Business Owner to SEO to Domainer vs Domainer to SEO to Business Owner

“Business Owner to SEO to Domainer vs Domainer to SEO to Business Owner” Wow, if this title doesn’t confuse you then please immediately submit a guest post so that I can replace your post with this one… Just kidding!

Alan Dunn had written a post earlier about Ad.ly that had a great little statement in it:

“The first step to success is to quit reading domain blogs – even this one – and focus on SEO, online marketing and viral marketing blogs.”

I love that statement and I was about to type out a long comment to compliment him but I decided that the comment was getting too long so I would just give him a quick compliment via his comment form and steal the meat of my comment for this post (Sorry Alan ).

The reason I love that statement is because it seems that the time line of my “career” as an entrepreneur seems to be exactly the opposite career path of many domainers (although I could be wrong as this is just what I have seen first hand). I was first a small business owner then an “SEO” and then lastly a domainer. I owned (and still own) a Florida health insurance agency and so of course being the nerd that I am I wanted to put up a website to help people compare health insurance plans online.

Once the website was up and running I quickly realized that I actually needed to get people to visit the site in order to make any money

This caused me to learn as much as I could about SEO and about all of the various factors that went into building a quality website that would give the search engines and most importantly the website visitors exactly what they were looking for. Once I started ranking the website high for its target keywords and working hard to provide a ton of high quality content on the site and a great user experience I naturally wanted to duplicate the process on other websites.

The more I learned about SEO the more I came to appreciate the importance of keyword domain names. An exact match keyword domain name is the one key element of a winning online strategy that cannot be duplicated. Let me say that again: your domain name cannot be duplicated.

If we can agree that domain names have inherent value (because of keywords, length, TLD, and any other combination of these 25 rules for choosing a domain name) and that domain names are unique (fact) then it’s easy to see why having the best domain name for a given market niche online is a HUGE sustainable competitive advantage that even the deepest pocketed competitors cannot copy (unless they buy your domain name from you for $$$ and then well, that is OK too )

If you are the owner of say DogFood.com then you have a significant competitive advantage in building a business online in the “Dog Food” niche that even huge Fortune 500 companies cannot duplicate no matter how hard they try. Purina.com and Iams.com and other very large dog food companies can pay out the wazoo for the very best web developers and the very best SEO company and they can hire a professional writing service to churn out hundreds of pages of dog food related articles every day (and you thought that sorting through lists of dropped domains was boring… that is if you are not saving yourself time and red eyes by using our dropped domain alerts instead… ) BUT they can do all of these things but if you are the proud owner of DogFood.com then you have a very real and very sustainable competitive advantage that they cannot copy

(Note, I chose the domain name “DogFood.com” randomly just because my Bull Mastiff Caesar and my Pit/Lab mix Mercedes both just got done chowing down and they now need some more dog food. Also, I just noticed that if you type in DogFood.com it redirects to PetsMart.com so it appears that at least PetsMart.com recognizes the value of this domain).

All of that to say that if you are a domainer then its time for you to branch out and learn as much as you can about SEO, online marketing, and general business skills. If you are a business owner then you need to learn as much as you can about the value of domain names and about bringing your business online. If you are an SEO professional then you need to quickly appreciate the impact that domain names can have on your search engine optimization efforts.

What about you? What is your story?

BrandBucket.com & Facebook Advertising

While I have never done any Facebook advertising myself and don’t ever really plan on it either I have wondered from time to time though what kind of conversion rate different domain name related Facebook advertisements typically pull.

One example of a nice looking site that I noticed that was advertising brandable domain names on Facebook is BrandBucket.com. I can see how a small business owner could find the “Brands” section of BrandBucket.com very helpful in either finding a domain name or at the very least getting some ideas for their domain name search.

Would anyone like to share any of their experiences (successes/failures/whatever) in advertising anything domain name related on Facebook?

Google for Advertisers: Is Your Branding Better than “Pet Stick”?

I was just reading a post over on SmashingMagazine.com and I saw a Google AdSense image ad run BY Google directing people to check out their various “Google for Advertisers” services. Nothing unusual so far as Google often advertises using their own ad network. What was interesting to see was the creative way that Google used a “pet stick” case study to sell their services.

