Blogging Along

A domain is only worth the amount someone is willing to pay for it or what revenue the domain is making each month multiplied by X amount of months.

What prices do domains go for and how do you appraisal a domain?

The best way to judge how much a domain is worth is to visit domainprices.co.uk and see what domains have sold for and where the sale took place.

Domains on the secondary market can vary depending on if the sale is to a reseller (someone who deals with domains) or an end-user (someone who will use the domain directly).

If you deal with domains you may see the domain personalinjurysolicitors.tv as a good investment and would only be willing to pay £1000 for it.

If you are an enduser or a Solicitor that figure (because you really want it) maybe 5 fold and be £5000.

Domains are hard to price unless they have a website on them generating revenue, which then can then be calculated from it’s monthly income.

The owner of a domain is always going to think it’s worth more than the buyer is willing to pay.

Ask yourself this – Will it make any money undeveloped and are you going to develop it? Is it likely that another buyer will come along and offer the same amount or if not more?

If you answer no to both, sell the domain for the best price possible today!

If you have domains and haven’t set it up with a mini site or a full on site, get one up NOW!

Having a domain and it not been indexed by search engine is a number 1 fail in my eyes as it takes a year or 2 to really break into the search engine results with relevant posts.

Even if it’s a 1 page website Google and alike will index it if you post a link on a busy website and the rep of the site will only increase with age.

A lot of people buy domains to do something with them but never do, which is a bit of a shame.

First rule for me, register or buy a domain – get a WordPress install running on it within a few days. You never know it may have some history from a previous owner.

Over the years I have found that certain products or services shine more with the seasons from the revenue generated from the sites I produce. Obviuosly Christmas Present related site do well from October and increase right up until 23rd December. BBQ sites do well in summer and snow shoes would do well in winter.

Taking this onboard I thought how much of a boost having a mini site would be if in general your business sinks during the colder months for example if you are a fencing suppier in Glasgow if your sales were 20% of what they are in summer what would effect would it have if it just dropped by 50% to 50%?

Having mini sites for areas of your business that taken individually are quite niche and letting me create micro sites for them maybe a case of sink or swim during hard times. You can pay on a monthly lease basis for 12 months at a time, for example if you have a fencing business in Wakefield and you lease a site from us in summer you”ll get more sales due to the site and a buffer in place for the winter months.

This to put figures to the idea and to make it easier – you have a normal (no niche mini sites) year in summer and take in £100’000 having a mini lease site for say a fencing business in Leicester may get on average 2 calls extra a day from the site. This would maybe from 1500 visitors to your site a month but you maybe would convert out the 60 calls a month just 10 of them. Taking a job with a profit of £250 on average, that would take in at least £12’500 over the summer months.

That’s just converting 4% of all visitors to your leased niche website!

Ownership of a domain and control for technical reasons are 2 different things. Ownership is overall control and legal status on a domain. In the UK Nominet would look at the Who-is to see WHO owns a domain.

This brings me to a local person/company that is in the field of web design and support that’s been going for some years now and their actions with some domains the control.

Going through their client portfolio and doing a who is look up on each of them I’d say 90%+ are registered to him personally. I found this out and dug deeper, this was brought to my attention when I spoke to an EX client of his who explained he wanted to offer a new website and they wanted to leave it and get quotes elsewhere been a current client of his.

In refusing to carry on HIS service and not to go ahead to have a new and quite expensive (for the quality) he suspended hosting and took the website down. He could do this because he had control of the hosting & domain but more importantly he OWNED the clients domain name.

As mentioned above the owner of a domain has overall control and ownership which in a legal and professional world the company commissioning/paying for work on a website should be the legal owner.

So a tip for me, go to http://www.nic.uk and enter your company domain name (if UK domain) and http://whois.domaintools.com for all other extensions.

Ask this question do you legally now own the domain name? Now approach the company you paid our to build your website and ask them to transfer ownership to your company. What response did you get?

Good luck and always think economical websites may have hidden pitfalls.

