Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Ever since I started hiring bloggers to blog for Blogtown Press I’ve been focusing my efforts on promoting and marketing the blogs within the network. I thought blogging was time consuming!

Marketing and promoting blogs consists, in my mind, of two groups. You want to gain readers, and if you’re in it for a monetary payoff, you want to gain advertisers as well. Gaining ground in both of these areas is a very time consuming job and you’ll need a lot of patience to see it through.

When I first started out blogging I had one blog, this one. I exchanged links by asking doing the usual: contacting like-minded bloggers with similar content and asking, no, begging, for link exchanges to promote my blog and boost Google Page Rank (PR). I did good for about two months and then it got really old. Once it got really old, my traffic got really stagnant. And it kept that way until about 2 months ago when I hired on some other bloggers and have been able to focus the bulk of my efforts on building traffic and gaining advertisers.

Although my efforts in both these categories aren’t nearly as “expert” as others claim to be I’m working towards learning all the ins and outs of SEO and the enticement of visitors. Blogging is fun, but watching traffic grow as you work behind the scenes can be just as rewarding.

If you are new to blogging, or old to blogging, chances are you’ve seen a few blog posts about SEO and you’ve probably tried to build your Google search results ranking before. But as I mentioned it can get old really quick. Stick with it! It becomes more and more rewarding the further along you go. Sure you’ll hit some lulls and you’ll probably loose ranking and then gain ranking. Don’t complain about Google screwing you, do something about it and try and figure out why, then fix it.

To help you out I found this great article over at Problogger.net posted by Darren’s guest poster Tony Hung all about how to market your blog. In it he lists and describes 41 ways you can use to market your blog, or website for that matter. Below is a list of my 3 favorites, but there’s plenty more.

1. Spend time to create links and trackbacks - This works, no matter how much you don’t think so, over time, it works
2. Get Your MyBlogLog widget - I just started this one after reading this article, seems simple and automagically gets the word out about your blog.
3. Get Dugg / Netscaped / Reddited / Stumbled upon - Gotta do this one, if you don’t you’ll be left behind.

There are a ton of ways you can market your blog. You just have to trust what you read about SEO and follow through. Doing one or two exchanges is great, but have you stumbled something, join a network, written about someone else’s post, tried to make a friend, participated in forums, commented? You have to do it all if you want to get your blog to the top of the blogosphere.

It takes time, I work on it for literally hours every night. And I’m only now seeing the payoff after 2 months straight. I plan on keeping it up and so should you.

Buying and selling domain names for profit is a rather new mainstream phenomenon. One that has been written about widely ever since the major story in Business 2.0 titled “Master of their Domains”. Although the act of buying and selling domain names for profit has been around. Tons of people, like anything that makes you a quick buck, are jumping in full force.

In this little five part series I have mentioned only one major way you can buy and sell domain names for profit. There are many more ways to monetize a domain name than just parking a name. Although, parking is the least time consuming method to a quick buck. There’s of course building the name with content, playing the SEO game to get your domain and site to the top of the Google Search list. There’s also building a community of readers and contributors, which is rather popular right now with MySpace making all the headlines. There’s also a plethora of ways you can make money on the Internet, buying domains and creating revenue with them, that I haven’t come close to touching on. There’s probably tons that aren’t even thought of (at least I hope so).

Since the bulk of this series is on buying and selling domain names that you park, I’m going to focus on that for right now, and where I think those types of names will go.

In the short-term, 6 months to a year, I think domaining will be strong. Internet users will still type-in names in their browsers, they’ll still mistype some of those names and advertisers will still pay for people to click through on ads placed on these pages. There won’t be an overnight extinction of parked pages.

However, as browsers move forward, these sites, parking pages, which most Internet users not in the parking game have grown to know and hate, will become harder and harder to monetize. One big problem is that browsers might come equipped with fishing, and third-party site announcers. Meaning you’ll be warned that you are being taken to a known third-party site, like a parking site, do you want to proceed. Specifically targeting typo’s

In fact Microsoft has just the service to help you out. Which, being a domainer I hate to promote or even show where they exist, but the service is called Stryder and is written about here.

