01 October 2011 ~ 3 Comments

Oversee Drops Safety Net

Oversee.net recently streamlined 13% of its workforce. Along with pending new hires, will allow the “new” Oversee.net to leverage core assets to innovate more effectively, improve competitive positioning and achieve growth.” Um, sure. I guess now they have less to “oversee”. Domainers wear so many hats, almost every domainer I know is their own Internet company. I’d like to see the actual product flow from an internet company just once with a profit model that reflects a monetary relationship what people are paid.

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30 September 2011 ~ 2 Comments

Domain Parking Industry Shift

DirectI, parent of BigJumbo, DomainAdvertising.com, Logicboxes and ResellerClub (amongst others) announced this week the merge with the DomainAdvertising and BigJumbo brands into a single Domain Parking Platform. The merged entity will function under the brand DomainAdvertising.com. this signals a shift in parking offerings from seller side features to a more customer based approach.

Do you need an entire company to structure a parking offering? Aren’t these generated by scripts? Where does the human factor add value? I have yet to see a compelling content generation model from any parking company, which emphasizes the metrical aspect to website and domain promotion but skips the content angle. This mirrors how I feel the parking industry should be developing. Once the arrogance of a parking company fades away, the utility of their service offering improves.

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03 July 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Don’t Launch Until ….

Ever see a website that has more finish than the product? Ever wish the people that built the website had had a hand in the manufacture of the sale item? This kind of mismatch still has no name, but corporate/product dis-synergy might be a way to express the situation. Webmasters and domainers now engineer entire sites for which there may or may not be concrete services behind it. A brick and mortar store is no longer required for commerce.

Webmasters have cut corners as long as the history of the Internet has been around. This was initially assumed to be the growing pain of new information technology. The beehive of change was at work. Mistakes could be forgiven. But today companies can be their own agencies. With the new media available online, navigating the gray flannel jungle is no longer an issue. Researching the customer means researching what the customer wants.

The Web is now  decade or so old and everyone remembers the first phase of growing pains of almost all the big websites. in fact many brands have repapered over their awkward growth stages with shinier logos, better websites, and more feature-rich platforms at the IP address of note. Selling the product is the effect behind the cause. Everything else is so much hand-waving that real buyers will see past when their checkbooks are open.

If companies  have a poorly received campaign, they can erase it instantly. This can be done overnight online these days. But the carefully created website with an end sum gain in unit sales must utilize top methods for product featuring without causing a letdown when the humble product enters the frame.

In “Lover Come Back”, the brand is product named VIP in search of an three dimensional realization. But sales of virtual wares is completely possible online. The trick is making sure customers get what they want. That’s a tough sell when the product is so intangible.

Today, the Internet is the incubator of change. Colors and light are in the hands of the web architecture artist,and webmasters can revolutionize their look with a minimum of real consumer waste and with an eye to cost. But care should be taken not to overshadow the product and its attributes. Pointing up the products strengths is what websites are for, ideally. But many websites devolve into overlay artistic statements, ad blitzes, or powerhouses of overdesigned text.

In 1961, there was a movie starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson about rival advertising executives that compete to land the big new account with a big firm. They compete to launch a huge new product with a stellar advertising campaign, complete with Times Square billboards and marquee treatment. This is the era of “Mad Men” and how Madison Avenue defined consumerism and the products people buy.

In the film, the actual product does not exist. The competing pair dream up an entire ad campaign to catch the eye of the potential consumer, building to a frenzied fever pitch. At some point the game ends and business intrudes. Then they realize they don’t have to have a great product they just need to produce something to sell. this ends up being candy mints laced with alcohol that make the customers, very very very happy indeed.

How things have changed. Today the company has to produce not only a finite product, but have specifications, tests, consumer panels, reaction reviews, test groups and response surveys. And that’s just in the beta testing phase. The instant gratification of buying a product online is the result of a groomed navigation path webmasters have in mind. Overstepping the product promotion plan is an error that leaves customers wondering what they bought.

Therefore when purchasing web hosting, look for the value adding features like email account setup, blog broadcasts, HTML friendly design with updates that save time executing automatically online. Look at the timeline for a Facebook and Twitter account, and make sure the cart does not come before the horse. Follow the sales cycle through to its logical conclusion without mixing up the marketing pieces up too much.The proof should be in the profit statement.

