyse your individual posts and see where visitors go in your Blog. Work out what works and work it even more.
• Act Big – increase your advertising and posting fees, cos if you undercharge people think you’re desperate, but if you charge premium rates, you must be worth it, right?
• Stick with it – have a plan, don’t get disheartened and don’t give up after three months. Work on building a brand and people will start coming to your Blog to see what you’ve got to say about a subject*

Basically, the upper echelon is very hard to break into, unless you’ve got a lot of money to throw around or some good contacts to take advantage of. For the rest of us, we can look for incremental gains in traffic organically through good content and good management. And you can look for that killer piece of link-bait or Value-Added service (interaction, real-time updates, a service) that’s going to tip the scales and get a heap of quality traffic heading your way.   

Any other tips and tricks for mixing it with the Big Boys?

Thanks
Dave 

* Plus, of course, “don’t forget important bullet points off your list” and “be prepared to edit/update your post if someone points it out”  (see first 2 comments) – thanks Coffesh0p

OK – so in parts 1 & 2 we covered an introduction and some basics on registering a new domain and finding dropped/expired domains.

In this piece, we’ll be looking at what will be the main stomping ground for most of you – the Forums. In particular I’ll be covering DigitalPoint and NamePros, because they are both popular and they represent different markets. Other popular Forums for buying and selling of Domains and Websites are SitePoint and Acorn Domains, but I won’t specifically address them here.

First things first – Build a Rep:

If you haven’t already done so, register at both Forums, take a good look at the different areas on them, and start posting in the ‘non-trading’ sections…get a bit of ‘post history’ under your belt, try and get some Rep points, as this will all help further down the track. If you have an area of expertise, use it to give some advice to those in need.

DP and NamePros- what’s the difference? 

I use both Forums frequently to buy and sell Domains, but you have to be aware that they have very different approaches to the game, and you have to behave accordingly.

DP is the bigger of the two in terms of users, traffic and posts but it is a LOT less regulated and, as a result, is more prone to spammers, scammers and time-wasters. The mods there are average at best and they will do little to help you out in case of any disputes. Also, they are not as open as they could be with regard to highlighting and stamping out scammers.

Having said all of that, there is a good community there, and there are some great bargains to be had if you trawl the Domains For Sale forum. It’s also a good place to buy and sell links/adverts or content and there are some useful posts in the other sections as well, if you ignore some of the more obviously juvenile/spammy crap.

NamePros is a smaller, tighter community and much better regulated (although obviously not totally free from scams). Their Domains For Sale sections are separated better than DP, and the Domains Wanted Forum is a good place to look for potential buyers.

Be warned that NamePros mods do a pretty good job of keeping on top of Sale/Auction threads and there are rules for all of these that you MUST abide by. It takes a little bit more effort but it’s generally a safer place to deal in.

Look And Learn:

I can’t stress how important it is to take some time looking at the Forums for a while before you do any trading. It is only by doing this that you’ll get a feel for good and bad prices, good traders etc.

Ask anyone who regularly deals in Domains and if they’re honest they will all admit to being stung or being stupid in the early days – I bought a few turkeys myself early on. But then, you can always sell them on to an un-suspecting newbie  

Sifting Out the Rubbish:

As a result of a spending some time looking at the Forums, you should be better positioned to spot and then ignore the trash – and there is a LOT of it. Of course, the trouble is that not many people will be honest enough to say they’re trying to offload a crap domain, so you’ll see some amusing posts trying to put a good spin on names that are blatantly pathetic. Methods used to try and do this include:

• trying to target a domain for a non-existent niche (e.g. “FartingAlbanianParrots.info – ideal name for a domain about Farting Parrots in Albania”
•  ”Dictionary word .com” – Yes, well “Assuetude” is a dictionary word but I can’t see much type-in traffic for it. Just cos it’s a dictionary word doesn’t mean it’s got any pull.
• “Web 2.0″ name – “Flxgl.org” – Woopy-Doo…   
• Typo’s – watch out for these.
• Likewise for TradeMarked names – maybe the current owner has realised they can’t use the name without being sued, so they want to offload it. Don’t complain after you’ve bought – do some research into any names you have the slightest doubt about.
• Good old-fashioned Bull – Just because the seller says it’s a good name doesn’t mean it is. They are quite happy to bandy around words like “Premium”, “Valuable” and the like – but step back and think before you buy.

Plus of course you will get the clowns who are deluded enough to believe that they’re crappy domain is worth a fortune…it isn’t.  You will see some truly ridiculous prices being asked for – on the other hand, you will also see some absolute bargains (I’ve picked up 20 $1 Domains in the past 3 weeks).