But that isn’t going to bring the world crashing down on domainers. Of course some of the prices of domains are getting a little out of control. Like any business, if you can’t realize a return from a purchase, ie spending more than you make, you’ll go out of business. The market will take care of itself if it gets out of control. Be it a bubble or just a gradual realization that prices are too high.

The key thing with domain names is how much money do they make and what’s the brandability of the name. If a domain name gets traffic, someone can always find a way to monetize that traffic. If you can show that the traffic, provided by a domain name, brings you money, you’ll be able to put a price on the domain.

I don’t have to send my domain name visitors to a parking page, it’s just the easiest thing to do right now. Eventually, if browsers wise up to the game and people enjoy the popup that asks if you want to proceed to a parked page (I for one would get annoyed and disable the thing), then I’ll find a different way to make money from the traffic.

The last thing that might hurt domainers are laws being passed about trademark cases with typo’s. This could hurt the “big-little” business of typo squatters where the easiest money is. I’m not going to get to far into this one since I don’t know that much about the legalities of trademark infringement on typo’s. It’s a sticky situation with probably more than one right answer.

Overall, I feel the art of buying and selling domain names for profit is here to stay. The Internet isn’t going anywhere, and the only way to navigate the net is from an address. Domain names give you a unique and sometimes brandable address that can make you a small fortune if the game is played right.

Yes Google may be trying to make searching the net without a domain name easier and easier. However, you shouldn’t fear that, they’ll never be able to make it easier than say, typing in Google. There’s too much clutter with all these blogs (guilty) cluttering the search results. Once a users finds a useful resource they’re bound to bookmark it, or type it in again. As long as you buy and sell domain names wisely, you’ll be able to make a few dollars in the business. Who knows, maybe you’ll make a lot more than a few.

OK, so I’m going to let a little bit of the cat out of the bag with this one. My method isn’t rocket science and it isn’t like I’m getting crazy go nuts lucky. Even without the big sale in December that I mentioned in Part II, I would have still made a 76% ROI this year just on month to month earnings.

Note: If you haven’t read the first 3 sections in this series start at the front and and link through there with:
Part I - How to Make Money Buying and Selling Domain Names

On to the good stuff. I use a type of value investing approach to buying and selling domain names. I look for names that people want to offload quickly and are willing to let go for cheaper than if they waited around for the right buyer. With so many domain names out there there are plenty of these that get bought and sold every day, so don’t think it’s that tough to find your diamond in the rough.

I try and follow these basic steps:

1. Reduce Risk by requiring at least 3 months revenue stats
2. Long term outlook and limiting seasonality
3. Limit exposure to potential trademark infringements
4. Buy at a low earnings Multiple

By following these 4 steps I’ve been able to make a pretty decent return in 6 months and so should you.

1. Reducing Risk by Requiring At Least 3 Months Revenue Stats

The main way I reduce the riskiness of the names I buy is by requiring proof of 3 months of revenue and traffic stats or more. Now a lot of names are bought and sold based off of only a months revenue stats. I’m not going to say that I won’t buy a domain name with only a month stats proof, but I try and limit the number of these names that I purchase. (For more on stats see Part II)

By requiring proof that the domain name has had traffic and revenue for at least 3 months you can better assume that the traffic and revenue will continue as such in the future. This is especially useful for typo domains. Since typo domains aren’t really useful without the non-typo domain name, they don’t really hold any “intrinsic value.” You can’t really put a price on it like you could something brandable such as BeachBums.com or something like that.

If you know a domain name has made money in the past you can better predict it’s earnings in the future. This isn’t fool proof as you’ll see with the next section. Some names that are typo’s could come crashing down on you and you’ll loose your initial investment.

2. Long Term Outlook and Limiting Seasonality

If you are buying a type-in and especially a typo you need to look at the staying power of the name. If it’s a typo you need to take extra care that the real name your domain name is a typo of will stick around. There is no set way to do this but if you’re getting into the business of buying typos you need to get good at this. You can do overture traffic analysis, look at the PR, the links, is it in the news, is it membership based, is the membership growing?

