Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Second website from the 12 sites in 12 months goal has been published.

Yesterday at 5:00 pm central standard time www.AlohaUpdate.com went online. The site is about living in Hawaii, Visiting Hawaii, and general information about the islands. As I have mentioned before I live on the island of Oahu with my girlfriend. We are both fairly active people and enjoy traveling. In the last year and a half we been to many places within the islands and have had many experiences and want to write about them and share out pictures.

We’ve swam with dolphins, hiked on lava fields, surfed Waikiki waves, snorkeled all over, and hiked a few mountains. This site actually accomplishes two tasks. For one we needed a place where we can keep our friends and family updated and jealous as to the adventures we are having. Hopefully if we write enough interesting things they will want to come and visit us. The second thing the site does is help accomplish my goal of 12 sites in 12 months goal.

My hope is that Aloha Update becomes very search engine friendly as I build the pictures and content of the site over the coming months. I have been told that people referred to sites through a search engine are the most likely to click through ads. If this is true, I figure people searching for things about Hawaii will find the Google AdSense ads very helpful. Within one hour of having the ads up on the net all but 2 were tailored to exactly what was on the page. Unlike my first site, this one, the ads make sense.

Another result that came from working on this content based website is that I am learning a lot about design and implementation. One of the most important things I’ve learned is to have a really good idea about the formatting for the site before you get into the coding, especially if you have multiple pages. I have been told the easiest way to format different portions of a site, if you don’t use php and stick with straight html, is to use include files. That way you change one file to make site wide changes. Next site I make this will probably be done, for now Aloha Update will continue to use CSS. To be more specific it was built using a modified CSS template from dreamweaver. I used the basic formatting idea and then hacked up the code.

All in all I would say the site is already a success. I have learned plenty and had fun writing about where we’ve been. If people visit, great. If they click through the ads, even better. We’ll keep updating it and see what happens. Now it’s on to the next site…

Microsoft fell 18 cents today and I went skiing and snowboarding for 7 hours in a nice Wisconsin winter. I am back home in WI visiting family and friends for the holidays and trying to enjoying weather that my body hasn’t seen for almost 2 years. Quite an adjustment. My parents keep their house colder than the average air temp in Honolulu. My girlfriend and I just missed 15 degree weather (that’s F) by a day and have had low to mid thirties for the duration of our trip. It made for slushy ice skating on Christmas Day, but the skiing and snowboarding today was great, overcast and about 33F.

Enough with the small talk, lets get down to business. Microsoft stock price is on par with what I wrote about in the article Is Microsoft a Strong Buy?. I posted at the end of November and the stock had risen above $28 a share. Now if you recall I mentioned that within a few months the stock would more than likely crawl back to $25 a share, just as it has been doing for the last 4 years straight. As a matter of fact 2 months before, in September the price was around $25 a share. I upped my holdings then and have been waiting out the spike.

Some good news about Windows Vista, the Microsoft Live product line, as well as the xBox 360 arriving on shelves and the price raced past $27 on to $28. Some shaky economic news; inflation, bonds, fed hikes, and MSFT is on its downward trend. Today it finished at 26.46 a share. Good buy now? I think so. However I plan on waiting out the downward trend to below $26 and double my holdings. As I mentioned in that previous article I hope to build enough shares that I can buy and sell on the ups and downs while still holding a decent amount in my portfolio.

MSFT also managed to let some of it’s war-chest go upping their 4th quarter dividend. Now if you read the last article you know I’m hot on stocks that offer consistent dividends. MSFT, TWX, GE, and yes even WMT although WMT hasn’t done so well. The dividend is the main reason for my wanting to hold some MSFT in my portfolio at all times.

Wait with me or buy now but I still say MSFT is a good buy. xBox 360 is still a great system, Windows Vista will be released next year, and Google now has a competitor that it can’t buy-out. Stay warm and make some money.

Related Posts:

Is Microsoft a Strong Buy?
Wanna Make $25
How to sell Gold and Silver on eBay

BUILDING A BASE

The first thing that anyone wanting to run a faster mile should do is build a good base. I have seen a lot of people unprepared injure themselves because they haven’t run enough miles prior to training. Pure miles can be a bit boring as I have just mentioned. but have patience. You need to build intensity in your runs before you can do any serious training. Especially if you haven’t been doing much in terms of athletics before beginning your quest.

