Most of the time, especially online, ESPECIALLY in the domain industry: you don’t know people as well as you think you do. The best advice I was given when I first entered into domaining was simply that there are a lot of sharks in this industry. The best advice I can give is sometimes people aren’t as bad as what they perceive themselves to be or the conclusion that you gather from fragmented opinions and blog posts.

The biggest factor is to take what the person claims to be and let it speak for itself.

My point is: it doesn’t matter how nice someone is if they are not living up to the very standards they uphold for themselves or the claims they make in public. If anyone remembers Patty from DNF, you will know exactly what I am talking about. She had her claws around so many domainers, quickly injected herself into our community and earned our trust.

I believe the opposite can be true. This isn’t to excuse anyone’s behavior but to say sometimes the “strong personalities” of the domain industry still have something of value to offer whether it be advice, a service or insight. Unfortunately, because of their method of delivery, people tend to shut them out and miss out on the good chunks of their message.

I learned to spit out the fat and chew the meat when it comes to what people have to say or do. However, sometimes you learn that people deliver nothing BUT fat then it becomes easy to dismiss them completely.

Then I took the time to know more about him personally via Facebook & email interactions. Turns out he is a husband and Father to a beautiful family. I also learned about his struggles with the lack of support from many domainers, even those who benefit from being on Domaining.com. That was made especially evident when he added the donation button.

The truth is, Domaining.com has brought many of us traffic, dedicated readers and even revenue throughout the years. I am ashamed at some of the reactions when being called to help support it.

Domaining.com is a project that has ran for a long time without proper support. I believe it is time to show some appreciation back by either linking to other projects (Valuate.com, BargainDomains.com, PremiumDomains.com, Catchy.com, etc), purchasing advertising space or buying a sponsored headline here or there. Francois is sure to show it back by improving & marketing the site: something that is a win/win for us all.

THE CHEF AND THE PATRONS

The Chef, he serves
A daily domainer feast
And sprinkles hors d’oeuvres
There at their feets
And daily they feast
And they eat and they eat

Day after day, they
Reap the rewards
Of the Chef’s great cooks
They munch and they horde
But for the Chef
It it also a reward
A relationship which consists
Of Create and discard

One day, the Chef
After many years he served
Noticed a decrease
Of meat and hors d’oeuvres
While the patrons, they feast
And took more than they earned
What is left to be fair?
As many returned
The Chef became a little concerned

He gave them numbers
And made them wait
For shrimp or steak
They want on their plates
So all may have
A strip on their plate
But not all were happy
Especially Fat Jake

Fat Jake threw a fit
He hissed and he screamed
He pointed to his belly
Which poked through his seams
The Chef was unfair
And crushed his fat dreams
Or so it seems

“You need me”, Yelled Fat Jake
“Who else will dine and eat?”
“And horde the hors d’oeuvres”
“You lay at our feet?”
All which he said while his pockets
Were lined with chocolate treats
He cried incomplete

The Chef, he then told
A Story so bold
Of a thousand domainer children
All hungry and cold
Each day they fight for scraps
After Fat Jake is full and
Done lining his pockets
For his single household

With a smile and twitch
They turned away Fat Jake
Which in turn left more steak
To the ones who do not take
More than their fair share
There was even cheesecake
And from then on forward
A beautiful relationship of
Fair give And fair take

A better explanation might be something that nearly anyone can connect with and root for. Example:

Joe wanted to run a flower shop located in New York so he pays $300 and registers the business name Cool Flowers, LLC. After two months of looking, Joe decides to rent a shop on the corner of Lincoln and Park Street. On opening day, two hundred curious pedestrians visit Joe’s shop and this continues on a daily basis for about a month as he begins to establish a return customer base. Joe choose this particular business location because it was near a local hospital and wedding chapel. In addition, he offers his beautiful designs at a fraction of what the hospital and chapels charge. Because of this prime location, Joe’s smart decision made him one of the most successful flower shops in New York.

