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My wife and I just got blessed with a bouncing, kicking and screaming baby girl on October 20th2008.  Mother and daughter are home now and doing real fine. A pleasant departure from the gloomy economy and the low and sometimes non existent PPC.  Now that gets me thinking, how many of you will acquire the .com or domain of your baby’s name. In my own case I did so many months prior. Before my wife conceived, I registered two names, one for a girl and one for a boy.

Did not want to make the same mistake I made early in my domain career. I assumed that my last name was so unique that no one will register it and since it cost like 35 bucks way back then, I decided to hold on for a while. Well when the .com and .org got snatched, I hurriedly registered the .net. My not registering this name early was a grave mistake because I later found out that my name was the acronym for the biggest Latin organisation in the world. Who would have known?

Well now you know why I have not been making much blogs recently. I have been extremely busy with my daughter and taking care of my wife. I banged up this web page from the hospital room so as to share with friends and family real quick. This was her first picture. See her at http://www.Chizara.com

God bless you all and please keep us in your prayers and thanks giving.

By the way, the question is real, how many of you own your names?
I own FrankieAladi.com and aladi.net

More importantly how many of you will or has dotcomed your kids?

The fact that all  major extensions of JoethePlumber is taken does not bother me. In fact someone even went as far as registering the .eu

What I find most interesting is that Joethe—-  is taken, try it out, Joethemechanic, even JoetheHandyman, all taken . Is this a new naming convention for blue collar jobs? Statistically, blue collar domains seldom attract super sales but who knows with the introduction of Joetheplumber to lime light, we may be dancing to a new tune. It is rumored that the owner of Joetheplumber.com has been offered 800K.

What do you make of all this?

I have been aware of WordPress for a long time now but have never actually used it until May of this year. This post might come as common place to a lot of domainers but this is awesome discovery for me. In less than two hours I was able to redesign an old website desperately in need of a makeover all with Wordpress. I must tell you, I am greatly impressed. Check out   SafariRacks.com

There is nothing spectacular about the design but the fact that it is simple and sharp. A big contrast from the parent site. I believe WordPress is the miracle wand I have been looking for. I did most of the redesign while waiting for a friend who was coming to borrow some stuff from me over the weekend. I intend to invest a few more hours seriously mastering this amazing tool.

Think of the possibilities; mini sites at the speed at which it takes me to write the articles in them— now that is way outstanding!

 A lot of blogs, mine included have suggested and made strong cases that this is a time to buy. No doubt, if you have the money. However the problem is that most people do not currently have uncommitted funds. Domainers are being pulled on both ends. Cost of everything is going up while in most cases revenue is down. So what do we do? Like a politician I will suggest what not to do. Do not fold your hands.

Do something. If you lack knowledge, read up more. I have been doing the same with the available time I have. I have successfully ( I hope) won the fight on spam bots on my forum sites. No knowledge in your chosen field is wasted. What I have also been doing is to find ways to develop or improve my old sites.  Despite the fact that PPC is down, this to me is an opportunity because a lot of people might abandon their projects and guess what when then come back in a year or two,  you could be a year or two ahead in ranking. I have also sent out one of my domains to be developed by a 3rd party. I will bring you details of that in another post. I decided to infuse new ideas into my website portfolio. If you are a full time domainer and beginning to sense some tough times or bumpy road ahead, get a second job or part time job. You must be good at something else. This is the same common sense advice you will be given if you worked on a brick and morter establishment. We must survive this economy onslaught.

In view of the prevailing circumstances, in the end my question still stands ” what time is it?”

Ecclesiastes 3 Chap 1-13

 1 There is a time for everything,
       and a season for every activity under heaven:

 2 a time to be born and a time to die,
       a time to plant and a time to uproot,

 3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
       a time to tear down and a time to build,

 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
       a time to mourn and a time to dance,

 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
       a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

 6 a time to search and a time to give up,
       a time to keep and a time to throw away,

 7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
       a time to be silent and a time to speak,

 8 a time to love and a time to hate,
       a time for war and a time for peace.