In the mean time why not visit BabyBabyBaby.co.uk

So a nice sale this week through SEDO from JobsinHull.co.uk

Although I’d of love to have kept it I needed the cash flow and also focus (as usual) on fewer projects. Not sure what my biggest sale of a domain is but I know it’s never been over £1k  and £650 was a good buy and sale in my eyes.

Over the past 2 months I have been at “The One Point Ltd” working on and batting projects about. To fast forward to today I now work with The One Point on their marketing and development. With me been into the whole SEO, mini site, back linking, websites, VoIP, domains etc this was an ideal opportunity to gain a desk away from working from home, be in a real office environment, have a good team to work with and help set my aims on target with The one Points and my own goals.

One of the first deals stuck was with my HullFencing.co.uk site that daily is getting leads by phone, email and the unknown shop visits now to a local Hull company HPR Fencing Ltd. Giving them a unique number from The One Point so we can monitor our marketing from the site helps reinforce our no brainier method and costs for a Hull Domain mini site.

The monthly fee covers, domain renewals, hosting, editing, a new phone number and any SEO to help propel the site on to page 1 of search engines for key phrases.

On the affiliate front I’m a bit disappointed with BlueDress.co.uk not converting at all and a slight dip in adsense rev too.

This month (a bit delayed i know) Humber TV will move from Mk1, BETA, or what ever you want to call it and should be a nice breeze of fresh air but most importantly offer some great services to the Humber area. In video advertising, commercial videos, DVD production for distribution, Media company access to help with advertising packages for their clients and enduser media submission.

To finish off on it was nice to warn KCOM about a major security hole for email and hosting accounts with Karoo accounts. Hopefully they will be on the case and enforced a fix by now.

For many years now the people of Hull have had to go to Kingston Comms for a Hull Phone Number or Hull landline.

That has now all changed and you can order a Hull number or landline through other companies.

These include Hull numbers through a VoIP phone system which gives you huge flexible options. A historical standard fixed phone line like the one available from Kingston Communications or even a sim card that you can use in mobiles but has a 01482 number as a land line and not the usual 07 xxxxxxxx format.

If this is something you want more information about please visit Hull Phone Numbers and complete the form for more information or a call back.

Just bagged 2 more Yorkshire domains today.

• YorkshireDesign.co.uk
• YorkshireSEO.co.uk

These for a fair price are a nice addition to the other 4 I have of which 2 have page ranking of 3 and 2.

• FilmYorkshire.co.uk Page Rank 3
• FoodYorkshire.co.uk
• YorkshireBlinds.co.uk Page Rank 2
• YorkshireBeds.co.uk

They all are good solid investments in my eyes and are worth more with even one page or holding page on. This keeps them in Googles eyes and search bots and helps keep any page rank or back links. I could develop further with paid for content but with these going on top of 100’s  of other domains I think I’ll stick with the 1 page for now.

Noticing a lot of old domains dropping from been registered in 1996+ and have had a site up and running since then. So once fleshed out with a mini site they should be a good slow burner. The last 2 I missed catching were reysrods.co.uk and europeanlife.co.uk both from over 10 years old!

Last local one I caught is HullWhitePages.co.uk which will just have a simple custom Google search on, along with a few graphics. Hopefully should do well and is a good portal for people to catch on to.

Completed a few short 45 second long promo videos for the Freedom centre. These just highlighted future events and turned out really nice. Gave me a boost on pushing this type of video to other businesses and the good thing is they can use them on their web site and are featured on Humber.TV too.

Looking to cut back on my domains I’m letting a lot drop that in my eyes I could do without renewing as 10 would cost £70 for 2 years! On the flip side all my Hull domains are now listed on HullDomians.co.uk and give the ability for visitors to show an interest and place an offer in through a form system. To start my campaign off to either rent them out or sell them I’ve placed an Ad in the Hull Daily Mail for a week starting 19th February.

Just bought 2 domains YorkshireSEO.uk and YorkshireDesign.co.uk for £60 which I thought was a bargain and should be able to get them ranking and sold on to a local business. (if I don’t use them myself)

Looking through my SAGE accounts I noticed I’d dropped a bombshell and missed nearly everyones hosting renewals from last year. #fail But should be a nice boost for a few bills I have come up or have now.

