Domain Owl

Amidst all the cynical backbiting taking place over the three amigos kicked from Oversee.net, I have yet to hear the logic behind Monte Cahn leaving. Is this company as much of a mess as it sounds like? I can’t quite track the convoluted history of these Internet based companies. Some of the comment show some bad blood between not only domainers in general and Oversee.net, but to those individuals in particular. Were these cost cutting measures or disciplinary measures against specific individuals?

This could make sense in the long run. I find it hard to believe any above-the-line talent in a high profile domaining company needs to be let go in such a public manner unless there is an underlying reason for having made them redundant that will be made clear in the fullness of time. Gee it’s hard to believe parking didn’t work out to be a money printing machine, right?

I still take issue with internet companies so bloated with infrastructure they can’t do more that publish parking programs and weave together parking networks. That’s just not a full days’ work for any domainer, in this domain owner’s humble opinion.

The news of these job cuts has alerted domainers to the money machine that parking is built on. Affiliate programs are always only as good as their bank balance.

At the same time naysayers are shuttering offices at Oversee.net, five figure domains sales are still taking place on public worldwide auction platform. That three of the big recent sales were .co name is serious food for domaining thought. Apple buying icloud.com for $4.5 million is the kind of sale may keyword domain buyers dream of. (What took them so long?)

Some marquee six figure sales broke profitably as well. That’s a dichotomy that should speak loudly to any domainer. The parking companies are going broke but the buyers market for big dollar domains is a blown out as ever.

eNom Expired Domain Name Software. Snap Expired Domain Names the Second They become Available for Registration.

That Amazon.com is buying single consonant domain names shows that a program of investment in domain names is still happening among large to global sized corporations. This complements the small to medium sized business purchase of a brand name or entity name to support online marketing and brand promotion.

Tap your feet three times if you “get it”. As reporters and broad stream media become more conversant in the domain name game, the open market for first time domain buyers and resales will sharpen. The recent appearance of the “Get Rich Click” author on the View reflects how this is done. It’s hard to believe the domain model for online marketing and resale profit, as well as affiliate sales derivation is still a mystery to anyone, but evidently this is so.

For domainers thinking strategically, this puts them at the middle of the demand market, behind the huge portfolio holders but ahead of the newbs with B2B needs for domains as yet to be determined. Any domainer can leverage existing domains into a worth position by multiplying their investment using coupon codes, the most recent of which was the Godaddy.com Indy car event code.

The B2B and side business potential of a domain name career continues to grow. I am surprised nobody has built a domain name shop franchise for the all the hue and cry that startups have in the world today. Today the Internet market for affiliate earnings is more suited to specialized end users, specialist webmasters,  and niche authors than ever.

For the right name the right customer is out there. Do the math: if you buy three domains a year at $1.29, and spend about $50 hosting them all, that’s a potential of $100 profit if even one of those websites sells intact with the name. On that formula, selling the right customer the right name should be simple. All they have to do is add content, link liberally to their social networking groups, and blend on low speed.

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A lot of people who come into contact with domainers misunderstand what domaining is all about. They assume there is a high-end technological ceiling that prevents the “common man” from getting involved. The domainers industry is filled with those who have an advanced knowledge of HTML, website design, and affiliate advertising, but the career of domaining can be accessed even without the experience qualified with coding and programming.
The ramp-up of introductory knowledge begins, as always, with a little history.  Researching the customers and clients that will evolve for any business, domaining include those entities and special rules and cultural traditions that must be navigated before admittance to the community of domainers occurs. There is no official roll of members of the industry, and there is no required educational requirements or certification need to participate, bid on, or buy domains.
The current customer base for domain name sellers includes both veteran domainers who navigated Darpanet before dial-up telephony was achievable, and teenagers following the domain sale market like a ladie’s stock picking club. Domain buying is done online or even in person at trade shows, private personal transactions, and special event sales. The set price of a new, untenanted domain can be precluded in cost by the  suffix, or TLD (Top Level Domain) that follows it. The TLD of any domain is a big tip to its price, value, and potential.
The portal though which domain names are vended is the registrar, the sale and buyer’s information is recorded into the registry record, and the recording of a new owner for the domain name is mirrored all  over the world in seconds. The computer servers these name records are located on are called nameservers. International banking and currency portals can also charge a surcharge for conversion of currency between buyer and seller, an auction listing premium, and/or local sales taxes and fees.
The listing of domain names for sale is published online, in event programs, and distributed via e-mail or auction house bulletins.

