It was only 1 to 2 years ago that I thought although late to the party I should try and do whatever it takes to get a couple of great generic UK domain names, preferably on a budget and with a bit of luck, plenty emails and perseverance I got TVs & PCs & quite a few others.

Over the last 12 months my Adsense income took a pounding, other income levels remained good so while paying the bills was in hand I wasn’t as comfortable as I had been in the previous few years, so I decided early this year that I really needed to raise some funds and get some established sites, starting from scratch sucks, it’s not something I am good at and I am impatient. Also looking at my overall portfolio I have a good couple of earning sites, some good generic domains but really most of the income was still was coming from one or two sources leaving me feeling vulnerable.

I mentioned before I raised funds so really the last few weeks, and weeks to come, are about going shopping, I have acquired lists of websites from various sources, I won’t go into that now as I am still doing it, but it’s simple enough. I paid Ryan to knock up a script so I can sit and using frames click & load up each homepage one by one. It’s not complicated, it’s not exciting and just like when I research domain names you always get a nagging feeling it’s a waste of time because others must have done this before. Not always so, when emailing I have had responses like “I’ve never thought of selling”. Preferably I am looking for sites not polished, possibly neglected or under monetised. I guess for the most part I use gut instinct as soon as a homepage loads as to my interest, in 2000 sites I have browsed recently I have probably sent around 50 emails.

3 sites have been bought this week, one of which I will mention today. The site is animal info, a great informative website built over ten years detailing endangered animals throughout the world. This site really appealed, I have added adlinks at the top & analytics for tracking, it’s pretty much a plain text website with no design and loads of great information. It was also (seemed like) a long time in coming, my first email to the previous owner was on 4th April which received an immediate reply and negotiations went well from $5000 offered blind to an agreement at $10,000 USD for the site & domain, I never asked for stats as the site had not been updated in 2 years. The real delay came about as the seller didn’t want to use Escrow & didn’t want to give me his bank details, I had to get a bankers draft (cashiers check) made up in USD which took a week and then send through FedEx to his door. Oh and the owners email address was on the homepage so no complicated tracking down of owner, a simple email and within 6 hours a reply saying yes he would be interested in selling. Still, I was taking a calculated risk sending him the money up front.

The website looked a good buy, I guesstimated around 1000 to 2000 visitors per day, lots of good links and a really good resource, albeit a bit neglected in recent years. As soon as I got the site I used search & replace to put analytics across the site and it’s been a fun ride watching it over the last day or 2, the first part day produced 2600 visitors, more than I had envisaged, the next full day it had 5710 visitors and yesterday it had over 7000 visitors!

Wow! a real gusher when it comes to traffic, very exciting, I guess a good question to ask would be how much would you have paid for that website blind? Would you have paid $10k? The real value of an old established site with great content shows through when you look up the keywords, yesterday search sent 6,215 total visits via 4,108 keywords. That’s an awesome site, just like prime generic domain names these sites which were built over a decade and many of which now lie neglected won’t sit around forever, again just like generic domains there is a period of opportunity right now to offer a fair amount of money for something you can’t replicate anytime soon.

My plans for the site are not completely agreed upon, the site could be expanded to cover all info on animals and not just rare one’s, I have people willing to write for it, I guess the biggest concern for now will be getting it into a CMS, should I get a shared header,left, right & footer or should I get the site somehow put into a database CMS like wordpress for future posting/adding content. I’m not sure, if you have any ideas please let me know or if you think you could convert it into a manageable site for me for a fee then please get in touch with your thoughts & pricing. I think it’s clear from the traffic and the fact the biggest keyword brings in under 100 visitors that this site could be a big enough project to keep me going for some time.

Apart from that I bought a game site that gets 2000 visitors per day also bought for $10,000, it earned $40 yesterday so with any luck it could pay itself back in one year, I also have an offer on a hobby/information site which would get 1000-2000 visitors per day which could be a great little ecommerce or affiliate site. I think I am well on my way to achieveing the portfolio that I am aiming for, to offer more stability and enough to keep me busy on for some time to come, but ultimately maintenance free sites that earn a good living so that I can enjoy the summer and work as hard as I want to when I want to.

There is going to be a small gathering on Saturday 8th November in Edinburgh for a pub lunch/meet, so if anyone wanted to attend I’d recommend contacting Rob or posting in this thread on Acorn, any domainers/developers or internet orientated entreprenuers welcome. A month away so plenty of notice, I will probably be staying overnight if anyone fancies a pint

Edit: Phew, I was just about to post this on PCs.co.uk lol wrong blog, – must arrange my bookmarks better or change the login area colour.