I took a punge and turned off my shop plugin for JokeShop.org.uk and made posts as normal posts but mirrored the path so not to upset Google etc. Instead of actually selling products myself I’m giving” Paid on results” affiliate links from Silly Jokes. Traffic from my site is directed to them I make a sale and I get a cut of it but has proven shite TBH.

I may turn the shop back on if by the end of this month I don’t make one sale.

I’m quite a laid back “do anything for anyone” kind of guy, but over the past few months I’m seeing more and more reason to look after No1 more. Dog eat dog world it’s turning into I just need to look at every situation a little more before jumping in to the rescue or offering.

I found my CV on an old memory stick and decided to apply for a few jobs in SEO, Marketing etc just to see what response I get as theirs no harm in trying to see what bites I get from it. I actually wouldn’t mind going into a decent company to work on SEO and online marketing for companies. I would do a bad job too! ;o)

I decided to pull the internet connection from Beverley as I was only using it twice a week for 1 or 2 hours and was costing £40 + a month. So just a waste really.

Final thought for me about my Hull Domains, I may need to educate business about mini sites and “do what you say on the tin” domains buy hopefully enough will get it and opt for the rent option to try and test.

Looking at ways to always make extra pennies from mini sites I was surprised to see £4-5 from a broadband site I’d set up a few years back. Looking into this a little more broadband clicks pay quite well from £1 to £5+ which does make it worth while.

Broadband in general and even mobile broadband isn’t really a niche no more and so >Geo<broadband.co.uk sites do well as they haven’t been tapped into that much as your Talk Talk’s BT’s and Virgins cover the whole UK.

proving that it does pay well and works I bought 3 domains of cities over 100’000 in population and setup 3 mini sites with a simple html template.

• LutonBroadband.co.uk
• BradfordBroadband.co.uk
• BrightonBroadband.co.uk

Once they show up in Search Engines and have a bit of age I’ll add the to a WordPress install and make regular posts to them about the pit falls and tips of broadband etc.  I’ve lost my login for Affiliate window and so need to send an email so that I can also add affiliate links which do pay more money but they have to sign up to get the commissions

Luton, Bradford and Brighton been fairly large towns should prove a popular search group with people online and if proven a winner easily cloned  ( not the content the idea ;o) )

Need to rant so here’s 1

-start rant-

Why do people think just because the phone isn’t agaist their ear its ok to DRIVE and use a mobile by having it on speaker phone and holding it infront of them AGGGHhhhhh.

-end of rant-

Slowing down on registering domains and booking catches with catch services just lately. Everyone is feeling the pinch and need more time to develop domains I already have anyway. Spending £30 – £50 for a catch is all good and well but need to be followed up with a live indexed site.

Humber wind farms or the whole wind farm idea in the Holderness East coast area seems a fab prospect for the area business,  jobs and just the green side of it. Myself I think we should dam part of the Humber off and be 100% guaranteed energy but I’m sure that won’t happen in my life time and the depth just isn’t there.

Looking forward I need to split myself into 50 I think or make a plan of action and STICK to it. Lots happening gand theirs me trying to juggle it all. With Humber TV’s 1 year Birthday coming up (party??)  I’m hoping that I have a set standard with all programs that get published. A nice intro tune, credits, graphics and just over all a better feel to them. This all does take time and think shows will need to be cut down more I think to a maximum of 20 minutes ish.

As mentioned in my last post – Looking at producing a few promotional videos to a fair standard at a good price for comapnies to use and for me to use on Humber TV, You Tube, Vimeo, mini websites like Hull Beds, Hull tyres. I have a few in mind which will look good and should give people and companies an idea of how it will look and work.

Keeping on domains I’m surprised none of my Premium ones haven’t been hunted down by big chains. PriceCrunch.net BodyCreams.co.uk BodyConfidence.co.uk to name just 3 as a £x’xxx or even a £xx’xxx would be nice right now. Well worth renewing and developing for an investment me thinks.