The ad reads, “What can Google do to help your advertising? Well, find out what we could do for a stick.”

Here is an image of the Google “pet stick” ad that also links off to their landing page:

The question is: in what ways can you bring some creativity to your domain development and website marketing efforts? Make a change. Get out of your rut. Look for ways to distinguish yourself from the competition.

In this particular marketing campaign by Google – do you like it? Do you think that it will be effective? If someone were to do a case study of one of your domains would it more closely resemble a boring pet stick or a creative Google ad?

New Website Tutorial Video Released: Customizing Wordpress Themes

Although the focus of Domain Superstar is of course all about our domain name tools and making it easy for anyone to consistently find loads of valuable domain names we do also have some additional perks for our premium members, one of them being some hopefully very helpful website development tutorial videos.

The tutorial videos make it easy for you to “watch over my shoulder” as I first find a valuable domain name in the first video and then take that domain name from just a name to a fully functioning e-commerce money making website.

I use the software program Camtasia so that I can capture what is on my computer screen and record my voice at the same time.

The domain name/website that I use as an example throughout the video series is actually not my domain name but the domain name of one of our premium members. MMA Supreme is the name of the domain name and the website is close to being halfway finished as we have just made tutorial video #4 “Customizing Wordpress with Theme Tweaks” and are at the halfway point as we have 4 more videos to release in the future.

No matter whether you develop your own websites, you pay someone to do your website development, or you could care less about developing your domains be sure and sign up for our premium membership so that you can consistently find valuable domain names using our tools!

999 Small Business Ideas + Why Most New Business Ideas Are Worthless

I love hearing/thinking about/dreaming up new business ideas. Why? It’s fun and the payoff can be huge! Lots of hard work is involved of course but starting new businesses and new websites is something that is definitely enjoyable. I usually put up 3-5 new websites every week and I like to think of each website as it’s own individual business with its own market. From a domain name tools site to a website backup site to hundreds of other types of sites – it can be a lot of fun to think of new business ideas.

BUT…

Even the best idea is not worth a whole lot if you cannot execute. So before I give you a link to the list of 999 small business ideas I would challenge you to read this quote that I found here at the online version of the 37signals book: “Getting Real: Done! (Chapter 6)”. Here is the quote by Derek Sivers that I absolutely love in it’s entirety:

“It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

* Awful idea = -1
* Weak idea = 1
* So-so idea = 5
* Good idea = 10
* Great idea = 15
* Brilliant idea = 20

* No execution = $1
* Weak execution = $1000
* So-so execution = $10,000
* Good execution = $100,000
* Great execution = $1,000,000
* Brilliant execution = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.

That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas. I’m not interested until I see their execution.”

Before you set out to start a business or even register a domain name with the intent to develop the domain into something meaningful ask yourself, “Am I really serious about executing on this plan or am I just wasting my time by thinking up ideas that I never have the nerve/discipline/work ethic/etc. to actually do something about?”

I would challenge you to spend less time dreaming up things to do and more time getting down to brass tacks and tackling your big ideas. If you fail then so what? Chalk it up as a learning experience and dare to attempt your next big project.

Of course, remember I said that I love thinking up new business ideas at the beginning of this post so please don’t get the impression that I believe that taking the time to think up good business ideas is a waste of time. It’s not – BUT it can be if you do not follow through and execute.

Here are a few action steps:

1) Read this list of 999 business ideas.

2) Choose some of the best business ideas from the list to refine as your own.

3) Use tools like our premium membership, business formation services from MyCorporation.com, etc. etc. to execute on those business ideas.

What do you think?

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!

3 Month Plan for Building Traffic to a New Website

Here is my down and dirty 3 month plan for building traffic to a new website. Of course, these are just general things as every niche will be different and you will want to devote more time to certain websites than to others but generally speaking here is a great action plan for building traffic to a new website.