A number of domain name auction companies have emerged to govern the market, such as Sedo.com. Other registrars functioning online as domain name sales portals have daily, weekly, quarterly domain sales events or multi-tiered auction events live often. Bidders can bid through an established account, on the phone, or via pre-set bids and limits per domain name.
The buyers of any given domain name in a premium auction might be a investment group, a private individual, a partnership proxy, or just a hobbyist finding a bargain or a investor looking for a likely branch of investment opportunities. Many startup businesses begin with the purchase of a domain name which is also the name of their website, product, service, or company. A website that is not ready or launching will have a “parkgin” page until other content or organized visual material is composed.

A domain name does not need a business model or company name to match to warrant sale or be listed for sale to any buyer.
The rules governing certain TLD names abroad can change these parameters. Certain Country Code names are formed from the suffixes of Country Code TLDs, which have been expanded for resale and licensed for commercial resale worldwide by that country through a registrar or auction house. International use of such names does occur, but some countries have taken the step to limit exploitation of domain name usage by placing geographical restrictions on the sale. The valuation of any name is what the buyer will pay.
Conditions exist within the domain ownership purview such that a given domain name with a more popular or commonly used TLD, such as dot-com, dot-net or dot-org, is unavailable, in use, priced beyond the buyer’s budget, or owned by a corporate entity which refuses to sell it. This type of domain ownership happens often, and can be a spur to a copyright conflict between domain name owners. Administrators are well advised to research the copyright entities worldwide before launching a site, promoting it, or investing development resources.
Exceptions to this are explained at the sale point on any registrar or by any legitimate seller. Not all registrars are licensed to sell the domain names of all TLDs, and in the competitive selling market online for vending domain names, these sale or licensing rights can carry a premium. But the policy of any legitimate domain name vendor are such that a sale to an inappropriate party will not occur.

Ombudsman organizations such as WIPO arbitrate disputes between domain name owners when such conflict arises.
Domain evaluation and value assessment is a gray area within the field of domaining. The methods of evaluation for a buy price or sale price might be applied from various instruments and methods. Website visits or domain name lookups alter the value of a domain name for potential resale or product promotion. The records of these statistics may be featured for a domain sale or researched independently.
Grooming domain name values includes incorporating website content, search engine approximations, and commercial advertising options called affiliates. Affiliates generate payments from site visitation per domain name and traffic volumes predictive of probable advertising participation. User traffic and links to and from the domain name’s website can bolster a domain name’s value significantly.

The value of a domain name  usually relates to traffic of web users to the site every day, links, and information therein. Various strategies and programs are used by site managers (called webmasters) to grow these statistics.
Thus, in the context of a domain name sale, the content which has historically been associated with the website or the domain name has value. Content is written material, text, caption, meta tags, video or audio files, or uploaded documents for visitors to view.

The organization of these elements of content can create a entity at a search engine known as a site profile which concords to the domain name. Thus, a search engine results page full of returned associated listing pertaining to the site name or from it, and/or the history for any domain name rich in content and development can inflate the name’s value.

The email addresses generated from the domain name address can also be of value in online communication and marketing. SEO value, or search engine result value for any domain name, is a hot topic amongst domainers.  New trends in domain name value leverage include social networking, Twitter, RSS feeds, and link exchange programs built to foster reflexive trade in web user visitation.

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Whenever I hear someone say “We’re working on the website” or “We haven’t decided which way to go with the domain name”, my domaining ears perk up. The expertise a career domainer can offer someone in this position is priceless. Fending off the domain name purchase is pointless, but so many great sites die in these birth pangs. Witness so many arbitration cases being lost because the domain owner dropped the ball very early in the value creation race. The real way to manufacture a domain sale for profit is the consulting or domain launch process for others.

