01 July where have I been? - Working on my newest / biggest project to date!

So the domain names are going really well and I am happy with the steady stream of money I have been making, however I have been working on a new project! I learnt that whilst small sites worked well it would be better to concentrate on one big one.

So to the world I give you Plooka.com - yes one of the names I bought a while ago. The site is about skiing, and I am hoping the Forum will take off. So please have a look at Plooka and if your a skier/boarder yourself then would love to see you on the forum. Lots of time and effort has gone in to it so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Frenchie

10 May 2008 - Getting Online isn't always so easy!

Hello there! Well after the amazing success of April you would expect that May would slow down, and that project would start to die a death - isn't that how these things go? Well actually NO! Things are still going really well, my aim when I started was to get up to a dollar a day and take things from there. Well it appears that I am now averaging over a dollar a day ($13 for May to date), I have learnt which names make money and which don't - and I have worked out what my costs are - so the plan now has to be to keep developing and keep things growing. However I must admit that recently social life has made it a little harder to get online as much, and I have been putting a lot of time in to an off shoot boy project. As a sneak peek you can see it here http://www.buythemap.com/Plooka however the domaineering will be continuing as I am seeing money out of this as well. So the point of this blog entry?? I dunno really just to keep things moving, and to report that things are going well. Looking at my portfolio I think I am going to sell some of my earlier names that aren't my money makers and I am going to get my .infos up and running to see how they go. GOTTA LOVE THAT GRAPH BELOW!!!!!

30 April 2008 - April is throught the roof!

Not my comments but my girlfriends as I showed her the stats for April officially the best ever month by a long way. Clicks have doubled, page views are positive and some of my sites ave been bringing in revenue nearly every day. So seems like the hard work is starting to pay off. The Search Engine Optimisation seems to be paying off and with hits come clicks! This months tally also means that I have now made over $100 in my google adsense account. So whats the significance of this, well it means google will now send me my first cheque! So waiting for that to arrive in the post, and hoping that it should become a regular occurance - one a month would be nice!! Oh bought some more domains listed below. These were .infos as they were for sale on Godaddy.com for just $0.99 so hopefully with only a couple of clicks I will make my money back on these quite easile and find out if they were worth buying and developing. Thanks for stopping by - Frenchie

Its a nice increase isn't it! More than twice the revenue from March. Oh and my new names.....

CheapestLoanRates.info - CheapRemortgage.info - FeeFreeRemortgage.info

QuickRemortgage.info - RemortgageOnline.info - SelfCertLoans.info

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28 April 2008 - How much will I need to make to make this worthwhile?

So its about time I addressed the question of profitability with regards to my domain names. I can classify my domains in two ways, the first are my investment domain names, ones that I expect to appreaciate in value, like GTR4.com and Hipoh.com and then there are my keyword revenue making domain names, these include MobileSatNav.com and ShortOnlineIQTest.com - I need to take in to account how much these names will cost to re-register each year and make sure that my keyword names are bringing home the bacon. So I decided to do some math and work out how much I need to make to 'make this worthwhile'. Currently I would say I own 30 domain names now that I would like to reregister when they are due. If I calculate that they will cost $10 each this is how I figure it....

30 domain names x $10 = $300 a year to reregister.

$300 / 365 days a year = 0.82

Ok so what is the importance of this 0.82? Well that the amount I need to earn each day to cover my costs, given that I believe the value of the domains will increase, and I may get the odd sale, or get one of my sites earning some good money, this is my benchmark - anything above this becomes pure profit. So how am I doing so far?? Well April by far my best month, I have now doubles last months revenue is currently averaging $1.25 - so over the year this means $156 pure profit. I know I know the figures are still not big and for the time and effort it really isn't worth it. But the principal is good and I think what I am now doing is scalable so it means to make money I have to spend money. So the Regging continues!

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13 April 2008 -Another landmark day in my new boy project....

So it's sunday night and time for another blog entry, another non descript week at work, but excitingly a great week for the buythemap advertising, domain name project. April now signifys the 6th month of my attempt at learning to be a domaineer and so far things have been going well. I've bought some great names, I've developed some interesting sites, I've started using parking, made some great contacts at Forums, even set my own one up at http://www.buythemap.com/Forum and finally I have setup an adsense account and every day I am making revenue. So why is this a real landmark day? Well today on 13 April I achieved last months entire revenue! To explain that I passed the $15 dollar mark today....

Ok that doesn't sound like a lot does it $15 dollars however as the midway point for the month if I can double that amount to $30 that means yearly I will be bring in $360dollars from my 30 odd websites. In theory these sites are setup now and will continue to bring in revenue, and as they become more established the revenue should increase. Plus I have the value of the domains as I may choose to sell. So I think things are positive.