Note For Sellers:

The advice I’ve given to looking around the Forums applies just as much if you want to SELL a domain. You need to come up with a realistic price, and decide where you want to sell it, and the method you want to use (Fixed Price, Auction etc).  and READ THE RULES.

Admin:

Most sales on both Forums are conducted via PayPal (although Escrow services are popular for higher value sales). So, as I said earlier, if you want to trade on these forums you will need PayPal. You will also need an account at the major registrars in order to acccept/give account pushes.

Etiquette:

Don’t mess people around. You WILL get landed with negative trader points and possibly bad reputation, and that is not the way to start your career in Domain speculating.

You will come across a number of sales (particularly on DP) where the seller turns out to be a waste of space and ignores all attempts to contact them even if your bid has won the domain. If you’ve abided by the Sale rules and given them fair opportunity to respond then you could slap them with some bad trader points but my advice (to begin with at least) would be to forget about it and move on (but make a note of their name so you know not to deal with them again).

It costs nothing to be courteous in sales threads, and as always, flaming/spamming someone’s sales thread will only end in sadness. Karma is a great consolation so hold your tongue.

Coming up next…the mechanics of conducting a sale on the Forums – bidding, accepting bids, processes for payment and transfer of Domains etc.

Thanks

Dave

Just a very quick update to let you know about some offers on Domain Registration:

GoDaddy – They currently have a Voucher code where you can register a .com (or .net/.org I think) for just 99c ($1.19 with the ICANN fee). That’s a pretty awesome offer. Just specify discount code ‘test99′ when checking out. I have no idea how long this will last, and I think it’s only valid for 1 domain per customer. You’d be daft to miss it though.

Namecheap – Another great offer from these guys. Get free SSL when registering or transferring a domain – http://www.namecheap.com/learn/ssl-certificates/free-positive-ssl-certificates.asp

Name.com – Just a heads up that their $5.99 registration offer is coming to an end in about a week. Update: name.com are (for now) letting you use coupon code ‘XUP599′ to continue getting $5.99 registrations.

 

Domaining/Webmaster news – DP being sued?

You may have heard about Shawn and DigitalPoint being one of a number of parties named in a lawsuit from EBay accused of Cookie-Stuffing. I guess this could affect DigitalPoint Forums down the track – as of yet there doesn’t seem to be any allegation that DP users have been caught up/affected but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, seems like business as usual at DP. Legal type details of the case can be found at Justia.com

Thanks guys
Dave  

Doug Scott is a very well-known name in Affiliate and Web Marketing circles – and a great subject for an interview, cos he tells it like it is without any bullshit or ‘black art’ stuff. He’s the man behind ASAP Ventures and a host of high-profile domains particularly in the travel and car-hire sectors.

This post would have appeared under the ‘Interviews’ section, except that someone got to Doug before me. However, this interview is so good you’ll want to hear it, believe me.  Fraser, from AffiliateBlog.co.uk did the interview with Doug and they have both agreed to me posting about it and producing a transcript.

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I’ve reproduced a few choice snippets here, to give you a taste, and there’s also a PDF version of the full transcript available for download – but you’ll find it worthwhile listening to the whole Podcast, if you can decipher the accents – being a Brummie I speak perfect English but these two guys aren’t as fortunate as me

The full interview comes in at 40 minutes plus but it’s a great lesson in how things really work.

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On Domains:

Fraser: Fly.co.uk that’s a kind of high profile purchase you made recently wasn’t it?

Doug: Yeah, that was GBP 87,500 (approx. $175,000). 

Fraser: That’s quite a big investment.

Doug: Personally, I thought it was a bargain – I thought they gave it away.

Fraser: You think so, that’s good.  So I take it you’re a real believer in a good generic domain name then.

Doug: If you’re going to sell something it’s much easier to sell fly.co.uk rather than dougscheapflights.co.uk.  As a company, what we do is we get traffic to websites. You know, carrentals.co.uk – is a very good generic. It probably does - over the past 5 years, it’s probably done between 50 and 100 million GBP worth of sales.  If we wanted to sell that domain it’s much easier to sell that domain having it as a nice name.  It’s much easier for a corporate to understand what they’re buying.
 
If you look at carrentals alone, that domain has probably had in the region of 5 million GBP spent on it. Therefore, you might as well spend that much money on a nice domain name.

If you look at Fly.co.uk, that was 87.5k GBP, Recycle was 152k GBP - and I just look and I think, it’s so easy.  The traffic part has never been a problem to us. I always say to people you put content on websites and give them some links – that’s all you have to do.

Traffic & Link-Building:

Fraser: So why would people find the traffic part difficult then?  I know there’d be a lot of people out trying to desperately get traffic to their websites.

Doug: I think that most people don’t believe it.  They do it for 3 months and then stop.