The growth process for every domainer is different. People of different backgrounds and varying degrees of education and technical background can become domainers almost by accident. But like many businesses, the ability to profit comes from the ability to strike when the iron is hot. Waiting for the client to realize the “now” moment doesn’t work. Domainers need to groom their domain clients into realizing website plans online. Then the income building and profit making can begin.Domain names are not like new clothes, they derive value from use, not disuse.

And for a domainer, hearing the growing pains of a non-web savvy domain prospect is music to their ears. Because the domainer holds the upper hand and can educate the new business owner or operator about the ways their domain can grow as a business tool. Just the incentive to build a site and get a domain into the SEO mix is the impetus that drives the primary marketing effort of any domain name. Every business opportunity that is idling is actually a live business opportunity being strangled to death.

Business people or individual entrepreneurs tend to look for the money before they develop any content. This is a self -circular defeat mechanism, because how can there be affiliate programs, sponsors, microtransactions or paying memberships for a site that doesn’t exist? Building the content is always the most important primary step in building any website. Building a website is the primary component in growing domain value and building traffic statistics. Domainers can execute a site before any plans or agreements for ads or sponsors take place.

The cost of marketing s often overinflated. The reason viral marketing can fall flat is that promoting a website and domain name with little or no application value at the destination is fruitless. Referral traffic can make or break a new site, which is why niche audiences need to overlap. People are looking for things to do. The utmost business model online is to find a need and fill it. Find “x” domain to fit “y end user and create “z” application for the equation.

A huge error many would-be domain entrepreneurs make is anticipating stopgaps and blocks to their success before the intangibles even become defined. A failed imagination counts the hurdles, a strategic thinker calculates the potential for success. But partnering talent and handing off responsibilities makes a delegation opportunity for smart leaders with vision.

Groundbreaking websites weren’t built by individuals who quoted sound reasons for not going ahead with their project. Smart domainers know how to turn the “no” in this sentiment into a “yes”. Nobody ever made a lot of money following someone else’s roadmap. if the entity doesn’t exist, it’s because everyone else is waiting for another entrepreneur to cross the finish line to have a reason to start the race. Smart players get coaching advice, successful winners work with expert trainers, and ultimately, the best domainers go where they are needed the most, in development cycles stalled in doubt.

Even flawed organizations are kept alive by the quality of the strengths of the key players. Knowing when to attach advanced talent and utilize resources for advancing agenda items can’t be done if all planning is forestalled by anticipatory question that circle the drain powered by doubt and hesitation. Faint heart never won the day. Certainly not in domaining, anyway.

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This week’s premiere domain industry activity is centered in Santa Monica, where Moniker auctions and event seminars showcase the hottest development in domaining. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is the next big show. With luck the seminars and videos will be up on Youtubes and blogs in no time. The domain industry is getting ready to mobilize to the .co universe.

But according to reports, security at gigs for domaining is getting stricter, and Elliott Silver reported today that even Frank Schilling couldn’t get in. Recent events at other domain trade shows have given rise to double checking at the gates, a sad commentary on the abuse of some domainers last year. But the domain industry babble is all about the Super Bowl Godaddy campaign and the identity of the Godaddy girl.

The hiring of Danica Patrick and NBC Biggest Loser Trainer Jillian Michaels have stirred the cup of controversy, which Bob Parsons of Godaddy likes to do himself. Whomever the Hollywood icon is, the sneak preview shows a likely suspect. Domainfest attendees will have a chance to educate the dot com entrepreneurs prowling the Playboy mansion later this week. The auctions taking place can be bid on by proxy or at Moniker online, or via a broker attending Domainfest.

‘Designing with Web Standards” By Jeffrey Zeldman, (2010)

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Have you gotten bogged down with everyday activities and missed a prime domain name deleting from your hosting or registrar account? Assigning an old email address, spam filtering, and the wearying upsell chain of emails from your hosting account and registrar can make even the savviest domainer skip any subject lines from those domain auto-generation lists.

