Namedrive Review

If you’ve read some of the articles I posted earlier this year regarding the subject of domaining you’ll know that the subject has not only drawn me in but has continued to become a greater part of my online earnings.

Domaining in its simplest terms is about buying domains and then parking them with a domain parking company (most are free to sign up to). Namedrive is one such company and this post is going to highlight some of the successes I’ve had with them.

Now before I get into the details I just want to clarify that I’m not a domain parking veteran. For me domain parking is a short term solution that allows me to earn from the 30-50 domains I usually hold whilst their sitting idle waiting to be developed. Many of these domains are purchased from domain expiry sites like tdnam which ultimately means they’re aged (anything from 2-12 years old) and have active back links to them.

Thanks to the backlinks 90% of these domains have some sort of traffic passing through them. This could be as little as 10 uniques per month to as high as 1000 uniques per month. Either way these domains aren’t the best types to monetise, they certainly don’t get any type in traffic and in most cases they’re not keyword rich. However despite these short comings if these domains weren’t parked I’d be losing around $100 per month. It’s not a lot of money but if I already own those domains why should I miss out, that’s an extra $1200 in my pocket at the end of the year.

So how does namedrive come into this, well firstly their free to sign up to and are the only domain parking service that has actually worked for me. I’ve tried sedo ($0.50-$10 per month), I even tried a paid service called whypark (cost $100 to sign up) which despite having worked for some colleagues of mine earnt me next to nothing ($0.05-$1.00 per month).

So the key to my earnings is 100% linked to Namedrive, no other parking service has paid me as highly as they have. What’s great is that if you signup using this link and earn more than $20 in November they’ll actually pay you a 10% seasonal bonus.

So if you have domains just sitting there, my advice would be to get them onto Namedrive. Remember sign up is 100% free and you’ll probably have your domains listed within 15 minutes. Their admin panel is second to none and their customer service is actually quite helpful (in most cases they replied to my queries extremely professionally and within the hour).

Give them a shot and let me know how you do ? I’ll keep you updated on any other services I find but for now Namedrive is my #1 choice..

The Wallpaper Directory

Following on from my last post, I’m going to take some time to discuss a rather unconventional project I started six months ago. The reason I call it unconventional is because it’s not a single website rather a collection of related wallpaper sites combined to form an overall network. The sheer scale of the project meant it had to be handled slightly differently and that’s something I really want to touch on as we work our way through this article. Lets get stuck in.

The Scenario

Those of you that read this projects scenario in my last post can skip this section but for those that have never heard of this wallpaper network project, I’m going to quote a section from my last post which you should read and digest below.

Well earlier this year I purchased a project off a friend, some of you may remember me mentioning it on the forums. Those of you that didn’t, well in simple terms he had this grand old plan of buying loads of niche wallpaper domains like say ferrari-wallpapers.com or sea-wallpapers.com and turning each one into a site earning atleast $1 per day.

On paper the challenge doesn’t sound too difficult but it was going to be hardwork and I told him that the day he started. Anyway I continued with my life and a month or two later we were talking again so I asked him how it was going. To my surprise he had not only lost interest in the project but had also decided to off load the project which at that time was maybe 1% complete and earning a whopping $0 per month.

Now under normal circumstances I would have stayed away from this over ambitious attempt at earning money online, but there was something charming about this challenge, it had a point to prove and something very experimental about it. So like its previous owner I too was seduced and ended up buying the project for around $800. This included over 120 niche wallpaper domains and one master domain which represented the overall network.

Well the idea was simple enough all I needed to do was develop atleast 100 of these sites, and if each site earned $1 per day that’s approximately $100 per day extra income all on autopilot. Yes it sounds highly achievable but the real question is can it be pulled off ?