Whats going on with domain names in general? Well this week Pizza.com sold for $2.6million dollars, and as we speak dollars.com is up for sale on Sedo, currently at 750,000 Euros - I think that will do for a lot more. I've been posting in my forum quite a lot so there are some interesting topics in there, including the first 100 domain names ever registered. Oh and finally this week I did not buy any new domain names :) Shocker I know!!!!

Thanks for visiting my blog anyway, and if your still a bit confused ask me a question in the forum.

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6 April - Highest Earning day Ever!

Just a quick post to say yesterday the BuytheMap advertising network posted its highes ever revenue day with a massive $4.97 - nearly breaking the $5 mark!!! What could this mean....riches await!

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5 April 2008 The Results are in for March - and another exciting graph!!

So March is over, where did that go, I reckon that the earth has started spinning faster or something as the months seem to be going quicker. Anyway I'm rambling lets get back to domain names, trading, selling, parking and making money. I've got another graph to show you for this months revenue, and again looks postivie. Ok part way through the month I had a couple of days where I was making over $2 a day and I thought it was going to be a big month, however things tailed off towards the end, but still the trend is good as revenue continued to increase.....

Good news though is that April is already shaping up to be a good month, got to remain positive! March also marked the month that I learnt how to setup a Forum, have I mentioned that :) And content is starting to build up on this, and of course I bought some Forum domain names. I have also just bought some new names based on some trends I expect to see. Today it is impossible to get a good lcd / hd tv domain name however what will be the technology of tomorrow?? OLED TV is seen as the next step. WIFI is another term that has all the domain names sold on, but Technology of tomorrow will be WIMAX, and finally said to be one of the hottest new products to be launched in 2008 will be Microsoft Surface, so I have made a few speculative purchases this month, in the hope that one of these technologies takes off and my domain names sit in the middle of some high traffic terms. They are.....

BestOLEDTv.co.uk - Surfacehelp.co.uk - SurfaceOnline.co.uk - WimaxZones.co.uk - WimaxEquipment.net

So I am off to develop some of my new sites. Thanks for dropping in and get yourself registered on the buythemap forum!

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So Whats so great about a Forum - Domaining??

Ok so in my last couple of posts I said how I wanted to make the site more interactive and give people a chance to discuss domain names and then hey presto 24hours later I posted again to say a Forum was online - so whats the big deal about a forum and am I moving away from domaineering.....?? Of course not - no!

So heres the plan the forum allows people to discuss domain names etc, and as I have been chatting in so many forums it makes sense to have my own, but also the second benefit of the forum is that as people discuss, chat, and create content on my forum this helps increase the content on my site. Having a popular forum and more and more members joining will also mean I can add adsense to my forum and get even more revenue. See it makes perfect sense.

With the excitement of my new forum, I thought I would celebrate the event by buying some new domain names of course. So I purchased DomaineerForum / DomaineersForum / DomaineeringForum all .coms and will hopefully bring more users to my BuytheMap forum as I will point them to it.

So firstly thanks to those people who have already joined, if you haven't yet - get involved. I'm going to post lots about the tools I use and plan to have a regular news feature.

So thats it, I will post revenue for March soon. Final little thing for you to check out, have you heard that Pizza.com is for sale on SEDO - a great name we are talking big money. Check out the auction here.

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25 March - Only a quick post but Frankenstein has risen!! The Forum goes 'live'

Well it took me a total of 24hours, but as I mentioned in my last post I have made BuytheMap.com interactive. I have my first ever Forum!! Drum role please!!! I have been spending a lot of time chatting in forums meeting new people and learning loads, so I thought I would bring the Forum to me, so with some messing around last night and a bit of research its Live! Ok most websites would do some testing, get a big launch sorted etc etc however the BuytheMap Forum launch is a little more subdued........are you ready for it...........here we go............its......... a new button!! Yes I know a bit crap, some music and something flashing would have been cool but instead I made a new button on the homepage. There it is below, so come in, say hi and I will see if I can make it a success. I will talk about the benefits of the Forum in my next post ;) And hopefully some of you will have joined and said hello - as I will get very bored very quick. Boy Project Continues!!!!!!!!

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24 March 2008 - Today is a Great Day as the BuytheMap Network earns money while I sleep!