These are only a few of the things you can look at but they are the main ones I look at when buying a domain name. You need to come up with a good method to make a reasonable inference as to the domain names staying power (if it’s a typo) or to it’s value as a brandable name.

If the name is a direct type-in you’ll need to usually concern yourself with if it’s a fad or not. Is the name going to continue to be popular and warrant people typing it into their browser? Does the name show up in search engine results near the top? The same can be said about typos as well.

Another similar thing to look at is the seasonality of the domain name. What I mean is does the name only get high traffic in a particular season. You can check that out on Alexa if the site is popular enough. Is it about lodges in a ski town? Do people look for bikini’s all year round? Be careful of these names and be sure to check the dates on the stats you are shown. Sometimes they’ll show you 6 months at a time but for the last 3 months the name hasn’t received any hits because it’s about a small town called Punxsutawney.

3. Limit Exposure to Potential Trademark Infringements

Buying a name like GooglePics.com Might put you smack in front of a C&D letter from those guys at Google, so weigh out what the potential risk you face that the company involved in the infringement portion might want to come after you. Especially if they have a history of doing so.

Check around on the forums and look at how much traffic the name gets. If it only gets a few visitors and is small potatoes the infringed company probably won’t want to waste their time and resources on you. But maybe they will. It’s all a guessing game there. Plus I don’t really know the exact rulings that would occur if you tried to claim that yes Google owns Google put I’m trademarking the whole word GooglePics. Thank goodness for no spaces in web addresses.

Best thing to do is ask a lawyers opinion, or take the risk.

4. Buy at Low Earnings Multiples

This is the big one. You have to be patient and wait for deals. The easiest thing to do is to get excited and buy a name because it seems like a good deal but you end up buying at a high price and increase your risk.

If you assume that in the worst case scenario you won’t be able to sell the domain to anyone even though it continues to make money, how long will it take to make your money back. That’s the risk of it all. If, at current earnings based off your work in step 1, you buy the domain name at 10 times monthly earnings your risk is a lot lower than if you buy the domain at 20 times monthly earnings.

The risk comes in because you never can be 100% sure that your traffic and thus revenue will stay. The Internet is a crazy beast and a liquid one at best. It moves and shakes on a moments notice.

The best advice I can give you is to wait it out. Buy value. Just look at the return I made if you need proof. I could buy at high multiples, without proof, and without knowing if the name is going to have any staying power, but that would be just crazy talk.

In Part V I’ll be looking at what I think the future of domain name investing is.

Make sure you check out the first two articles in this series:
Part I - How to make Money Buying and Selling Domain Names
Part II - My 65% ROI Buying and Selling Domain Names 

Getting started in domaining or domain name investing can be as easy as going over to your favorite registrar and registering a domain name. But how do you value a domain, how do you know it will make money, how can you get in above the basement floor?

I’ve tried my hat at buying typos, buying what I thought would be good type-ins, and in both cases failed miserably. Unless you have a bit of time for research, or feel as thought you’re a lucky person. Buying domain names like this isn’t going to be the easiest way to enter domain name investing and make money right away.

Bonus Tip: Some might already know this but you can buy massive amounts of domain names (called bulk registering) at moniker.com, and they let you drop the name in the first 4 days for only the $0.25 ICANN regsitration fee. This can be a great way to find domains that make money, typos or type-ins and not spend a lot doing so. I don’t want to spend the time or money doing this but if you got the time, try it out.

Instead you need to search out domain names that already have proven traffic and possibly even proven revenue. To do this you can go to several places. My personal choices are three dedicated domaining forums:

NamePros.com
DNForum.com
DomainState.com

I’ve listed the forums in the order of my preference. Namepros is a great forum that is completely free. You don’t have pay a subscription or membership fee to start posting and dealing with other members in the forum. The second one, DN Forum, is a great forum, but to start a thread in any of the marketplace forums you have to pay a fee. The cheapest fee for this forum is $30. Not bad if you want to get your names to a large traffic very active forum. However, DN Forum will allow you to post in the marketplace forums in response to threads, and also you can PM and deal with users for free. The last forum up there, Domain State, is a good forum, but doesn’t have as much traffic as the other two.

