KHALID

I was looking over my collection of domain names the other day as I have a few sitting doing nothing. Well, quite a few to be honest. So, I’m being pro-active and trying to monetise them, at least until they catch on and I’m offered something substantial for them.

At least 80% of the names have ranking websites, however I’ve never approached anyone to advertise on them. So, I got off my arse and made a few contacts with people I know, and as they believe in what I do, I’ve got some deals setup. There’s nothing life changing in these partnerships, however money is money!

I know the likes of Yell and uFindus have bought up a large proportion of keyword and geo names, and the money they charge to rent the minisites on them is extortionate! They have the infrastructure to do this on a massive scale and the sales staff to ensure it is profitable. If you run a business chances are they’ll have phoned you offering it for just £xx per week…I would charge that for a month!

So my little geo-jaunt has me working on partnerships for Edinburgh Taxi, Edinburgh Nightclubs and Edinburgh Hairdresser mainly, as well as continuing my day job in the double glazing market.

Happy days, we’ll see how it goes. Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Since selling my tattoo network I’ve been in a financial position to trial a lot of new web ventures. I’ve tried running a bar jobs site, I heavily marketed a student portal, I built several mini-sites and invested in domain leasing. Now I’m back to square one.

Did I fail?

No, I learned a lot, made some money and began planning my future properly. When I say I’m back to square one I don’t mean I’m back to the beginning, I’m back to what I’m good at – developing. Several attempts to take on big competitors, rush into multiple new projects and look for “the next big thing” meant I spread myself and my resources too thinly, resulting in some failures.

It’s not all bad though, I’ve bagged a fantastic small (yet established!) site I’ve been working hard on, I’m registered one or two valuable domain names, Adsense earnings are up and two deals are in the pipeline.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing, just remember that if you are venturing into new projects then do so carefully, don’t think that cash and a nice site will win the race. Stick to what you are good at and always have something to fall back on.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

I managed to raise $1050 this month by clearing out all the sites that I no longer have time to update, including many of the mini-sites that were helping me reach my goal of $100 a day.

I’m moving into a different direction, with exciting new investments and partnering with some fantastic, established domainers/entrepreneurs.

I have managed to bag a few nice .co.uk names in an attempt to become a domain leaser. More on these projects to come in the new year.

I’ve now got two weeks off from my new job and I intend to work hard on ranking some of my new domains.

Good luck with your persuits, have a nice Christmas and a happy New Year!

Khalid.

It has been less than a month since I registered http://www.ukelectricshowers.co.uk but already it is ranking well in Google.co.uk

So far I have spent $419 on backlinks and bookmarking which has been money well spent in my opinion. As time progresses and the domain ages I am hopeful the site will rank better. From my previous experience I know this can take anything from two months to two years, it’s up to Google!

This is my first attempt of ranking a name well with the view of become a domain leaser. The term “electric showers” receives about 40,000 searches per month in the UK alone and I am confident I will be able to lease it. If not, then I’m sure private adverts will ensure a return on my investment.

The domain was registered on November 10th 2008, a little less than a month ago, and has achieved the following ranks…

• electric shower – 46th out of 594,000 competitors
• electric showers – 45th out of 385,000 competitors
• electric power shower – 38th out of 184,000 competitors
• electric power showers – 25th out of 257,000 competitors
• uk electric showers – 5th out of 563,000 competitors

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

After some deliberation over what else I could try my hand at, I thought about domain leasing. In short, this is exactly what it says on the tin – you lease a domain.

If you have a nice generic name like loans.co.uk then you can easily lease it. But, what I am looking to do is find keywords that have anything from 10,000 – 100,000 searches per month, rank a domain name in Google’s top 10 for that keyword then lease it. I learned most of this from Scott and finally had a chance to talk a little about it at the Edinburgh meetup.

After our chat I set about querying domain leasing into detail and Scott gave me some useful advice and tips. The first project is http://www.ukelectricshowers.co.uk which I want to rank well for electric showers, electric shower and electric power shower.

I’ve already spent over $250 on backlinks through blog post reviews and article submissions. I’ll be keeping a track of the seo I do on this site to see how it fairs for future projects.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.