An exciting title isn't it! Well since my last blog entry the advertising network seems to be going from strength to strength. Firstly today I have now surpassed the revenue from last month and there are still quite a few more days left. And secondly for all those adverts you see that say 'earn money while you sleep' well it seems that I am. Ok as always not a lot of money, but when I go to bed in the UK, and people in the US of A are logging on to their computers, by clicking on my adverts money starts going in to my account. If only there was more.

Ok so what else do I have to report, well my network of sites I think I have about 25 in total are recieving over 160 people per day viewing them. Not massive numbers but there is definately an upward trend. This month over 350 people have added the buythemap blog to their favourites lists, last month we hit 300.

I've still be scowering forums and bumping in to some now familiar faces, and I think I am starting to get a good eye for a good domain name, I have been searching the usual places to purchase, Snapnames, Ebay, and Sedo - but have not seen anything that takes my fancy recently.

Three of my domain names have now paid for themselves and are making pure proft - thats been great news.

And finally quite a few people have been emailing me Frenchie@buythemap - thanks always great to here from people, I want to make the site more interactive, as you have probably been able to tell my internet skills are a little limited but I am going to see if I can get a forum setup so watch out for that.

Anyway Happy Easter Everyone - Marchs revenue will be posted soon, and hopefully you will be seeing some nice little changes soon. - Frenchie (Domaineer)

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13 March 2008 - Rockin and Rollin

So seems like things have started to take off a little bit now, and I am getting some nice little clicks on my domains. The other day I had a record $3.11 hit my adsense account, and yesterday I had $2.20 in clicks. Today and it seems history is repeating itself as I hit nearly $2 dollars again. That means during the month of March I have had my 3 highest revenue days, and already it looks like I am going to make more money than in Feb and its only the 13th. Great for my little graph below if I can keep things going up!

As I have said before I really want to start working on adding content to my sites that I currently have listed. More content on a site helps with the Search Engine Optimisation. The more text and information I have on a site the more interested google and the other search engines will be. Then climbing up the search listings will mean more visitors and more revenue - simple really. Parking with Sedo seems like a good place to hold my sites before I develop them, and the third and final income stream - sales is a bit more long term so nothing to report there.

But as you can see I am happy! I spent the weekend in Paris (hence no update) but hanging out in such a great city and with so many rich people walking around it made me want to work at this harder!!! So I am going to get more dedicated, I am going to improve my sites (the recent upturn in revenue is helping to inspire me even more), So I'll keep on the forums learning more info and most importantly investing in new sites. $100 dollars means 10 new sites, this is a long term revenue generation attempt - so I need to continue building the BuytheMap Advertising Network. The empire keeps a growing!!!

One thing I must say though................this is harder than I expected!

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01 March 2008 - The Boy Project Continues, the empire groweth!

Phew boy have I been busy! Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing some project management training called Prince2, watching to much TV (masterchef) and planning my great escape from the U.K. to Australia. Researching VISAs and finding out where the best places are takes time! So this kind of means I have taken my eye of the domain pulse a little, but alas there is still a pulse!!

I thought the last couple of weeks would be a great opportunity to sit back and just let my domains tick over and see how much money would roll in. Well it seems good news, the revenue from my adsense is remaining positive and parking my sites on SEDO is bringing in some pennies. OK no big sales and not hundreds of dollars but the business model still seems viable.

At present I am averaging about a dollar a day (it's started going up over the last week), this means every 10 days I can buy a new domain, and in theory this will help to bring more money. Over the weeks as I add more names the revenue should increase, purchases should increase and hence the BuytheMap network becomes bigger and makes me rich....

In general the domain industry continues to gather pace as more and more people realise the value of this domain name stock. The launch of .ASIA was covered in BBC news last week - however you have to be registered in the area to register these names, so I am sticking to what I know, - .coms / .nets and .co.uks And yes the registrations have continued. I am now the proud owner of ChefCourses.net and Prince4.com - this weekend I am back on the trail (I think I have 32 now)- I am going to get some new content on my sites, get posting in forums, and I have a little plan that I am concocting that I will reveal soon....

Yep ok not the most exciting blog entry ever, but I am still here, I am still plugging away, and this is the reality of modern day domaining - experimenting, investing and working hard for the magic solution. Rome wasn't built in a day :) Oh also last month I announced my first ever check from google - I still haven't had it!!

Revenue for the month of revenue - $13.72 - the most yet. In fact check out my little graph of monthly earnings below....

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13 February 2008 - More Cash in the coffers!

As another week passes through all of our lives, thousands of new names will have been registered, thousands more changing hands for vast amounts of money, and thousands more millionaires created around the world. Unfortunately on my current standings the only place where I would be a millionaire would be in some strange Russian state experiencing ridiculous inflation. So why more cash in the coffers as this weeks title?? Well not my coffers obviously, but the domain registrars.

