Domain Owl

Remember when Groupon was just a funny little website with a unique sounding domain name? Groupon has now become the domainer’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the GroupOn story has grown and grown, until the tombstone headlines in the business journals have proclaimed it a blue chip investment worthy of underwriting on the metropolitan stock exchanges worldwide.

The ongoing opportunity in the online space for a domainer to build a brand, establish a service, deliver a product and find a market still exists. As many experts observe, the SEO search result B2B offering has barely been tapped, domainer clams to the contrary. The SEO business available online is a green market ripe for plucking. Domainers needy for SEO development and cementing into the virtual universe on the vine.

Domainers and their service providers have fallen short of delivering the full scope of SEO quality services, as one observer notes in an article “The B2b of SEO”.

“Even with the popularization of SEO value present in the current online media community, actual search engine penetration is rare. But the cause of this is more counter intuitive than even the most qualified experts can defend.”

GroupOn was smart enough not to listen to the naysayers who scoffed at their idea or nodded knowingly at one more undevelopable app coming down the pike. They ignored even further the people who said according to the extant rules GroupOn might fail. Every domainer should doff their cap to GroupOn for extending the domaining possibilities for every name in every domain portfolio in existence.

Yes, I am talking to YOU. Why aren’t you marketing your domain harder? Don’t you want an IPO? Get on the stick and get your marketing department clicking. It costs NOTHING to plant urls and post comments, yet so many ambitious domain owners haven’t posted a self-serving blog comment or forum post in YEARS.

Physician, heal thyself.

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A one domain strategy is a long game for those who have an investment view of finding return value on their domain name investment. One domain name with exceptional startup values, traffic, integrated SEO presence, domain ranking  and corporate or brandable name can be purchased using the entire investment nest egg or capital funding. A single domain can be a hobby or part time employment investment avenue.

A multiple domain name strategy includes various tools bought in bulk or employed over time in combination with one another that they return a  higher dollar value the one domain name itself. Not every name will benefit equally from like methods of marketing and promotion, yet every domain will feel some complementary benefit to the overall domain portfolio promotion strategy. The webmaster must administrate the content and keyword density efficiently.

Some names will have more traction than others from the get-go. Each domainer will have to decide if this means the “favorite son” gets more attention or less. Some domainers choose to focus on the most popular domain name in their stable. Some domainers try to shore up equal SEO results for equal time spent utilizing marketing and promotion tools.

Managing a domain portfolio takes planning, managing one domain requires simply attention to detail over various platforms and promotion campaigns. An approach to article writing for url promotion via resource quotation may not work for every domain keyword association. Domainers should evaluate their promotion skills and purchase domain names which can benefit best form each employment of their SEO optimization skill set and site content enhancement techniques.

Link building may not apply equally well over a broad array of domain names of various types. Some names may remain parked simply due to lack of time on the domainer’s part to develop them. Scheduled activities such as link building and article writing and submissions should be penciled out as far as time commitments go. The sum of many domain development parts equals much more than the sum of its SEO result.

Time assessment to develop should be an important element of additional domain name acquisition value analysis. A numerical domain or typo domain will not have the same branding appeal as a nonsense word with a catchy sound and funny onotomological effect. Domain names for best use are verbal and should encourage repetition and viral communication in an expanding loop outward. When end users stumble over difficult to pronounce or unknown domain names,for viral spread it’s game over.

Multiple domain investment will use up more time and absorb more attention than a single domain marketing project. Domainers should explore the full scope of domain name promotion and marketing options before considering themselves having tapped the full value of development potential. Experience using domain development applications, promotion websites, domain auctions, and online domain link building tools will factor into any domain name acquisition and business plan analysis and strategy further down the line.

A classic business error in the domain handling sciences is to quickly acquire many more names than the current time and resources of any domainer can reasonably develop to return value on time. A more wise domain name investment and development course is to hone SEO optimization skills and familiarize themselves with the necessary tools to promote a domain names value, and then multiply labor with supernumerary domain acquisitions.

Unless keyword and topic similarity are more than 80% congruent, each domain name’s value increase will depend on consistent SEO promotion. But a domain name traffic development strategy might take turns pointing each promoted domain name at another, thus algebraically transferring metrics of traffic while bolstering overall SEO domain name recognition.