The Script

Ok so I’m sitting on around 123 new domains in my namecheap account of which 1 site Funny Wallpapers was half developed by the previous owner. In fact the site in question is still in the same state it was when I started, ugly, loads of broken links and only a handful of wallpapers to share. (Edit: It’s now been converted) Check the image below to see how it looked:

If you’re a digitalpoint user you’ll quickly recognise the skin and realise that it’s the infamous CollectPHP script in action. Since I purchased the network I also purchased the previous owners choice of script. On initial inspection I wasn’t hugely impressed with the script but after checking out my options which included:

a) coding my own script (could be time consuming)
b) using other 3rd party scripts (most much more expensive and requiring a license per domain)

I quickly realised that CollectPHP was going to be the way forward. For starters the script was 100% unencoded giving me full access to the source code, I could use it on as many domains as I wanted and most importantly it actually did most of what it said on the tin.

My main concern however was the look and feel of the site and how easy it would be to modify. A quick glance into the code revealed a few more things:

a) The script was actually very poorly coded.
b) No templating system was in place.
c) The script had some bugs

I quickly realised that before I could get to the skin I needed to get my hands dirty with the code. If I was going to develop in excess of 100+ sites using this script I needed to make sure the scripts weak points were re-coded sooner rather than later.

Overall this wasn’t a huge setback as after a day of fiddling with the code I manged to get the script to a point where it was cleaner, more managable and even had better SEO urls for search engine readability. The script was ready to go and working just the way I wanted.

The Skin

Ok so I had the script working perfectly but I still needed a skin that wasn’t being used by every single owner of this script. Just go to digitalpoint and you’ll quickly realise that 99% of wallpaper site owners are using this script unmodded complete with the naruto header at the top.

That’s right on DP it doesn’t matter what theme your wallpaper site covers, good old naruto is the theme to have. I’ve seen car sites, barbie doll sites and even pet sites all using the same skin complete with the orange naruto header. You would think people would have the decency to atleast change the header but for some even that’s too much work (but lets not go down the whole list of complaints I have with the buyers and sellers on DP churning out cheap useless sites).

Getting the skin right and of course distancing myself from the overused naruto skin was a top priority. My requirements were simple, I needed a skin which was 100% unique but more importantly easy to update, change and adapt for different niches.

After a day of messing around in photoshop I came up with a fixed width layout which employed a simple header image that could be swapped and changed to match the niche I wanted to create. I modded the css file as well so that I could quickly change the background and font colors to complement the style I was targeting, I’ve taken some screenshots of the skin to show it in action, see below:

As you can see the skin looks much better than the original, true it’s still not a work of art but it does the job and most importantly carries the content and adsense ads perfectly.

(Quick tip: Wallpaper sites convert very well when the ads are placed above the fold of the page and offer very few distractions in terms of other links and buttons. My experience has shown that the type of users that pass through a wallpaper site are very likely to click on links and ads that are related to their niche so putting the ads in the center of the page just above the fold works very well for click through rates.)

Overall my tests showed that running my skin versus the standard naruto one increased my revenue by almost double. Never under estimate the importance of a sites skin, the placement of your ads and how it can impact your revenue.

The Earnings

Ok so the building blocks for the project have been explained, I’ve even hinted on the success of the new skin but what about the sites, what sort of traffic are they getting and what are the earnings ? My initial goals were to earn $1 per day via adsense but was this really achievable?

The above questions are all key areas that will determine the future success of this project and it’s for this reason my very first decision after sorting out the script and skin was to run the project on a smaller scale. You would be foolish to develop 100+ sites without knowing the answers to the above questions, so my first task was selecting 10 domains from the 123 and getting them online as soon as possible. It took me around 2 weeks to completely launch my first 10 sites (this included adding over 200+ wallpapers to each site and performing some light SEO).

My initial findings were actually quite demoralising, firstly I learnt that adsense on wallpaper sites can often be quite low paying, my initial clicks were very very low and my total earnings were around $1.00 per month. Yes the above is not a typo $1 per day about 3 months ago would have been an amazing feat because each site on my network was struggling to make that in a month.

Despite the above one thing that was in my favour was that my search engine rankings were still improving hence the type and quantity of traffic I could capture was bound to change. Remember the low earnings per click is usually related to the quality of your traffic. Until your sites move higher up the search engines you can usually expect more of this cheap overseas traffic. Overseas clicks are usually lower paying per click compared to traffic from the USA, Canada and UK which you usually only capture once you maintain better rankings on google.com.

As of today search rankings have improved vastly (but still well off where I want them to be). Despite this let me give you a break down of where the earnings are as of today. Remember I have only launched 10 sites.

