F1 Numberplates - Domain names

For those who wonder about the values of domain names and whether scarcity value really exists:

Fan pays record for Formula One car plates

A businessman has paid almost half a million pounds for the car registration plate "F1" - making it the most expensive ever sold in Britain.
Afzal Kahn, a Formula One motor racing fan, has fixed the £375,000 number plate to his 200mph black McLaren SLR sports car, which itself cost £300,000.
With VAT, the total paid for the plate by Mr Kahn was £440,625.

A number plate, let's remember is a pure vanity item. Yes it's unique, but it doesn't offer much in the way of return. It doesn't allow people to contact you, it has no way of earning you money directly, and it's only of interest to a small number of wealthy people and a small number of investors. It's also a very local thing. A premium UK number plate may look good cruising around Sloane Square but is unlikely to be seen in Monte Carlo, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley.

Domain names are different. For a start, the prices are still well under their true value to the market (and I'll come back to why in another post), so you don't have to drop £1/2 million on one just yet (although there are plenty at these prices if you like..).

But there are much bigger business propositions: people can contact you with a domain name, a domain name can earn you astronomic amounts of money with little or no effort (think how many people hit mobiles, loans, even secondary product areas such firebowls every week), and your buying circle increases massively, form domain investors, individual entrepreneurs and the business and marketing world - where the big money really is. Don't forget also, that a domain name is accessible to anyone on the planet with an Internet connection.

Unreported Income - Unless You Are A Minister

I wonder what would happen to an individual or business that earned £103,000 and didn't report it to anyone. I'm not sure, but I can guess.

Of course, if you are a Minister, you don't have to worry about little things like the law. That's for normal people, not the powerful-overlords.

Server problems solved with Google

Google + Blogs is better than any manual or helpfile, due to the fact that you can almost always find someone else with the exact same problem, and usually a solution as well. The blog aspect helps as you tend to also get a stream of user comments that might go into more detail.

A case in point. For whatever reason, one of my servers decided to stop resolving names. OK, chances are that the DNS servers I'm pointing at have fallen over or something, but that's no good for me, so I went hunting for more DNS servers to use.

I found the OpenNic Project, which is a free to use group of name servers - ideal for my requirements. I noted down the French and UK IP addresses (server is physically in Germany, so France is the closest on their list for me) and went to add them to my server.

Aha. A problem. Due to the server setup, it's not possible to update the DNS servers using the windows interface, as Windows tries to trap an error (which is there because of the ISPs configuration). No problem, I'll add from the command line. But how?

This posting from years back provides the solution, which worked a treat. Simply use the NETSH commandline utility and you can remove and add DNS servers with impunity! After a swift reboot to install recent system updates whilst I was sorting things out, the server is back up and running as it should. Phew!!

Financial Lead Generation

Lead Generation is technically quite easy. You need a trust-worthy site, with a form asking all of the questions that a correct lead requires. Obviously the fields required for a mortgage, loan, double glazing or DNA testing are different, but the concept is the same.

1. Provide detail of the product/service
2. Display a form with the relevant fields
3. Validate the form values, so that you don't get invalid details
4. Process the lead details
5. Get paid!

So technically, there's not a lot about it.

BUT, you need a stream of valid visitors to hit your lead generation pages, and this is where it gets difficult, as many people want those leads. You are up against the companies who buy leads themselves, as a self-generated lead beats paying someone for it!, and also many other small lead generation operations.

The obvious ways are to have good search engine placements. If someone searches for "loan" and you are on the first page, then well-done! You should get a stream of traffic for free. But that is a difficult place to get, and a million other pages are vying for that first page.

Another way is PPC adverts on the main search engines. These provide good targetted traffic, but you need to be creative with your keywords, as the main words such as "loan", "mortgage" etc. can all cost £5+ per click to be at the top. You need to identify keywords and phrases that don't have much, if any, competition, to ensure you get 5p clicks. Find 1000 words that get 1 click a day and you're on the way to getting rich!

Domaining Calendar

Serious domaining means that you need to have an edge over the rest of the market. For some this is budget: if you have the cash, you can buy excellent domains. For others this is speed: dropcatching is very profitable, but you gotta be quick. For the rest there is the brain. This involves out-thinking the rest of the domain buying market, or just being quicker.

For example, going through my affiliate calendar, my wife reminded me that Halloween is now the only second to Christmas as far as spending on gifts and novelties is concerned in the UK. So I fired up my copy of GREP and found all the Halloween related .com domains to see what was left available as a .co.uk. Surprisingly there were quite a few, so I will soon create some Halloween based sites (yes, I know it's only January, but these things need to be planned WELL in advance!)

Affiliate/domain watchers: remember that Easter is earlier this year...

2008 - year of the Mac

This year, I absolutely need some new computer power. My two main desktops are at least 4 years old, and although still great at the day to day stuff, are starting to struggle with newer web media, Office 2008 and just general usage.

What I need to do is separate out tasks, so that one PC is rebuilt and used only for .Net 1.1 development, one is used only for .Net 2.0 development, and an unidentified new unit will take on the regular office tasks of email, browsing, accounts, content management and on the fly tweaks to things.

That new unit is likely to be a Mac.

I'm not sure exactly which model yet, and I also need to see - with my own eyes - how parallels works in practice, but this is almost definitely the way I'm heading. I'll still be able to do everything I do now, but with the benefit of cross platform understanding: using the right tool no matter which OS it's on. I do have an original mini-mac, bought for compatibility testing and the like, but it was never powerful enough as a main desktop. My new Mac will be.

I am avidly reading reviews, blogs, watching video demos on YouTube to prepare myself to become a Mac Switcher. I'll obviously still use my Windows XP and Vista PCs for various .Net development projects, but my day-to-day life will be in front of a Mac.

Apple famously urged people to Think Different. It's about time I did.

Welcome to 2008

A new year brings new thoughts and resolutions and the belief that "this year will be different". Well this year, I intend that to be the case.

There are a couple of client projects that need to be signed off/completed, but beyond that, I'm intending to entriely self-finance for the year, with minimal client based work. I have a number of strands to this strategy:

Affilliate income
Domain name sales
Lead generation
Home Information Packs

I am already active in each area, but this year plan to make them my sole source of income. For some I will need to just do more of what am I already doing (affiliate sites, lead gen); for others I need to actively promote them (selling domain names instead of just buying!). Domain names especially, is still a goldmine in the .co.uk space. There is still time to register decent generic names before the big American buyers start to get the bug. Prices will rise and rise here before the end of 2008.

I also plan to update this blog a bit more often!

My first jobs however are to mark up my annual affiliate plan so I know what product offers I should be working on and when (ie. Valentines Day offers right now!), get the 2 existing projects done and dusted, and research some areas so I can create some original content.

Add a target for this year: Lean INTO problems, not away from them. Live the problem, breath the problem, solve the problem. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Happy new year!