The other forums you can buy names at that are big time are Site Point and Digital Point. These two forums are very very large with many active members but they aren’t domaining dedicated. Therefor, you may be able to find some deals there but there just won’t be as many names as the first three that I mentioned.

How to Buy From the Forums

The way you conduct business at these forums is pretty simple but comes with risk. A user posts a domain they have for sale, listing any traffic or revenue if applicable, and then lists a price or accepts offers. People post questions, post offers, and post comments about the name within the forum thread that was started. This can go back and forth for a while until the seller and one buyer agree on a price or someone can just buy it quickly and end the sale.

Here’s where the risk comes in. Once that is official the seller and buyer usually private message (PM) each other their paypal and registrar information. The buyer then sends the money to the sellers paypal account. Once the payment is confirmed, the seller then pushes or transfers the domain to the buyers registrar account. It’s pretty easy and can happen in less than 10 minutes if you’re quick about it.

How to Reduce Risk during a Transaction

The biggest risk is, what if the seller takes the money and runs? Well, the three forums I listed as domain dedicated have trader rating systems, similar to eBay rating system that allows you to see what users have to say about the seller or buyer from previous dealings. Although most of these ratings are linked to a forum thread so you can look to see if there was a legit sale involved in the comment, the system can be skewed by false trader ratings. It’s up to you to determine if the rating is valid.

Other things you can look at to see if a user is legitimate is looking at the number of posts, the previous posts, how long they’ve been a member, and what else they’re selling or have sold. Most users like to build up their reputation in these forums and don’t like people saying bad things about them.

Another way you can go about reducing or eliminating risk is by using an escrow payment service. These types of services act as the middle man. They hold your money until you receive the domain then send the funds on. That way you can’t cheat the user and the user can’t cheat you. The one downfall to these systems is they usually take a day or three to process payments and most people don’t like dealing with them. Especially for small time dealings of $500 or less. Which most domain names go for. This means you won’t be able to get into a lot of the good deals. It’s up to you though.

Most of all you’ll need to determine if the seller is legit. It can be tough to do but you’ll get better at it as you go along. Also these communities are pretty good at looking out for one another. All three of the ones I mentioned have warning forums and I was once in a bad dealing and was able to resolve it. I’ll talk about that later.

Valuing Domain Names 

Valuing a name is all about what it’s worth to you. If the domain name is a type-in you may end up paying a lot for a name that doesn’t receive any traffic or revenue. The reason being is that if it’s popular phrase, catchy phrase, or very brand-able domain name a lot of people might want to buy it and push the price up. Buying these domains isn’t really what I’m in the domaining game for. I like to buy names that already make revenue. Guessing if a name is going to bring traffic and money later on is what speculators do. I’m looking at a more value based approach.

To value names that claim to already make revenue you’ll need to consider several things. First off, the seller usually posts what the revenue and or traffic of the domain name is. They are most likely required to post this per the rules of the forums. They are also usually required to link a screenshot of the stats or requested via PM to provide a screenshot.

Screenshots are all different looking, based on what parking site the seller uses, and you’ll have to get good at determining a good one from a bad one. I like to see a screenshot of the daily stats if possible, and to reduce the risk of a name having large traffic spikes I like to see a couple months worth of stats. Of course these screen shots are jpegs or gif files and can be easily manipulated in paint or photoshop so you’ll have to get good at seeing a fraud. However, as I mentioned in the previous section, these forums are good at spreading the word on a fraudulent seller.

Some sellers have also become accustomed to simply copying and pasting stats into threads via which can look confusing at first like this:

Thu, Dec 21st, 2006 US$ 1.30 58 13 % 22.41 US$ 0.10 US$ 22.41
Wed, Dec 20th, 2006 US$ 0.10 63 10 % 15.87 US$ 0.01 US$ 1.56

But actually isn’t too bad and usually comes with an explanation as most parking sites list their stats in a different order. This one happens to be from namedrive and lists the day, the revenue, the visitors, the clicks, the CTR, the CPC, and the RPM. You’ll get used to these formats and be able to quickly spot the parking site the name is with.