Day 1

Register a great domain name using tools like our type in traffic finder, dictionary domain name finder, geo domain name finder, etc. etc. (Shameless plug yes – unimportant definitely not. Understanding how to choose a good domain name is a crucial first step to success).

Day 2

After the nameservers resolve and you have set up your hosting account then your goal is to put up some nice meaty, on topic, original content on the home page and on 3-5 additional pages of your site.

I like to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to do my research. Typically I will try and map out the site architecture from the very beginning and maybe even plot out a publishing schedule. Break the site up like this: long article focused on the main site keyword for the home page and then build the main navigation menu using related keywords from the Google tool and place a fairly long article on each of these menu sub theme pages.

Pay particular attention to making sure that these 5 or so pages of content (excluding your privacy page, site map, XML site map pages, etc, of course) are very high quality well written articles that you would have no problem showing a “real person” and asking them to link to.

Day 3-15

The goal for the first 2 weeks is to try and participate in the community that your site is in.

This means leaving well thought out comments (making sure to include your site URL) on blogs in your niche, posting on forums in your niche, and contacting webmasters to try to establish a presence in the community and introduce yourself and your site.

Set up Google Alerts for your site’s main keywords so that you can participate in blogs that are related to your site’s main keywords.

Work though a list of “DoFollow” forums and use the site Comment Hunt to find good sources for links that do not have the rel=”nofollow” attribute.

The main priority is to start to slowly build up lower quality backlinks (you do not want to make the mistake of creating an unnatural linkbuilding profile by acquiring too many high PR links right away as that may appear manufactured in the eyes of the search engines) and perhaps more importantly start building some traffic from referring links on other sites.

Day 16-30

In addition to your continued participation in the community you now want to start to add more content to your site. Aim for one new article every other day at a minimum for these 2 weeks. Be sure and structure your internal linking structure to achieve maximum benefit by using anchor text wisely.

Day 31-60

In addition to all of the above it is now time to start writing unique content and publishing it not only to your site but also to other sites. Start off publishing articles to article directories like ezinearticles.com and then begin to use some of your newly acquired webmaster contacts that you hopefully gained by participating in the community of your site’s niche to offer to write guest articles and guest posts for that include a link back to your site.

Day 61-90

In addition to all of the above it is now time to think about some creative ways that you can start to attract some high quality links. Widgets, tools, high quality reports, controversial content, and other similar types of interesting and valuable content are all things that can attract both quality and quantity of links if done properly.

Get Started!

There you have it. This is of course an overly simplistic view of just very basic things that one can do to build traffic for a new website but I think this rough outline is certainly helpful because if you are like me then it helps to have some sort of goal to shoot for. What are some things that you would add to the 3 month plan?

Domain Superstar Launch: 25 Best Domaining, SEO, and Internet Marketing Websites, Forum and Blogs

To kick off the launch of DomainSuperstar.com I thought that it would be fun to show people a little bit about who we are and what we want to accomplish by yes, talking a little bit about us but also making a list of our favorite blogs and websites in the SEO, domaining, and internet marketing niches.

In a nutshell, we are all about trying to help you find great domain names – over and over again. Whether you are a full time domainer that wants to be able to weed through a lot of the junk available in auction domain names and find the gems (you can do so using our All-in-One Domain Auction Tool or our personalized Domain Alerts), or maybe you are an SEO that wants to grab a great exact match keyword only domain name (like those you can find using our Type-In Traffic Finder or Keyword Domain Repository) to help you rank for a specific keyword phrase, or maybe you just want to find a great domain name for your business (you can find it quickly using our Instant Domain Search Tool) – we can help.

You can view a description of how all of our tools work by selecting a tool from the drop down menu at the top of the page, you can compare the features that free vs. premium members will have access to on our pricing page, and you can access all of our tools directly to try them out right now for free by navigating to our dashboard.

Without further ado, here is our list of the very best domaining, SEO, and internet marketing websites and blogs that we love to visit and read.

Best Domaining Websites, Forums, and Blogs

1. Domaining.com – Domaining.com is of course the owner of the absolute best domain name possible in the domaining niche and the content of the site matches the premium domain name. Francois (the owner) has been adding some very cool new features that serve the domaining community as of late including a domain name marketplace, customizable domaining news feeds, and more.