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05 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

5 Reasons Your Website Isn’t Working

This is a message for all the website administrators out there who have  lot of fun installing the wrong web engine or application for their domain or web presence, then cry foul that no readers visit, comment or post. NB: A lot of hard work, time consuming communication, and resources go into the development and launch of a website.

Getting the details right makes the difference between a site that is sticky and one that merely aggregates hosting charges. Since the goal of almost every website  is to build revenue streams from multiple e-commerce channels, building a better more interactive site is always a positive move.

1. Readers are Not Encouraged to Post

If your material is too dry or inaccessible, readers will move on. Check the tone of your material. Look at it from the perspective of a fresh reader with no other information about what the website is supposed to do or how it wil function. Traffic will lighten up if SEO results migrate researchers to a site  which reads as something uninteresting like dated newspaper articles or newsradio text.

Does the content beg a question? Does it provoke comment? Are there actual invitations to participate with the site actually visible? Does the shading, ads, text and instructions guide the viewer toward a pain-free interaction experience? Edit anything that works against this motif.

2. Login/Access is Unwieldy/Disabled

One way to make sure no visitors bookmark your page is to load it down security options for any articles, blog posts or forum areas. Is your website about the price of garlic really a valid rationale for necessitating NASA level security?

3. Format Not Upgraded Suitably

The rush to upgrade open source applications and reforge template editions puts a burden on the website visitor. But many disgruntled (nonreturning) posters can log in and spend laborious amounts of time trying to post one entry.

The contracting webmaster may not know any of this because they relied on a third party to administer the website version without any discussion or commentary with the people actually using the system.

Hint: changing the rules of the way an internal way a website works without notice may alienate contributors, paid and unpaid, to your website forever.

Print too large, text to small, confusing organization of important options and clustered arrays of options never used show a lack of respect for the actual task at hand. Ads which resize the page layout two to three times make viewers fatigued navigating a web page three or four time to get to one post is also bad news.

If you write into the site once a month and you expected 200 posts form other users a month, don’t change the settings of the website or application to suit your computer but not the people you depend on for content.

4. Bad Scripts/Preventive Settings

Preventive settings are installed script instruction that order the way ad editor, administrator or visitor interacts with your website. If you can;t find anyone to contribute to your website, the formatting and scripting could be making your posters or writers draw a line in the sand. This includes silly  requirements like posting a photo with every blog post, verifying email before approving post access, or delaying posting privileges until the admin gets around to checking their email.

I have signed up for dozens of websites where the registration process is nothing more than  a data collector script or email trap. Wanna guess how encouraged I feel to return?

5. No Tags/Categories

The horizon is unlimited for blog contributions and website additions, but unless containers and blog entries have tags and relevant categorical notation, the search engines (and browsers) are not going to find them. t is not “obvious” what the page or content is about, these tags need to guide search engines and researchers to the site.

For SEO results and online searchability,, think of a dot-to-dot site map strategy. Every landing page result should have a focused keyword and a link somewhere else. Use multiple synonyms and words of varying sophistication and complexity to say the same thing.

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31 March 2011 ~ 1 Comment

Introduction to the Domain Trade

Buying and selling of domains happens now in almost every country around the world. Anyone can buy a domain name, but legal requirements and laws suggest a legal adult is the best candidate for a domain occupation. Tutorials, videos, seminars, white papers, and websites devoted to the buying and selling of domain names, content, and websites are online in every language. The formal use of a domain name is to frame a website, but the commodity of a domains for future resales is a thriving industry.

There is a variety of uses for a domain name as a sales entity. A domain name can be an embryonic brand or product, or a location and online destination. One strategy to make money selling domains is to leverage value from domain ownership is to concentrate domain ownership in critical TLD suffixes. Advanced knowledge of computer code and software is not required at all to buy as many domains as desired.These domain properties are secured inside an online account with a password and user name for buyer privacy. However, business norms for domainers make the registration data available to researchers online unless buyers purchase additional privacy safeguards.

