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?

Barack Obama/US Government: Best Domaining Portfolio?

I read these 2 posts a while back and I really enjoyed them but for some reason I just never got around to mentioning them. Aaron Wall from SEO Book makes some veeerrry interesting observations about Barack Obama’s use of domain names and the effect that it is having on certain niches in the SEO space. Highly recommended that you check them out:

Barack Obama Earns 2009 Domainer of the Year Award

The US Government is Getting into Domain Names (Cars.gov = Domaining on Steroids)

What kind of implications does this have for your domaining or domain development strategy?

Best Mozilla FireFox Plugins for SEO, Domaining, and Web Development

One of the reasons that FireFox is my favorite browser is the wealth of different plugins, extensions, addons, and themes that are available to use free of charge from the Mozilla community of developers. Here is a list of my personal favorite Mozilla FireFox plugins/addons/extensions for SEO, Domaining, web development, Internet marketing, etc:

1. Search Status – The Search Status FireFox plugin is primarily an SEO plugin and it lets you look up WhoIs information, backlinks, indexed pages, perform keyword analysis, highlight nofollow links, and much more for whatever domain you are currently visiting all with just one click.
2. Firebug – The Firebug FireFox plugin is a plugin designed for web developers that is an extreme timesaver for me. The plugin works by letting you see HTML, CSS, scripting, DOM information and much more in a little console box at the bottom of your browser with just one click. The feature that really sets Firebug apart though is that it will let you edit any websites style sheet on the fly and then in real time allow you to see the effect of those changes in your browser. Of course, you still have to change the style sheet on your site and then FTP it to your site to make the changes permanent but Firebug is a great way for both novice and experienced web developers to play around with the code and see how their changes affect the display of the site.
3. Colorzilla – The Colorzilla FireFox plugin is awesome because it lets you mouse over anything in your browser and it will tell you exactly what color it is both in RGB and in web safe HTML color code. Very easy to use and very useful.
4. Google Toolbar for FireFox – This one doesn’t need much explanation I would hope. BONUS: Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+K to do a Google search in FireFox (doesn’t require the Google toolbar).
5. InFormEnter – This data entry FireFox plugin makes any field on a website a clickable drop down field where you can select information that you specify ahead of time to fill into the field with no typing required.
6. SearchKeys – This FireFox search engine enhancement plugin allows you to simply type in the number of a search result in a Google or Yahoo results page and it will take you there automatically without any mouse movement or clicking. This is pretty sweet when you combine it with the keyboard shortcut mentioned earlier. If you want to do a Google search you just hit Ctrl+K, type in your search term, hit enter, and then press the number of the result that you want to go to (i.e. press “1″ on your number pad for result #1)

Those are some of my favorites although I am sure that I am missing some that I have used in the past since I recently reinstalled FireFox on my new home office computer set up. What are your favorite FireFox addons and plugins? Also, would it be useful to you if we made any of our tools into widgets/FireFox plugins or addons?

The #1 Reason Why Your Domains Are Not Making You Money

Whether you park your domains, develop your domains, or really no matter what you do with your domains – I bet that I know why your domains are not making you much money (or at least not as much as they could be making you). I bet that I could tell you why your domains are performing so poorly before I even know what they are or what’s on them. You want the answer?

The answer is TRUST. Let’s face it most domainers do not have trustworthy looking e-commerce web properties. Here are some clues that you are losing a LOT of money because most users do not trust what they see:

1. Your domains are parked and they look the same as they did in 1997. Web users are becoming more and more sophisticated. The same person who visited your parked domain in 2003 and would happily click away on various “search results” to their hearts content and drive your PPC earnings through the roof will now arrive at your site and then hit the back button as soon as they see this girl’s smiling face.

2. Your developed domains look like they were developed by a domainer and not a web developer. Let me be the first to say that I have had some domains that I have personally developed back in the day before I knew what I was doing that look truly horrendous (and some of them are still floating around and in dire need of an overhaul). Let me also say that taking a risk and developing your domains all on your own is admirable because it is much better than just sitting back and doing nothing.