I’ll finish off by asking any businesses who spend money on advertising on or offline to get in touch to see how I can help you gain more clients by using my many portals.

New Year and New goals will be in the form of a marketing service that weirdly enough rolls all the things I have been doing for the past 2 years into one! SEO, Domains, mini sites, Video, Photos, Content writing etc They goals will be having a ques of businesses wanting to get involved.

First stop will be to create 3-5 example showcases of how it looks and works as everyone likes to see examples of anything they are buying into. FACT!

On the domain front I am letting a lot of them drop if I think they are way too much effort to even start to gain any revenue or are not gems. I would say 5% are niche domains / Websites like PlayParachutes.co.uk (not dev yet) that will become cash cows for advertising rev or actual e commerce sites selling products on stock. The other 95% are the GEO domains like my HullBeds.co.uk which will be slowly moved over from the BIG ‘G’ to REAL – LOCAL companies where they will be featuring on other sites I have.

3 Words I hated since I started out in business in early 2008 is VAT, TAX and Books. If I could give anyone any advice in starting up a business, it’s “Get an accountant ASAP”. You may think £100-£200 a month to do ALL your accounts is steep but boy is it worth it in the end. It frees you up to do other work YOU get paid for and is one less stressful thing in your life.

Be careful (as I have found out) you do get shocking accountants that just don’t talk to you and you get some FAB ones.

Other Goals and plans that I do hope will help Humber TV are ones with local groups or business. I can offer News and video coverage to help promote their services and they can offer me the use of the facilities there. Maybe the use of  a Board room, meeting rooms, Gym, etc it’s a little bit of back scratching that costs both parties no cash.

As I always look at situations to see how they can be turned into profit, the snow and ice was a hard one but…..

I’ve noticed lots of gutting hanging off buildings / houses and thought they will need replacing in a week or so and decided to knock up a very quick single page website on “Guttering in Hull”.

HullGuttering.co.uk

I’m hoping as it is so niche that once indexed it will shoot to page one on search engines and get a few clicks to at least pay the domain reg fee back. I know for a fact businesses that fit guttering will have a busy few months ahead of themseleves!

Update: Since putting it LIVE it’s made £1 LOL but is on most phrases page 1, so we’ll see how it does when people start to call in the new year to get guttering fix or replaced.

I have collected 150+ Geo & service/product domains besides the 500+ Hull domains I have like BristolGyms.co.uk and the others below.

• CardiffLocksmiths.co.uk
• CardiffNetworking.co.uk
• Edinburgh-SkipHire.co.uk
• BradfordNetworking.co.uk
• BelfastAccountants.co.uk
• LincolnDoors.co.uk
• LincolnEstateAgent.co.uk
• LincolnFencing.co.uk
• LincolnGarages.co.uk
• LincolnGyms.co.uk
• LincolnLighting.co.uk
• LincolnOpticians.co.uk
• LiverpoolNetworking.co.uk
• PlymouthNetworking.co.uk
• SheffieldAdvertising.co.uk
• SheffieldCleaners.co.uk
• EdinburghNetworking.co.uk

A guy contacted me trying to sell a .com domain he had registered only 30 days ago and I had the .co.uk version. By the sounds of things he has blasted emails out to all local businesses suggesting they make an offer for the domain.

Doing it they way he has, has probably pissed a lot of businesses off and has put a lot of brick walls up in front of them if I ever wanted to offer my domains to them. Although I do make money from them monthly it was nice to feel I could at some point offer them for sale to local businesses.

I’m just on a mission to get all of my geo domains live and have decided not to go down the WordPress route for them all to save time and resources – At the moment the sites live generate a nice bit and once all live, indexed and have visitors I think £1k+ a month would be ideal sum to start at (fingers crossed). It would help if the revenue increased a bit soon, as renewals come in batches and can be £100+ a pop.

I have had a few calls regarding the geo domains and would rather rent them out than sell out right! So I’d best build them quick and stack em high!