Make a spreadsheet or get a small notebook. On each page (or in each column) write down the name of the domain you bought, the place you purchased it, how much, and the expiration date. If you have the Paypal address or the email contact and name of the person who sold it to you, this could be queried later on if there is a contested name change.

If you used an online forum, resales portal or auction house, get the user name and note whether or not the person exchanged proper trader rating data. Selling a domain name can be something that domain owners trumpet to the skies, especially if they made a profit. Following the purchase, Google the domain name to see if any comments (or protests) regarding the domain name sale have been published online.

The domain purchase price becomes the new start value for the domain. Every marketing cost or time investment must evaluated for change in domain value from here on in. Don’t use any other projected values discussed in the negotiation phase of acquiring the domain. Those are not concrete. Your goal is to change this domain name purchase value and increase it until the name can be marketed for resale.

Create  a page in the notebook or spreadsheet for domain traffic and SEO measurements. It is worthwhile to note online metrics generators searches for the name on such and such a date, and tabulate changes at these same generators for the name later on. If you jump around using sweetheart sites to get the values you want, the data validity won’t be as strong as all values over time.

As stated, the domain purchase price is the establishing value. This value can be inserted into a variety of formulas. These formulas can be used to generate reports for domain name auction or resale data later on. By establishing an origin data point for all your domain calculations from then on, you can make a quarterly growth table for all the values. These would be traffic, new user signups, offer inquiries, or ad responses and Google revenues.

The notebook domaining method can be used if you only have one or two domains and don’t feel a need to mechanize the data. But it gets easier as you buy more domains to just add the basic information and let legacy formulas through the sreadsheet take over the work for you. Also, exporting data be  comes easier to cut and paste into a computerized spreadsheet, especially if you are catching up.

Regarding domain name expirations; If you outline the Expiry date in red, or sort regularly once a week to check domain name expirations in the spreadsheet, you do a quick check for renewals due, So, when the panic strikes in the middle of the night your most valuable domain is slipping away through the droplist, you can flip pages or scan the top dates for calmness.

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Domaining is a lot like the process and concept of feng-shui, the harmony in relationship to spaces and other objects practiced by the Japanese for millennia. The two concepts have a lot in common. A harmonious relationship in feng shui results in beauty and peace. A harmonious relationship in domaining results in profit.

Feng shui considers the attributes of a different plane of consciousness and calculates the astral possibilities of likelihood of positive and negative events from a varied dimension from the current static reality. Sound like so much hocus-pocus? Follow. Domaining situates a domain on the dragon’s eyeball of the internet traffic market and rolls the dice and sets the roulette wheel of fate in motion. The laws of chance can govern its monetary success.

Many people involved in the Internet domain name game miss the philosophy dimension that is necessary to manage a domain portfolio. Such people see direct equations of investment and profit with no values in between. These are most likely those scrambling around asking questions like “why  didn’t this domain sell?” or “why didn’t someone offer me a staggering amount of money for that domain I bought yesterday?”.

This demeanor boils down to a basic question. “Why don’t people do what I want when I want? ” This has many answers. In the domain world the only guarantees of resale success for a domain name are effort. Not the least of which can be answered by an individual’s ability to effectively launch their domain sites and promote them effectively.

I have been in the domain name game for about twenty years now. The more things change, the more some things stay the same. It’s impossible to believe (yet wholly common and accurately conveyed) that many aggressively profit seeking domainers do little or nothing to promote their urls, while actively soliciting bids as though the names were traffic horse race winners.

If I had a dime for every domainer who wrote me hurt and victimized emails about how their brand new speculative domain wasn’t being snapped up by the highest bidder, I’d be in hog heaven. And with the developing sites market exploding the way it has, anyone would be a fool to expect high volume profit and massive cash turnover in days. Those stories are fantastic for a reason.

The domain name commodity market  has a lot of people in it to game the system. They seek to leverage value from a name or website that otherwise might be perceived as having none. Petulant questions and whining yield no revenue. Building links, adding articles, submitting link directory entries and buying ad space yield traffic and web clicks.