No matter what your mile goal is you can start out with cross training. I have decided to take up tennis, go surfing, road biking and might jump into basketball as well to get back into the rigors of intense athletics. I don’t mean to suggest that everyone should go out and play as many sports as they can. If you want to do that you can start a blog with me and see how fast you can run yourself into the ground. Instead what I suggest is picking up one or two other sports that you also enjoy doing. These could be soccer and tennis, or swimming and hiking, or surfing and biking. Whatever they are just try for two other sports to keep your mind from becoming stagnant with running. Switching off running and tennis 3-2 times a week, can make for 5-6 days of exercise without the strain of a single sport. Try 2 other sports with running and you’ll be down to 2-3 days a week running getting the same cardiovascular exercise as with more.

To run a four minute mile you can still begin with this type of cross training at first but need to quickly phase it out in order to get used to intense training sessions. I am going to spend a few months with cross-training to get my legs used to movement again. They are still able to carry me fairly quickly but I will need a few days rest afterwards if I get too intense. With cross-training I can still go and surf the day after a long run, or go for a bike ride to loosen my legs.

Within about 6 months I want to have increased my weekly runs to 5 days a week at around 6:30 mile pace. I will still be enjoying other sports but my focus will be mainly on how it effects my running schedule. You should do likewise as your running will begin to get more and more stressful requiring more downtime from other sport form.

I still hope to keep my base building going for at least the first year. If you plan to make a real go at a great mile, say 4:15 or better you too should have a solid base of miles built. The intensity should have also increased to the point where each long run feels like a training run. If you plan on running a 6:00 mile and this is presumed to be your best you should still put in a solid 6-9 months of base building. Don’t underestimate it. Your results will be much greater than without, and the risk of injury much lower.

After 1 year of building a base I plan on continuing with the same intensity of mileage but with more track miles than without. The gradual increase in mileage and intensity in my base building should ease the transition into running intervals, repeats, and the like.

Whatever you are training for remember to start out slow and feel out where injuries might occur. Being cautious and building your strength is a key component to allowing for your athletics goals to be achieved.

I got back down to bogey golf this last week. I played the Millilani Golf Course in Hawaii and shot 45 and 45. It wasn’t the greatest round of golf as I only had 2 pars and hit 2 greens in regulation. What did improve was my short game. At worst I two putted and my pitching and chipping around the greens has gotten a lot better. Partly because I began focusing on it and partly because I began thinking through my short shots before just pulling out a club and taking them.

Around the green when there is no obstacles in my way and if I am within 5-10 yards of the fringe I use my 7 or 8 iron. I choke up on the club and use mostly arms. I try to keep my left arm stiff throughout the swing. The key thing that I have figured out is to make sure to turn over our wrists and finish the same way you finish you swing, pointing the club face perpendicular to the ground and at the target. This keeps the club face from opening up and push the ball to the right. Of course if there is an obstacle in my way, like heavy rough or a sand trap I take out my sand wedge, 55 degrees. The is a little harder to control the distance and being so close getting a lot of spin is tough as well. I try to aim for a spot just short of the hole allowing the ball to roll after landing. If I manage to eliminate spin from the ball I am still just a short putt home.

The poorest part of my golf game right now is my irons play. This last time out everything was going wrong that could. Slice, hook, duff, push, top, everything. This was mainly due to my not committing to my swing. I was trying to control the ball with my arms rather than hit the ball with my swing. I was under rotating on my back swing and using mostly my arms to swing through the ball. What I have to do is try and keep my legs and knees still, building the torque in my back. Then when I begin my downswing, rotate with my hips and let my wrists hinge freely just swinging at the ball.

I imagine this will come with more practice and I hope to get out a lot more this coming year.

With the sale of Weblogs, Inc to AOL for a reported $25 million the blogosphere has exploded. People are throwing up blogs about anything and everything; promoting, pasting ads, and trying to turn them for a profit. Personal blogs, news blogs, rants, pictures, self help, and I am no exception. Along with blogs there has been the recent sale of some top sites such as myspace.com which went for $580 million. With all this money to be made why not jump on the bus?

