IIJM.com: Cool Development of an LLLL.com as an Abbreviation

I just happened to come across the site IIJM.com earlier today and thought that it was kind of a cool LLLL.com that was developed as an abbreviation (for “Is It Just Me”). I didn’t join the site but it is kind of a clever idea to let people post/rant by posting a short Twitter style message that begins with, “Is it just me, or do you ________?”

There are plenty of LLLL.com domains that have been developed as 4 letter words or as brandable domains but do you know of any others that have been developed as abbreviations (not including those that that are just abbreviations of a company name)?

Have you developed any LLLL.com/LLL.com’s?

I own JJU.com and have plans to develop it into a Jiu Jitsu website but I just need to devote some time to it instead of some of my other development projects that have been keeping me swamped – what do you think?

Consumer Media Network: Smart Category Killer .org Domain Strategy

While I am not ordinarily a huge fan of .org’s (the only .org that we have is a home loan calculator website) I did recently stumble across what I think is a very smart use of a number of category killer .org domains by the Consumer Media Network.

Ordinarily, .org domains can seem a little off in ordinarily very commercial niches if not done right but one of the reasons that I like Consumer Media Network’s strategy is that it appears like they are:

A) Choosing domains with high search volume in very competitive niches.

B) Positioning the sites from the “consumer” angle and not adding a lot of monetization to the sites so that they can justify the use of the .org from a common sense point of view and more importantly so that they can potentially attract some links that a more commercially oriented site would not be able to get (then they will more than likely monetize the sites up the wazoo if they are able to attract enough links to start ranking high).

C) Offering unique designs and high quality images with surprisingly high quality content as well (from the limited articles that I read).

Here is a listing of some of the websites in their portfolio from their home page:

MotorcycleInsurance.org

TravelInsurance.org

PersonalLoans.org

HomeownersInsurance.org

TermLifeInsurance.org

RentersInsurance.org

PaydayLoans.org

MedicalInsurance.org

HomeLoans.org

BoatInsurance.org

All in all, they seem to have a very good grasp of one strategy that could work well for .org domains. What do YOU think?

Case Study Friday: Computer.asia

This week’s Case Study Friday features a great one word domain ending in an alternate TLD: Computer.asia. This computer site was submitted by Chris so let’s see if we can all give him some feedback on what he was done with the site so far and hopefully also give him some tips for improving the site.

To make things flow a little better I thought I would put some of my thoughts in bullet point form and then please chime in via the comments:

- I would try to stay away from dynamic looking URL’s like this: http://www.computer.asia/page.php?page=about as much as possible especially for static pages like an about page.

- Consider separating the TOS onto its own page instead of merging it onto the about page.

- The web 2.0 drop shadow is all the rage of course but spending the money to do a professional looking logo would be well worth the effort I think and the enhanced branding could go a long way to make sure users remember to type in computer.asia instead of computer.com the next time they want to visit the site.

- I really like the star ratings as it adds a nice level of interactivity as well as a value add to what is just a news aggregator essentially. That being said, it looks to me like every single article is rated 5 stars so there could be an issue there.

- I really do like the overall nice clean look of the site. The colors are great and I think its just the right approach for a computer news oriented site. With the addition of a professional logo and some buttons then it could look even better (I especially like the cool transparent effect for the login box when you click on “Login” on the top right).

- I keep thinking that there should be a test link to “Home” to the left of the “Published News” button.

- The site has 100 pages indexed in Yahoo and 522 links according to Yahoo Site Explorer as well as a PR of 3 so there is definitely some link building done so far which is very good to see. The one downside that I can see just from looking at the site’s link profile is that it appears that most of the links are domaining related links. This is not that bad because the computer niche and the domaining niche are semi related in that they are both in the “tech” family tree (although very distantly related cousins at best ). The potential downside to this domaining heavy link profile is that there could be some kind of filter that is tripped that discount the site links and in turn rankings to some degree but that is just my paranoid speculation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting a couple or ten domaining related links for a non domaining niche site but when almost all of the links are domaining related then there could be a problem.

- There is a lot of white space underneath the comment section of individual article pages like this: http://www.computer.asia/story.php?title=singapore-gets-google-street-view-finally – rather than have all of that wasted white space it would be better to show things like related articles, products to buy, advertisements, anything at all really.

- I really like that this site has a lot of different social media type features to stimulate people to interact with the site and leave comments, reviews, star ratings, tags, etc. One potential downside is that in order to do any of these things a user must first create an account. Making people create an account before allowing them to comment will dramatically cut down on spam but it will also cut down on good comments as well as some people just do not want to create an account for whatever reason. One thing to consider would be to either open up the participation for non members or think of some different ways to inventivize people to become members like offering a members only newsletter or offering a point ranking system for members to compete against each other in some way, etc.

- The site should have more original content. It seems like most, if not all, of the content in the site are news feeds. The content is certainly relevant to the Asian computer market, but original analysis and articles would help with the search engine traffic.

- You probably shouldn’t show navigation to categories with no content. It’s disconcerting to check out a link from the menu and just get a blank page to appear.

- One really little thing I noticed that I like is the back-to-top button in the footer. It’s nice to have that little button to save my fingers from more scrolling

What do YOU think?

My Guest Post for a Personal Finance Blog on Domain Name Investing

Many domainers talk about the need to educate “end users” and further the domain name industry by telling people about the value of domain names. Now is your chance to chime in with some comments on a guest post that I just got published on the popular personal finance blog FinancialSamurai.com (one of his posts about the flat tax received over 100 comments – nice!). Here is the guest post that I wrote so go check it out: Domain Name Investing 101 – Online Real Estate as an Asset Class

Maybe getting guest articles and guest posts published in non domaining related blogs, websites, newspapers, and magazines is a great strategy to further the domain name industry – what do you think?

If you think that this is a good idea then why not reach out to some mainstream bloggers, writers, and editors and give it a try?

I would especially like to see some articles from:

Aron Meystedt (writer of “Big Boys – It’s Time – Taking the Industry to the Next Level – I’m Contacting You TODAY” and “Seeking the End User — We are Missing the Target — It’s NOT the Fortune 500“)

Bruce Marler (writer of “Quit Blaming the End Users It Is A Domain Industry Problem“)

Rick Schwartz (the “Domain King”? nuff said. Ok, and also the writer of “Domainers Fail to Even SPOT an End User“)

How about you?

Who Owns the Best Domaining Domain out of all of the Domaining Blogs?

If you take Domaining.com out of the mix then who do you think has the absolute best domaining related domain name out of all of our list of the Top 100 Domaining Blogs?

Here are some of my favorites (talking purely about their domain names and not their actual websites):

DomainNameNews.com – What could be a better domain name for a domain name news site?

DomainSuperstar.com – Come on, I had to put our domain name on the list right?

Symbolics.com – First domain name ever registered = instant domainer street cred.

ChefPatrick.com – Somewhat confusing to people that assume he is a chef at first but what the domain name lacks by not having anything related to “domains” or “domaining” in the domain it makes up for in memorability.

DomainingTips.com – Contains the target keyword of “domaining” plus a nice short descriptive word.

What are YOUR picks for the best domaining domain name out of our entire list domaining blogs?

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