- 1 site is earning $2+ per day
- 4 sites area earning $1-$1.50 per day
- 5 sites are earning $0.10-$0.50 per day

So what does the above demonstrate ? Well to me it shows that the $1 per day goal is certainly achievable, it also indicates that with time the potential to earn is much greater than $1 day. The second positive point is that apart from the initial investment of time required to upload the base set of wallpapers you probably only need to update and add new wallpapers every 6 months.

Remember these are 100% auto pilot sites which require very little involvement on a day to day basis. Secondly sites that run on auto pilot fetch a much higher value when you sell them. So instead of the usual 12 month revenue model a solid page 1 ranking site with a good selection of wallpapers could easily return 18-24+ months of revenue upon selling.

The Actual Directory

I haven’t really touched upon the parent directory i.e. http://www.wallpaper-network.com yet but this site itself has been extremely successful and is continuning to gain solid rankings on the search engines for many key terms.

The model is simple keep adding quality sites to the directory, many of these are mine but the site is open to the public and so far around 20% of the submissions received belong to other webmasters. Over time as I stop developing new wallpaper sites this percentage will increase.

The wallpaper directory isn’t earning much at the moment (maybe $10 per month via adsense) but that’s expected. The positive point however is that I would say what is being offered is almost unique on the web. There are at most 2-3 quality directories catering for the wallpaper niche and I’m pretty confident that as more sites are added to the network offering featured subscriptions as a means of monetisation will be completely possible allowing for incomes as high as $200-$300 per month. (I say the above based on experience and actually having owned a quality niche directory in the past).

Final Words

Building sites on the web is all about quality and patience. Rushing any task usually leads to failure and disappointment, if there is one thing I can recommend and suggest to webmasters embarking on new projects its that you should plan well and then stick with the program trying to improve and provide real value to your users.

The web is no different to real life, if you deliver a site that people can take real value from you will be rewarded by repeat visitors and a good ranking on google. If you build sites with a short term viewpoint and the intention to make a quick buck you’re sure to be one of the losers. Yes there are ways to speed up things and optimise certain processes but in all cases hard work and patience have to be a part of the equation.

Overall I hope this case study has offered some insight into the scope and potential of developing wallpaper sites and more so developing a complete network. When I get to 50% I’ll make sure that I post some updates and include more data with regards to the actual traffic and earning stats which by then should be much more substantial. As usual feel free to leave a comment if you found this post helpful.

I Love This Blog, Really I Do

The above is no joke, when I first started this blog I knew the articles were going to be fresh and distinctive. I knew people would enjoy my writing style and may even stand to learn something from the case studies I offered. This blog was going to be special, unfortunately somewhere along the lines I became busy with my sites and got so heavily involved with a mass reorganisation of my portfolio that I had absolutely no time for this site and its members.

Well last night I decided to end the drought and post some updates on what I’ve been up to. I have a lot to share and a lot to blog about so for this post I’m going to be brief and quickly outline some of the subjects that I want to cover in the coming days. (Yes Im going to post 3 new posts 1 every day from today). So heres the quick summary.

Post 1 - The Wallpaper Network

I’ve always been curious about desktop wallpaper sites, you know those cheesy looking sites that offer you an assortment of desktop backgrounds for your PC. You see so many of them on sale at DigitalPoint that they seem almost worthless.

Well earlier this year I purchased a project off a friend, some of you may remember me mentioning it on the forums. Those of you that didn’t, well in simple terms he had this grand old plan of buying loads of niche wallpaper domains like say ferrari-wallpapers.com or sea-wallpapers.com and turning each one into a site earning atleast $1 per day.

On paper the challenge doesn’t sound too difficult but it was going to be hardwork and I told him that the day he started. Anyway I continued with my life and a month or two later we were talking again so I asked him how it was going. To my surprise he had not only lost interest in the project but had also decided to off load the project which at that time was maybe 1% complete and earning a whopping $0 per month.

Now under normal circumstances I would have stayed away from this over ambitious attempt at earning money online, but there was something charming about this challenge, it had a point to prove and something very experimental about it. So like its previous owner I too was seduced and ended up buying the project for around $800. This included over 120 niche wallpaper domains and one master domain which represented the overall network.