I have recently been immersing myself in blogs, articles, and conversations about using the internet to create income. Passive income is the main objective for me. To put in the time and effort to create sites which can sustain themselves and put some money in my pocket. One blog that is more of an inspiration rather than a how-to is Steve Pavlina’s. Somehow the man gets 3.2 million page views only 1 year after he started. Now he has tons of really useful content and is pretty interesting to read, but he must have done some heavy promoting to get to that point. The other blog I regularly read is Yaro Starak’s. His blog Entrepreneurs-Journey.com has become sort of a portal for me into the world of making money through web site creation.

One of his recent posts was about creating niche websites to get just enough traffic to make $1-2 a day using AdSense ads. I won’t get too into the details of how he says you should do it (check his post for that) but the main idea is to find an untapped niche that gets a decent 1000+ overture searches per month and put up a good informative site about it. If you would do one of these a month for 12 months, make $2 per day, that would come out to $38,000 a year. The sites you create don’t have to be anything more than what you initially made. Just leave them to make money for you, passive income.

As I mentioned I am using Yaro’s blog as a portal to many more entrepreneurial sites and blogs, one of which Jonathan Wolds I have found very interesting. He is busy creating a digital empire around the niche site creation method. He currently has 10 niche sites ranging from his Mold blog to his Sump Pumps page. Jonathan develops sites around certain niches that aren’t all that exposed on the internet and gives really informative content to his readers. He spends a lot of time creating them and it shows. I plan on following his progress and gaining insight into the world of niche marketing from his methods.

Inspirational articles

If you aren’t inspired to join the revolution let me point you towards two more articles. Both of them are in Business 2.0 and both will have you running out to buy your first domain, or your first 15 domains. The first article I have mentioned before called Master of Their Domains is about people taking passive income to a new level. All they’ve done is register a domain name, signed up for a site parking service and watched the money come in. The domains they have receive what is called type-in traffic. I explain more about it in my domain state article. Mainly you just have to know that one of these sites allowed a domainer to sell his portfolio of 101 domain names for $3.6 million.

The other article, also in Business 2.0, is titled The Return of Monetized Eyeballs. Another inspiration for anyone leaning towards online income, this will tip you and tip you fast. It’s about all those sites built up then sold off for big money. The ones before the dot com bust, and the growing number after the dot com bust. It’s message is a good one; build a site, bring traffic, prove it can make income and then sell it to someone who thinks they can make more with it. Take Tom from myspace.com, $580 million is a nice chunk of change.

Yaro, from the above mentioned blog just purchased smallbusinessbranding.com, so this idea of flipping websites isn’t just for the super rich. He writes a nice little article on his site as a primer towards what he wants to do with SBB. He doesn’t give the price but he elaborates a little on how he costed the site and what he offered the previous publisher. Another average Joe that I’ve come across in my speed linking through these sites is webby media. The blog hasn’t been updated much but the few posts that are there are quite interesting. He developed blognetworklist.com and sold it off only months after developing it. It’s a great site, very well planned out and offers interesting information, sold for an undisclosed price. My guess is something decent, he hasn’t posted since he sold it so I would imagine either something big in the works or he’s traveling with his riches. Who knows.

Where do I go From Here?

Just look around the web, mainly check blogs, but people are flipping websites left and right and making a pretty penny from them. Affiliate linking, services, Google AdSense, and straight-up partner advertising; whatever the method people are making money, so why can’t I?, why can’t you? Through these other bloggers I have gained a drive to create an online “empire” of sites in order to make myself some passive income. With that passive income I plan on reinvesting in other passive income sources; Stocks, bonds, other sites, real estate. Things that make me money while I sleep.

To do that I have begun first with my blog. Here I am posting my progress and building this site as an outlet for news on what I am doing and how things are going. It is going to be more of an inspirational site rather than a monetized six figure blog like that of Steve Pavlina’s. If I get to six figures I’m not going to complain, but that’s not the drive for this blog. The six figures I hope to build through other sites.

