Whilst it is quite nice to take a break and have funds sitting in the bank for the right investment, sometimes it can get a little frustrating and I often find myself feeling like I’m just sitting…waiting. I’ve followed up one or two leads for names that are sitting doing nothing but people don’t want to sell or someone has told them their name is worth £xx,xxx when it is often really worth half of that!

What is for you won’t go by you and I think that for every 100 names I research and possibly enquire about, I may only get a handful of responses. This is how it works unfortunately, but it is all part of the challenge and I love it!

I’ve been keeping myself busy by teaching kids boxing training at The Edinburgh Boxing Academy and concentrating on putting on weight after falling ill last year. Things are going well and I’ve just ordered a Cross Trainer for the house so Christy and I can train every evening. I need to work on my cardio as I have Asthma and slightly unfit!

After sending out numerous e-mails introducing the site to prospective advertisers, I managed to sell one ad spot and may have another in the pipeline. Meanwhile, PPC ads are working well on the site and I’ll be happy to announce January’s earnings shortly.

In a few weeks I’ve taken an old project and turned it into something profitable whilst generating 125% of my investment back! I’m really happy with the progess I have made so far and have prompted my friend, Stephen, to invest in numerous generic domain names too!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

I was pleasantly surprised to find one or two of my sites have crept up the rankings without link building, just from the domains being a little older. In my experience this can really help and I have read some webmasters buy a domain then leave it for a year before they build a site.

The extra traffic I am not getting will help me nicely and I am sitting here with a smile and I own over 100 domains that are maturing day-by-day. I can’t wait to start producing good quality sites on domains I’ve had for maybe 2 or 3 years.

Right now though I’m still working on my current front line sites, including the content based ones I’ve been talking about. Both are coming along nicely, I just wish it was 6 or 12 months down the line and they were established.

Time will tell. Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

I arrived home around 7pm and was glad to back. My boss was kind enough to give me tomorrow (today as it’s past 12) off which means I can enjoy a long lie and a three day weekend.

In short, I’m tired…but I’m still thinking about new investments. I visited my friend this evening who has started his own record label. He is in talks with major music companies about record deals with some of the artists he manages. As I have “insider” knowledge, even simple details like their name, I was thinking I could use this to my advantage – buying domain names.

You see, If I bought unsigned band “Oh-My-God-We’re-A-Band.com” and they became signed and successful, suddenly my $10 investment may turn into a domain worth thousands. And if I chose to keep it, creating a fan club with plenty of infomation about the band could provide a nice little return in revenue…providing people liked them!

What do you think?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

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.