[Video] Domainer Income TV – Interview With David Harry

If you currently use domain name parking services, then this video could be lifechanging for you. I’m deadly SERIOUS. Depending on how you optimize your parked websites, you should be able to substantally increase your earnings from parking companies. I’m not talking about just doubling your earnings either – I’m talking about multiples…. just wait to you see the video! I’ve had to chop it up into 5 parts (it goes for 50+ minutes) for YouTube. If you want the whole video, just subscribe to our iTunes channel.

For those people that do not use parking as a monetization strategy, then this will definitely make you reconsider!

This episode has been months in the making and David has given me unprecedented access to KEYRPM to show REAL EVIDENCE based on a LIVE PORTFOLIO of domains. Seriously – this is one episode that you cant afford to miss!

Can I ask you a favour? After you watch the video, please “Like It” and post a comment below to share your “lessons learned” with other viewers.

Happy Holidays

On behalf of the team at Domainer Income, I’d like to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous 2011.

Thanks again for your support throughout the year.

Interview With Bhavin Turakhia [Directi]

This is a great interview with Bhavin Turakhia – Founder and CEO of Directi. Domain investors will know many of their brands including ResellerClub, Skenzo, LogicBoxes, WebHosting.Info.

Enjoy!

Bunnings Loses Hardware – Woolworths Snaps It Up = [Record Sale]

Many of you would have seen the sale of hardware.com.au in our domain sales database for $33,333. The domain was purchased by Woolworths via its advertising agency.

What many of you don’t know, is that hardware.com.au was previously owned by Bunnings! It seems they forgot to renew it (or rather update their email address in the registrant details).

The Australian hardware sector is a $36 BILLION dollar market and the JV between Lowes and Woolworths have already spent $12 million in setup costs. Now they own the hardware market with a $33k purchase. Nice one!

A spokesman for Wesfarmers (owners of Bunnings) told the Herald Sun “This is the first I’ve heard of it, I didn’t know. I’m completely in the dark”. No doubt, heads will be rolling at Wesfarmers today.

Of course, if Wesfarmers had a Domainer Income Professional Membership, then they could have kept track of the expiration of hardware.com.au and this would not have happened.

Editors Note: We have been holding off publishing this story until now. Given that it’s just hitting the media – the cats out the bag!

Domainer Income Includes Trademark Checking

Over the past few months the team at Domainer Income has been testing out a new groundbreaking feature – automatic trademark checks!

That’s right. When you are viewing .au drops, all of those domains are now checked for trademarked keywords. This level of automation is something that is not offered anywhere else. It can:

1. Save you HOURS of time.

2. Potentially save you from a lawsuit.

3. Save you money, because you will be shown what auctions to avoid.

See the TM column? You can hover your mouse over it and get all the information on the trademark. Cool eh?

Why Trademarks?

Trademark infringement is one area that hurts domain investors and newcomers to the industry. It’s largely something that’s not widely talked about, so here are a few scenarios to be aware of:

Example #1

A newcomer to the industry gets sucked in by all the marketing hype around “buying aged domains”. They sign up to the latest and greatest auction site and start buying, only to find they get slapped with a lawsuit because the keywords in the domain name they just purchased were trademarked.

Example #2

Someone buys a domain at auction for $1,000 and a few days later receives a letter from the regulator that their domain infringes on someone elses trademark. The domain is taken off them, put into “Pending Delete” and the person loses their $1,000.

The Future

This will be the first in many new features that we are making available to our Professional Members. We have some VERY BIG surprises for 2011.

Thanks again to our customers who continue to support us and inspire our team to innovate.

Who Are You Supporting?

If you surround yourself with people, then THEIR values and beliefs will have an effect on you.

Think about that for a moment – if you were in a room with successful like minded entrepreneurs, then you WILL feel some very positive energy, wont you?

What you may not know, is that OTHER people will judge YOU on the people you:

1. Promote (to your email list, at events, or via Facebook / Twitter)
2. Support (via ads on your blog or people you provide services to)
3. Associate with (conferences and interviews)

Why should YOU care? It’s simple….

When other people see who you promote, they may think twice about getting involved with YOU.

If you are seen to promote unethical people and products, then YOU are tarred with the same brush. Guilty by association. In addition, next time YOU have something to say or a product to promote, people will question it. They will also question YOUR decision making capability.