That being said, be honest with yourself and if your domains have flashing lights, weird little animated figurines, or any other number of things that scream “bush league” or even worse “scam” then it’s time to get real and start making website overhaul plans if you really want to maximize your earnings.

Before you get too cocky about how great your site looks just because your site doesn’t offend as bad as this one then check to make sure your site design looks current and you have other trust signals like an about us page, a privacy policy page, a contact us page, a site map, a testimonials page, etc.

3. Your domain name sends all the wrong signals. No, I don’t just mean that your domain name can be construed as meaning something other than its intended to. What I mean is that the very first thing that a potential customer, client, or user of your website sees is not your website design but it is your domain name. We can’t all have a domain name like cars.com but come on; do we really think that most people feel comfortable about wanting to submit their personal information on a site with a domain name like 123-fast-cheap-online-car-deals.info?

Trust is king. Use our domain name tools to consistently find money making, trust inspiring domain names. Sign up for a $3 premium membership trial today!

Domain Name Value

There is an absolute ton of different things to consider when finding a domain name’s value. I will probably go into more detail in a future post on each of these different domain valuation considerations but here is a list that I put together just off of the top of my head with some different domain value metrics to consider when attempting to evaluate the worth of a domain name:

1. Age – The older the better.

2. TLD – The superior domain extension will probably always remain the .com.

3. Keywords – Keyword domain names will always have value – especially if they are an exact match.

4. No Hyphens – Un-hyphenated domains will always trump hyphenated domains everything else being equal.

5. Short – The shorter the better.

6. Easy to Spell – The easier it is to spell the better.

7. One Possible Spelling – If there are alternative spellings then not so good.

8. Last Letter/First Letter Double Letters – This is when the last letter of one word is the same as the first letter of the next word (i.e. alaskAAutoinsurance.com). This is maybe a small thing and there are of course many valuable domains that have this characteristic but this adds some negative points in my personal criterion.

9. User Intent – Some domains contain keywords that show strong user intent to take a favorable action (i.e. “buy”, “rates”, etc.) while other domains contain words that are more informational in nature (i.e. “guide” “info” etc.). On a side note, sometimes you may find that a domain name that is more informational in nature is better. It all depends on the niche and goal of your website.

10. Branding – While studentloanconsolidationinterestrates.com may be an exact match keyword domain name – let’s face it. It’s not going to be on any TV commercials anytime soon.

How Do You Value Domain Names?

Ok, I purposefully only included the first 10 things that popped into my mind. Come on, fire away! What domain value metrics did I miss?

Additional Recommended Reading:

How to Choose a Domain Name (25 Rules)
Watch Me Hand Register Keyword Domain Names worth More than $100
What is a Premium Domain Name?

Once you have read the above and contributed some of your domain name value tips then it is time to take action and get started finding some great domain names! Take full advantage of all of our domain name tool’s premium features and find yourself some money making domain names by signing up to become a premium member today!

The Best Domaining Home Office Computer Set Up?

One thing that I love about domaining and really any type of Internet marketing or web work is that as long as you have a computer and an Internet connection then you can make money from anywhere in the world. I remember years and years ago it was (and still is really) just the coolest feeling for me to think that with something as simple as tapping on a keyboard I could start to make money online by virtue of hard work and smarts alone.

That being said, it is still a lot of fun to “pimp out” your domaining home office computer set up. Here are a couple pictures and some information about my home office set up and then also a picture and link to my all time favorite home office set up. (Also, Shanker Bakshi also has a pretty comprehensive list of images of well known Internet marketers, domainers, and web workers and their home offices).

My Home Office

My home office has 3 30″ Samsung monitors, a Dell T5400 workstation with a quad core processor and 32 gigs of memory, and a really cool adjustable electric “Geek Desk” that adjusts up and down with a touch of a button so that I can work both sitting and standing. I also have a Dell laptop w/ a 17″ screen and 4 gigs of memory that I use when I prefer to work from a different room or on the road (and if I am really in a bind then I can use my wife’s pink Dell laptop which is much newer and nicer than my laptop ).