You know, they don’t see the results they expect. I did an explanation yesterday to a couple of people, and they had a website and my first question was how many visitors does it get? And they said 5 a day.  I said, you’ve got 5 now, whatever you did last time do it again ‘cause then you’ll have 10 and then do it again and you’ll have 20 and once you get to a certain point theyre will be a logical point where what you should actually do is turn this into a process and have other people do it or have machines do it.

There’s no point you as an individual sitting in a bedroom trying to manually do everything.

Fraser: So processes for things like getting the content written, doing the link building, those kind of jobs?

Doug: We do processes for everything.  I say we do factory SEO. We have probably about 300 writers now around the world who write content for us.  We used to write it ourself but then it became cheaper to give to someone else in bulk. 

If we do link building, we have machines that do requests, we have people who do requests.  Basically we’ll trial something, trial something, work out how it works and then we will try to make it an automated process or a manual process.

Fraser: That you can then outsource, so you’re not stuck having to doing it yourselves?

Doug: You can outsource or you can build a machine.
 
Fraser: So how do you mean, can I explore that a little bit “build a machine” – you just mean an application that does it for you or what?

Doug: If I’m very simple about it, if you’re looking for links in a sector, what most people will do is, they will go to Google.  They will search for terms relating to their sector, they will try to find the contact forms and the email addresses of those people and then they will manually contact all of them. 

Now, aside from saying the legalities of how you contact them, the collecting of that data, well a machine can do all of that much, much faster than an individual will ever do it.  Now you may put a sanity check in – where we’ve now got all the data, we now get people involved, who then basically before we touch someone will look at the data to make sure it’s what it’s meant to be.

Fraser: Right yeah, so you’re emailing the right people and not asking the wrong sites for links and that kind of stuff?

Doug: Yes, in most cases it’s very limited in what we do about asking people for links anymore.  We have processes now – we’ve just learnt as time goes on that the efficiency of asking people is not the best way of doing it. 

If I went back 4 years ago we would have been doing very much more traditional asking for the link.
 
Now what we would do is we will try and create something and then tell the relevant people who really want to link to it because if you can kick that snowball down the hill the effect is dramatic.  It’s one of the discussions, you know going back to the domain name purchases  – you look at the 2 big ones which people know that we bought was Fly and Recycle.  Now have a look at the back links at any time you want of Fly and Recycle and you’ll see there’s a lot of them and there’s a lot of them based because of how much we paid for it.

Fraser: Right, that’s almost kind of self fulfilling, yeah you spent that money on an instant success because people talk about it because of how much you spent on it.

Doug: Anytime I mention it, anywhere, like here, other people will link to it. It’s the same on my blog, my blog has taught me a huge amount of how to create controversy.

Link-Bait

Fraser: Do you think that’s a good method? I know that some people have frowned at that link bait at money.co.uk saying that if the story’s not true it’s misleading and unethical, I mean  what’s your stance on it?

Doug: Depends on where you going with it.  Ethically wise, I would say I agree, it’s not ethical. Lyndon’s view is, commercially it’s hugely viable. Now if you’re Google what do you do with that I don’t know. What we’ve done in the past is we prefer to create a story – we play – rather than rifle shooting we play a lot more of a random game, a shotgun, where what we will do is we will create a 100 stories and some will get picked up – we don’t know which ones will but once one is picked up we will then exploit it.

So we let the world decide what the story is that wants to be told.

Paid Search:

Doug: Paid search to me now is pure arbitrage business. You know, it’s exactly what happens in money markets and share trading markets.  What you’re looking for is a hole in the market. And there’s enough data out there, if you’ve got access to the data – that’s what it very simply is – at one point we were running one paid search campaign with 4.5 million key words in it.  An individual can not do the analysis on that data – it’s just not physically possible. So you need to have a machine.

You’re changing your bid prices, time of days and things like that but you need to be able to take the data you’ve got and react to it.  It should be possible with enough data to take the click through value, the click through rates, the amount of money you paid on a position in Google – you should be able to forward forecast and reverse forecast what any price should be at any time of the day for any keyword in any month.

From our experience, if you’re in a very targeted niche, say if you’re doing car insurance, an individual will win every time because an individual will physically look at the ads and see how good they are, bad they are, in comparison to what other people are doing, and be able to make gut instinct changes – a machine can’t do that. 

But as soon as you go past the 100 key words – we proved it most of last year, ‘cause we ran 2 parallel campaigns on 2 different sites, and that’s exactly what we found.  The machines just won every time. 

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These are just a few snippets from what is a very interesting interview.

Hear the full Podcast at: http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/doug-scott-asap-ventures-interview.html

Download the full transcript here

I hope you find it entertaining and educational.

Dave