Ok I'll stop moaning - firstly no new purchases made this week...........for the second week in a row, mainly because I am having a small cash flow crisis (the reality of modern day domaining for people new to the business)! However the market in general continues to bound along - some news in the domaining world for you.....crusies.co.uk sells for the highest amount ever for a .co.uk at a massive $1million dollars! Whilst 4x4.co.uk sold for $75,000 dollars. Imagine having the foresight to have bought names like that.

Well that really sums up domaining, having the faith and forsight to spot a new trend, the next big thing, and then register the names before everyone else. Well thats the plan anyway, and means its a bit of a long term view to take, but who knows perhaps I will blindly stumble on something good ;)

Ok so how much money did I make last week. Well from my google adsense adverts a massive £3.53 - ok again not much but I am seeing a definate trend in the popularity of my original few names, and I am getting lots of clicks. However I need to increase the value of them, and somehow get me other sites bringing in some revenue as well! Simple.

Finally I think I mentioned before every week more and more people are adding the buythemap blog to their favourites list. Firstly thanks, very kind of you, its not really that exciting!! So to make it worth your while a quick joke.

Sausage and an egg in a frying pan and the sausage says ''ahh its getting hot in here!"

And the egg says......."ahhhh - ahhhh - ahhh a talking sausage!!!"

Anyway checkout my new sites, mobilesatnav.com, cheapghdstraighteners.com and PSPInternetAccess.com

4 February 2008 - Google has been in touch and more news on purchases!

So the most exciting thing to mention this week is that google wrote to me to tell me that I needed to verify my google adsense account and they would pay me the grand sum of $54.06. Whats more every month I will now recieve a payment from google - exciting stuff! It's great to think a business worth many billions of pounds is paying me! So of course I will need to do something grand with this money (about £20 in sterling) realistically it will probably go on beer, however I will have a think and see if I can get something a bit more symbolic.......any ideas appreciated - maybe another name :)

I also have some major news to report about my domain name purchases for this week..........................wait for it..........................wait......................this week I bought.............NOTHING! Yes probably the first week ever that I have not bought a domain name, so does this mean that I am scaling back operations or giving up?! Well no I thought it would be good to sit back and take stock of my portfolio. I am also getting frustrated that my first 3/4 names that I bought seem to be my cash cows, and constantly get traffic however many of my newer names do not seem to be featuring yet, depsite content and submitting them to search engines - so I am going to have to scratch my head about this a bit.

A quick mention of the activity on the domain name markets, well last week a site called IReport.com was sold to CNN for $750,000 dollars, some of the other interesting sales recorded included Chefuniforms.com for $65,000. And Featuring.com solf for $15,000 dollars (who pays that for chef uniforms??). So activity seems to remain high despite the credit crunch hitting the biggest market (the US).

Finally I wanted to mention two forums I have been using to learn more, and get appraisals these are NamePros.com and domainstate.com great ways to learn about the market, and find out if you are doing things right of wrong. Now can someone go feed my fish on IpodSongs.co.uk - Thanks

Oh one last mention, it seems that loads of people have been adding the BuytheMap blog to their favourites list (I can spy on this) and every week the blog is getting more and more popular - a bit of self promotion never hurt anyone!

27 January 2008 - The Scores are in and some Stats to report on.

So another week in my life has slipped through my fingers, and another entry is added to the BuytheMap blog. Over the last couple of weeks it seems the domain name empire has been stalling as more names have been added to the network but the effect has not been an increase in revenue. However my first few keyword specific names still seem to be bringing the visitors, for instance if you type in short online IQ test in google, my site is there on the front page. So I am keeping my fingers crossed, and working hard to get mu other sites up there on the front pages. If sites pay for themselves they can stay, if not I'll let them go when they are due to be renewed. So lets quickly check on where we are so far.

Total number of domains registered 26. Total spent on registrations £166 (thats a total of £329 dollars) so an average of £12 for each domain. I have also racked up one domain sale as well for $25. Since the project began I have made on average about $10 a month. So that means I'm on course for £120 dollars a year, so I'm making a loss!!! Not good news, however I am still in my startup phase, and there are a lot of positives that I can take from this.