Down Position: 26″ off of the ground for sitting

Up Position: 46.5″ off of the ground for working while standing

The Ultimate Home Office

Although I love my home office set up especially because I think that 3 monitors is the sweet spot (this study shows that having 3 monitors increases productivity by 35.5%) and 2 monitors is too hard to concentrate because you have to look at the crack between the 2 monitors and 4 or more monitors is just too distracting I just had to include a picture of Stefan Didak’s home office:

Ok, now that we are all officially in awe of Stefan Didak’s home office – what kind of set up do you have for your home office?

Type In Traffic Questions

We recently received a series of questions related to type in traffic by a visitor to our site and I thought that they were great questions so after replying to his questions in an email I decided to include the transcript of our email exchange as it may be useful for anyone else that has had these type in traffic questions. Here it is:

Message from our contact form:

I just visited your site for the 1st time. I am very intriged by the type-in domain name idea. I think this idea may work for me for either by redirecting the name or with mini sites (depending on the specifics).

Three Questions:
1) Do you have any information about how much of this type-in traffic actually takes place. Is there any way of finding the amount of this traffic for a particular term?

2) If I have a type-in domain name redirected to my main name, is there a way to track the traffic that comes via the that name. I use Google Analytics. I can see how to do this if I have a mini site, but not sure how with a redirect.

3) If I set up a mini site with a type-in name do you have any wisdom on how much of a boost I would get from a type-in domain name in the SERPS vs a page url with the same terms?

My Response:

Hi,

1) It is estimated that as much as 10-15% of all Internet traffic is type-in traffic (Link)

2) It depends on the type of redirect that you use (Link)

3) I have first hand experience as well as experience from many other SEO’s that having a domain name that matches exactly to a keyword phrase will definitely give a very large boost to rankings. I have ranked sites almost immediately for competitive keyword phrases within weeks of putting up a site on a domain that matches exactly to the keyword or keyword phrase (I wrote this guest post for SEO Moz recently: Link and there is also this article from SEO Book among many others: Link)

Hope that this helps and we would encourage you to sign up for premium membership to enjoy full access to all of our tools as well as access to our website development tutorial videos. – Joel

PS Our premium membership is discounted from the full price of $97/month to $47/month right now but on 5/1 the price increased to $77/month so if you are contemplating joining then be sure and join before 5/1 to lock in the lower price for lifetime.

Thanks!

2nd Message (I have changed the details of his search terms to protect any domains that he may want to purchase that he found using the type in traffic tool – although keep in mind that all domain names found using the type in traffic finder tool go into the keyword domain repository and are available immediately for premium members to look through):

Joel,

Thanks for your quick response. This may very well help with a problem I am
trying to solve.

I have a couple of follow-on questions

1) I noticed that the 10-15% type-in traffic was from an old source and
several of the comments predicted a decline. Do you have any feel how this
has changed since the date of the article?

2)About Exact match. Example: I am looking at a domain name for a common FAQ for my product.
At the moment I have a page on my site targeted at the FAQ “How to do a
***.” I have tried several page names, titles, etc. The highest
I have ever been able to rank is #17 when I use How to “conduct” a
***. The rest of the time I do not even show on the 1st 10
pages.
The type-in tool shows several different ways this FAQ is searched,
including:

***.com (720) is taken (somebody is trying to
sell it for several grand).
***.com (5400) is taken (it is not currently active)
***.com (4400) is available
***.com (1300) is available

If I build a quality mini-site on ***.com:

a) What would happen to the type-in traffic for the other three terms?

b) Would it be considered an “exact match” for the other three in the SERPs? If not “exact match,” what?

Again, Thanks

P.S. I have playing with several of your tools, they look very useful.

My 2nd Response:

Hi,

1) The 10-15% number is probably pretty conservative in my opinion. There are a few other places that back this up (Link)

2) Chances are you can still rank the existing page in question it is just that you will need a lot of backlinks with the right anchor text pointing to that page.

a) Many people buy more than one domain (myself included) and then redirect all of the secondary domains to the primary domain. i.e If you ever bought ***.com then you could buy all of the others and redirect them to your main site. Keep in mind that I only advise doing this for domain names that have the exact same target keyword.

b) No. If a domain contains only the keyword and nothing else than it is an exact match keyword domain name. If it contains the keyword exactly and something else then it is keyword rich. If it contains a variation of the keyword then it is not a keyword domain (at least as far as that particular target keyword phrase is concerned).