The successful turnover of a domain name for a resale of huge dollar gain is a yellow brick road. For anyone who has seen the “Wizard of Oz”, Dorothy’s story doesn’t begin and end with her demanding shrilly to get the ruby shoes as she stands in front of the witch’s house. She has a journey and she acquires partners and they aid her with significant wisdom and counsel.

The incorporation of magical belief and chance and fate and destiny affect the way many stolid businessmen perceive the internet. Something about the web makes them believe magical things can happen. It is possible, but without a magic wand summoning the auction fairies to do your bidding is difficult. Sprinkling magic dust on the domain resale offer letter is not possible.

How does this relate to feng shui? The concept of harmony and one’s place in the universe is one that correlates to domaining. Every domainer maps an independent journey through the domain name commodity market with their own fate in their hands. Seasons change, yin and yang operate in flux, and balances are restored.

In the domain game, your name value is your karma. But the five elements of domain name feng shui I would categorize as the name, the hosting account, the site design, the traffic building and the content. All of these must work in harmony. For many domainers, significant gaps exists in one or more of these columns per name.

Each of the five phenomena of the domain name market and resale commodity bazaar operate to strengthen and vitalize name value. Elide one category and the energy drains away. Without movement and traffic, a site is stagnant. Without active promotion and the humanistic zest of ideas, a domain falls flat. And the domainer must look within to find out why.

To dissipate and destroy name value happens more often than domainers are comfortable dealing with. Changing horses midstream, flirting with content strategies, and assuming important website architecture changes are needed when not even one week has gone by is a way of fencing with the feng shui of the domain  market. A bad way.

Yes, the Internet can be stormy and dangerous. But when the right energy is contributed it runs smooth and clear like flowing water. I urge all domainers to contemplate their interactive environment and consider their domaining feng shui. A successful approach like this one could be a new way to gain emotional perspective and retain motivatonal drive to snowball domain value skyward.

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One of the fastest and most entry level friendly niches in domaining has been the growth of the database market. To sell or vend a database should take a minimum number of thread posting listings and per word price negotiation. A premium price or per word rate should be hung on a database with super dense keyword content and notable outbound link targets.

Why are databases valuable? Because they can be re-used. By now, domain name buyers and sellers know the big money in domaining comes from developed names that form viable sites with traffic stats to support resale dynamics. By purchasing and installing an SEO optimized database and aggregating inbound links via link exchanges and link building, a domain name owner and webmaster can bring together a working site.

The blog engine is the most user friendly and widely used site maker now, and new domain owners may want to skip the early stages of blog birthing pains and ramp up a database for the first cycle of entries to fit. For the domainer launching multiple projects this can be a lifesaver strategy. And the blog database especially has value when associated with a domain name with “blog’ in the title.

A database of blog entries is flexible in that it can be viewed in a vertical, top-down manner in spreadsheet or table form after importing and file conversion. These records can then be uploaded to a new blog installation that suddenly has content within it. With each user the content becomes more customized, fresh and new.

The database table is a character set table that can be converted from the Access database file format and converted to Word table or Excel block view. Blog entries can be scanned for relevance to the intended new domain name project or website. This utility can be used when a domain name is being dismantled or let to drop. the domain database can be salvaged for future posting or resale value.

Repopulating a database with new terms and keywords, and editing the entries to reflect a new domain name makes a dozen blogs possible to update daily. A domainer who owns a dozen blogs can work with a busy calendar by filling in some of them with legacy database source entries. This keeps the bots happy and allows domain name owners to bulk fortify their online blog installations without exhaustion.

The database salvage starts with the editing. Conversion Wizards can be activated by mouse clicking the object upon extraction from the hosting account database manager. And many blog engines allow direct file extraction for the administration menu interface. Files form database downloads can be split, unacceptable records deleted, and spam entries in comment fields bulk cleared of content.