So what about last weeks revenue, well a total of 28 clicks, this seems quite low and in total revenue was $2.59. So an increase on last week and going in the right direction again, but still some of my keyword sites are not doing well enough. I am pretty sure they will start to come online, and I have written some good content, so I need to work on the SEO. Creating backlinks, posting articles, and getting the word out!! Thats its - until the next time ;)

20 January 2008 - Wow this is just too easy, I can't stop making money!

So the domaineering continues, and the acquistions continue. Like a cash rich company I am stalking the market, Ebay, SnapNames, Forums, Registars, always looking for new victims to add to my growing monopoly of the domain name market. Swallowing more and more, costs of purchases becomes insignificant as the cash flow continues to grow, the more money I throw at this the more keeps flooding back and I cannot spend it quick enough. Trying to find different avenues for all these income streams the BuytheMap network moves in to website acquisitions, good, bad, big, small they are all wanted and recruitment in the BuytheMap offices is becoming a priority, as well as new larger offices and new hardware. I'm also now working 18hour days, connected to the net, checking my bank balances and planning a trip to the bahamas flying business class, where I will meet my supermodel girlfriend, and no doubt eat and drink the most expensive foods avaliable. Life is good!!!!!!

Of course all the above is a complete lie, and unfortunately I am not a rich twat yet! In fact times seem to be gettin tough, yes the acquisitions have continued (I probably need to curtail this now as the credit card bill is going up) this week I bought BiteSpray.com and AutomaticCar.net and they are yet to be developed. I did spend some time upating and upgrading some of my sites though at the weekend. As I hope new fresh content, will get my sites indexed higher in google and as a result I will get more traffic to my sites, and more clicks on my adds. However I also moved a few sites over to Sedo, as I was concerned I could be breaking trademark rules, so I wanted to sort that out. So this week traffic and revenue seems dissapointing. As much as I am buying new sites and adding them to the web of BuytheMap I am not seeing great increases in Adsense revenue. Blimey infact less than I expected at $1.25 for the last week.

Im hoping that some of this may be due to people being busy back from Christmas, and still alot of my sites are not indexed by google, it seems 3 sites from my early buys, and that have been indexed for over a month now, seem to be my cash cows, so I am perhaps realising that it takes a bit longer than expected to start earning revenue from sites. So thats it, until the next time!!! Hopefully things will change........and the dreaming will stop.

13 January 2008 - Shouldn't I be a millionaire by now?

So the plan was to register great domain names, recieve lots of traffic, sell a few for big money, and then retire on the proceeds. Well the reality is, and I am sure anyone who has been through this, is that its a lot harder than it looks! Slowly the buythemap network grows, and I register more and more names, however revenue at present is not increasing fast enough, or making some of my domain name purchases viable. I need to improve this otherwise each new domain registration is effectively just another wast of money.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one way to do this, the majority of my traffic should be coming from searches people are making on the likes of google and yahoo, so I am trying to get my sites registered on these as soon as possible. However to improve my search rankings, ie appearing on the front page I have to increase something called 'PageRank'. This is how google indexes your site, basically the higher the page rank the higher you feature in search engines as the search engines want to list highest the sites that are deemed to be the experts. To improve PageRank you need to build content on your site, work on keywords, and importantly build strong links to your site. At the moment I am having some successes on this - type in Epthelial in google (overture tells me this is searched over 1000 times a month on Yahoo alone) my site Epithelial.net appears 7th - Success! I'm chuffed with that but I need to work on getting my other sites up those rankings.

Also I very quickly wanted to again re-iterate in this weeks blog how big the domain name markets are. This week Dollars.com reported that the domain name Spicy.com sold for $81,000 - HotVoip.com a name I think sounds easy to have made up sold for close to $6,000. I have inserted a small banner from Sedo below to show the current live Sedo auctions - you should have a look at this some time.

So anyway thats it another week over - oh nearly forgot to mention I bought another name, I know.....so this week whilst at work (encroaching on work time now) I ready on BBC news the Macquarie Dictionary words of 2007 see here is quite interesting. One of these was Climate Sceptic which I had a quick check of an it was avaliable so.....I now own ClimateSceptic.com - I plan to setup a little site talking about global warming on this, should be interesting. I've done some small tweaks to my site this week, but thats about it news over. Revenue I here you ask......very dissapointing dropping down to $2.50 and only 40 clicks. Oh well onwards and upwards...........

7 January 2008 - Bah Humbug Back to Work Blues, More Purchases made!

This week, well last week really I was back at work - man that was hard after such a great break. However I couldn't help but dip in and out of my Adsense account every few hours to see how things were shaping up. With many of my newly bought domain names up and running online now and the adverts twinkling on the pages I can't wait to watch the money roll in!