Domain Names
As I mentioned I have been building my domain name portfolio. However, my plan isn’t to focus on type-in traffic. Rather, I want to focus on building traffic through content. People are making a lot of money on parking type-in sites but most of the high income sites are taken. Sure there are always new names popping up that will make you some money, but right now that isn’t where my drive is. I know developing sites will take a lot more time. That’s somewhat of an issue with all the other things I have going on, I work full-time as an engineer at a tissue engineering company, not too mention some of my other lofty goals. However, it’s what I will learn and the connections I will make through site development that I am more interested in. Getting a few good business contacts means a lot to someone who plans to build an empire, be it online or GE style.

I currently own 17 domain names and don’t think a single one of them gets much type-in traffic, if any. I haven’t posted my portfolio because as I mentioned my plan is to develop them and I wouldn’t want to let a great idea slip out before I get my content up. I will post about them here the day I launch each site and you can check them out then. I also will post parts of my portfolio as I see fit. Such as pure type-ins that I don’t think are going anywhere and the someone might want to buy. That’s just good business.

Building Sites

My mind has been racing these last few weeks, soaking up ideas like a sponge and formulating new ones on the fly. I will stick with content and service based sites for the time being and I plan on building them on several different platforms. Wordpress is great, it’s what this site is powered by, and it’s just too easy not to use. Right now I am using Dreamweaver to make the site I plan to launch within the next week. It’s all html coded and I haven’t really exploited all of the resources that Dreamweaver has but will build from this initial site and see how it can make site creation easier.

I realize making 12 sites in 12 months will take a lot of time, especially quality sites. However, I am going to rely on my new found joy to stay focused. Also, like I mentioned in my post about becoming accountable, as long as people know my goals this alone can have a very powerful effect on sticking with them to accomplishment. Who wants to be that guy who is all talk and no show.

Promoting Sites

Promoting websites is a lot of work. Even if you know everything there is to know about the particular topic of your site and you can write pages upon pages of content quickly and easily, you still have to promote the site. Search engines will only bring in so much traffic, sooner or later you’re going to need to get traffic by other means. Linking, posting in forums, buying AdWords, whatever it takes. You have to get out there and promote your site. My goal is half a million people visit my sites by the end of this next year. Will I get there? Not sure, but I gotta try. The time spent promoting sites will initially be the most time consuming. That is where this blog comes in and where one could help you. I plan on building enough return traffic and getting enough links with this site that people will come back to learn and find out more, and then help me promote my sites for me. We’ll see how it works.

In Closing

As I mentioned the main goal is to build sites that create passive income. If I spend the next year developing at least 12 sites I hope that 2 of them create a decent passive income. There are a lot of ideas passing through my head, some good, some not so good. I will spend a good amount of my time over the next few months building traffic here and seeing what that amounts to. I will keep you informed as to my progress with the numerous domain names and sites and let you know any launch dates I might have.

Take care and happy Building.

Aloha,

Erik

Week 5, Done. My unique visitors and page impressions went down overall due to my decreased participation in blogclicker, blogxchange, and blogexplosion. However, my search engine referrals are up, way up, from Google, MSN, and AOL for the last week. Almost 100 people visited me through a search engine and the number keeps climbing.

84 from Google, 9 from MSN, and 2 from AOL, also one from a random search engine.

These results are no doubt due to my increased amount of content and building links. Even though I completed my link goal I am still promoting my site trying to get links and give links. (If you want to swap links contact me.) Both of these efforts have made my page your appealing to search results.

I feel like the direction my blog is taking is a good one. For the past week I have been using addfreestats web statistics to track user experience and I am pleased with the service, and the results. Users from search results tend stick around my site for a bit and check out other posts and categories and stay for more than just a few seconds. That tells me my writing isn’t too poor as of now and that I am providing an interesting read to some people. This information can be invaluable for a site developer. If you don’t have visitor path and time spent as an option I suggest you get a stat service that offers it.

See my article on Google Analytics Alternatives for a review of some of the services out there.

I should have more information on site wide statistics later this week or next week. As I mentioned before I am switching services around and testing whats good. I like addfreestats.com for now and probably will stick with it.

Technology has answered the call time and time again for those who want to cram more and more into a 24 hour day. Cellphones, PDA’s, laptops, and iPods. Anything and everything just to get more done, more knowledge, and stay ahead of the competition. Along with all this multitasking has come ulcers, heart conditions, and more Dr. Phil connections than I care to list.

