Archive for General:

The last of the 4 L’s

Although this information may be slightly dated, it is important to recognise a good opportunity when you see one. Recently, all possible combinations of four letter .com domain names have been registered, resulting in webmasters trying to get their hands on a piece of “history” before they become far more valuable than the current asking price ($50 upwards).

If you think about 3 letter .com’s now being sold for, say $5,000 upwards, what will the future hold for 4 letter domains? In a post made by Tyler Cruz recently (successfully internet entrepreneur), he backs the idea of purchasing domains as an investment for the future…

“The best and easiest advice to give, though, would be to invest in domains. While I didn’t have much money back then since I was only working a part-time job, if I knew then what I know now, I could have invested $5,000 into domain names and sold them today for $5-$10 million – no exaggeration on those numbers, either.”

Perhaps it’s time to buy…before it’s too late.

Trialling Pay Per Post

I seem to be in a trialling mood now I’ve got some cash to spend. With my birthday just passed and pay day today I can afford to invest in some trials, hence my previous post and now this one.

I’ve always hoovered around the idea of using pay per post as a mean of gaining credible backlinks along with creating a buzz around your site. So I decided to deposit $50 into my PPP account and run a campaign for tattoo lettering.

The process was fairly straight forward and having the power to choose the minimum quality of sites that will link to you (by means of pagerank or alexa rank) is quite appealing. We’ll see how it goes, something I’ll definately keep an eye on and report back about.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Trialling The Theory

Following on from my previous post about hyphenated domains, I decided to trial this theory and so built another mini site…

Introducing Lower Back Tattoos.

The site using the domain lower-back-tattoos.net which I doubt people would ever remember, but this trial is to rank well in the SERPs naturally. The site is small and simple, with only two pages – a gallery and an information page.

I’ll probably do some link building to ensure the site gets indexed and makes its way up the ranks in due course!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Hyphenated Domains

In my quest to start a number of profitable mini sites, I’ve been researching domain name possibilities, only to find many keyword1keyword2.com and .nets are now taken. But wait, what about keyword1-keyword2.com???

It is quite likely the .net is still available and I’ve managed to bag two in the past 24 hours, both with a moderate amount of searches per month but a lack of competition.

After reading up on the advantages/disadvantages, there is slightly conflicting information. What I can say is that hyphens can help separate the keywords and it makes it easier to rank in SERPs.

One study suggests, for highly searched terms, too many hyphens in a domain may result in a penalty as spiders know what you are up to and take note of it, for example, on 1st December 2007, according to Google Trends, “Texas Box Office” ranked 6th in the top search terms. TexasBoxOffice.com ranks first on Google, but Texas-Box-Office.com could probably get in 2nd with some SEO work.

Another study suggests that the penalties associated with hyphens are a myth and Google will not bat an eyelid if you don’t use too many hyphens. For the two domains I have purchased, one has a single hyphen whilst the other has two.

I’ll definately report the results in due course. Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Unable To Commit

Sometimes as a webmaster you tend to commit to too much in an attempt to maximise your earning potential as quickly as possible. When you see one thing working you can often find yourself replicating it without just nurturing your initial project, leading you astray with new ideas and a new workload.

For me this occured with OffBeatInk.com and BloggersBox.com. OffBeatInk is working well, establishing itself in the online world of bodyart. I post daily and the site pulls in anywhere from 500 – 1,000 uniques in a 24 hour period.

I thought I could replicated this success with BloggersBox.com, I just didn’t think of the time constraints associated with another blog. I do remember posting that I didn’t want to take on too much. If I juggled things around then I could work on the site daily but I don’t think its a good idea.

Sometimes you need to know when to stop and take a step back before you end up neglecting potential projects for less important startups. I’ve put BloggersBox.com up for sale on Digital Point, get in touch if you’d like to make an offer.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Kortaz.com Rebranded

I’ve given Kortaz.com a new image with a custom built link’s script. The site has become a forefront web proxy list and become a moderate earning website. Unfortunately, the old site used an free unreliable script where the hit counter and certain functions would magically stop working!