Keep in mind that those numbers in the type in traffic tool come directly from the Google Adwords Keyword tool and represent the number of times that that particular phrase is searched on average every month. Those numbers do not reflect exact type in traffic numbers of course as there is no easy way to estimate actual type in traffic numbers apart from realizing that the larger the number of monthly searches and the shorter the keyword/keyword phrase then the higher the type in traffic number tends to be.

Hope that this helps! – Joel

Hopefully the above email correspondence was helpful. What questions do you have about type in traffic? Have you used our tool for finding type in traffic? To receive full access to our type in traffic tool and all of our other tools then be sure and sign up for premium membership!

Ideas for Choosing Domain Names When You Have “Domain Name Block”

Do you ever have one of those days (weeks, months…) when you feel like you are just sapped of all creativity and you can’t really get any good ideas for finding profitable domain names?

I know that I have. It’s often the easiest part of the domaining process to find good domain names once you have a niche already selected. You can plug in keywords into our type in traffic tool to get back a bunch of related keyword domain names or you can bulk upload an entire list of keywords into our bulk keyword domain checker (currently available via our beta dashboard) and return a list of available domain names that are exact matches to those keywords but the hardest part is often finding a niche in the first place.

Here is a list of some different resources that you can use to get your creative juices flowing and bust out of your “domain name block”:

Google Trends – Check out the “Today’s Hot Trends” for trends across your country that are rising in popularity.

NicheADay – Niche A Day is a free service that will send you out an email once a day with a new niche and attached to the email will be a zip file of keywords related to that niche along with their average monthly searches (great for uploading into our bulk keyword domain checker that I mentioned earlier).

Google Analytics – Google Analytics (or really any website tracking software) can help you if you use data from the keywords that people have typed in to arrive at your site. This kind of keyword data can be very valuable when looking for new niches or domains to purchase within niches that maybe you are already in.

There is my list of resources to get the creative juices flowing when trying to find domain names and new niches for domain names. What are yours?

5 Reasons Why You Might Not Be Making Money Domaining

What is the #1 goal of almost any domainer? Making money. Of course, domaining is fun but spending thousands of dollars on domain names only to see them not bring in any cash flow or to not turn a profit when resold can take the air out of the sails of even the most happy go lucky domainer. Here are 5 reasons why you might not be making any money domaining:

#1 You Buy Domains Without a Clear Monetization Strategy

Domain monetization is really pretty simple in concept when you boil it all down. You can make a profit as a domainer when you buy a domain name and it brings in a steady cash flow through any number of different ways (parking, affiliate programs, advertisements, selling a product/service, etc.) or you can sell the domain for a price greater than you purchased it for.

Of course there are thousands upon thousands of different sub avenues to pursue once you choose one of the two monetization methods but for the most part those two avenues are all you have.

You can fail very easily in your domaining money making efforts if you just snap up domain names without at least first giving thought to how you will be able to monetize the domain names.

#2 You Aren’t Willing to Do the Necessary Domain Name Research

You must have a handle on the different metrics that you can use to research any given domain name and determine how much it is worth. Our domain name tools will save you a lot of time and do a lot of the heavy lifting for you (especially if you are a premium member and can schedule personalized domain alerts for yourself).

You must understand how having a domain name that matches specific keywords phrases that get searched in Google is valued. Our Type-In Traffic Finder and our Keyword Domain Repository can help you find domain names that are exact matches to keywords with search traffic in Google.

You must understand how data from Google, Yahoo, Alexa, Compete, and other sources all can help you in your research to find a great domain name. Our All-In-One Domain Auction Tool can help you make this kind of research a snap.

#3 You Are Not Willing to Invest in Yourself

Let’s say that you find a piece of software that will save you a lot of time and money (maybe like any number of the different pieces of software that I recommended in an earlier post “Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When Developing Your Domains?”).