As I undertake what some are saying to be an insane amount of tasks I am always looking for ways to maximize my time without going clinical. It can be a fine line to walk but when you find things that work, not only can they help you accomplish more, but they can make you relax at the same time. One of these technological advances I use regularly is the mp3 player, more specifically my iPod. Sure, I listen to music on it, but the most useful thing I’ve found for it is listening to Audio books.

I have been reading a lot lately, regular print books, but have slowed down some because of the time I spend at work and play. I still try to get in a bit of reading here and there but haven’t been able to keep up with the amount I was getting in last year. To solve this problem a friend of mine told me about how he uses his iPod to listen to books. Right away I thought about all the old people you see listening to audio books by who knows who as they power walk around the mall. But he said I should really give it a try and sent me a sign up email for 2 free audio books. “Why not,” I thought “free is free.”

So I tried it out and was instantly hooked. Being an engineer, I sometimes have a lot of screw turning to assemble prototypes. Now that mindless task has turned productive, I listen to audio books about history, technology, biographies, anything. It’s great. The other times I listen to these books is during car rides to the store, walking down the street, and on my runs as I train for the 4 minute mile. All this time where I was listening to the radio or zoning out thinking about nothing is now spent learning and expanding my knowledge. In the age where knowledge is power and money, the more you know the better chance you have to succeed.

Ease of use. There is no way I would be using this service if I needed to go to a store, or receive something in the mail, or fill out a bunch of information. Once I had my account I was good to go. I clicked on the books I wanted, downloaded the file and was listening in less than 10 minutes. That was for really large books, shorter books take less time. Another nice thing that iPod does is keep your place in your book. If I listen to say, 4 hours of a book, then some music, then go back to my book, it picks up right where I left off. Sweet iPod!

Cost. The cost of the books isn’t too bad. I use Audible.com, and you can join for $20 a month and get 2 books. $10 isn’t horrible. They also run some specials here and there and have free reads available too. Small price to pay for mobile knowledge.

Note: you don’t have to join to get books, it’s just cheaper that way. So far my review of audible.com is a great one. They are easy to use and have books I would have never thought to read. Joining up has actually made me keep reading. There are others out there but give audible a look.

Quality. The readers are usually pretty good. Sometimes the authors themselves read but not always. Every now and then you get someone reading who might say a particular word awkward but other than that not too bad. Sound quality is great and can be downloaded at different compression rates to save space.

Overall this is a great way to fill up your down time. Become productive at times you never thought possible. I have listened to all kinds of books, from Collapse by Jared Diamond, to America by Jon Stewart, and The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb. Audiobooks are great and I suggest them to anyone trying to expand their knowledge base with limited time.

Related Posts:
Making Intermediate Goals
Becoming Good at Everything - Become Accountable
The Power of Positive Thinking

Since I have made some of my goals public through this blog comments have shot in. Comments about how ridiculous some of the goals may be, comments about the paths I may be taking, along with comments of encouragement. One of these which I have thought about a bit is now the topic of this post. Not only should I be discussing my ultimate goals but I should also discuss and make public my goals along the way. I did this at first with my getting 1 new link a day for 3 weeks goal, but haven’t done so since.

I hadn’t stopped to realize the impact each small step towards the main goal could be. Becoming accountable for all the steps along the way is just as important as the end result.

Example of intermediate goals

Take for instance running the four minute mile. The end result seems so outrageous that most responses to this goal are, “shouldn’t you start with something a little more attainable?” Thanks for the encouragement by the way. Breaking this goal down, the individual steps seem a lot easier and can summarized like this.

Training Goals

Build a base - Within 6 months increase my weekly mileage to 50+ miles a week
Increase intensity - Within 1 year increase the pace of my regular runs to an average of 6 minute pace
Begin track workouts - Within 1.5 years build to track workouts 3-4 times a week
Full Intensity training - Within 2 years be over 50 miles a week in training with all miles run at better than 5:30/mile pace

Race Goals

First mile - Run my first timed mile in under 6 minutes within the first 5 months
5 minutes - run under 5 minutes within 9 months
4:30 - under 4:30 within 1 year
4:15 - 2 years 3 months
4:00 - 3-4 years

This example is intended to show you the progression your goals could take. I am going to tweak these a little bit over the first few months of training but this is the basic idea.