It was time to change it before people got pissed off. I tried re-installing it but the same problems re-occured. The script author even didn’t know what the problem was. I found a coder on Rent-A-Coder and had the script completed and implemented over the weekend.

The template is a free design from OSWD. The link submission page is completely automated including payment which takes some labourious tasks off my shoulders.

What do you think?

Khalid.

Mini Sites for Maximum Profit

After my last post regarding BloggersBox.com and being busy updating two sites, I had to think about efficient ways to generate revenue without overworking myself. I currently work 37 hours per week full time, plus travelling to and from work. In addition to that, I have my personal life etc to fit in too!

It is never easy trying to do two things at once so I tend to either miss out on 8 hours sleep per night or neglect one thing in favour of another. I have been managing my time well juggling working full time and being a webmaster, but it is far from easy and can be stressful at times.

I remember about a year ago when I had a site that was making money without requiring any maintenance. Before I go any further, I’m not talking about information based sites, I’m referring to tool based mini sites. By that I mean a site that has a tool or generator for people to use.

The site in question was TattooFonts.net, which I sold for $200 (I think). The script cost $20 and the site was making around $10 per month from Google Adsense. This was with NO marketing or SEO, the site just ranked second for “Tattoo Fonts” naturally. Back then it was bringing in around 100 uniques per day.

I recently read the profit generated by a similar site and that was $200 per month. The webmaster is a successful entrepreneur and he stated that “One page websites can rank well and be very profitable so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. A mini site can be built just to supply a single purpose/function.”

A quick dig through my computer and I found the script for TattooFonts.net. I had a quick check using Word Tracker’s Keyword Tool and found “Tattoo Lettering” gets more than double the amount of searches “Tattoo Fonts” does in a month. Lukily, TattooLettering.net was available to buy and I now have a new mini site!

Armed with a bucketful more knowledge about SEO and traffic than I did a year ago, fingers crossed this site will become busier and more profitable than my previous site did! If this is the case, and I earn say $20 per month as a result, imagine the possibilities with 10 or 20 tool based sites???

Wish me luck! Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Happy Birthday to ME!

I’m 21 today folks, getting old you see! I’ve come along way in the internet world of making money online and I hope the knowledge I am now armed with will make 2008 a very prosperous year.

For a change I’ll relax today – I took a day off work and plan to go for lunch with my girlfriend. I’ll then visit my family in the evening. Nothing major, I wasn’t up for anything big, too stressful! I am planning on going for a meal with my immediate family this weekend and my good friend Stephen has booked a boy weekend away to Amsterdam in February!

Have a lovely day,

Khalid.

Goals for 2008

Happy new year to you, may 2008 be a successful and prosperous year for you all.

My personal goals are as follows…

• Have my sites rank well in SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages)
• Secure more than one revenue stream (No relying one one ad company)
• Earn a minimum of $10 per day online (Profit!)
• Clear outstanding debt and start saving
• Start a new fitness training regime

I think the above are reasonable, I like a challenge but not something that is simply unachievable. Maybe I’ll end up beating the goals and setting new ones! What are your goals?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Introducing BloggersBox.com

BloggersBox.com is my latest blog, packed with wordpress themes, plugins and articles. The idea quickly became a project after a culmination of factors lead me to believe it would be a good investment.

One, I remember the popularity of FreeTurnkey.net when it first came out (a site I used to own that gave away turnkey scripts for free). Two, I know how difficult it is trying to find decent WordPress plugins so I hand picked a few and put them all on one page. Three, WordPress blogs are easy to maintain and work well with regards to SEO. Four, I have experience in the first three.

I personally think the name is easy to remember and pretty cool. The site is easy to naviate and user friendly, with articles explaining how to install a wordpress plugin and more. I won’t be investing a lot of money marketing the site just yet as I need to add more content and I need to raise more cash too!

With two blogs under my belt I think I’ll be too busy updating them daily to consider taking on a third just yet, therefore I am going to explore other viable options. Your opinions on the site would be much appreciated.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.