Thoughts and thanks for 2007

Happy New Year 2008 

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year from Al and myself.

Let’s ensure that we leave behind all negatives and reasons why not to and make 2008 a doing year that builds on what we have already done and sets us up for the future.

Quick thought on 2007
In 2007 I have personally gone through a fair dip in Adsense, like many others, but that has been no bad thing for me, it gave me the jolt to open my eyes and realise I needed to make moves right now to ensure a more stable and an overall greater income in the future which has prompted me to invest in some good generic domains to build, earn from and lease.

It is clear there are limitless possibilities for everyone right now, probably the best time to invest a little time, a little money and some energy for great future rewards regardless of your financial position there is space for everyone, the key is to choose your battles, play smart and do more than the next person, over the last few years both Al and I have spent long hours regardless of short term returns building full time incomes on our own websites.

I expect to see more progress in the .co.uk domain market in late 2008 and I think it has to be said there are some amazing bargains to be picked up on forums, auctions and by going directly to owners for all domain extensions.

Quick thought on domains
The biggest change in my mindset is to STOP, beg or borrow the money to get the best possible domain name you can, a true generic that describes your market or product in the best way possible, whatever it takes!.. and then build your website.

If bedroomfurniture.com seemed overpriced 4 years ago at $15k is it any less so when it sold for around $150k this year? If you look at true generic domain sales in the past it is hard to spot many, if any, that seem overpriced looking at them now, but at the time many do. If I was to build 5 websites in 2008 I would make sure they were on the best domain names possible even if I had to borrow money to get the domains, whatever happens in the future the value of your generic domain will in my opinion appreciate whereas the value of a website will always be bound by it’s organic rankings and income. If you build 5 websites that ranked well, earned a fortune and then lost their rankings you would have nothing left, if you build them on generic domains then you are still holding a winning lottery ticket.

Quick thought on links
Last night a thought came to me on backlinks, donations - surely there are millions of local cause websites throughout the world with a charity, appeal or good cause and a website then a donation in return for a small banner (& text link) would seem like a great way to promote your site, donate money and some of those good cause websites get great links and trust which could really boost your website.

Looking forward to 2008
Overall I am pretty happy with ’07 and I have lots of things in the wind that may or may not come off including a really fantastic .com domain from 1996 that could one day easily be a 6 figure domain in my opinion - but the owner won’t sell at my opening offer of $800 for fear of it being just that! And won’t sell for $5k which is was my last offer and limit for it. What to do, exchanged about 10 emails so far and working hard on it, either way it should make for a good post and the deal is not dead yet! No way.

Thanks

  • I’d like to thank Al for sharing his gadget earning milestones and experiences, I have enjoyed reading about the affiliate sales especially and hope to get a piece of that action in the future! and doing over $1k a day just in Adsense should be inspirational to everyone.
  • Thanks to Rob for helping me with my first lease getting me a contract and answering a few questions I had along the way.
  • Thanks to Acorn domains for giving me a place to read and try and learn from.
  • I’d like to thank all readers of Self Made Minds in 2007, it can be very rewarding just sharing highs and lows and sharing our learning curve, so those that read, comment and give us feedback really do make a difference.
  • Special thanks to my wife Elaine for putting up with all that talk about domain names and trying as hard as she could not to look bored senseless 😉 Looks like it isn’t going to get any easier for you in ’08 🙂

So have a very happy and prosperous New Year! … Slange Var

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. I enjoyed reading your blog and I wish both you and Al all the best for 2008. I started domaining this year and have learnt a lot from your posts.

    Thanks

    W

  2. Happy New Year to SelfMadeMinds team!

    You’ve shared a lot of great advice and I’m looking forward to new articles and tips in 2008.

    Enjoy your New Year party! 😉

  3. Scott and Al just I’d like to wish you and your families a happy new year I only found your site a couple of months ago but it has really kicked me into gear on a number of projects for next year.

    Already looking forward to 2008 and your adventures in business.

    Colm

  4. Congratulations on your year and best wishes for 2008.

    I have found many new sites that have captured my interest this past year, but few have inspired me to push on like Self Made Minds has.

  5. Just as I was starting to work on collecting any unused domains out there, I read your article and pause to reconsider. After all, you do have a point - nothing like main street to get the traffic. I am hoping the side streets will still have good traffic, although it will never be the same as invest.com. On the other hand, to celebrate succeeding with my first online goal of $1 by the end of this year I am launching a new site to better work with the online environment and to track my progress with reaching my next goal of $1 per month by end of June 2008.

    (Warning plug here)
    if you do decide to visit Amazon, please consider using this as a starting point:
    http://beckerit.com/purchasing-links
    Thanks in advance for your consideration.

  6. Scott,
    your success (and future success) with domains has got me thinking that I should start buying up some localized domains here as well. Now if only I could find a cheap provider!

  7. Thanks for all the great posts, and happy new year!

  8. Happy new year to you both. 2008 is going to be a great year 🙂

  9. I found Self Made Minds late this year, and it has very quickly become one of my favorite blogs to read. I hope you all have a very prosperous new year. And happy hunting in 2008!

  10. A happy new year to you all.

    Keep up the good work with the blog, look forward to more in 2008.

  11. Please keep posting Scott. It has been a pleasure following your thoughts on domains. Got myself a few semi good uk domains and I can’t wait to see what I can make of them.

  12. I don’t get it why some domains with two or tree keywords in url are so expensive, and how to determine that value. Can you explain please ?

    • I would say due to the size of their market, they describe their genre perfectly and those exact terms get a lot of search traffic specifically.

  13. So, in order to predict a domain value how do you proceed ? Make a keyword research to find something about the traffic, and about that how do you know the value. I’m simply amazed about this fact, on how a simple domain can be so expensive.

    • There has to be products there, just being popular does not add as much value but yes if it is searched for specifically and it’s a large product based market then the value can be huge in the .com market it seems.

  14. Hmmm interesting idea, and eye opening for me. So products with high traffic. And one more question …how you set the price, and how do I know if that domain is worth 1000$, 20.000$ or 200.000$ ?

    • I don’t know that Michael, that comes down to having or finding a motivated buyer. If a buyer approaches you then your in pole position, they say great domain names sell themselves.

  15. Yes I know, but I wanted to know how I set the right price, so I can’t be fooled.

    • I don’t think there is ever a “right price”. You just need to make sure you can sell a domain for more then you buy it for, or earn back in X months what you paid for it. There is no right or wrong price in online property or domain names.

  16. Happy New Year to you mate 🙂

  17. To finish that thank you off I’d like to thank you on the behalf of all SMM readers for providing with such a useful platform for learning and discussing similar issues.

    I am looking forward to 2008 just like you. I am stating a site which I hope would be BIG. It’s in a good international niche useful for your average person 😀

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