OzDomainer.com

One thing I do on a regular basis is look over the domain names that are going to auction at any given time and then do a search of my ccTLD’s that I have in my portfolio (mainly .co.uk, com.au & .co.in & .in) to see if that domain name is available in any of those extensions.

Quite often they are and as long as it makes sense to searchers in that country and has a decent search volume for the domain name keyword string, then I will register that name. I do usually stick to commercial based domains as it is much easier to monetise them from parking in the short term and developing mini sites etc with them.

As an example here are a few Indian domains that I picked up after looking over the current list of auctions coming up next week at TRAFFIC in New York.

spreadsheets.in

spreadsheets.co.in

securityalarms.co.in

atriums.in

atriums.co.in

computerbatteries.in

computerbatteries.co.in

researchlab.in

researchlab.co.in

researchlabs.in

researchlabs.co.in

bulldozers.co.in

bulldozers.in

liabilities.co.in

liabilities.in

ticketsales.co.in

partysupplies.co.in

furniturerepair.co.in

furniturerepair.in

Now I now these names are not a .com or .net but they can be very, very powerful in their country of origin as many people relate very strongly to their own ccTLD.

I know for a fact that they will pretty much all wash their faces within 6 months once a mini-site has been put up with some original content, AdSense , affiliate programs & advertises etc. The risk of investment is not very high for a decent return and hopefully a better sale price in the long run.

I have many sites that are set up this way and tick along bringing in $5+ per day from AdSense and some a lot more from affiliate products and advertising and none are .com domains.

It is a no brainer to me that if I can buy a good quality overlooked ccTLD for under $10 and spend another $150 on content and building the mini-site and get that back in 6 months then from then on its all cream on top.

An example of a site I have is www.biodieselkits.co.uk. I have had that domain since Feb 2007 and from about Nov 2007 it has been bringing in between $5-20 per day in AdSense income and it is number 1 in Google UK for its main keyword phrase (and has been for the past 9 months) and in the top 5 on Google globally as well.
I am also talking with some suppliers to sell the product direct from the website (these kits sell for anywhere between $2500 - $25000 depending on the size) now it won’t take many sales even at the low end to make this a very profitable website and I spent $200 bucks and about 2 hours developing it.

I am not saying this to pat myself on the back, I am saying this to try and get those of you who think ccTLD’s are not worth it to think again, they are and they will only get stronger over time as the .com gets stonger and more expensive and out of reach for the small to medium businesses to buy.

At the end of a day it is just a simple formula that works for me, it may not be for everyone and that’s fine by me too. (more for me )

I am looking forward to seeing how much the .com equivalents of my domains sell for if at all. If they do go for high prices it only ads to the value of my ccTLD’s.

Am I full of crap??? Time will tell! LOL

I get asked that question a great deal and I will get to that in just a moment.

The answer depends on many things.

But first you need to ask a few other more important questions-

Do you even want to to do them yourself?

If so, how much time do you have available if you are building the sites yourself?

Do you want to create the content for the sites yourself or outsource it to a ghost writer on Elance etc?

How many domains do you have to develop and are you kidding yourself that you will ever get around to building them all out!!??
(I own approx 900 or so domains and I know that I will only ever get to developing a fraction of those)

The answers to the above questions may very well make the first question mute!

If you get to the point where you do want to develop your domain names yourself then here are some of the software platforms that I use.

For anything website / blog related, as far as I am concerned the king of the hill is Wordpress. I have tried the others over the years but still keep coming back to Wordpress and it just keeps getting better and better each year. It is open source so it if free to use!! Yey!

It has a huge community behind it and most decent hosting companies using C/Panel or alike suck as Host Gator have automated installs and updates available which makes it very easy for the new person getting started with Wordpress.

I have about 10 sites that I currently have running in Wordpress including my Biodiesel Kits website and of course this one. So check it out at www.wordpress.org

The other software program I use and have done for the past few years is XSite Pro 2. It is a fantastic HTML / WYSYWIG website design package that is taylor made for web marketers and has many great templates, widgets, scripts etc built in.

