June 15, 2009

Some sold, some bought & some earn.

It’s been a busy month.

Just want to cover a few questions, is Al still alive? Yes, you can follow him on twitter as always, both Al and my self are pretty busy with stuff at present, it’s easy to talk about things you do in the past as we did in the early days of SMM, it’s not always easy or advisable to discuss current projects that are maybe under wraps or things that are not for the general public.

I have sold a few domains over the last 2 months for 4 & 5 figures, notebooks & netbooks (.co.uk) are sold, that isn’t a reflection on the market or niche, in fact if your in the UK you’ll probably find another domain I own in the top 5 (usually 3rd) for ‘netbooks’ and that domain sells a netbook every day or so. I had a good offer for netbooks/notebooks so decided to cash them in, as I say though still selling netbooks every week. Also sold a site so had a few good enquiries in the last month which is refreshing including a pretty good offer for PCs & PCgames.

Since my last post on my 2 purchased established sites I haven’t found anything else of great value or potential. Still looking and still open to being contacted if you are selling. The two sites I bought cost $20,000 USD ($10k each). It’s been just over a month since I bought them. Looking at the stats May 14th to June 14th they earned $2513.35 for Adsense content & search so obviously very happy with that. With Animalinfo.org I have joined DMG as they run affiliate programs for people like WWF where you can earn commission on donations or subscriptions so I am looking to test that in the coming months to see if it can up earnings.

Apart from that the only other thing I can really comment on was that I bought a few small geographic domains, Ayr.co.uk which is a town with around 50k people, just up from Ayr is West Kilbride.co.uk where my gran stays 🙂 a ferry trip away is Arran.co.uk a close by island that I used to live on and Largs.co.uk which is just up from West Kilbride. So basically 4 places all pretty close by each other. Initially I am going to get a few basic posts done and a similar theme on each one. They are not huge places, although Ayr is a decent size, however they do have a tourism angle and after speaking to someone who ran a small town website with a population of around 10,000 very successfully I can see their potential so a nice set to work on. Geo domains seem to be more popular than and easy to check/contact & mine so I doubt I’ll buy anything more than my small set which has sentimental value as well as business/future income appeal.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous 27 Comments
May 15, 2009

Hit a gusher!

It’s been a busy but a good week for me, raised some money, sold some domains & more importantly bought a few websites which are (touch wood) exceeding expectations.

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.Continue Reading

Filed Under: Business News 112 Comments
April 24, 2009

A bit of a slog

It’s been a while since I posted, it feels like I’ve achieved nothing in the last few weeks, I really expected to have a few sites bought by now.

Been searching through hundreds of sites sending emails to site owners but getting very little response, I have agreed one site purchase but the owner seems wary and I get the feeling he feels I am scamming him trying to get his bank details to send him money to buy his site (he is in the US), been working on that deal for 2 weeks now and if it comes off it will take a few more weeks I reckon with really slow comms. I suck at waiting, if this one comes off I will post about it as I am buying it blind so will be interesting to see the stats/traffic and possible income so hopefully one I can revisit, I have a fair idea of what it should/could do from guesswork.

I raised some cash from my house equity (I bought my house 7 years ago before prices went way up and down again) so I have funds for buying sites but finding any quality one’s is giving me rsi, I am going to persevere though - I plan to physically look at around 50,000 sites over the next couple of months and target sites that look promising/neglected, really looking to try and find sites in the $5-$15k region. It seems harder than looking for good domain names, if a website owner has had a site for 10 years they can be even more attached to it even if it’s been neglected for years and ultimately many seem like they would only sell for funny money. Still I’m no quitter and I don’t mind putting in long hours to turn up gems, I’ve done it with domains so I really hope I can put in the hours and do it with a few good sites.