The owner of a keyword domain with a high generic value and an extant page rank may want to offer the dot com, dot org, and dot net as a package, which offers top first-pass domain management without competitors trying to hijack traffic away from a launch effort or website promotion. Comprehension of domain name commerce terms and trading advice can be obtained by participation in online forums and trade shows worldwide

Domain names can be very affordable to collect. The price of any domain name in a dot-com theater of commerce is a range from five to fifteen dollars depending on the registrar, or licensed vendor. Dictionary names are generic domains which are assumed to be salable in any language. But trademark checking and language translation can introduce less risk to these investments. Copyright lawsuits can overturn ownership of established brands and trademarks, even from other countries.

As with every investment idea, financial risk can become a hazard. Domainers should survey the likely market and historic high auctions sales for similar names before investment four figures or more. Another strategy is to invest in keyword domains of emerging technologies, popular hobbies, and occupational or trade product sites which are very specific but offer an advantage to visitors. This might be via a coaching video, an explanatory essay, or images directed at ease of use or performance improvement.

The blueprint for any domain value growth model should be a business plan for launching a website. Many domain owners also refer their domain urls to parked pages for link revenue derived from bulk volumes of visitors.

There is an etiquette for making and withdrawing domain offers, and an accepted community and marketplace for such transactions. Disputes concerning domain name ownership, illegal domain name transfers, copyright violations, trademark jumping, and fraud are governed by accepted policies per the name registrar and web hosting company where a site or domain name is hosted online. Email communications and legal escrow processes can be required for large value domains, and auction companies online dealing in domain name sales charge a percentage fee and a transaction fee for these services.

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09 June 2010 ~ 4 Comments

Basic Online Domaining Skills

Domaining is one of the best things about the World Wide Web. Anyone can do it. There is no ethnic tabu or gender restriction, educational bias or language barrier. The web allows individual users their own path to domaining success. The domain name game is a custom career with no checklist or required curriculum to start or actively participate in online.

And it is a myth that every domainer webmaster or site designer has to know all the code types and applications administration tasks in the beginning. the learning curve of a domainer is both a challenge and a reward. Domainers make excellent peer advisors. Learning to navigate the basic starting points of owning a domain and promoting it for resale can be the start of many lasting online relationships.

Online web travelers from all over the world use the internet every day to traffic in domain names and related products. Being able to make websites, engineer hosting account setups, and administrate open source applications are some of the skills needed for domain name careers. Hosting account ownership and registrar commerce is a must for domainers. Studying the interactions and execution of domain purchase, registration, transfer and hosting of names and websites are pivotal domaining skills.

A robust Internet connection with some tolerances for crisp security and ISP access is suggested. Facebook access and experience using Twitter is a bona fide asset to any domainer working online today. Niche skills like language or industry core competencies can lift a newby domainer into the advanced level of his group of interested name promoters and owners.

Domaining can be as multifaceted as the individual operator decides their business day online needs to be. Working offline editing HTML code or participation in domainer chat are equally valuable domain name development inputs. Photo editing, graphic design skills, and overall adherence to web standards is a valued set of skills that can become domaining sidelines for other domainer clients.

Basic computer skills and word processing facility is very much utilized in domaining and basically any online editing of text and material. Indexing a numbered list, or formatting a bullet point in the code might be needed one day and then never again. Some spreadsheet analysis may occur using traffic statistics but graphic representation of these reports is commonly available.

People generally want to know what to expect when they break into the domain name game and how the industry works. The individual domainer will produce his own agenda and set his own standards about how their day or   week or month will progress in terms of domain acquisition and resales. Redesigning or editing sites for user ease of use is a common task.

Domainers usually hire subcontractors to get little things like code editing or site patches done, as it is not a good use of their time to learn a skill from the ground up when it can be done by an online domainer professional. The skills domainers learn ramping up in the job make them feasibly able to perform these tasks for others as well. Search engine optimization and link building are almost domain industries of their own.

The schedule of a domainer can be arduous or part time. The domainer can spend all their time scanning drop list auctions, reading technology tutorials, or building social network relationships with other domainers. All can be equally valuable. The underlying trait of a successful domainer is the willingness to learn and the ability to actively participate online in business areas relating to domain name commerce.

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