A new database file is then opened that presents all of the text of the blog entry words. Each entry is separated by its date stamp. These can be reordered at will by the editor. The entries will then be visible in a transparent manner, one on top of the other. The cascading records (each entry forms one record) can be bulk processed to form the basis of a new blog

In Excel, the autofill of the date function can supply the new calendar of dates. The date field can also be left as is, and the record entries salvaged on a piecemeal basis day by day or entry by entry. For many newb bloggers, rewriting 350 words and supplementing them to form one 500 word text blog entry is doable, while a blank “new post’ field (daily) scares them to death.

Editing a database table of records is much easier than it sounds. The database application allows find and replace features so the operator can bulk replace keywords. By identifying good keywords and using content editing and link seeding within the words of the file the database as a whole becomes more congruent to a certain domain name. Each record can be reworked and revised to reflect current SEO needs.

One big secret to vending a database is that owning the domain name isn’t necessary. If a talented writer wants to write a blog about a geo market, hot new term, or niche industry, they can install the WordPress or blog installation on their hosting account file manager directory tree and start growing their database right there. Tending the fields of data can earn domainers big bucks.

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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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When website technology makes the cover of TIME magazine, the webmasters who skip taking note and continue on their geeky ride to stardom suffer. Collaborative filtering is what Netflix and Blockbuster have been doing for years with our movie choices. TIME’s article assumes that consumers and listeners are such spineless jellyfish their taste in music is a non-static dynamic one Pandoresque taffy pull away from new consumerism online.

Webmasters have seen this kind of taste making before, usually linked to consumer side reviews or specification linked technology elements. How you buy a computer online or how you buy an Ebay object show massive marketing heave in complementary response to every click. Vacuum cleaners and diapers get the same treatment from sites like Target.com and Kmart. Online consumers have learned to accept this collaborative response as a constant.

The owners and programmers of Pandora.com have a gleeful exuberance and gosh-gee-whiz exuberance of a winning website at the top of its game. Opening Pandora.com’s box would seem to be fun, I haven’t had the time nor the inclination. But to change up the model of the appeal of a Pandora business plan is a challenge all webmasters can relate to.

The domain is the brand, the starting point of a functional online destination. Creating a “Pandora” for computers and suggesting netbook or Ipad choices could also be the next big collaborative software requiring a recommendation engine. It could also be a shopping list item for domainers cruising the dollar domain threads or the dropping and deleting auction site lists.

Forming domain names to eventuate as Pandora-like portals for other consumer items or objects thus becomes a valid domaining goal. The name Pandora itself does not pertain to music or technology but rather to classical mythology. That the broad arc between those dynamics has been bridged shows the stamp of an impressive marketing campaign. The user clickthrough and site visit frequency ramps up the SEO value of any such site.

But what about the rest of us who haven’t chosen wannabe music fans as our target market? Lots of web surfers don’t want to be informed about their taste and neither do they  want suggestions about what the webmasters think they are supposed to do or buy or click next.  Generally these type of pointing fingers take the form of affiliate ads. YouTube and Tivo aren’t as sales oriented in the recommendation engine tactics so the pain isn’t felt as much.

The key market for Pandora would seem to be people too dumb or impatient to discover music for themselves. I guess if it doesn’t slay you in the first ten bars, you won’ t be tempted to buy it or know it or learn it. Pandora has transformed music appreciation into a game of “Name That Tune”, where consumers can turn thumbs down on any ditty they don’t cotton to.

Pandora.com has an intrinsic value in that it slyly siphons content from the corpus of music created worldwide across history. That is a very large target base of Internet browsers to tap. And they didn’t pay for the development.  iTunes mined the same demographic, with its  lead samplings and suggested additional tracks and artists.

The core value of a recommendation engine is its database of users. Pandora taps the musical tastes of users who have ranged through its site answering questions, scanning titles, and selecting artists. This type of data works through the filtering model and products likely pathways of additional similar choices. But the associative (SEO) model still works too.

It is hard to argue about the success and popularity of Pandora, but it confounds the logical webmaster in me to do it. FaceBook was just such a site, and now an industry of privacy and security software companies are making bank doling out protective code to people who give crib notes on their lives to people (Friends) they haven’t spoken to in decades.