Some people won’t give you screen shots, or won’t provide copy and past stats like those above. They’ll contact you via PM or sometimes post and not be reprimanded by the forum staff for not providing info. Personally I try to steer clear of these people. I need proof of what I’m buying.

Once you have the proper information you need to value the name. To each their own and you can pay what you’d like for a name. I’m going to get into what I try and pay later but most of the time sellers look for a multiple of the proven monthly earnings. The multiple can be 5 times or it can be 100 times. It’s just what you’re willing to pay for the name.

Some things to think about when determining your multiple are, how long will the name be around, what’s the chance for growth, and how long are you willing to wait until you make your money back. Some people can wait a few years. I’m impatient and cannot. I’ll be talking about how I determine my multiple in Part IV.

Sedo, Moniker, and other Domain Marketplaces

You can also buy domain names from places like Sedo and moniker. These are mainly aftermarket spots, meaning people use the sites to sell names. They usually park the names with the site and then enter a price that’s viewable by the public. A price that they’re willing to sell the domain name for. If you browse through these listings you’ll notice that some of the prices are rediculous. But if you need the name, you gotta pay the price.

Since what I’m showing you assumes you don’t need the name, you probably want to steer clear of these domain name marketplaces. But don’t throw them out completely. There is always that diamond in the rough that someone is just dying to give away. 

You can read Part 1 in Buying and Selling Domain Names for Profit or continue on. 

I’m not going to divulge my actual investment dollar amounts right now, I may in the future, but for now I’d like to keep them secret. I can say that it’s not small potatoes so these numbers aren’t skewed by one large return. I’m going to use percentages because it’ll keep my investments secret for the time being. There is a way to figure out the initial investment but I’ll leave that to the people who really want to know (although one large number has been left out.)

I started back in the late part of June and the numbers go through to this month. I bought a few domains each month and tried to reinvest my earnings each month to increase the monthly return and build my domain portfolio. Here are the month to month ROI’s adjusted each month for domains and reinvested earnings. I took the total invested up to the end of that month and divided by the earnings that month.

You’ll see right away that last month my earnings jumped considerably. The only reason for that is because I sold a domain name in which I made a sizable profit. If I weren’t to have sold that name my earnings would have been about 8% again and I would have had a total return of 38% with a yearly return of 76%.

Still a very respectable return. Feel free to use either chart for your personal decision, either way, both returns beat many other investments out there.

 Also of note. I recently evaluated my domain portfolio by asking for an appraisal in one of the domain forums and was offered the same amount as my total investment which, if I sold the portfolio then, would have mad my return 138% or an estimated 176% on the year.

The spread of earnings on each of my domain names ranges from a 1% to a high of 80%. These are just monthly returns and do not include sales of domain names. It’s like the earnings a company makes off investing on a piece of land or equipment.

From these numbers you can see that I was able to earn a steady return of 6.3% per month (equating to 76% per year). So on a simple $1000 investment I would make $760. I can live with that, so can most other investors willing to accept a little risk (which I delve into in Part IV). You must also remember that this is an investment that you do no more work other than searching, buying and letting sit.

If on the other hand I were to take the total return on my investment including sales. I would be averaging 10.8% per month or 130% per year. So on a $1000 investment I would make $1300. More than my initial invest. So even if I couldn’t give the domains away at the end of the year I would still make money. Actually I would still make a 30% ROI, still an amazing return when compared to the stock market.

In the next part I will be discussing the basics of what I look for and how I go about buying and selling domains. That’s right I’ll be revealing some of my “secrets” to my domaining world.

Back in May of this year I talked about wanting to take the plunge into domain name investing and the world of domaining. I finally did and for the last six months I’ve been tracking how I’ve been buying, and recently selling domain names. I’ve done decent at it, making a 65% return on investment, and thought I would write about my foray into domaining in a 5 part series titled Domaining for Beginners.