One domain name can have multiple domain strategies, but the same domain names with the same marketing steps can be repeated over time and receive the value of an applied campaign to promote page rank escalation, SEO result optimization, Alexa categorical data fulfillment, and overall traffic increases. A social network campaign can follow these types of domain name development or operate congruently.

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New domainers can spend time combining keywords to make new domain names, or they can browse the clearance aisles of the domain world. Drop lists are churning every day, throwing deleting domain names into the shark pool of auctions. The victory belongs to the brave few who can master these drop list scanning chores and pull the gems from the silt.

Drop lists, or deleting name auctions, are composed from various sources. The chief source is the body of renewing names the owners have elected not to renew. These names recur to the domain registrar for ownership and record keeping. The domain owners may not be in the domaining business sector any longer or they may simply be streamlining their domain portfolio. Differing  reasons a name might expire or not be renewed make the excitement of what domain may pop up on the droplist potent for domainers.

Some domainers take the view that only the “dogs” of the domain industry make the droplists. This is not true. The fact is, most domain owners respond to the expiration and renewal notices their various registrars may send. Timely and repeated notifications of domain name renewal are a sign of a conscientious registrar. Godaddy.com, Networksolutions,com, Enom.com and other have a history of reliable “expiration period” pre-droplist domain notification practices.

Yet the domain name of value may yet slip through the the cracks and debut on the drop list to a sea of interested domain name bidders. the challenge for domain main investors is to seed their portfolios with enough anterior names, traffic domains, and lucky finds to increase value in the domain portfolio overall.  Original domain names take longer to seed into the existing SEO vocabulary than established domains with search engine traction.

The domain drop list market is opportunistic and highly competitive. One day a hundred thousand domainers might peruse the domain drop lists and fuel frantic domain name bidding. On a holiday or Sunday many domainers skip the list one domainer might find a fistful of PR treasure and SEO gold for very modest resale amount prices.

Droplisting can save time for the domain name investor because  instead of inventing a new name and taking the associated risk, they can get a known domain name. Instead of guessing via WHOIS domain name data for the entire pantheon of existing and available keyword combination terms and domain names they can simply select to buy or not to bid for existing names.

Many domainers construct cognate domain name clusters within their portfolio as a strategy to capture traffic for a certain subject, hobby, term, or keyword combination. They can resell these names to new project investors or other domainers looking to consolidate an existing position among top terms, keyword base names, and words.

A side benefit of the droplist treasure hunt is that the domain name already has a “presence” within Google and other search engine entities. Bidders can check the rankings themselves using SEO evaluation sites and PR site ranking reports online. Such finds can happen, especially when the drop list techniques for scanning become rote and efficiency rises.

Droplists continue to serve as a way for a domainer to augment an existing portfolio by watching for keywords or terms very similar or cognate to the existing owned domain name the domainer already has. A domain name speculator can vary his “bet about certain technologies or terminologies becoming robustly searched by allotting key resources of investment to the same group of keyword names or related “traffic” urls.

The various email addresses, changed contact numbers, and new addresses can prove a challenge for the registrar to finitely contact the domain owner. This is why WHOIS registry data is so explicitly gathered at the time of the original domain purchase. The administrative and other contacts are used if the registrar feels their customer is somehow not responding. Conscientious registrars guard the domains of their customers.

But if they miss a notice and the renewal period stretches on with no action, the registrar takes control of the “abandoned” name. The registrar may elect to keep the name rolling through their domain name base, or try to vend it for sale in the next chronologically occurring auction. International website owners and domain name brokers can play a part in this process as well.

Shopping the domain name auctions as the names expire and move through the hopper can be fun. Many domainers scrutinize the droplists just to see which trends in domain name buying are being sold off. A bulk selloff tips them off that a name type or lexicon of names is “over”. These maturations of names, especially trendy or “buzzword” names, happen in cycles.

But scanning drop lists, running search scripts, and searching by TLDs and country codes can save time for the busy domainer. Pool.com is one such site, Sedo.com is another.Some domainers specialize in finding keyword names for other domainers. Many registrars feature a droplist augmented service and auction events.

If domainers can identify their niche market or likely keyword dependent domain name for development, they can shrink the cycle of their time spent searching for names of interest online. Tools, scripts,  and droplist sites can save searches to expedite the droplist scan. And they can save their time for domain development, the meat and potatoes of the domain world.