Well the idea was simple enough all I needed to do was develop atleast 100 of these sites, and if each site earned $1 per day that’s approximately $100 per day extra income all on autopilot. Yes it sounds highly achievable but the real question is can it be pulled off ?

The answer will be revealed in my next post where I will be talking about the projects current status and what plans I have for it in the near future.

Post 2 - I Only Use Adsense

Yeah that’s right until now my method has been to keep things simple so I’ve really only used adsense as a means of monetisation. Things changed however in my recent portfolio reorganisation where I spent time trying different things. That basically meant using adsense along with another type of ad provider. I’ll be talking about my findings and how much of an increase I achieved by tweaking the ad providers and their placements.

Post 3 - PPC Coach Review

Another aspect of online marketing is the use of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. There’s nothing obscure or odd about using it but until now I’ve only delivered traffic to my sites via natural organic SEO. So what’s the problem ?

Well PPC was probably one of the last methods of internet marketing that I still didn’t fully understand. I wanted to fill this knowledge gap and more importantly actually use it as a method of driving traffic to my sites whilst they’re still new and working their way up the search engine rankings.

Using PPC to kick start a new project could be quite profitable, the only problem was that my experience with PPC stood at zero. I knew absolutely nothing about how it worked and how to do it correctly, that was until I signed up to the PPC Coach program (a well known PPC coaching program where many members are earning over $1000 per day profit).

I’ll be giving my review and assessment of what happened whilst I was with PPC Coach and how it could benefit you as it did me. A highly recommended program but not for everyone so watch out for the review.

Other Updates

Well I have plenty of other small juicy bits but I’m going to save them for later because this post is getting way too long, but one thing I will mention is that one of my science related sites got a mention in the BBC Knowledge Magazine.

Unfortunately it’ a US only subscription magazine so I never got to see the actual snippet. (Im sure it wasn’t anything special but I did get some emails from subscribers of the mag telling me they saw my site in it). So just goes to show what honest hardwork and real quality articles can do to help you get noticed.

The Forums

Oh and lastly after sending out a mass email on the forums notifying that they would be closed for private coaching members only, I recently decided to reverse that decision, leaving them open for the public but also giving the private coaching members a separate private forum for their needs. This means the forums are still kind of open to the public but with a twist.

So whats the twist ? Well from today the forums will be invitation only. This means you can only join if you’ve been recommended by another member or if you send me an email giving details of why you want to join. This hopefully will cut the spammers and of course the useless members who make one post and leave.

I think that pretty much covers everything for now, so watch out for my posts over the coming days and I hope you had a great halloween.

Buying Your Domain Names Cheaper

I’m currently writing the second part to the signaturebar story but I’m a little stuck so I thought I’d share a quick post on where I pick up domains at very good prices. The registrars I’m going to talk about are fully ICANN accredited (i.e. they’re not resellers) and more so offer some extremely cool features in addition to their low prices.

Now before I go on I’m just going to say that for some strange reason people seem to overlook these lesser known registrars. The general trend with users is that they stick to the household names like Namecheap, GoDaddy, eNom, 1&1 etc. I personally don’t have a problem with this trend because I too have at least 50% of my domains at two of the above sites, so it’s all quite normal. However being who I am, I need to have variety and keeping your options open is always a good thing. 

So what if I told you about two sites which are not only cheaper, but more feature rich and easier to use than the previously mentioned companies. That’s hard to be believe right but I honestly do have two very awesome sites to share with you.

Lesser Known Registrar #1

I’m talking about .com domains as low as $7.50, responsive support from real people, free domain parking options, and the ability to taste domains for free. Remember domain tasting is where you can pick up a domain try it for around 5 days and then just give it back for a full refund, how cool is that ?

Well if you’re even slightly tempted by the above features and are spending a decent amount on domains every year (at least $500 per year) then the site I’m about to recommend will be right up your street.

The company I’m referring to is DynaDot. Not only are these guys fully accredited by ICANN but they have a very human feel to them when it comes to customer support. Combine that with domain tasting, domain parking and access to loads of international domains (ITDNs that most registrars either don’t provide or charge too much for) you really can’t go wrong.