Part I - How to Make Money Buying and Selling Domain Names?
Part II - My 65% ROI in 6 Months Buying and Selling Domain Names
Part III - How to Get Started Buying and Selling Domain Names for Profit
Part IV - A Simple Method to Get a 130% APY Investing in Domain Names
Part V - What is the Future of Buying and Selling Domain Names for Profit

I wrote about domaining earlier but feel like this part was warranted because I’ve learned so much more since then. However I must warn you, there are a lot more people making a lot more money, buying, selling and parking domain names. I’m just here to give you a primer on what I’ve done and how it’s worked. Take what you will and use it or toss it. I don’t claim to be an expert, I just feel like sharing my small success.

Domaining in the sense of strict investing in domain names and squatting on them is simple. You buy a domain name that receives traffic, type-in or referral, and you park the name with a site that provides the layout, the advertising and the tracking of all this action. I’m going to stick with this simplest form of domaining because it involves the least amount of work. Also I’m going to use the word domaining rather than squatting because there are a lot of negative connotations that go along with domain squatting and I’m not trying to perpetuate negativity with this business.

Type-Ins and Typos 

The first type of names you can get are type-ins. They can be broken down into two basic categories. One is someone typing in the wrong spelling of a domain name, or Typo, and the second is a real dictionary word or phrase that is better known as the real Type-in.

Typos 

The typos are the ones that most people (non-investors) despise because they are trying to get to a page they know exists, like a newspaper, or a famous blog, and someone has registered a common typo error and has parked that name with a service which we’ll get to later. There are also some investors who dislike certain typos, but really where do you draw the line?

Typos are some of the riskiest domain investments and proper research and guesstimation is essential to limiting you risk. Prices are usually strictly based on earnings for several reasons. First typos are difficult to predict because one day a website can be all the rage and the next day it can tank, or vis versa.  Two, there are sometimes is trademark issues with typos which from my limited experience and searching of the forums, no one is too certain about. But you must always be weary of the Cease and Desist Letter (C&D).

Also, there are people who park names that have nothing to do with adult content using adult content words, thus display adult content advertisements, which in my opinion is wrong. Most parking services will quickly remove your account from this so a lot of people don’t practice this. However, that’s not to say that people aren’t redirecting their names to adult sites. I don’t recommend this practice and it’s just not an honest way to make a buck.

Type-Ins

The other type of Type-in is the real type-in. Names that are naturally typed in that contain real “dictionary” words or word phrases. Things like Candy, Songs, kitchensupplies, and a lot more. These are the names that are worth a lot more than their earnings because you can always get someone who wants to come along and buy a catchy 2 word phrase that is will to pay you way more than what you are earning on the name.

Natural Type-in, real spelling names, are also much better for search engine rankings. Most search engines will rank names containing the same and real spellings of searchers keywords higher than random or misspelled domains with similar keywords. Although your content can be strong enough to pull in many searches (just look at ebaumsworld) you’ll have an easier time with real words relating to your site topic. 

These are the names that most domainers strive to get to because they are the safest investments, especially if they are getting natural type-in traffic. You can earn money while you wait for someone to want to start a site based on your parked name.

Referral

The next type of domains are those domains that have a lot of referrals to them either through searches or backlinks. Since backlinks usually aides in searches I won’t break this grouping down but I will say that there are a lot of type-in names that have never been developed with content that are still number one in Google search results.

The others are sites that have been developed before and are now parked. They used to have great backlinks, still possibly have indexed pages and page rank and are for sale as undeveloped sites. These are names that you must be careful with because a lot of links to these pages may disappear.

Webmasters clean up their links all the time and if they link through and see a site is now parked they’ll loose the link in second, guaranteed. With that lost link you may loose a lot of your traffic. These should only be bought at the right price.

Now you may think, well I can just list my parked names in forums, on websites and build links that way. Wrongo, if you read the Terms and Conditions to most parking sites you’ll read that you can only have natural type-in or search traffic. No referral that wasn’t natural prior to ownership is usually standard. Now you can’t help it if the name had links previously and starts out with a lot of traffic. But if you build traffic the wrong way, parking sites will get you!

Domaining Isn’t a Bad Word

I want finish up Part I by saying domaining isn’t a bad word. Think of it as owning a piece of real estate in cyberland. My thoughts are that parking a site is providing the user, who might type-in naturally or via the typo, with ads that provide them with sites that may or may not be of service. Most of the parking sites get their ads through Google and these are the same ads that people have plastered all over their websites in optimal places for you to exit their pages from.