The domain market contains many expansive opportunities for those with ideas and commitment to their collaborative projects. The domain model like Pandora.com as a suggestive filter or recommendation engine has merit. The broad range of objects this might apply to could start another domain gold rush in recommendation engine domains. Toys, books, kites, model airplanes, surfboards, a portal for anything can be created with such a model to work from.

Now that the public and online Internet user base has developed a taste for having their choices filtered back to them in the form of additional product or item suggestions, any domainer can identify their target object and build a ‘Pandora” of their own. There are no limits, from game playing software to Barbie clothing. The Web (and TIME Magazine) has spoken. If you build it, they will come.

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In speaking with a client today concerning making his website, the entire campaign to get traffic and new business for his company unfolded. But the customer remarked,  that he was “just talking about a website”, but what I was talking about was marketing and advertising. I had a hard time not falling out of my chair. Where in the online business world, or even click and mortar commerce, did he think the two were supposed to be separated?

This client owned a small contracting business and had a FaceBook page. He was awake to the Internet possibilities.  But the effort to get the website up was “ongoing”. Big red flag: the client didn’t even have a domain picked out yet. This told me that no timetable or launch date had been set. Without these milestones, website projects and domain sites wither and die. Domains get registered by competitors because the project team waffles around.

One of the biggest reasons a website never happens is that the domain marketing effort is devoid of strategic initiative. The necessary decisions about form and intent never get made. Without a game plan the project simply never has a shape and becomes an endless talking point that ever materializes. I wasn’t surprised to hear that the client both scoffed at a coherent marketing plan and had no site up yet. The two tend to go together.

One of the ways to evaluate a potential website’s strengths and weaknesses is to see what kinds of options to participate visitors and referred readers will perceive when the landing page loads. Can they call, email, to stop by the office? Just the integration of company data to directories of local business was probably not even done.  A broad campaign to saturate the site with discoverable keyword elements and SEO related geo data was indicated.

Without anything online, there is nothing to market, discuss, or promote. Practically any business today that does not have a website feels very fly-by-night, not the vibe a customer is looking for in a construction contractor. This type of site can be as bare-bones as possible and still serve its purpose. Very little flash and flimflam features need to be added. I suggested the client author both write a blog detailing past projects with photos, and contribute to his own keyword rich forum describing construction issues.

Astonishingly, the client told me his brother was a web designer and was “working on the website”. This is another red flag. Websites are professional advertising tools, not weekend hobbies. Unless the strictest standards of professional respect are brought to bear, nothing will result. The world is full of back burner website projects that never see the light of day. That a family’s livelihood depends on this site production makes the situation acute.

The company name hadn’t even been searched for the associated domain name yet. I could tell at once that the “brother” was extremely ambiguous about the project and controlling his brother’s commercial success by suppressing progress. These are sticky dynamics where nothing but the truth will serve. I told the client to get his domain secured with capable hosting.

The client was wearing a company t-shirt with lots of text almost constructed like a minisite front page. The construction services, I told the client, had an appeal for immediate geographical users. These would be prospective customers who would be looking for companies to do work locally.  These,  I told this client, would be looking up the services using keywords and local city names or even possibly zip codes to find workers.

I advised this client  to emphasize his Spanish and English bi-lingual service and outline all the contracting services his company did with a short paragraph or two each. These would be a valuable SEO incorporation of important keywords relative to the search engine descriptors browsers would use to find local project help. I told him the information on his t-shirt, expanded into sentences and paragraphs, would make an excellent website.

I also suggested he link to another minipage where images and short descriptions from past projects could show people without reading how the company worked and what kinds of projects he did. This type of simple task compeltion would both lead to the meaning of the domain, but support its keyword and topical subject matter. We discussed a domain name with the geographic suffix if the company name dot-com was taken.

These steps immediately focused the domain buy and initiated a sketching out of the domain name in the customer’s mind. Every stage of the text construction and the content writing would now lead back to the domain name. With an independent hosting buy and a website project under personal control, the client was now individually responsible for his domain and construction progress for his new company website.

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