If you are not willing to invest in yourself and your domaining business to constantly learn new things and learn how to do things better and faster then you most likely will be left behind at some point.

Realize that you do not know it all. Invest in yourself to learn as much as you possibly can. This investment can be in the form of software, our premium membership (where we will very soon be releasing premium members only domain development training tutorials and custom domain development services), or even just business books to help yourself run your domaining business better.

#4 You Don’t Follow Through

When you find a great domain name to buy and you either buy the domain name or bid on the domain name and then have the wining bid on the domain then it is definitely a high.

It’s easy to be excited about developing the domain name or even flipping the domain name for a resale profit during the initial rush. It’s sometimes much harder to stay excited weeks or months down the road when the monotony of writing good solid content or emailing potential buyers sets in.

If you have a problem following through with your plans for domaining profit then you are most likely leaving a lot of money on the table.

#5 You Don’t Pull the Trigger

You can do all of the research you want, read every news article on domaining, and use all of the domain name tools on our dashboard until you are blue in face but if you don’t take a risk and pull the trigger then you won’t make a penny. Take action and get started finding some great domain names now!

Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When You Develop Your Domains?

Ok, so you already know how to choose a domain name, you know how to choose a hosting plan, etc. etc. You may know how to do all of that BUT if you are making the plunge into domain name development and shooting to make quite a nice sized chunk of change then you had better plan ahead to make sure that you do it properly. Are you making any of these 7 mistakes when you develop your domains?

Mistake #1 – Forcing All of Your Domains into the Same Business Model

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make when you develop your domains is to treat them all the same. If you do this then you will most likely leave a lot of money on the table. This is even more true with premium domain names.

While it is certainly important to find a winning business model or domain monetization strategy and then scale it quickly (see #2 below) – you should only scale and duplicate your business model across domain names from your portfolio that are similar in nature. Do not assume that just because the best way to monetize your mortgage domain names is with a mortgage lead generation affiliate program then that a lead generation affiliate program of some sort is the best way to monetize your music lyrics domain names as well.

Treat every new niche as a chance to craft a new business model. Stay away from blanket statements like “AdSense is never the best way to monetize a domain name” (that is usually true though by the way) or “You should sell advertising on all of your websites”. Take the time to plan out your business model and do it before you begin designing your site.

Mistake #2 – Failing to Scale Your Web Development Efforts

By all means put up a test site to work out some of the kinks in setting up an affiliate program, or creating a membership site, or creating a downloadable ebook BUT once you have put your business model into practice then scale your solution across all of your sites within that same niche.

To quickly scale up your web development efforts then consider using a combination of the following solutions:

1. Wordpress – (Wordpress is much more than just free blogging software and can very easily be used as a CMS for an entire website. Minus our domain tools dashboard this entire site is run on Wordpress).

2. cPanel/WHM – Choose a host that offers cPanel and WHM (Web Hosting Manager). Some of my favorites include HostGator and HostMonster. Along with being compatible with the other mass website development options that I will mention below and offering many other features cPanel also offers an install of Wordpress with just a couple of clicks.

3. Mass Account Manager – MAM is a software package that you upload to your server and use to interact with WHM and cPanel to create and manage multiple packages and accounts. Using this software it is a cinch to create hundreds or even thousands of accounts on your server so that each of your domains will be set up and ready to go. MAM also has functionality to allow you to schedule cron jobs to mass upload files across multiple sites via ftp. This means that if you want to update a file or folder on say all of your nutrition sites then you can just with a few clicks instead of having to connect via FTP to every single one of your sites that you want to make the change on.

4. WP Auto Installer/WP Auto Upgrader – These 2 Wordpress plugin (not free) are well worth the price if you are planning on installing Wordpress on a lot of your domains and want to keep them upgraded to the newest version of Wordpress. You may think that you don’t have to worry about purchasing plugins like these but let me tell you once you start to install and manage more than 10 or so Wordpress installs on different domains then it can quickly become a huge time suck if you don’t plan ahead to scale your efforts with these plugins.