SET ATTAINABLE MILESTONES

Even though your end goal may seem a bit out of reach at first once you complete a few milestones the end won’t seem so far away. Let’s look at my first goal. 5 years ago I used to run 11 mile runs in under 6 minute pace. Knowing that makes a 6 minute mile seem pretty attainable. Since then I have had cancer, stopped running, and gained 25 pounds (not muscle). But still, this goal should be easy to reach within the time period I have allotted.

Before you reach that first milestone you should set your next one. Make it a little more difficult, but still not all the way. It might seem a bit out of reach at first but don’t worry. Finishing your first goal will give you momentum into your second and so on and so fourth. Each goal will build on the last and you see your progress in realizable bits rather than one big quantum leap.

DON’T SWEAT THE SET-BACKS

Setting attainable milestones is probably the best way to get to your final goal. However, if you are unable to complete one in the time period you set for yourself this can be very discouraging. You can get so wrapped up in the discouragement that you forget about your real goal. Don’t worry. Think of it as a minor set-back, adjust the goal if you have to an move on. Learn from it. If you let it eat at you you’ll never remember why you set the goal in the first place. To help you along your path.

STAY THE COURSE

Finally, when setting intermediate goals you need to stay the course. Just like getting too discouraged if you miss a milestone, thinking its good enough can be just as devastating. If you’ve already thought it’s good enough then you’re probably ready to be done. Don’t be. Stay the course. This is why setting the next milestone before you finish the current one is so important. You need to know that it is just a step towards the end goal. If you become accountable for the next milestone then you won’t want to stop. People will know you’re next goal and ask you about how you’re doing.

The three techniques I just mentioned should make accomplishing your tough goals a little easier. It has helped me work through some of mine, especially finishing cancer treatment in a summer, then finishing my degree on time. Just remember to keep your eyes toward the final step and learn from any bumps in the road.

Keeping people coming back and getting them to stay. That’s the name of the game when it comes to developing profitable websites. First thing you need to start out with is content. Content, content, content. Getting a good Google search ranking is all about content. It needs to be updated regularly and there needs to be a lot of it. Second is links. The page rank from most search engines and web directories is also based on the amount of quality links from other sites. No bogus spamming links, genuine links from similar content sites.

Starting out with content you’ll need to write clearly and you need to write prolifically. Focus on a niche and don’t worry about your writing at first. It should be good but don’t over analyze. Quality writing will come with practice. The other thing you need to do is to get out there and promote your site. You can start with the directories and then venture to similar sites. See if they’ll link exchange with you. Just let people know you’re here. I have been employing a couple different methods of my own which I explain, with results in my increasing traffic within the first two weeks post.

Once you’ve got a good start on those two things you should move on to creating a good looking site. What is a good looking site? Well, an example of a bad site is those that you stay on for only a second. When you reached it your brain was probably saying, “you won’t find what you need here, move on.” So you listened, without even skipping a beat. Those are the sites that don’t look good. The ones that you don’t even wait to see what the content is. The next question is how do you create a site that people stick around to see the content? Well, tons of people have studied this and rightly so.

Luckily for us many people share their research free and post them all over the internet. Before visiting these though I suggest paying attention to the sites you go to often. I sometimes wonder to myself such as, why do I go to gizmodo.com over engadget.com. The navigation, the color, the text, the spacing, look at it all and make note of it.

Aside from just paying attention to good sites you should visit sites that inform you of the techniques that have worked for them. Below I listed some sites I have used to help me develop my site. They range from ideas on site layout to tools for color matching. Try them out and find your own. There’s a bunch out there.

One Minute Designer - The whole website is really good, efuse, but I found the one minute design article to be the most helpful. It’s a quick primer to getting you thinking in the right direction of keeping traffic surfing your site. I would start with this article if I were you.

7 ways to keep customers coming back - This is an article by Microsoft about keeping your customers coming back. Little tricks you can use to keep people involved with you site. The list is short and sweet but outlines some good points. One thing I have employed is a newsletter. Not many people have joined yet but as my traffic grows a newsletter will be a good way to keep forgetful surfers coming back.