 9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God.

No matter how  you look at it, in the end we are all salesmen. We sell domains, that is what we do or hope to do. One of the big  segment of our business worth mastering is the art of pricing our domains. Especially here in the US, consumers are not used to negotiating for items without an asking price. “Make an offer” sound like I do not really want to sell but if you blow me away, I just might. That is not encouraging to the potential buyer. Who ever posted “make an offer” on a home they want to sell.

As time wears on, I have started paying attention to this area of our business. We Americans generally do not negotiate or when we do we negotiate poorly. When serving  with the US Air Force in the middle east as  a contractor for Northrop Grumman, I noticed that the Gold shops that had the most business from Americans where those that had their prices clearly displayed. Americans find that comfortable. However in the middle east, Africa and most parts of the world, the norm is to negotiate prices up or down.

One of the few newsletters I subscribe to is Rick Latona’s. This guy amazes me with his prices. He seams to have reached a near mastery of this phenomenon. Rick seams to have a clear idea of what his domains are worth to a wholesaler and has no qualms asking for it. When you get Rick`s daily newsletter, It sometimes convicts you because here you are thinking you won`t take 10K for MyLongName.com but he is selling MyName.com or LongName.com for $5K (These are just metaphoric examples)

I think most domainers are afraid of selling short. That is if they put a $5K asking price on a name, someone who might have  paid $50K for the name may just snap it up. So they have just lost 45K they never owned to start with. On the other field of the spectrum is the notion that If you ask for $5K someone with $3K will not approach you and you might have even been willing to sell for $2k. On the middle ground are those who have a low minimum offer and when you respond, they now give you a response with the magic of zero’s to the right of a number.

I am also guilty on all three counts above, but that is one of the things I am working to change. I plan to have a realistic posted price for 80%  of my domains as soon as possible.

In conclusion, our society demands openness in pricing. “make an offer” might just not be mainstream and may be hurting our business.  If you do not currently subscribe to Rick’s newsletter, I recommend you do. His prices will often amaze you and sometimes shock you. (Note that at the time of making this post, I do not know the guy nor have I ever met him. However I do admire his no nonsense approach to handling his portfolio)

One of the ways to quickly develop your site is having a forum. For example if you have a job related domain, you can start up a job related forum and go from there. The past few days have been very challenging for me. I run a couple of forum style websites, PetMessageBoard.com, OverseasContract.com also known as OverseasJobForum.com and petmemorial to mention a few. For some reason, over the past few days, I have been hit by the worst spamming ever. On petmessageboard, there was all kinds of adult content posted on the home page. Now that is sick. Petmessageboard is a family friendly website. The same for Overseascontract.com.

As I write this post, Petmessageboard is currently closed until I can clean up the member list. I have also resulted to moderating the membership and post. Why is this a problem ?

It is a huge problem because I do not want to spend all my waking hours moderating forums. This thing was set up so that they virtually run themselves (big mistake)
I post on them as time permits but with the recent unslot of spam, I am spending too much time moderating and going through the list of registration requests. Of every hundred,  may only one is a legit registration request.

A couple of years back, I was forced to close down a rather successful petclassified section in PetHall.com because of spam and scam posters. I am tired of this never do wells and I am at my wits end. I have since upgraded my classified script to one of the best in the industry but I am yet to open the doors of PetClassfiedAds.com because it takes a lot of effort to get a classifieds or forum running.

In this times when I was going to focus my energies on developing my domains, I am not particularly trilled that I am experiencing this challenges.

What have I learnt from this? Well that is the question I have been asking myself. Aside from the fact that I have learnt more about the software that powers these forums, I am  yet to take anything home from this. While I ponder, I will give forgiveness a try. Maybe If I write it, I will believe it ; “I forgive you never do well spammers”

Not exactly heartfelt but I am working on it. God works with all kinds of imperfect people. If he wanted just perfect beings then he would have stuck with just the Trinity. Even some of the angels would  never have been created.

For me now, I am going to really work on my spirit of forgiveness.

Have a pleasant weekend

God bless you all.