The reason most people frown upon it is because it’s a really easy way to make money and they’re just mad they don’t have patience or technical know-how to get into it. But as I’ll show you in the next part, I don’t spend a lot of time looking for and buying domain names and I was able to make 130% APY in 6 months!

I’ve been a little sick for the past few days with the flu. Which means two things (aside from the gory details) a lot of sleep and a lot of TV. With the second one, TV, I’ve also been watching a lot of commercials and one in particular has gotten my attention. A commercial for a product called BahamaVention.

The commercial appears half-way real with it’s cheesy 90’s infomercial appeal. A few goofy characters going from depressed states to super happy all with the use of a product called Bahama Vention. It doesn’t really tell you what the product does or what exactly it is, just that if you’re depressed, overworked, or under tanned, you’ll be helped with BahamaVention. You can call or visit BahamaVention.com for more information.

By the third time I was ready to find out if this was for real and what it was all about. So I went to Bahamavention.com and began reading through the “abouts” and the testimonials to see if I could get any sense of what the heck this was. What is a bahama vention?

Proven, safe, effective, and hypoallergenic, a Bahamavention is the single-most important “instrument of love” you can use to get an overworked, overstressed, and undertan loved one the treatment he or she so desperately, desperately needs.

That clears it up doesn’t it?  

Well after viewing a few pages I began to notice at the top of the page that you can call the BahamaVention hotline at 1-800-BAHAMA or you can click on a link to get a free kit. The link takes you to bahamas.com. Ah, now it makes sense. What a tricky and interesting marketing scheme that was so obvious now that I know what it is promoting.

I thought I would mention this as an alternative to the classic in your face marketing approach, or gimmicky marketing approach. Like offering a coconut for joining a contest.

All the people at the Bahamas Board of Tourism wanted were people to visit their site. Everyone knows that the Bahamas has sun, tropical fish, beaches and nice hotels. So chances are a normal television ad showing a honeymooning couple holding hands walking in the sand, or a family snorkeling with yellow and orange fish wasn’t going to get people to visit the site. But making a cheesy TV comericial talking about some new seemingly great self-help program might get those bored holiday couch patatoes to visit the site bahamavention.com on their next trip to Google land.

Plus the name is memoriable. You’re going to have a Bahama-Vention to get you through being overworked, stressed out, and untanned? The name just sticks. Need some help why not a bahamavention. Although Bahamas is pretty easy it’s not that memoriable. Everyone knows that the Bahamas exist. But they don’t know what a Bahamavention is.

The commerical doesn’t really tell you exactly what the bahamavention is, and better yet the bahamavention.com site doesn’t really tell you what it is either. If you keep digging around sooner or later one of the many many links on the site will exit you to the actual Bahamas.com tourism site.

So what can we learn as budding marketers from this scheme:

1. Have stickyness - have a memorable name or logo or phrase that doesn’t neccessarily tell your audience exactly what you are selling or offering but sticks in their head when they see something related to your product.

2. Relate to Your Audience - The Bahamavention relates to most couch potatoes in cold climates by saying it solves your untan skin problem, and relates to most people in the work force by talking about solving problems with being overworked and stress out.

3. Be Elusive - Don’t mention what your product exactly is or how it can solve problems but mention what it can solve. People want to know how things get done, we’re curious beings. By only mentioning what it can solve and not how it does it, most people will be interested finding out the how and will be intrigued to learn more.

Now the Bahama Board of Tourism went even further and made the landing page for www.BahamaVention.com it’s own site rather than redirecting to www.bahamas.com. They even carried out the cheesy infomercial like ad on several pages and made it look believable. I would imagine that making a one pager with all the redirects in the world to the actual page would have the same effect, but leading people on is so much more fun.

Either way, check out www.BahamaVention.com and see what I mean. A good marketing idea that we all can learn from.

You may all be thinking about what your new year’s resolution is going to be. Blogging more, getting links, building a better business system. But what about the things you still need to accomplish before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st, 2006.