5. WP Cloner – This plugin is my absolute favorite Wordpress plugin (not free and again well worth the price just like the preceding plugins) and I use a lot (until I get around to writing my own list of Wordpress plugins Michael Fortin has a great list). WP Cloner allows you to clone the pages, settings, themes, options, posts, categories, you name it from one Wordpress blog onto as many others as you would like. This is a huge time saver and it is pretty flexible as far as being able to select via check box which things you would like to clone over and which you would like to just leave alone. Just like MAM this plugin is also another great way to update multiple websites at once although with WP Cloner of course you can only update your sites that have Wordpress installed and with MAM you can update all of your sites whether they have Wordpress installed or not.

6. Manage Multiple Blogs Plugin – I confess that this plugin is not one that I have used myself but I keep meaning to try it. I also would like to try out Wordpress MU and although I do not know too much about it I know that Barry Goggin of Predictive Domaining does and I may have to see if I can get him to weigh in on it in detail (I did buy his ebook and it is pretty well detailed and full of good information but it does cover a lot of basic Wordpress material for the first portion).

7. Premium Wordpress Themes – If your site looks like crap then people won’t buy. There I said it. Now I feel better. Go out and purchase some high quality premium Wordpress themes from a place like WooThemes or Studio Press (formerly known as Revolution Two – this site currently uses a modified version of the Revolution Church Wordpress theme developed by Brian Gardner). If you are smart and thinking ahead then you will buy a developer’s license so that you can install the themes on as many different domains as you want.

Mistake #3 – Letting Your Site’s Content Get Stale

This is self explanatory. Some niches will need more attention than others. At a minimum you should keep some kind of website tracking sheet so that you can periodically check up on your websites (even the ones that you are not continually adding fresh content to). Again, this is where using a very easy to use free software package like Wordpress can be a huge time saver.

Mistake #4 – Failing to Market the Site

Sure, I will give it to you that sometimes it is a good strategy to just put up a quick website with a couple of pages of original and well written content so that the domain can at least get indexed by the search engines and start to age a little bit. However, if that is all you are doing with all of your websites then you may be in for a rude surprise when all of the type-in traffic that you were expecting doesn’t necessarily monetize as well as you had hoped. Build backlinks to the site slowly, participate in the community of the niche that the site is in (leave blog comments, post in forums, etc.), and slowly but surely your marketing efforts will start to pay off.

Mistake #5 – Ignoring Basic SEO

It is really amazing to see some web developers ignore or just flat out violate basic and commonly accepted SEO good practice guidelines. When you are building a lot of sites at once it can definitely be easy to overlook common things like adding a keyword rich title tag, properly structuring your site’s internal link structure, arranging your site into a properly themed silo structure (since I am in the mood to mention a lot of good Wordpress plugins here is another good one: Virtual Silo. This plugin makes creating silo themed Wordpress sites a snap)., etc. If it helps make a list so you won’t forget. If you don’t know where to start or you just want to stay abreast of what is happening in the SEO world then purchase the SEO Book membership from Aaron Wall or go get a PRO Membership from SEO Moz.

Mistake #6 – Thinking You Know it All

If you want to consistently build great sites and scale your web development up so that you are publishing to more than just a couple of websites then you need to be willing to learn. Do all you can to study up at places like TUTS+ or enlist the help of a mini site developer like Bradley from Site Graduate. There is always something that you could use to sharpen your skills or someone who can offer some fresh insight.

Mistake #7 – Giving Up at the Wrong Time

Notice that I did not say that just plain giving up is a mistake. Why? Because sometimes quitting a particular course of action can be a smart business move. However, make sure if you quit it is for the right reasons and not just because you would rather watch TV for 6 hours every night and stuff your face with Twinkies (although you could of course actually still keep working from your laptop while doing both of those things but anyway…) Read The Dip by Seth Godin to figure out when you should quit and when you should persevere.

Getting Started

There you have it. Check out our tools for finding great domain names (you can access the tools directly by heading right on over to our dashboard) and then get started making some money by developing your domain names into full blown content rich websites!

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