By utilising twitter, as well as the numerous directories jam packed with geo users, I’ve reached out, gained interest and got in touch with the right person when usually a generic e-mail to their a business’ mail@ or info@ contact address would be ignored / misplaced.

Just like I said in my picking up the phone post, don’t be shy and get in touch!

Fraser’s got two cracking domain names with a lot of potential (note to wine sellers / wholesalers / business owners get on the sites!) and I thought his cool advertising was effective.

I passed the red bottle over to the girlfriend’s parents as I’m not refined enough to enjoy warm liquid.

However, last night the mrs and my mate’s partner enjoyed the bottle of chilled white and didn’t have a bad word to say.

The labelled wine was certainly a talking point and the people I told were certainly intrigued. It is a cool way to market your brand, especially if you’re in the domain industry where half the folk love a good bevvy.

If Fraser can continue churning out quality articles his twitter following will certainly go up and I’m pretty sure that’ll convert into a nice trickle of wine buyers through any affiliate programmes he hooks up with.

I wish Fraser the best of luck with his sites and if you’re cheeky enough to ask on Twitter he’ll probably send you a bottle!

Recently, I’ve been working alongside another business owner to try to gain new contracts in a mutual area of business. We both e-mailed a firm and never heard back, yet I got in touch with their London HQ and now we may have the opportunity to work with one of the biggest companies in that industry.

It took me a couple of minutes to get an instant interest where as writing an e-mail and tapping your desk waiting on a reply is not only tedious, it is painful. Often your message gets sent to the wrong person, ends up in a junk mail folder or is simply discarded.

So, my tip of the day / week / month is to get over being shy, pick up the phone and speak to the right person first time. Follow it up with an e-mail if required and make sure you leave a good impression.

One day e-mail will get there, but for now the telephone is top!

Fraser Edwards, a well known affiliate organised another cracking event in Edinburgh recently, attracting Elaine and Dave from All Kids, The Hodge (a man who loves legal letters), Clarke (who has recently joined the HBOS blowjob club), Jonathon, Geoff, Mark (the hashtag addict), Fiona (the alcoholic) and Chris (the shark man) from Big Mouth Media (who I like to call “Gobshite Solutions” as it sounds better).

We started at the Voodoo Rooms, with Paid on Results buying a few beers for everyone (must be all those sex toys they sell). We then headed to Grand Cru and had a good munch and plenty of banter. The most notable story of the evening was how Clarke acquired his first employee, although I won’t go there – they have lists for people like him.

The Hodge wouldn’t give anyone discounted tickets to Think Visibility without a Burger King as he wanted a free toy, so he got a bit of a pasting which he didn’t mind as he revealed he regularly comes into contact with legal bullies through the opinion he airs online – good on ya!

Big Mouth certainly sent their best employees; Fiona dropped drinks on two people and Chris took the conversation in a whole new direction talking about sharks!

As a responsible individual I didn’t dilute my sanity with alcohol and played driver, which I was quite happy about as it gave me automatic rights to write this blog post without the worry of being able to defend it.

Much love,

Ethan

p.s. (this post is a complete joke, the people who attended the evening will understand!)

p.p.s photo courtest of Mark, showing how crap the camera on the iPhone 4 is.

We combined our move with purchasing Ollie, a purebred Bichon Frise. If it was up to me we would have got a bigger dog, however Christy got her way and it makes sense as we’re in a flat and I can just imagine driving home to find her being dragged along the street by some 15 stone beast! I’ve always wanted a dog and both Christy and I have both had them in our families previously, so we were both aware of the commitment involved.

Ollie was a fantastic edition, and got us out walking a lot more. Every evening we take a stroll down the to the quay it is lovely. Coming home and being eagerly greeted is an amazing feeling and Ollie has really added to our lives.

Ollie is extremely close to us and if either of us go to another room he always follows. We figured he’d be a bit calmer and overall happier if he had a buddy to keep him company, so we purchased a Lhasa Apso named Brodie.

The great thing about the dogs is that they’re completely different in nature but both fantastic pets and enjoyable to be around. We regularly get stopped, purely because they are both so small, by people who just adore them.

Having been around a variety of dogs I have to say smaller breeds seem to have more personalities. Ollie and Brodie are like two little men, and are hilarious to watch when they’re having fun.

I don’t want to sound like a weird dog lover who is insanely boring so I’ll keep this post short, but I have to say I feel like I’m enjoying life much more with them in my life. They say “a dog is a man’s best friend”, but they never had the internet when that term was coined haha! Really though, they are great and if you can look after one properly I’d recommend them over any other expensive purchase! Getting away from the computer and taking in some fresh air on a long walk is a great way to relax.