Whatever way you look it it …..it makes me feel like I’ve been in a coma as far as productivity goes, Google has managed to penetrate almost everyone’s lives from mail to maps to writing to even a browser. Personally I have not been overly impressed with much Google has done in the last 2 years apart from the very recent browser Chrome which I have totally switched to and love, that aside considering their muscle, wealth and power they can waltz through failures without breaking a sweat which can be a bad thing, but when they get it right and sometimes they do…they are very very good.

Either way….. for tomorrow………. Happy Birthday Google

I just did it this morning for a domain that was caught for me for me by DropSystem.co.uk, recently I pickedup mobilematch.co.uk which is a real nice domain and this morning it was exhibitiondisplays.co.uk, both cost £20 which will change to £30 I think, plus Nom transfer fee of £11.75 per domain. ExhibitionDisplays is a nice keyword domain, so I wanted to check and see if there was a little bit of traffic for the term:

There is a drop down menu that you can change to show all columns, now I can see there is a little ‘exact’ search traffic but really high competition and really high average CPC for ‘exhibition displays’  at £6.56 making this a nice little gem, thanks Google!,.. oh and thanks Simon & Dale for catching it

In the past the average search data was just displayed as green bars showing most popular terms which has been handy for sure.

But now as of today I am seeing real numbers given for June search volume

EDIT: Make sure if your looking for specific data, after your search change it from Broad to Exact in the little drop down menu on the right

Last year I was approached by fellow entrepreneur Scott Evans to be featured in his new book Success Alert Volume 2 (if buying see the end of the post for a discount code). In the book he interviews 10 Internet entrepreneurs with various different business models, I received a review copy last week and have just finished reading it and it’s a really cool book.

When doing the original interview I was on the phone with John for a couple of hours, we then bounced questions back and forth via email. As interviews go it was the most comprehensive one I’ve done and John tailored the questions to suit my business (reading some of my answers I use a lot of word repetition which is a pet peeve of mine, oops!), he did the same with the other writers and I learnt a lot and got a fair few ideas from them (annual revenues range from $60K to $80 million so there are some pretty serious players featured)

Other entreprenuers and their sites are:

• Name: Al Carlton
  Main Site: Coolest Gadgets
  Business Model: Blogging
  Annual Revenue: > $300K
• Name: CC
  Main Site: Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Affiliate reward site
  Annual Revenue: $1 million
• Name: CB
  Main Site: Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Digital products and subscription based revenue models
  Annual Revenue: > $400,000
• Name: ED
  Main Site (most popular): Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Retail products – designer suites via eBay, won site and Amazon
  Annual Revenue: $1 million
• Name: JB
  Main Site: Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Product based, toys
  Annual Revenue: $6 million last year
• Name: MS
  Main Site: Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Subscription
  Annual Revenue: $60K
• Name: RD
  Main Site: Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Retail/affiliate (UK holiday market)
  Annual Revenue: $80 million
• Name: TJ
  Main Site: Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Blog network (130 blogs)
  Annual Revenue: $1.5 million

• Name: BV
  Main Site: Edited to hide but is included in the book
  Business Model: Products, boating
  Annual Revenue: $25 million

As you can see from some of the revenues reported I’ve got a long way to grow

The book is organised by interviewee, with each asked specific questions relevent to how they’ve grown their business and increased revenue. Each interview is 20-30 pages in length, including a good summary of all pertinent parts, in total the book is just over 200 pages. Answers are both thorough and open, finding information on how much revenue different site generate is normally difficult if not impossible to do. So IMO Alert Success is a worthwhile addition to most entrepreneurs reading lists.

I must admit I hate long sales page but they seem standard (and working) practice with books of this nature. The book costs $77 , as I’m featured in the book John has kindly provided a $20 discount code (quote SA2ALC) so our readers can buy Success Alert for $57. If you’ve read it please let us know what you think.

Edit – I’ve been asked to remove URLs and names from this post, which as John is a good guy I’ve done, they are all shown in the book though.

I am interested in purchasing your web site xxxxxxxx.com . If you would like to sell it send me your phone number to call you.
I have cash to buy today!

Thank you

My email was from a ‘Phemie Dull’ aol email address, however the name/email address is different for others like Michael and Andrew, so just a heads up in case you get the same.

I advise that we are happy to accept your offer in the sum of £3,000 plus VAT

Excellent, that was 23rd April and I was over the moon so sent a cheque which was presented at their bank the next day and I later received an email to confirm receipt of payment and that the forms would be completed and sent on to myself, almost 4 weeks later I get a letter through the door this morning stating that

I apologise for the delay in this matter, however whilst discussing this matter with our solicitors we have been advised that we are not in a position to sell the item.

Argh, now what is just as worrying is communication with my local solicitor seems extremely at odds with what I have read, I was told:

An exchange of e mails is not sufficient to form a binding contract. I assume you did not have any written agreement other than the e mails. At first glance I would say you have no remedy here.