If you haven’t heard of them, then I suggest you head over there and take a look because they really could save you a bundle in the long run. If you’re into domaining no doubt the domain tasting features are a huge bonus but even without them the price per domain (at just $7.50) is reason enough to give them a try.

Lesser Known Registrar #2

The second registrar I like to use is DomainSite.com. These guys are great because they’re straight forward, won’t burn a whole in your pocket and if you don’t need the more advanced domaining features like domain tasting, then these guys are an awesome choice.

With .info registrations from $2.99 and .com/.net/.org registrations from $7.88 (No bulk purchase required) it’s difficult to get a lower price than what’s on offer here. Go any lower and you’ll absolutely see a drop in customer service levels which as we all know is never good. Lastly like DynaDot these guys are 100% ICANN accredited allowing you to buy with confidence and have peace of mind.

Final Words

So there you go, not sure how many of you already use the above mentioned sites, but with my domain spending budget growing I can confidently save about $100 each month (that’s a whopping $1200 per year) thanks to using these lesser known registrars. 

If you combine these cost savings with access to free domaining features like domain tasting then you can’t help but smile all the way to the piggy bank. Remember if you know of any other hidden gems that you can personally recommend be sure to leave a comment or even head over to the forums and drop me your thoughts. 

Domaining - The Dark Arts

Ok so the title is a little misleading but the whole subject of expired domains, domain parking, domain tasting and everything else associated with being a domainer is a bit of a black box to me. I say this because in my experience it’s a niche which is not only exclusive to a select few thousand individuals (everyone else I would classify as casual domainers) but more so very little real information on how domaining is done is available.

That’s why I call it a dark art, it has a level of mysteriousness and unknowns not found in other webmaster specialisations. Time and time again I read articles about domaining and the domain name industry only to finish the article feeling empty because the author merely covered the observable surface facts making no real attempt to answer the why’s and how’s of what actually goes on.

If you compare this to other webmaster subjects like web design, programming and even seo, then simply heading over to Google, Wikipedia, a webmaster forum or even buying a book from the local store will answer a lot of your questions. Combine that reading with some hands on experience and within 6-7 months you’re pretty much ready to go.

Try that with domaining and you won’t even get to the lets start practicing for 6-7 months part. The best you will find in terms of information is a couple of explanations on what domaining is, how cyber squatters gave domaining a bad name, and that professional domainers are making a killing online. Honestly there’s a lot of talk on the web but very little substance and hardly any practical tips on how to get started.

The Webmaster Void

Ok so there isn’t much on the web so what do you do next ? For me it was simple, I started asking around and being a full time webmaster I had friends and contacts who I thought might be able to help. I had scratched their backs in the past so surely they would scratch mine in my time of need ? Under normal circumstances you would expect someone like me to come back with some insights into the subject but my friends actually knew less than I did, this was a serious knock back but simply reconfirmed my initial thoughts about the scarcity of good practical domaining knowledge.

With no answers available I got a little desperate and fired a question on the digitalpoint (DP) forums. Surely what I wanted to know wasn’t a big deal right ? I mean all I needed from someone was an explanation of a) where people buy expiring domains from ? and b) with over 100,000+ domains expiring everyday even if just half of these go to auction it’s quite obvious that tools are needed to filter out the good from the bad. Can you filter domains by pagerank, traffic, age, alexa rank etc ? All perfectly decent questions don’t you think ? Surely someone would respond ?

You guessed it, I got a big fat zero responses to my post and with no luck trying to find decent information on the web I was beginning to lose hope. However like most things you seem to find what you need when you least expect it. It was only a few days later that I randomly bumped into an old friend on MSN. We got chatting and he happened to mention that he had previously dabbled in domain auctions. He wasn’t exactly an expert but he did point me in the right direction, which ultimately meant a bunch of links that included auction sites and some research tools he had used in the past (none of them free or cheap for that matter).

