Domain-Guides

Blogging

Blogging is a legitimate way to develop a domain and you can make money doing it. The catch is the time it takes to write posts and to manage comments.

Pros

• Creates a strong bond and trust between authors and readers
• Creates an aura of authority in a topic

Cons

• Significant time needed to write and respond
• Must be updated regularly to retain readership

Blogs can be very useful to develop domains that reflect new and emerging areas. If you have been trying some of the Predictive Domaining techniques then you will have some domains in these areas. Using a blog to establish yourself as an authority in an emerging area can attract reporters, website owners and even academics to your site. The catch is the time you must spend writing and responding to readers. One trick I use is to schedule posts. Often i find i need to be in the mood to write and when i am, then i can put together multiple posts. Other times I go through a dry spell. For a blog to succeed, you need to have an even release of new material so I use the ability of WordPress to schedule a publish date and time for posts. Basically once the post is written, I can then set the date and time I want the post to appear on the website. Of course I still need to field any comments so the claim by some that you could be off for a couple of weeks on a tropical beach while your software publishes your posts is not quite true. Bring a laptop to check on comments and it is true. And no, I am not on some tropical beach right now! Blogs also create relationships with other blog authors and readers. That strong bond is something advertisers would love to leverage because in effect, there is a strong level of trust and so recommendations from such a blog carry more weight. With a strong readership, one to one relationships can be leveraged with advertisers. You can also hire someone to blog for you or offer free blogging based on the theme of the domain name. WordPress MU allows you to host many blogs from one piece of software out of the box. (You do not need my e-book to use WordPress MU for blogs - only for websites). For example About.com and some newspapers use this third party blogger method with the former being paid and the latter being free usually. This is a good idea if you have the money to pay a blogger or can attract good bloggers for free to your topic.

Discussion Boards

Discussion boards have been around for a long time and can attract a large loyal following. One such board is WebmasterWorld.com where the idea for this blog started.

Pros

• Content is generated automatically by people posting
• Can develop a large and loyal following

Cons

• Have to deal with spam, off-topic and inflammatory posts
• Gaining significant and worthwhile postings can be difficult

The nicest part about a discussion board is that your visitors are your authors and so you do not need to be an expert in that area. What you gain in time and effort from not having to author content though is often lost through managing the posts to ensure spam, off-topic and inflammatory posts do not slip through.......

Pizza.com sold recently for $2.6M, and vodka.com for $3M. Domain names are now a global business. The explosive growth in online advertising (in the first half of 2007 alone, advertisers in the US spent more than $10 billion) has seen Internet entrepreneurs earn millions of dollars by buying, selling, developing and monetizing web addresses, or "domain names". There are now over 1,000 so-called "domainers" (as domain owners refer to themselves), as many as 100 million registered domains, and a thriving aftermarket for domain names, with reported sales exceeding US$700M in 2007. At a recent conference aimed at domainers, Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes, Inc and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine was enthusiastic about the industry: "Internet traffic and domains are the prime real estate of the 21st century. This market has matured, and individuals, brands, investors and organizations who do not grasp their importance or value are missing out on numerous levels." Interestingly, experts say that the highest growth rates in the industry are currently being found outside the US. Nastel to Exhibit at SYS-CON's SOA World Conference & Expo SYS-CON Media all 21 news articles