2. Chef Patrick – Chef Patrick is a key example of a person who has chosen to go the route of using and marketing a very brandable domain name (this requires more work than using a generic keyword domain name but he appears to be pulling it off quite nicely). Chef Patrick offers a great mix of content that has recently included videos of weekly domaining news.

3. Rick Schwartz – Rick’s blog is the home of the “Domain King”. Rick could very well be considered one of the Godfathers of domaining. He is a founder of the ICA (Internet Commerce Association), and he is CEO, President and Co-Founder of eRealestate.com and T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

4. DN Forum – Great domaining related forum.

5. Name Pros – Another great forum for discussing domain names and everything related to the buying and selling of domain names.

6. Domain State – Top domain name forum with a LOT of posts to read through and learn from.

7. DotSauce – Mark Fulton is the Founder and Editor of the DotSauce Domaining Magazine and has really done nice job.

8. Elliot’s Blog – Elliot Silver’s blog about all things related to domain name investing and domain news. Elliot has some very nice in depth posts on a wide range of domaining related topics.

9. Predictive Domaining – Predictive Domaining is a blog that is run by Barry Goggin who is a full time scientist and a member of the NY Academy of Sciences but a domainer on the side who manages to keep his blog updated quite frequently with some pretty good stuff.

10. DotWeekly – DotWeekly is a weekly domain name blog run by Jamie Zoch. DotWeekly has a number of great domaining resources.

11. Domain Habit – A domain name forum with not quite as many posts as some of the others but has some quality content and discussion nonetheless.

Best SEO Websites, Forums, and Blogs

12. SEO Book – SEOBook.com is run by Aaron Wall and the blog is constantly updated with very high quality SEO and internet marketing nuggets.

13. SEO Moz – The SEO Moz team headed up by Rand Fishkin is continually on the cutting edge of Search Engine Optimization. A great source for both beginner and advanced SEO learning.

14. Search Engine Land – Chock full of SEO information and information related to all things search.

15. Stomper Blog – The Stomper Blog is a good source of SEO information.

16. JenSense – Ok, ok the JenSense blog isn’t truly about SEO as Jennifer Slegg focuses on all things related to contextual advertising (both with Google AdSense & the Yahoo Publisher Network) but still worth a read to broaden your knowledge of how the search engines “think” (it’s pretty much all about money).

17. High Rankings – Known more for their SEO newsletter, the Jill Whalen High Rankings Newsletter is a very popular newsletter for search marketers.

18. SEO Roundtable – Solid SEO information and SEO news.

19. Search Engine Journal – Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal is a tried and true place for great SEO news and information.

20. Matt Cutts – Of course you knew that the blog of everyone’s favorite Google engineer would be in the list didn’t you?

Best Internet Marketing Websites, Forums, and Blogs

21. Digital Point Forum – THE forum for learning about everything related to internet marketing, search engine marketing, coding, graphic design, copywriting, and more. Really this forum could be in any of the above sections as it is quite literally the most active webmaster related forum currently on the Internet.

22. MichaelFortin.com – Michael Fortin’s blog focuses primarily on copywriting and marketing tips as well it should as he is the “Internet’s number one copywriter”… and actually very well could be.

23. Shoe Money – Shoe Money’s blog (run by Jeremy Schoemaker) is quite possibly the most entertaining of all of the blogs on this list and one of my personal favorites. Jam packed full of very practical tips and advice for succeeding in internet marketing.

24. Copy Blogger – Copy Blogger probably takes the award for most consistently offering extremely high quality material. This stuff is so good that it really almost shouldn’t be free.

25. Perry Marshall – Perry Marshall is an AdWords guru who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. Perry has a great way of just plain telling the truth in a way that if applied will tend to make some people a lot of money.

Submit Your Favorites

I know that I am bound to have forgotten some of the best. Submit some of your favorite domaining, SEO, and internet marketing related websites, blogs, and forums via the comment form below and then check out our tools for finding some great domain names today!