What do you think of when you see the words “gas” or “oil“? Probably the BP oil spill. Would you dare compare domain names to oil or gas? Would you call yourself an oil company?

The same goes for us when we use the terms “real estate investor” or “web real estate”, etc. With thousands of people still losing their homes and looking for jobs, maybe it’s time to temporarily change what scenarios we use and who we compare ourselves to in the “real world”.

Still not convinced? Read the ridiculous article titled “Biz model for domain names to change” on PublicRadio.org (discussion thread at DNF).

• foot odor fetishes
• wallpaper glues unsafe for consumption
• safe fingernail mold remover
• correct ways on how to scratch a cat’s butt
• spider herpes and protecting the garden
• microsoft paint & ascii art tutorials
• transferring domains offline while hiding from the mafia
• lava lamp phobic men and the women who love them

Please submit your domains in the comments below. Thanks in advance.

On another note, I would like to request that people who read my blog only do so wearing proper attire. ( I wouldn’t exactly visit your blog in the nude, now would I? ) I have installed an Are You Decent WP plugin that automatically detects those browsing in the buff. Those individuals will be redirected back to Domaining.com and your home address ticketed for indecent exposure.

Lead companies such as LeadPile.com and Leads.com buy targeted leads from individuals. However, the reason I suggest starting here is because they know what categories sell and what companies are looking for.  For instance, LeadPile suggests the following categories as their top payouts:

• Payday
• Homeowner
• Bankruptcy
• Auto Financing
• Debt Settlement
• etc.

Not only do these categories make great lead generation but they also mirror the timeless, commercial components of a good keyword domain. Good examples from the “Bankruptcy” category would be:

• Bankruptcy Firm
• Bankruptcy Consulting
• Bankruptcy Lawyer
• Business Bankruptcy
• etc.

If you are new to domaining, I would suggest beginning with one domain from any of those categories and initially learning to scale / SEO that one domain.

Schedule Content to Release

Sometimes it is difficult to find the inspiration to write. Sometimes you may be springing full of ideas and can’t wait to publish five articles at once. Make great use of scheduling content in intervals that span over a period of time. Most CMS systems (Wordpress, Joomla, etc) now have this feature. It is better to have the appearance that your website updates on a regular basis than to release tons of content at once while your site gathers cobwebs over the next two months.

Encourage Discussion

Comments themselves can be great content to read. There is an actual art form on how to close an article or blog post that can encourage more comments. The article itself can be tailored to inspire conflicting opinions that result in debates via comments (which is a completely different subject but worth looking into). Either way, this is updated content.

Allow Users to Submit Content

You might not want to do this with your personal blog but this article is a good read: How to use WordPress to build a website with user-generated content…Furthermore, I believe for niche sites (beside a personal blog) you should give users an opportunity to contribute in some way. This can be in the form of comments, directory submission, article submission, profile editing, content editing, video submission, etc. The more you allow them to contribute to the actual growth of the website the better chance they turn into a return visitor (and eventually a dedicated user).

“Auto Pilot” Your Content

I am a huge fan of automation. If you have an opportunity to turn (even in part) some of your content into auto generating updates, do it. An example is GoodFuckinMorning.com which chooses content from a database and updates itself at midnight on a daily basis. Another example is from TiaWood.com that shows random thumbnails from the Domainer Directory with every page view.

Assign Yourself Topics

I write better if I know the topic of what I am writing about. For instance, TiaWood.com is divided into sections with two main areas that get constant attention: “Articles” and “Learn“. Those two areas are further divided into categories: “News“, “Industry Reviews“, “In the Spotlight“, etc. I have an actual schedule that I tend to every morning that looks something like this:

17th – Blog.TiaWood.com

18th – TiaWood.com : Industry Reviews

etc.