As I try and form my companies and build business systems, I’m beginning to see a lot of things that would just make sense to get done before the new year starts. This way I won’t have to go back with books and see where my finances deviate, where I should have bought a domain name under a DBA account, or where I should have set up that checking account before I decided to buy the computer.

I happened upon a list of 15 things and Entrepreneur should do before Years End over at Entrepreneur.com and thought I should come up with my own list. There list is great and some may apply to you, some may not. Like overhauling your website. Wouldn’t a new look for the new year be a great kickoff to jump start your traffic. Or how about their number 1 thing to do which is review your business systems.  Building a business that is self-sufficient is only as good as it’s worst system. How do your systems stack up?

These were all great and definitely extended my to-do list, but I have a little list of my own if you’re a budding entrepreneur that spent 2006 building assets (or liabilities) and wants to set yourself up right for 2007.

1. Form and LLC, S-Corp, or at least a DBA - One of the biggest organizational tasks that you can undertake while starting your own business is allowing the business to be a separate entity. This way you can look on as an outsider and see where your bucket is leaking because you’re spending too much money, or where you could increase revenues.

Having a separate bank account, entity name, and all that goes with it can help you be forced to organize better and keep your spending separate. You’ll never build a good business system if you look at your books and say, well I have enough to pay for that because I got payed today. Having a different account for each business will force you to at least recognize when your leaking money into a business that should be fixed.

Also setting up and LLC or S-Corp right at the beginning of the new year will allow all your tax filings to line up and you won’t have to think back about what you used to buy what. If you have a company account, that’s the only account you should use to do company business. Especially if you’re an LLC, or S-corp and not a sole proprietorship.

2. Get a P.O. Box - This stems from the first one that you want to keep your business separate from yourself. Setting up a P.O. Box at your local post office will help you distance yourself from your company. There only about $5-$10 a month depending on where you live, it’s cheap and it might be what your business needs to make it look official.

3. Update your books - It’s almost tax season and why would you want to start your new year off having to organize last years books! If you spend the end of the year organizing your accounting you’ll have momentum going into the new year and hopefully start it out on the right foot. You’ll be organized and ready to go.

I’m working on this right now and it’s helping me to decide where I want to split my “assets” up into different companies. I’m thinking of forming 1-3 companies for the coming year and knowing where my money went this previous year will be a big help.

4. Appreciate what you did - If you can’t appreciate what you did this past year, maybe you’re in the wrong business. I’m so psyched about all the sites that I’ve setup and the things I’ve learned in the process that I can’t wait to see what the new year brings.

If you’re stuck wondering what you did, reorganize and try and decide where you should focus your efforts. Not appreciating your accomplishments, big or small, will only make the task of creating a business that much harder.

Hope you like the list, and I hope I can get them done in time, only 19 more days! Feel free to add to the list in the comments.

The newest issue of Fortune has the myspace.com guys on the cover. Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. You can read more about their small little company at…

MySpace cowboys - September 4, 2006

It has some great info, that’ll surely motivate you to try and make it, wherever you can.

technorati tags:Make, Money, Myspace, Entrepreneur, Business

Thought I would keep you all updated as to where my time has been spent. I have read and enjoyed the following posts and articles and think you may like them as well.

Yaro posts about a guy who made $500,000 using AdSense in one year. He has a link to a video from the guy as well, and it’s a new one, not that English guy everyone has seen the video from.

Wordpress Theme Browser - Quickly thumb through all the themes of wordpress 1.5 and higher. Always useful, and is helping me decide on a blog network layout.

Found a new site by a young lady trying to build an internet empire. She has a good list of 15 steps an affiliate marketer goes through at her blog. Her site is an interesting read, I suggest you swing by.

In an effort to get more comments on my site I have joined yesfollow.org and activated the dofollow plugin. I’ll let you know the results, or maybe you can help me.

I also stop by Neville’s Financial Blog from time to time to see what that guy is up to. Once again he has his picture taken with some famous guy. This time he met the CEO of GE. How he does it is beyond me. He also snapped a photo with Matthew McConaughey, and we all know how dreamy that guy is??? Check him, he’s go some interesting things going on.

Happy surfing.

Erik