Ok a little nieve I know and the new year hasn't quite seen the rush of money from my domain name adverts as I would have liked, however I made myself feel a little better with some new buys! Now previously I have been using Overture to search for keyword specific domain names and have been finding that anything that made any sense had been taken. searching hundreds of domain names only to see taken, and then the odd one pop up that a) didn't make any sense and b) didn't really have that many searches meant I though a new tack should be taken. So I have turned to using Adwords, and its keyword suggestion tool. If your thinking of using Google Adsense it makes sense to get an Adwords Account. This shows keywords and phrases that people are searching on and how strong the advertiser competition is. So what did I buy, well some of my best yet me thinks.....

www.PSPInternetAccess.com / www.CheapGhdStraighteners.com / www.MobileSatNav.com

I'm quite pleased with the MobileSatNav website as I think there is a lot of opportunity for this site, especially as this software has taken off in the U.K. and the technology is now being applied to mobile phones so fingers crossed. And I think they all make sense and people will search for these names on google.

This week I also setup my first ever blogger account. This is the most famous blog software on the internet, and owned by google. I have recreated my buythemap blog on my shiny new blogger account, you can see it here. The benefit of this is to publicise the buythemap website and it lets me create new links for my websites I have set up on an external source. This aids my Search Engine Optimisation & PageRank (perhaps I will talk about that in my next post).

Anyway results for this week, in total I made $9.67 my best week yet, and as I like to do projections using these figures would suggest revenue of over $500 a year. Of course ignoring renewal fees and reg fees. Perhaps I will set out all my costs in my next entry (going to be a big one isn't it).

Right thats it for now, perhaps this week I will abstain from buying any new names!

31 December 2007 - The First Month draws to an End, happy New Year!

Ok so firstly no apologies for not updating my blog last week I was away for Christmas Skiing, no broken bones luckily, but unfortunately I must report that this holiday was not paid for by some shock domaining profits, more so by the credit card! Anyway it was definately exciting to get back and see if I had made any money for the week! However let me fill you in first....

I have two new purchases to report, these were a random couple of ebay buys I mentioned them below, ebay is a quick and good place to pick up cheap names. So I have now added my first two 4 letter domain names to add to my portfolio. As there are no longer any 4 letter .coms avaliable I am hoping these may prove good little investments as I hope prices will increase. So I bought GTR4.com for $25 and ST03.com for $9 - I didn't want to reveal the names until finalised. Typing both these words in google brings up quite a few results, GTR4 brings up 15,000 related results, and it appears this was the make of a Triumph car so may work with some development. ST03 brings up 82,000 results but what I do with this at the moment I don't know. I know I know I keep buying more and more names!

Anyway lets get around to the money part. It seems my earlier keyword domain name purchases are starting to get a little bit of traffic and these appear to be my cash generators. From 9 December to today I have made a total of $7.98. This includes two days where I have made $1.68 and $1.87, the latter a new record was made on 28 December. So again it is a case of capitalising on the good days, understanding where the money is coming from and looking at finding some more great keyword domain names. Also a few of my newer domains are still yet to list on Google so I am hopeful this will aid the cause.

You may also notice I have added quite a few links below to blog directories as I try to get listed on these, perhaps you have come from one. Anyway the learning curve continues and the money is going up (not a quick as intended) but still in the right direction. Revenue for December is $10.15 + $15 for a name sale (lets not mention spend for now :) Frenchie

16 December - Week three clicks down, revenue up!

So I was all excited last week about buying a domain name for $10 and then selling a week later for $25. Of course quite a lot of effort for $15 profit but more importantly it proved to me that I could buy a domain name and resell it for a profit, even if it wasn't much. However I also learnt another lesson, and this is that you cannot transfer a domain within 60days of buying it or having transferred it, this is a rule set down my ICANN the domain watchdog. Luckily the ebay winner seemed reasonable and I will transfer the name in the new year.

Now secondly, today I have won a couple of new domain names on Ebay! I know I know I should concentrate on making more money from my current portfolio, however I still feel that I am in the testing phase and so I wanted to buy some 4 letter domain names. Now apparantly as all 3 letter names have been sold, it is expected the price of 4 letter names will increase. So I have spent $30 dollars on 2 new names. I am currently finalising details so will let you know what these are when the purchase is completed. Then it will be good to see if they get any traffic....

My two other new names BalanceNewShoes and AntiFreeSpyware seem to be getting no traffic at the moment, despite these keywords proving popular for searches. However they have not yet been spidered by the big search engines (this means indexed) so am still hoping this will change things when they are.