UPDATE

I was called in December 2010 by a local Aerial fitter who wanted a Hull, Goole, Scunthorpe etc numbers from my Hull VoIP website which diverted to his mobile. I got him setup with a Hull number and made my HullAerials.co.uk reflect his new number to drive traffic to him.

I can see he’s had a fair few calls but think it will be in the first few weeks of 2011 he’ll see more calls filter through. I will be renting the site out to him at just £25 per month and will add content weekly to help with rankings.

Last month I became the proud owner of a nice set of recycling domains for quite a few cities in the UK. Examples below are the set I have.

Recycling is a business that will just grow and grow a bit like an undertaker theirs always a demand for it. When searching Google people or businesses usually search for what they want and then drill down again and add the city they need the product or service.

Google is now noting where you are and are showing local results based on your current location which again having a domain that says what you do on the tin helps!

• EdinburghRecycling.co.uk
• BirminghamRecycling.co.uk
• GlasgowRecycling.co.uk
• CoventryRecycling.co.uk
• SunderlandRecycling.co.uk
• BrightonRecycling.co.uk
• ManchesterRecycling.co.uk
• NewcastleRecycling.co.uk
• BristolRecycling.co.uk
• HullRecycling.co.uk
• LiverpoolRecycling.co.uk

We are looking at either selling out right, offering a website build package, domain rental and selling them all as a set. Any of these would be for the right price for us both.

Recycling as a growing culture is also big business for companies and so should see value in a domain that shouts what you do and where you are based.

Think about it………..not too long and get in touch!

Bit of a bombshell hit me the other week which I won’t go into but god it felt like I had a voodoo doll somewhere and was getting it right in the neck! Hopefully I will sort that situation out before the end of September and can move on with a clean slate. Big black cross next to that individual.

I always say people who want jobs doing for next to nothing and/or haggle on prices are not worth the hassle. Well how true is it with a job I have now, it’s a peanuts job but they want the earth to revolve around them 24/7. Although the extra cash was welcomed I feel like a genie in a lamp who needs to perform miracles.

Setup and Getting into FaceBook, Twitter, You Tube, Vimeo and are seeing results by the way of people viewing the pages whether it be a video or a post but then clicking through to Humber.TV which is a result for unique visitors.

Twitter I use daily, i do seem to be getting on well and are trying not to follow every Tom, Dick and Heather that follows me.

You Tube is a great one as I’m posting RAW unedited video and prviews of video’s that are say 20 minutes long ASAP of me recording them. People are searching for that event and viewing the video but then clicking through to Humber.tv from You Tube which is a FAB way to increase the uniques per day.

Vimeo and FaceBook I only kicked off this week and so need to see results filter through over the coming weeks.

I’ve been building back links up for the site and am hoping that Google takes note and rewards it with a nice PR score and even better search results.

Recently we’ve done a bit of OB (outside Broadcasting) for Howden Show and Hull Pride to name just 2 and just them 2 alone drew in 100’s of extra visitors who wanted to find out more or wanted to see the video we shot. (T-shirts we wear have URL on back)

Just like buses this week I have had 2 calls regarding domains, but never struck a deal with either of them, which was a pity as they both need developing. I’ll maybe follow them up in a few weeks for a final nudge which would be nice to pay for an iPAD.

Latest bash at converting hard work into cash/results is my Hull domains AGAIN I know. I have bought a few 01482 numbers and placed them on a few sites one been Hull Recovery which gets a nice flow of traffic but not much revenue. It’s going quite well as I forward the numbers to businesses (helps to track calls) and hope once shown the statistics agree a small monthly fee, and then multiplied 35+ will a nice monthly income. (fingers crossed)

Final thought for today to self – Get out more, meet and talk to people but you must get an iPAD soon!
UPDATE: I have an IPAD WHOO HOO – If you need help setting one up and your in Hull call 01482 240087 and quote this site!

As for the numbers I bought for sites like Hull Recovery, Hull Taxis etc they died a dealth. When I called they didn’t think they would or was doing any good (call records proved other wise). It maybe that they would be ideal for a new start up who hasn’t got any traffic or exposure, but we’ll see.