Talking of which had no offers or enquiries for quite a few months on anything I own from what I can remember and then all of a sudden a fist full on budget day with domain enquiries and leasing enquiries, as things stand I have 2 .net domains I bought for £2500 in Escrow to a buyer for £4000. I also agreed to sell a couple of uk domains. Each one just into 5 figures GBP with a contract agreed and signed, that will net a profit of around £15,000 which will also bolster the buying fund and has been quite exciting really, strangely for me it will mean money in the bank with nothing to spend it on. That’s just not my style 🙂 .. back to work on Monday then looking for sites to buy.

Filed Under: Case Study 50 Comments
April 6, 2009

Bit of an update

I know the blog’s been neglected, not a great deal happening recently on my end. A few good deals worth low to mid 5 figures have fallen through for various reasons over the last few months, it’s clear a lot of companies and individuals have cash flow problems and for some that may get worse.

From what I can see there will not be a great many high value deals done this year in the domaining world and the low/reseller market has dried up a great deal, thankfully that doesn’t really affect me as I have for the most part bought domains for developing and long term investment in.

2 lease deals have fallen through due to the companies actually shelving plans to open new websites they had been developing, again another sign of tightening their belts and reducing risk but you can’t blame businesses wanting to reduce their costs & exposure.

So with all that in mind I will be raising capital and buying up some existing websites, they offer the best return. Getting a 33% yield is no mean feat in any business, while there is risk, there is no better way to spend time & money than researching and buying older sites even if they are already monetised. There are often little changes you can make to turn a website bought on 3 years income pay itself back in 2 years. If you do feel anything over 12-24 months net income is too generous for zero maintenance websites that are established with good stable stats then get in touch because I am buying 🙂

One site has been bought for the best part of 20k, another for £5750 agreed to be purchased within the next 2 weeks which I am quite excited about. Moving on from there I spoke to my bank this morning and they are happy to give me £50k based on my home equity with no references all sorted and agreed in principal within literally a 10 minute phone call so it’s not all doom and gloom, it can take 2 to 4 weeks to arrange but pleasantly suprised by the efficiency of C&G, borrowing against my home equity is a cheap way to raise funds for me to acquire faster than I can naturally, I already have another website or 2 in my sights with rough numbers done on them which again would likely be looking at paying 3 years income to buy them, as they are not start-ups it means I won’t share the url’s here I am afraid.

That’s the basic strategy for me, there will be deals this year so having funds ready to buy is what I am sorting out. With that in mind I plan to have a larger variety of established sites in the next couple of years, along with the domain leasing and a good potfolio of valuable generics which will spread my risk & potential, it’s not the time to have all your eggs in one basket. For info generally speaking any sites I would purchase would not be for sale, more a case of me contacting website owners out of the blue, which brings it’s own problems and challenges and of course rewards but you can get a better quality of site by going looking for it rather than waiting for them to be listed for sale.

Remember, old leads are worth chasing up this year, people who refused offers for domains and sites in the past may not be so bullish or on the same financial footing today as they were over the last few years so going through any old leads making fresh contact offering hard cash can give you a favourable outcome at a cheaper price.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous 77 Comments
March 13, 2009

Paying up to 3 years income for UK based sites

If your looking to sell your website and it is primarily UK based with good history/stats then I may be able to pay up to 36 x monthly net income. Cash waiting for the right sites. Open to all topics, preferably 40% + UK based traffic. Low maintenance an advantage. Email scott atsign selfmademinds.com

Filed Under: Miscellaneous 37 Comments
February 26, 2009

Domain Leasing

Domain leasing I feel will continue to be one of my main focuses this year while others tick over, I am either having more luck or business owners are more receptive to new ideas in challenging times, either way I feel after a year or so of working quietly I am beginning to reap some of the rewards.

The premise for domain leasing for me for the most part is to buy a good product based generic UK domain, build it out as much as can be justifiably done to get it indexed and possibly ranking and then offer it as a second storefront to existing businesses, show them the advantage of a generic, high recall & recognition value especially when advertising, easy to spell, niche dominance and market credibility as well as some traffic.

The first year was mostly working on getting some good domains and after a great early lease it’s been odd pickings here and there to finally end up at £775 per month in income at the end of last year for a business built literally from scratch. 