The 4 Keys To Success

Anyway armed with my friends links I went about signing up to his recommendations as well as some other sites I found along the way. After blowing almost $400 on tools and spending another 3-4 days testing them, I quickly realised there are four things you absolutely need to get started as a domainer:

• A source that generates a daily list of domains that are expiring, dropping and/or in auction.
• A tool to help you analyse these domains and filter out the stuff you don’t want.
• Access to the domain auction sites where these domains are exchanging hands.
• Some spare cash because being a domainer isn’t cheap.

In short once you have the above you can at least start to trade and gain experience as a domainer. In total I spent $800 on this discovery experience (approx $400 on tools and another $400 on actual domain auctions). Despite this upfront cost I now have a half decent understanding of how domaining works and more importantly the tools to help me find the domains I so desperately want.

Show Me The Money !!!

By now I’m sure you’re all desperate to hear which tools and auction markets are the best to go for. In fact for many including myself the auction markets I disclose may not come as a surprise but what will be of interest are the tools that I’m about to recommend.

These tools will not only help you research large lists of domains but ultimately make the whole selection and isolation phase of domain purchase possible. Lets just say without these tools picking quality domains is exactly like finding a needle in a hay stack. So let’s take a look below.

Domain Lists

My recommendation for getting daily updated domain lists is premiumdomains (PD). It costs around $25 per month and in my eyes is easily one of the best sources for domain lists on the net.

Filtering The Domain Lists

There are 2 ways to do this and you should only do one or the other so read carefully.

• Option 1: Domain Research Tool (DRT)

Domain Research Tool (see below for a $100 discount) is a desktop based research application that you can use to filter and analyse your domain lists. It’s developed and owned by the same guys that own premiumdrops (PD) which means as a bonus you can import your domain lists from your PD account with the click of a button (a very handy featured indeed).

Not only is this tool powerful but absolutely amazing at generating some great analytics from your domain lists. There is no tool that matches this for detail but I must warn you it may seem a little complex to the newbie webmaster, so if you want something a little more basic then look at option 2 (listed below).

$100 Discount: This tool is normally priced at $249 but if you want to save $100 and get this for just $149 then click this special link.

• Option 2: Freshdrops (FD)

FreshDrops is great if you’re after something a little cheaper and of course straightforward. It’s $32.95 per month and unlike DRT is 100% online based. The site sources and manages its own domain lists meaning you don’t have to subscribe to a 3rd party provider like premiumdrops.

Freshdrops definitely consolidates things making your life as a newbie domainer much easier. It lets you search through a pretty decent list of domains and even lets you filter by pagerank, age and a couple of other criteria. However just remember that these online searches are no way as powerful as DRT. 

You get what you pay for but saying that if you’re new to domaining the options available to you aren’t half bad. FD is probably the most cost effective method of tasting the whole domaining experience and as such is my recommended site for most people. On the other hand if you’re a little more confident in your abilities try out DRT because in the long run it’s the tool to have.

Domain Markets

Although there are a whole range of domain markets ready for you to jump into, I strongly suggest you keep things simple and spend time on just 1-2 sites to begin with. For this purpose my recommendations are below:

• Domain Name Aftermarket (GoDaddys auction site, $5 signup fee, good variety & price)
• SnapNames (Very reliable, good variety of domains, a little more pricey)

For reference other domain sites include Pool, NameJet, Tucows, Sedo and a couple of others that escape me right now.

Final Words

Just remember domaining is not easy, you need a budget, some practice, some luck and a lot of late nights doing your research. Despite all of these things there is no reason why you can’t use the tools and recommendations I have made to good effect.

For me getting into the domaining scene has been a win win situation. Even if I never engage it on a full time basis (because my root skills still lie with web development) I now have the tools to pick up all sorts of expired domains whenever I want. 

Combining these high pagerank, highly aged domains with fresh content, a new design and some seo could produce some really smashing sites. These would no doubt monetise much quicker than a domain registered with no history thus making my life as website flipper much much easier.

Domaining also brings with it other opportunities like traffic redirection which could be beneficial to me further down the line. All these points just go to show how useful basic domaining skills are for modern day webmasters.

In closing I’m sure I’m heading down a path with many twists and turns, so expect more commentary from me on this absolutely massive subject area. I will also try my best to share any cool stories and experiences as I start purchasing more domains.