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Think you’ve got what it takes to be a domain name professional? A domainer starts the day early, or “urly” as the case may be. Yet the true domainer’s day is packed with conflicting needs and time traps. Evaluating media, reading blogs, writing content and designing sites is absorbing. The time seems infinite, yet by the end of the day, it’s all gone. It happens in the blink of an eye, every day.

The domainer day must be navigated with key efficiency for multiple tasks. Managing business plans for websites, building site plans, choosing domain name, and checking auction sites takes time. Domain site bookmarks and favorites are natural time savers. Anything that shortens a task completion cycle, like a domain auction service, data reporting tool, domain forum, or tips update form a domain industry source is valuable.

Domainers must always be referencing their chosen domain news platform, or reviewing their hosting functionality and related discounts and offers. Domains come up for sale every day. Keeping competitive while managing existing domains is tricky. Budgets and timelines are the religion of true domainers. Rapid execution of these domaining tasks  is key across many different domain name sale, promotion, marketing, and development objectives. The reward is the profit.

Here is a sample agenda schedule in the day of a domainer:

6:00 a.m. Conference call between domain name investment partners.

6:30 a.m. Check email and review pertinent notifications and messages.

7:00 a.m. Login blog #1 and administrate comments & build new blog entry.

7:45 a.m. Check domain forum #1. Read messages and respond.

8:00 a.m. Review daily Pool auction and aftermarket drop listings.

8: 45 Log best picks from drop and deletions lists. Make min and max offers.

9:00 a.m. Peruse Droplist keyword lists and budget 2nd and 3rd offer ceilings.

9:30 a.m. Take call from domainer contact with bulk portfolio sale.

10 a.m. Register for a new topical forum for new domain name. Post 10 threads and then establish link to url of domain name in signature.

10:30 a.m. Check domain auctions and drop list bids between forum posts.

11:00 a.m. Make 3 blog entries with url link and domain name trackbacks.

12 noon. Munch lunch while listening to domain radio shows. Watch domain SEO information videos from live streaming or attempt some halfhearted cardio exercises and stretching hardworking neck and back muscles.

1 p.m. Open domain portfolio report and check date files for tickler spreadsheet with passwords and user names and visit 5 domain keyword related forums and make three posts in each one. Mark date of visit and adjust spreadsheet to next “tickler” sites for the next online development domain link promotion session. Print out report for domain portfolio notebook update.

2 p.m. Brainstorm new domains to buy, forming potential domain names from keywords and terms from clipped media reports. Use the Network Solutions WHOIS,  Godaddy, and other resources to verify if domains already exist and how much they might cost. Scan for current Godaddy coupon codes and determine if a bulk buy is in order.

3 p.m. Collect text files of custom content ordered form members of online domain forums. Evaluate keywords in Textalyser, and verify originality using Copyscape.

4 p.m. Make custom logo for new domain minisite using Cooltext. Experiment with textures, colors, fonts and sizing.

5 p.m. Submit Google and Adsense data for a new domain. Compose the minisite file with text content files collected and test the new site appearance in your resident browser or HTML viewer.

6 p.m. Proof marketing email for key domain site and send to broadcast list from registrations at the site. Submit new articles and graphics to the open source application and jot in a notebook the most viewed recent articles.

7 p.m. Review domain expiration report in domain portfolio software. Submit two domain names “for sale” threads for BIN auctions in two domain forum auction categories.

8 p.m. Sign up for streaming video webinar from trusted consultant in the domain world. Download videos from archive to review offline. Log into domain forums and change signature link to newest domain venture.

9 p.m. Review email bids and counter offer for bid domains. make payments to content authors, domain owners, and graphic artists for custom logos and themes for new partnership site. Browse SEO blog for reminder tips.

9:30 Stream favorite TV show on one LCD screen while adding keywords and doing text searches on the other. Use commercials for ad hoc keyword and meta tag addition in window with open source application site login in the article editor administration interface.

10 p.m. Review Alexa ranking for each domain in the portfolio spreadsheets. . Perform domain name and website analysis & compose review charts. Determine priority tasks for the next day.

[Rinse, lather & repeat.]

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