What?…that just doesn’t ring true, the main criteria for a contract would be

• Offer
• Acceptance
• Consideration
• Intention to create legal relations

From what I can find in reference to a binding agreement is that it can be done by email, especially seeing as they accepted my money, so now I have a refund cheque which I am unsure whether to cash as would that be acceptance of my refund, the reason I am frustrated is the domain is worth a lot more than £3k to myself especially if I could develop it.

So, don’t accept the first bit of advice you get from a solicitor!
I really need to find out whether there is a real reason they cannot sell or whether it’s a change of heart, I shall pursue it.

I am gutted, I have a list as long as my arm of deals which have not come off recently.

Parked portfolios consist of large companies with thousands of domains parking the pages and relying on parking revenue income from direct type in traffic, companies like DBS Dark Blue Sea with the size of their portfolio can really give you a more measured look into the bigger picture.

DBS releases their financial profit guidance with it’s first quarter performance to March 31st
http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/previewDocument.ac?docID=GCA00839750DBS&f=pdf

The report is really quite interesting and well worth a read.

The online advertising industry has been growing at 25% to 30% per annum since
the bottom in 2002 and while estimates from industry analysts of future growth vary,
similarly strong growth rates are anticipated for the next few years. In March 2008,
eMarketer, the leading online advertising industry research group, released updated
forecasts of 23% growth for calendar 2008 (revised down from 28%) and 16% for
2009 (unchanged).

One of the reasons that the online advertising industry’s share of ad spend is still low
relative to audience is that it has not yet been fully embraced by two significant
advertiser segments – major brand advertisers and SMEs. Growth in the online
advertising industry to date has been substantially driven by internet companies and
direct marketers.

Industry analysts are now concerned about the cyclical exposure of the US online
advertising industry to an economic downturn. Whilst online advertising is still one of
the most cost effective methods of advertising, it is also one of the easiest to cancel.
And cancelled online advertising can lead to immediate impacts through the keyword
auction and Coverage, Relevancy, Quality, Price mechanisms outlined above.

Over the last four or five months, the Company has observed a general reduction in
the ad spend of a number of large advertisers that have historically purchased the
Company’s direct navigation traffic. We have observed this through a partial
reduction in price but more significantly through a decrease in Click through rate.
This reduction in these advertisers appears to be partly due to the weaker economic
environment but is also linked to some significant structural changes that the Search
Ad Networks have been making.
This company have struck a deal with godaddy to sell their domains which will make a huge difference to it’s profitability over the next few years helping it maintain profits but with advertising going down and domain sales going up to try and keep overall profit levels it does not look like a sustainable business model to me.

Internal domain sales
First Quarter Last year $333,000
First Quarter This Year $1,370,000

Total Revenue
First Quarter Last year $2,281,000
First Quarter This Year $2,372,000

So the rise in domain sales covers the drop in advertising revenue but you can only sell a domain once, finding and buying domains with traffic is getting harder and less abundant than it would have been.

Why am I talking about this company?
Well I feel it has parallels to a lot of what many of us are doing and experiencing,  we endeavour to garner more and more free traffic through organic rankings just to get users to quickly click and leave our site before they even know they arrived, what site? they will ask, if you have a 15% CTR based on page impressions is that more like 40% of actual visitors who would not be able to recall your domain name even if they wanted the same information in the future.

Falling advertising income means we all have to widen our search for profitability and look at our business models, this offers many possibilities and options, some of which I am considering just now.

• Contacting advertisers directly to leverage a better return.
• Value our traffic better, is it really worth sending to some other site in return for a few cents or would it be more valuable in the long run to build a brand and a readership making advertising less blended.
• Building our own products and services rather than selling through affiliates which can offer better value, more income and again help build a brand.
• Perhaps some of us need to change our whole model away from high CTR to re-investing money earned to build more useful sites, products and tools which don’t go after a quick buck but play the long game.
• Use existing sites to launch cleaner better looking sites without ugly advertising and high CTR’s with low return.

Now is a very good time to take a long hard look at what your offering or trying to offer and consider that right now Google can provide enough free traffic to build a brand, in the future that may change which makes what you choose to do today even more important.

More than 6000 filled in the survey

So the average UK salary came in at £35k which is a fair bit up on the quotes figure of £24907 a separate nationwide survey concluded. This survey of The Register readers would target more of specific niche though which would account for the difference.

One of the more interesting questions was who would you prefer to work for:

More than twice as many people would prefer to work for Google as be self employed and work for themselves, there is no question Google promote a friendly and happy work environment but in saying all that Microsoft still manage to be the second most popular employer of choice.