This year needs to be the year I take this side of my business up a notch, the basic strategy which I have detailed on the blog is sound and I’ve tested it out enough times to feel happy with the principle. I decided in January my goal for this year will be to get up close to around £2000 per month from leasing which will be a pretty decent sideline, you have to remember that if I get it up to £24k annual income by the end of this year then not only is it a business earning pretty much £24k net passively, it also has assets that amount to far more than that, the lease itself increases the value of the domain hugely.

I’ve been asked once or twice to list domains for others and lease out for others but that’s not on the cards just yet, for now I need to ensure I’m getting a decent payoff for investing the time & effort needed to see a domain through from purchase to lease and that means ignoring the £15-£45 per month price bracket. One of my better domains was leased out this week for £500 per month, it was 2 long months of waiting to conclude the deal but it’s done and I’m very happy to have it wrapped up, I’m happy to say that for the most part I’m still working on the general rule of trying to get my capital invested back in around 12 months on a lease of 2 years+

Already done some more research and bought 2 domains, one for £600 & one for £800 which I feel are good candidates for leasing out at around £100 per month and I feel I have the inventory here to push on. Like I mentioned earlier I have had good feedback in the last few weeks when approaching companies, one agreed to lease 3 domains for £360 - not sure if it will come off and I can’t include it until the paperwork is done, I’d really like to get a few done this year around £100-£200 as they would add up quickly, however for now the confirmed passive leasing income stands at £1275 per month.

Edit: I created a category for domain leasing which started with this post some time ago!

Filed Under: Domain Leasing, Domains 42 Comments
February 26, 2009

Bit of coding work needed

I could do with a bit of coding work, if someone has some time please mail me with a price if you can do it straight away.

Basically I have a terms & conditions in Word that I need to make available online to someone who has to add their name, email adrdess, date and check a tick box to say they agree to the terms & conditions at the bottom, upon clicking submit both they and I get a copy by email to confirm the agreement.

Should be easy I guess, the form/terms will change so I need to be able to paste the text or upload the main part of it each time for each new client.

Edit: Sorted now thanks 🙂

Filed Under: Miscellaneous 9 Comments
February 24, 2009

AEIOU update

Small update on sites I had done by aeiou.com

There seems to have been a little bit of controversy with a huge rant here & reply by Rick here on his minisite service. I posted my thoughts before and promised an update. 

Firstly, it’s not meant to be development, it’s a quick and lazy way to get a domain indexed and possibly ranking for non competitive terms, from the few I have had done some do rank - for me this gives them more credibility when looking to lease the domain out, if it’s ranking for it’s name it just makes it easier. It’s not something you can do with 1000 domains with no type in traffic and expect a return, for me it’s a start to leasing domains or building on them later.

One of the domains I used aeiou.com for ranked top 5 within 2 months, it wasn’t a competitive term so no major feat but exactly what I wanted. I then leased the domain to an end user for £100 per month who took over the site and put their own website on it, this wasn’t a waste of time, it helped me get the domain to where I wanted it- to an end user. The domain cost £1500, minisite about £170 and now I get £100 per month back so a safe return on my investment for little work and the domain is put to proper use.

One major point I want to make, it seems like loads of people like to comment on how you can get the same for less, that it’s overpriced, I decided to let others try it then and I offered to let 2 people do them cheaper if they felt $250 was overpriced, neither of them delivered anything. It’s always easier to comment than to take action. So as an option to not doing anything I think it’s a good option, if you have time and inclination your better of doing the work yourself, it’s not a one size fits all.

Should also point out Kieron offers a service for content & linkbuilding at ContentNow which I have yet to try out but hope to at some point so would welcome any feedback if you have used that.

Filed Under: Property Developing Online 17 Comments
February 17, 2009

Profiling

The internet is awake and so are most who live in and around it, while it’s rare to find a high ranking site not monetised with Adsense or the like there ways to buy websites and advertising that not may strike as obvious.