The latest version 2 has only been out for the past 4 months and is a great improvement over the first version which was still great for its time.

XSite Pro 2 has built in scripts for your AdSense account details so it makes it very very easy with just a few clicks to have ads placed wherever you like on your site.

A site that I have just started which is on the subject of water purifiers in India called www.waterpurifiers.in was built using XSite Pro 2. It won’t win any design awards, but in my experiance in internet marketing over the past 5 years “slick is dick” and as long as the site is fuctional and has good information that is all that most visitors give a hoot about. The more bells and whistles you have on a website IMHO the worse it is for the user.

So thats my 2 cents worth on the matter and I welcome any useful and relevant comments.

Cheers

Ed

I am in Paris at the moment for 7 days as part of my Laptop Nomads trip.

We were in the local cafe using the wifi when a very cool van drove past us and it caught our eye and so did the domain name. The domain is www.dogwalking.fr and you will never guess what this company does…. you guest it, Dog Walking. I did not get a chance to check out the domain name until later that day about 7 hours after first seeing it but because they used an easy to remember domain name I went straight to the website no problem at all.

I know to most this may seem like such an obvious thing to do, but on my travels I have seen some really crap domain names and guess what, I can’t remember them!

Anyway check out this website, it is very very cool and one of the stand out websites I have seen this year. www.dogwalking.fr

I am writing this post from our first class coach on the train from Scotland to London on the last leg of the UK section of our travels before heading for Europe.

The train has free high speed wifi on board so my wife Lois, Daughter Sasha and I all had our laptops out making good use of the 4 hour trip.

We had a very funny moment as I was on Elance paying one of my content writers in India for the work that she was doing for one of my Indian domains about Water Purifiers www.waterpurifiers.in (still parked at the moment but being developed). We sat and pondered at the freedom an online business can give you as we are from Australia travelling through UK & Europe using someone in India to write content for our sites that are both globally and locally targeted.

If that is not a sign that the world truly is a global economy these days then I don’t know what is!

I also caught up with another Aussie domainer mate of mine Ben Wilks from Queensland who has been travelling since May. We met at the Tower of London and had lunch and chewed the fat on domain names, SEO etc. Great fun and it was the first time we had met in the flesh but had emailed and talked on Skype many times.

If anyone needs any top notch serious, kick butt SEO work done, then Ben is your man.

Hi all and sorry for no posts over the past few months.

As most of you know my family and I are on the road for 7 months taking some time out and having a great time I can tell you

We have a blog about what we are up to at www.laptopnomads.com so I will not repeat myself with that stuff here.

I relation to domaining and domainers I have managed to catch up with some guys I know from the web but have not met in person up to now and am very happy that I have done so.

I first caught up with David Carter and his family at his home in Birmingham UK for afternoon tea and met his children and wife Jan.
Read more on that with some pics here http://www.laptopnomads.com/10/laptop-nomads-are-go/

Then we spent some time with Tommy Butler and his wife Tricia who own www.glasgow.com (very nice domain name guys) Tommy is a very switched on guy and has many many Glasgow related domain names and his a great business based around them.

He took us around Glasgow for a day and we all had a ball. As Lois & I were both born in Glasgow it was a real treat to be taken around buy the man who owns it!!! Virtually at least LOL. More about that on our blog at http://www.laptopnomads.com/38/edinburgh-to-glasgow/

So many thanks to those guys for their time and hospitality, it was great to finally put a face to the names.

Before I left I said I had a new podcast to upload that I hade done with Brian Johnson from www.domainparkingmoney.net, well I am still editing that one as I have had some audio editing challenges since being away but should have it ready soon.

As for other podcasts I have been talking with Ron Jackson from www.dnjournal.com about doing one but the timing for both of us has not been great so as soon as I have more info I will let you all know.

If you have any suggestions or requests on who you would like me to interview on the subject of domain names or internet marketing please let me know and I will see what I can do.

Regards

Ed