Tips from ProBlogger on Monetizing with Amazon Associates

If you have not subscribed to the RSS feed of Darren Rowse AKA “ProBlogger” over at problogger.net then I would strongly recommend that you do so.

His latest post is a great example of not only top notch content on how to monetize domains with the Amazon Associates affiliate program but also a case study in and of itself on great writing, great organization, and a great headline.

Check out his post titled 11 Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program and let me know what 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!

Getting Your Online Startup to $1,000,000 a Year

I recently watched one of the best business/entrepreneurship/technology videos that I have seen in a long, long time. The below video is a presentation by the creator of Ruby on Rails and partner of 37 Signals (creator of Basecamp), David Heinemeir Hansson. The presentation takes place at Startup School 08 (Startup school is an annual free conference for hackers interested in startups).

If your goal is to take one or more of your domain investments and turn it into a full fledged web startup then this is a must see video for you. Sure you can monetize your domain names by just parking them but why not take a creative risk and have some fun to boot? Hansson gives some practical and sometimes downright hilarious advice about startups and specifically startups in the technology niche.

The video is 31 minutes and 53 seconds long including the question and answer time at the end and even includes all of the slides he used at Startup School 08. Check it out:

What did you think?

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!

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!