Color Schemer Online - color schemer online is the free web based version of the Color Schemer software. This company has made the color wheel quick and easy to use. If you go to the online version you will be able to pick one of the standard 256 colors and then the software chooses 16 colors that match it the best. This can be used to make your website color friendly. I am currently going through some color changes myself to make things a bit easier on the eyes. Browsing around I have notice that the color factor is a big portion of whether I will stay or not.

Seth Godin - Anything Seth Godin will help you on your path to internet marketing, advertising, and just plane old grabbing attention. I have read the combo Free Prize Inside and Purple Cow and think this man is a genius. Simple and to the point. Soak up all he has to say. I believe this is his blog as well. Check it out.

I would also like to mention that you should try out as many text possibilities as possible. There are some that work and some that don’t. Also use the line-spacing: and text-spacing: attributes within your CSS style sheets (or your in line styles). Having good spacing makes a world of difference towards the readability of your site.

Good luck, pay attention, and try, try, try as much as you can.

Ever typed in a domain name cold turkey wondering where it will lead to? I have and supposedly thousands upon thousands of people do it everyday. When you’ve type in one of these common everyday used words you have probably ended up at some site resembling a normal search results page like that from Google or Yahoo. What you might not know is that all the links on those pages are paid advertisers going through a central advertising agency. The type of traffic these websites make money from is mainly type-in traffic like I just explained.

Like real estate domain state is all about location. A good type-in domain name can be like having a pizza joint on the main road through a college campus. That company could make the worst pizza around but they still manage to make some money by offering the service at the right location. Words like candy and cellphones can have huge amounts of traffic and be listed on page 3000 of Google. Having a huge network of links is also a bit like having a good location. Getting your links on high traffic sites can be difficult but if you do, just driving traffic to your site can be enough to make a few dollars a day on those that click through your ads. These ads are usually provided by hosting services like Sedo.com or Google’s DomainPark. They get all they advertisers, set up your page, and all you do is forward the domain to them. End of Month, Receive Check.

The more difficult way to increase the value of your domain name but having the most potential to earn income is to build a content rich site. Once you have people visiting through search engines you can add some ads here and there or use affiliate linking to generate click-through income. This last group would be more like your sky rise apartments, hotels, health clubs, or malls. The more revenue you can generate from providing one of these services the more the property is worth.

Ultimately you can keep your domain names and or content rich sites to earn a passive income stream. Or you can get in the market of buying and selling domain state just like a real estate developer would buy and sell properties. This is just what a growing number of people are doing. There are some out there who have domain portfolios which include over 300,000 domains names, with countless others having several thousand. (If you can’t find what you’re looking for at Netfirms or GoDaddy chances are one of these people has what you’re looking for. Sure they’ll part with it. For a price.) In an article published in Business 2.0 about domainers and specifically one domainer with a portfolio of 101 names. One of these was cellphones.com. A simple site parked not fancy graphics or content, just ads. It generated at the time $1300 a day average. His portfolio was purchased for $3.6 million. Yes, 3.6 million dollars. If the site keeps up, which undoubtedly it will, the purchasing company will be able to break even on just that site along in 8 years. Try that on 3.6 million dollar home, hotel, or mall property.

I currently own 15 domain names and am trying to grow my portfolio weekly. I am also developing some of the sites, this one included, while keeping track of any type in traffic should I plan to sell off the domains later. Most I will try and develop with content or services as I see this to be the most profitable long term passive income stream. I can reinvest whatever I make in other ventures as they arise. I will keep you posted as to my progress and any publishing of the sites I may do. One I will have up by the end of the month.

There are still many domain names out there and many more to come. Take for instance avian flu. Not even on the map before this year. Whoever snatched that domain name up is probably making a pretty penny as you read this article. As new words are developed so will follow type-in traffic. Don’t forget the developing of content rich or service providing sites that will make a name for themselves and become standard everyday lingo. Look at how well blogs such as Gizmodo and Engadget are doing.

Who knew what a google was before Google came along?

If you liked this read you may also like:

How to Increase Traffic to your site within the first 2 weeks
Becoming a Millionaire
Wrap Text Around AdSense or Chitika ads