So I still consider this project a success at the moment, this week my clicks were less than the previous weeks, however they have been higher value - so maybe focusing on higher value keywords may pay off - I just need the traffic! So this week I generated $3.05 yes more than last week but a little dissapointing. However hopefully my new names will come on line and perhaps people use the internet less over xmas as they are out shopping. This still puts me on course for more money this month, fingers crossed.

9 December 2007 - My Second Week of my new career.....

So another week down, as we head in to xmas and the domain buying continues! Importantly I sold my first ever domain this week. Colonising.com was sold on Ebay, exactly one week after registering it for $10 I was able to sell it on Ebay for $25. Ok not a huge sum of money but that sale has now provided me with some money to buy more sites.

As mentioned in my last blog entry I wanted to see if I could buy some more keyword specific websites, put some content on them and some adsense advertising and see what would happen. So this week I bought another two domain names, after a lot researching (my whole saturday) I was able to buy AntiFreeSpyware.com and BalanceNewShoes.com - I know not the most exciting names but if I am researching correctly, and doing the right things I will hopefully start to see revenue soon.

Using the Channels on my google adsense account has been a great find and I am continuing to monitor the success of my other names. I have also noticed that since completely restructuring Buythemap google is still yet to index my site and so a lot of my pages are currently listed wrongly on google, and so I think once this is updated I should see my sites feature higher in searches and thus more traffic and better pagerank for the buythemap network.

Finally I set up one of my sites Plooka.com to have content around Tramadol, this drug creates huge bidding wars for adwords (about $4 a click) keyword so if I can drive some traffic to plooka hopefully I will get some big clicks on this site.

Therefore this weeks revenue was a measly $2.50 although my pages were there busiest ever and I recieved more clicks than the previous week. Plus the $15 I made from selling a site. Although I bought two new ones so I broke about even!

2 December 2007 - Good News and Bad .....

Ok so I have now bought a number of domain names, some of these I have developed, and some I have simply parked. Those that I have developed I am hoping to make some Adsense revenue off. This is where you have a website with google advertising on it - like on the right there. This week I learnt how to setup channels on Google Adsense so now I can tell on which pages people are clicking my links. Excellent this means I can now track which of my websites is making me revenue. Also for my first month I have now made a total $10.19 in revenue so this all seems really good. This is over one hundred dollars a year. This month December I would like to double that amount!

However.....at the moment it looks like all my revenue is coming from one site WindowMediaPlayerDownload now when I bought this domain name I actually thought it was rubbish and thought it was a mistake. I chose the name because the keywords had really high search results on Overture but I didnt think anyone would actually type this name in. However they are - each day about 10-15 visits to this site and most people click the links which is great. But this means I am making about .50 cents a day, and my other sites are not. So I need to focus on how I can recreate this success.

Therefore this week I bought DownloadMediaPlayerWindow.com yes I know again it seems like a rubbish name but if I can recreate the success of the above then I will be on to a winning forumla. According to Overture this term is more popular than the first.

Also this week I bought Colonising.com my first ever dictionary domain name. This is listed on Ebay see here - I wanted to see if I could turn around a quick sale - so I will keep my fingers crossed for that.

So going forward I think I am going to see if I can get some more Keyword specific websites setup in order to increase revenue and become a domain name millionaire! I am also going to look in to keywords that generate more money when they are clicked, at the moment I am getting about .4cents a click if I can target more popular keywords some recieve $7 for one click I can make some serious money!!!! He says......

25 November 2007 - Week 1 and the results are in....

So this is my first official week writing about my exploits on the domain name market, and it's time to talk cold hard cash. Now from all the domain names that I have bought, so far I have not sold an actual name although all names are listed on Sedo.co.uk for sale. I expect my main income stream will be from google adsense, like the adverts you see displayed on this page. To very quickly explain how Adsense works, on each of my webpages that I have put on my newly purchased domain names I have put the google code on these. This means that google will put adverts on my page to match up with the content. Other website owners setup google adword accounts and pay google to display adds. For everyone that clicks on an add they pay google. In turn google displays the ads on my website and when someone clicks on them I take a cut of the money. I will talk about Adsense I am sure a lot in this blog as this will be where I make money from and the plan will be to make my sites popular so that I get the opportunity for more revenue. And of course I will talk about keywords and how some clicks can be worth more than others, as a taster have a quick look at this. Anyway enough of the boring stuff how has week one gone.

Well I have updated most of the pages on buythemap so that they are displaying the ads. I have also changed the structure of the site (behind the scenes) so that I can add more guides and articles. More content = more people finding my website and seeing my ads. Plans for next week are to keep an eye out for some more domains to purchase and get on the marketing trail - and also not to spend so much time playing Call of Duty 4 which is awesome. And of course I will update the blog........ok ok the money part.

