Getting More Traffic

Getting more traffic to each of my finished websites has been somewhat of a priority of late. It's something that I easily neglect as I move from project to project.

Came across this useful little page: How to get a massive amount of traffic to your hub or website and realised that I know so little about social media that its time I started learning. Despite what some people think I am not online all the time, and when I am its usually to do something specific or to do some research.

I haven't had a lot of time to study the ins and outs of every new social media/bookmarking site that comes online. I have a few recent favorites, yet even these I haven't fully explored the possibilities. So I'm making a rule, Learn everything there is to know about one specific site in a week.

I already started with Craigslist. Wether or not it's a traffic generator is debateable, I personally have had mixed success. And yet I created a spreadsheet to track my ads and to streamline operations there. Further experimentation is required, this thread at digitalpoint may be of some help.

YouTube Rocks; if you have the right kind of videos. And making great videos is time consuming.

I think I'll try the StumbleUpon toolbar next, from the post above.

Sounds worth trying.

Making Money with Ebay Affiliates

In my pursuit of trying every way to make money online I haven't really had the time to explore the Ebay Affiliates route to decide if its worth the time.

So I recently purchased the first finished website and domain name utilizing the Ebay Affiliates code and Googles Adsense.

The problems are that the previous owner did nothing to promote the site, BuyCarAuctions.com. It isn't indexed in any search engine, it has no backlinks, the onpage optimization is lacking and the Google Adsense returns irrelevant ads.

Thats just the begining of the list I have as far as changes to the site go.

But it gives me something to do besides trying to rank highly for my own name @ Chris Miller .com

Building Online Stores

Finally just finished building out Women's Discount Jewelry, my latest online store.

For something that was supposed to be the easiest concept in the world to build, it took me two days to finish up the four page site. And I haven't even started building backlinks yet.

Most of the time was taken up by researching and writing useful original content. The rest was tweaking out various settings to get it to look the way I want. The funny part is that I have two textbooks on their way in the mail and when I finish learning those the whole store will have to be revamped anyway.

I finally bought the domain name last week due to going through my old lists. Last year I bought Women's Discount Perfume while thouroghly burnt out from working too much and accidentally thought I bought the jewelry domain name. I then proceeded to purchase jewelry related pictures until I realized my mistake.

The perfume store was going to be my first attempt at building an online retail site, only the trial version of Actinic 8 stopped working when I moved it to the new laptop. It just stopped being able to FTP even though all of the settings were correct.

So after all of the work I put into the perfume store I had to shelve the idea and moved onto other things.

Looks like now its time to go back and redo that store the same way I did the jewelry store.

Old Domain Name Wish Lists

Recently I have been going through old domain name wish lists. It's something I do once or twice a year, I look at old lists of domain names that I had wanted to purchase for whatever reasons, but never did, and see what is still available.

When I first started domaining the list was huge, and everything on it was available. That was only a few years ago. Those names that I did not purchase are no longer available, some haven't been for quite some time.

There are a few that fall between the cracks and I have recently purchased them, in part because of my failure to exploit the whole 4 letter domain name thing as much as I should have.

But what suprises me is the stuff that people are buying, stuff that for whatever reason was on my shopping list: GoGoZombie.com, FuckStupidPeople.com, PaleBlueDot.com?

I don't even have half a clue as to what I was thinking when I added those to my wish list, but someone else, out there, seems to think they are worth the investment.

All I have to say is thank God for Domain Name Analyzer. I can type up a huge list and have it check them automatically while I do other things. It's Free so if you are just starting out domaining give it a try.

4 Letter Domain Name Sales Heating Up

If you had read my previous posts about getting in on the 4 letter domain name action you would have purchased some very valuable internet real estate.

Why?

Because it finally happened, all of the 4 letter domain names were bought up. As of November 2nd 2007 there are none to be had for a simple registration fee.

Some of last weeks 4 letter sales suprised me:

• vncc.com $5,618
• imal.com $4,200
• svag.com $4,080
• fimi.com $4,051
• mgas.com $4,000
• wmwm.com $3,600
• ofen.com $3,500
• wobs.com $3,000
• govx.com $3,000
• gorf.com $3,000
• amyi.com $3,000
• sowo.com $2,600
• kitu.com $2,110
• wnds.com $2,020

At one time I had a list of over a thousand 4 letter domain names still left. Did I buy as many as possible? No.

Now I plainly see that was a mistake. At that time the 4 Letter domain names were selling on Ebay for roughly $15 all day long. Now, unless its a xzq type 4 letter name, its selling for $100 or so.

And prices are going to keep climbing at a steady pace.