I’ve been asked not to publicise the acquisition or purchase price due to the sensitive history of the name so I’ll refrain from going into detail. The name was formerly owned by Khalid Hanif who sadly passed away.

I am happy with the purchase and although I think I paid over the odds, I feel it was justified as I know it will be used for a good cause.

Expect to see a few changes around here soon!

CrossTrainers.co.uk is now sold. Thank you for all the interest. I apologise if I did not reply to your e-mail, the site was sold extremely quickly.

Thanks,

Khalid.

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.

The first analysis was on Dave Naylor, a quite well known name in the SEO world. Now I don’t know Dave personally, but I do know his SEO company – Bronco – refused to show me an example of quality links they wanted to offer me. Fair enough, NDA’s and all that, but then I asked myself how Dave was getting business if he couldn’t showcase his work? I do know he’s done work for some well ranked sites, like Elaine’s All Kids, and I don’t see her complaining, so maybe Dave is worth his weight in gold. But, for someone that doesn’t know him and was steered in his direction, he didn’t do much to attract me. Perhaps it was because I had a specific requirement – quality backlinks – but isn’t that what most webmasters need?

The problem I have with public figures e.g. John Chow and such is that they gain a reputation for being amazing by posting how amazing they are. I have no doubt John Chow is making money, afterall his blog earns him thousands due to the number of followers, but what about all the other fake entrepeneurs and “seo experts”? I think they make money because they say they make money because they say they are amazing – if that makes sense?

I’m not saying Dave is a fake, he clearly knows what he is doing, what I’m saying is that I’m questioning how much of his success is down to his results and how much is because he is perceived as amazing? Dave this isn’t a dig, you just ended up on the above site first so I chose to use you as an example!

I have been learning SEO continually for years and had the opportunity to pickup tips from some great webmasters with fantastic sites. But, they only shared this information to me because I helped them in one way or another. We’ve shared resources, tested methods, trialled outsourcing and even today, we’re still learning together.

It’s no shock that the best of the best buy links, and whilst search engines frown upon it, Yahoo openly sells directory listings which is a link, so they must tolerate it! The key to SEO, in my opinion, is to have a quality site filled with hundreds of quality pages, fresh content daily and links built over time from multiple resources.

One year ago I began working for my current employer, and after battling for 12 months we’ve just reached page 2 in Google for our chosen keyword. The market is extremely competative, but we’re succeeding, only through doing the above though. There’s no magical secret in seo, it is how well you adapt the above to your website.

It may surprise you that as an SEO consultant myself, I’ve employed two companies who rank on the front page for Google.co.uk for “SEO services” to work on websites for me, and they both returned with link farmed crap. The cost to me was £x,xxx but I learned one lesson – if you want a job done properly do it yourself. These links get cached, but how long will they last before Google ignore’s them or they get removed as the company has a new client that needs the space.

By outsourcing I learned what the competition were doing, what to do myself and what to avoid. By analysing rival websites, ranking websites in other niches and cross-comparing with my own, I also learned how the higher ranking sites were doing better. Now, I do little bits here and there for myself and some clients, and I’m not afraid to show my current and previous work.

I’ve never pro-actively promoted myself as an “SEO Guru”, nor have the few people I choose to share information with, but we’re doing well because instead of shouting about how amazing we are, we just get on with the job in hand.

I really commend people like Dave for being able to get some of the contracts he does, and as I said before I have no doubt he’s good at what he does, I just think the media spotlight shines a light on these people that blinds others into thinking they’re better than they actually are.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Exact searches for “downhill bike” as of January 2010 – 49,500
Exact searches for “downhill bikes” as of January 2010 – 22,100

Website
- Customised wordpress theme
- 75 downhill bikes/frames with url masking
- I have 100 unique bike for descriptions for the new buyer to add to the site
- downhillbike.org.uk included in sale
- Site is built on wordpress

Rankings
- 7th for “Downhill Bike” and “Downhill Bikes”
- 3rd for “Downhill Bike Frames”

Unique Traffic
- February 214
- March 747
- April 1022
- May 736

Earnings

I’ve completed ignored this site since setting it up and actually have 100 unique descriptions of suspension forks that I will give to the buyer.

Since the site made the front page last month and remained there it has made the odd sale, see below…

Free Site

TriathlonBicycles.co.uk which ranks 2nd for “triathlon bicycles” and receives around 300 uniques per month (assume no revenue) is included in the sale for free.

Notes
- Buyer is responsible for moving site over to his/her hosting
- Buyer pays Nominet fee
- Payment via BACS

Price
Offers above £500 welcomed. No BIN set yet, please bear in mind these are two generic names so do not go below £500.

UPDATE – SITES NOW SOLD!