Week 1 - Total Revenue recieved $2.92

Its not the most amount of money in the world but all rivers start with a trickle. At the moment the clicks I have recieved have been quite low yielding, however if you look at the page I linked to above if I could get clicks of higher value this will also help immensley so that may be another approach. Frenchie

21 November 2007 - Blog Entry 2 and what I have done so far!

Ok so as I have mentioned in my first blog entry below I have already started the game and I have entered the domain market. So obviously I am new to this so I wanted to do some experimenting, I wanted to try different names and how they would work for traffic. And as always with me I probably got a bit over excited and bought too many names but as they say you have to speculate to accummulate.

So the first purchases were Plooka.com as I thought this was a brandable name and a .com these tend to be the most prestigious. The second was what I hope was a cool one Hipoh.com again a .com and I thought a quirky name that sounded like something. My third purchase was digbooks.com as books are such a popular thing to buy I thought I could make this in to a website for digital books. Now at the moment I have not done anything with these names and they are currently listed on Sedo.co.uk - this is somewhere where you can buy and sell names, and whilst you await a bid for sale Sedo put adverts on your site and if someone clicks on them they will pay me some money.

Now the next thing I did was see what people search for on the net, online IQ tests were popular and using WindowsMediaPlayer. So I wanted to see if I could get some sites where people would search on google and would come to my sites. Thus I bought ShortOnlineIQTest.com and WindowMediaPlayerdownload.com I have listed these two sites on search engines, written some content and put google adsense advertising on them. Hopefully as people come to the sites they will again use the links and I will get money.

I took two further strategies, 1. I wanted to see if I could buy names where if people mispelled the names when typing in to the search bar they would again come to my sites. I looked for some popular sites and mispelled them, this caused me to buy Telergaph.co.uk and Rightmoev.com - Lets see how the traffic works out, as you just don't know until you try.

2. I wanted to buy some one word domain names that again I could get listed on search engines and as people typed in the names they would come to my sites. If I can get one word names the chances are if you google that one word my site is more likely to come up. So I bought Parol.co.uk and Epithelial.net - two subjects I have no idea about but after a lot of searching I found they were avaliable and again - lets just try it. So these are my first sites!

Ok so I know what your thinking... what a strange choice of names, why these? The reason for this is that there are some very rich people out there that have spotted this market a long time ago. They got in early and they have taken up many of the best domains, a bit of a modern gold rush. Very little quality is left, apparantly all 3 letter and 4 letter .com domain names have been sold and most dictionary names are gone. So I have been searching thousands of possible names to find what is avaliable and chose the best. I can't explain everything straight away but as I contribute to the blog more, more of my methods will be revealed. Now will England beat Croatia in the football, I predict 2-0 to England...(and I promise I won't change that)! Ahh as I was just typing this Croatia score.....Doh!

20 November 2007 - Blog Entry Number 1 My new Boy Project

The first entry in a blog is always an important moment, it sets the tone of things to come, and makes the reader think....do I like this person, do I care. Well hopefully you will be interested in how this story goes, hopefully there will be a happy ending with lots of success. Now hopefully you havel have read the bit at the top and now have figured out what BuytheMap was and still is. My new venture is something I know very little about......being a 'domaineer'. Now this may be something you have never heard of, you may be someone that is involved in this, and reading this blog will remind you of what it was like when you first started out, or you may be new to this as well and hence as I learn more my knowledge will help you too.

Ok so first I want to explain how I got in to this. On this link click here is Dollars.com it was in my chaotic surfing of the web I happened across this site. I never realised that domain names were traded like this, if you look up and down the list some names are selling for thousands, and many you will look at them and think 'I could have come up with that' so I am going to try to! The most expensive names sold to date are Business.com sold for $11million, and Sex.com $14million dollars! It turns out that domain names are like realestate, the best names command the highest prices, names that people can easily remember ie bored.com, or can be branded, google.com, or may be typed in direct to the browser bar cars.com are thus worth a lot of money. Why? Well as people will type these names in and arrive at the sites, think of the web like a shopping street, each website a shop, the more people come in the more you sell, and the more you can subject people to adverts.

So it begins! I am going to see if I can crack this market, if I can get hold of a domain name that is worth some money, or a domain name that gets traffic so that I can sell advertising. Now I must admit I have already started, I did so about a month ago and in my next entry I will talk about what I have done so far so that we are up to date. Anyway that's it the first blog entry, a bit serious, none of my bad jokes, but hopefully I have explained something. So bookmark my blog and pop in from time to time.

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