I may not know the exact title of what I want to write about (need to have some sort of spontaneous subject matter. ) but I do know my topics. It helps keep me focused and ensures that different areas on my website get an update.

Write Down All Ideas

Write down all ideas even if you cannot write on them right away. (I wrote down the idea for this article last week.) If you need to update your site but have no idea what to write (guess what?!) this is very helpful. The “muse” can be quickly sparked by going back to a compilation of things you wanted to write about.

There are many different methods for keeping your site (or blog) fresh with the overall key being quality and execution which you should never sacrifice and the sanity which you must always keep.

For one, good keywords are still widely available to register. In search engine testing, I was able to get the domain keyword to appear right under their .com twin. Also, to my surprise, a good handful get type-in traffic and revenue in parking.

DOTcom is best but not the only “ruler” of the internet. You can succeed on any good alternative extension (right, Bruce?) given you are building a website and with a real goal.

.im already looks familiar (despite meaning Isle of Man) because it is also short for “instant message”. (”Hey, Sally. IM me sometime?”). I think someone would do well branding this to their users.

I am going to make like Rick Schwartz and offer you some numbers, numbers, numbers.

Recent sales as reported by NameBio for over $1k:

• hotels.im $2,082 sedo.com
• mobile.im $7,000  afternic.com
• sale.im $1,470  sedo.com
• gay.im $1,033 sedo.com
• my.im $1,796 sedo.com

Nothing major. It still has a few milestones but .im is definitely not as useless as .tel.

Developed .im sites with decent traffic:

• Adium.im
• Trillian.im
• Tweet.im
• Pic.im
• Tr.im (died because of competition with Twitter’s Bit.ly. Visit site for more info)
• CV.im

My good friend, Dave, sent me an email this morning about a New York Times article (Local Governments Offer Data to Miners). The article explains how some local governments are opening public access to their data via the internet and how some developers are integrating that data into mashups. What does this mean for domainers? More options to integrate content & mashable features into your websites, especially for geo domain holders.

“Cameroon’s .cm domain has long been popular with domain name scammers, or typosquatters, who register sites with the intention of getting traffic from unsuspecting users who mistype ‘.com’.

These sites are either monetised with online ads or infected with malware and other potentially unwanted programs, said McAfee.”

This is pretty much the basic over generalization that we don’t need, however thankful we should be they did not use the terms “domain investors” or “domainers”.

The safest domain, according the Mcafee, was .jp for the second year in a row with .gov being the safest non-country domain. Unfortunately, .com was tagged as the second most dangerous . In total, McAfee scanned “27 million web sites and 104 top level domains (TLDs)”.

For more information on the metrics McAfee uses to rate websites, download, e-commerce vulnerabilities and more visit “How It Works” on SiteAdvisor.com

Resources

• V3.co.uk – McAfee names dodgiest domains
• Ciol.com – McAfee reveals the riskiest web domains to surf and search

According to technewsworld.com(1995):

“…Single-letter domains were set aside because of technical worries about whether the growing need for domain names could be met. ICANN was reserving the ability to append a single letter to a name (www.technewsworld.t.com for instance) to split the database into 26 distinct portions. That never became necessary and some businesses have been pushing for ICANN to release the single letters….”

“…Six single-letter domain names were registered before ICANN reserved them. They are q.com for Qwest Communications (NYSE: Q); x.com for PayPal; z.com for Nissan’s Z cars; i.net, a domain name registration company; q.net, registered to “Q Networks,” but the Web site was down when checked; x.org for the X.Org Foundation, an open-source organization. Other single-letter domain names may be online as soon as next year…”

Other Interesting References:

• http://domainnamewire.com/2009/02/15/single-letter-biz-domains-closer-to-reality/

• http://www.udrplaw.net/udrp/governance/icann/single-letter-domain-names.html

Footnote: On a semi related note, Paypal now has an API which means you don’t necessarily have to redirect people to Paypal anymore for site payments. Paypal API documentation is here.