Competitive markets like insurances and debt management look like they will thrive in 2009 while the mortgage market suffers, approaching a top 10 ranking website for debt management will NOT provide you with a cheap gem to buy but that doesn’t mean traditionally difficult markets are to be avoided. Thinking outside the box can offer cheaper inroads to high paying niches and the example I will give can be applied as always to many ideas and markets, for this one let’s presume you want to tap into the high paying debt management market.

Liken your task to that of a profiler who works for the police, if there had been a complicated murder and the police call in a profiler to get a profile of the murderer they expect to be given an overall picture with accurate behavioural detail. The profiler won’t tell the police to wait until there is another murder and then you’ll find them, instead behavioural patterns are given to try and find the offender and narrow them down through everything else apart from the murder, so work, social life, habits and hobbies.

Take this back to your debt management leads, worth say £50 a pop, people who are heavily in debt have a profile, finding them at the top 10 ranking sites for debt management would be expensive, as it would for finding them through Adwords. You can however find these people at other cheaper places through profiling, cheaper websites and cheaper advertising places that have a direct correlation to your desired lead can give you great profit with albeit a poorer conversion rate. People get up to all sorts online and a great many of them fit patterns and profiles.

Filed Under: Money Making Tips 17 Comments
February 6, 2009

£200 per week for every reader

It’s going to be a tough year for many, I know of a few friends paid off and others that have had to take other jobs on less money so while today’s post is nothing new I think it’s worth going over to point out that you can make a couple of hundred here and there and for many that can mean the difference between paying bills and not.

Simply one idea is to hand register domain names and sell them for a couple of hundred, try not to presume anything, don’t presume all product names are registered, don’t presume nobody wants to buy and don’t presume it’s a waste of time. With a budget of less than £50 and your time you could research, register and sell domains to very happy people.

As usual when I tried this to test it I stuck to UK domains, more opportunity in CCTLD’s
I would suggest finding a source of ecommerce websites, again for me this would be UK based sites, you could probably use DMOZ as a source. Pick a subject like ‘mobility’. Then find the product pages of the sites and check the names of their products again the whois – with a bit of luck you will very quickly find products available as I did, mobilityvans.co.uk & mobilitywalkers.co.uk, the latter is now part of a £50 per month lease. For example on this page you can see they sell a car caddie and that domain is available. If you chose instead home improvements the first site’s description says “Online store for supplies of timber, sheet materials, specially treated woods and ancillary products” A quick check and you’ll see treatedwoods.co.uk and sheetmaterials.co.uk are available or the 8th company on this list sell temporary window blinds which I remember seeing on Dragons Den, surely temporarywindowblinds.co.uk isn’t available that has to be worth £100 and as I write it is available. Don’t get bogged down with search volumes or other unrelated data - your selling the domain only, the name of a product that companies sell.

It’s important to be courteous and reasonable, point out that you own it and are selling it for a fixed price of £100 or £150 or whatever your number is, a fixed price lets them know your not out to rip anyone off and gives them a very clear decision to make, I don’t think it would take long to get a bite, you really don’t have much to lose apart from your time.

By keeping the price low and fixed you increase your chances of making quick sales, now is not the time to put your head in the sky - deals can be done even at £50 your well in profit, I did this with solarcover.co.uk today to a swimming pool company, sending 5 emails and one came back and paid £200 within the hour and asked if I had any others product names he would be interested, also had one other person reply looking to buy it but they were too slow so I could have sold it twice. It’s simple and it works, yes there are going to be some you can’t sell off or find a buyer for initially but build some stock and try those again in a few months time targeting offline businesses. Anyway I’m feeling skint just now so I may just go do it myself next week unless you get in there before me 🙂

Edit: Got bored so did it again, starting in Dmoz at A = Alternative within 5 minutes  discovered spiritualcrystals.co.uk which was available, quite a nice one, sent 8 emails and just had a reply saying someone will buy it for £75 all within 30 minutes, resisted the urge to register hedgewitchery.co.uk

Filed Under: Money Making Tips 88 Comments