Scenario – How It Affects You

You get an email from someone you saw at conference a few times, asking you to promote his new product. You think it might make you some extra $$ per month, so you promote it to your list. But afterwards you find out that the person is dodgy and their product was a straight copy/paste from somewhere else. People complain, YOU are associated with it, and the industry is now talking about YOU.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. What is EVEN WORSE is if YOU continue to promote it !! Why? Because people form an opinion that YOU don’t know what you are talking about. They know this person or product is dodgy, but from THEIR perspective, YOU lack the insight to see it.

In 2010, if you have promoted a person or a product (which has turned out to be dodgy), then LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. Don’t promote them again! Stop yourself – seriously, learn how to SAY NO. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but people will respect you a LOT more if you can admit (even if it’s to yourself) that you made a mistake. All you need to do to fix this, is change your approach.

We are coming up on a new year. In 2011 I’d like to see the industry clean itself up. That starts at the grass roots level, with people like YOU.

Next time someone asks you to promote their product, STOP and think about it. Don’t just look at “all the other people on the bandwagon”. Ask yourself:

1. What will be the impact to MY reputation if this doesn’t work out?

2. How will people view my organisation if I’m seen to promote this?

3. Will I miss out on other (more valuable) opportunities if I promote this?

4. Who are the competitors to this product or person? Will they support me and my business if I’m seen to promote, FB Like or endorse this product/person?

These questions should help you determine the consequences of your actions. In the corporate world this is called reputational risk. It’s something that is closely guarded and protected above all else.

What I’m asking, is that you THINK about this – starting today. I wish you the best for 2011.

[Help] Us Shape The Future Of .au

As you may know, I’ve been representing the interests of both the domain investment community and small business on the auDA Names Policy Panel. The panel today released:

1. A discussion paper to the general public based upon deliberations to date.

2. This survey to seek public opinion on domain monetization, misspellings, eligibility and allocation policy rules.

Why should you care? Because:

1. If you buy .au domain names (or want to buy them, but you can’t), this gives you an opportunity to get your voice heard and change the rules.

2. If you think that domain monetization (eg: parking) is a legitimate business practice and want to see the “domain monetization policy” abolished, then now is your chance! Seriously, go and tell auDA what you REALLY think! Should Australia continue to be the only country in the world with these restrictions?

Anyone can provide feedback – you don’t have to be an auDA Member.

What You Should Do Right Now

Its Friday, take some time out and fill in this survey.

Thanks again for your support.

The Facts About Parking [Case Study]

Parking means different things to different people. It’s no secret that our organisation develops and parks – we have done so for years. To us, its quite simple; some domains do very well when they are parked – others do better when they developed out. Its a risk / return equation.

However, there are things you can do to earn more $$$$ from parking. One of them is to find a good parking company. Here is where the issue is; there are companies that call themselves “parking companies” and then there are the REAL parking companies. As you know, I’m all for transparency, hard facts and evidence; so I wanted to bring your attention to this study conducted by Michael Gilmour. The results are amazing and Michael deserves a huge round of applause for publishing it.

The reality is that you need to read the study for yourself, but here are a few highlights. To summarize, Park Logic split tested domains between parking companies (yes, I’m oversimplifying it) and compared the results:

1. There was a 164% increase in revenue for the 67% of domains which were “won” by the Domain Advertising provider.

2. Almost a $100 RPM aggregate revenue was achieved on those winning domains

When you look deeper into the data, some of the domains have a $236 RPM ! Now before you go moving your portfolio over…… results like these require a LOT of work. Its not a simple process of just pointing your portfolio somewhere else.

So… to all the people who think that parking is a waste of time and that development is the only way to go – think again.

7 Things We Did For Domainer Income Members

We have had a tremendous amount of positive feedback since making our domain investment platform available to the public. Many people have taken the time to write to us saying thanks and some people have made some great suggestions as to how we can make it even better!

“great you are actually looking for feedback, most people don’t care.” – Samuel.

Well – we listened AND we took action after receiving your feedback. Here is just some of what we have done:

1. More Help !

Quite a number of people were overwhelmed with all the different analysis and metrics we provide. While we have descriptions of each column, people wanted more information. We heard you and have added an additional 21 detailed explanations into our existing help section.

2. Clarifying Expired Domains

Many of our Free Members were used to seeing the term “expired domains” misrepresented. They saw expired domains in the context of an auction! For example: a domain had expired and then they could bid on it. They were certainly not used to having a REAL list of genuine expired domains, that they could hand register straight away!

To clarify, it is updated DAILY with new domains. Each day we remove the old data and add new information about domains that have expired. Our aim is to give you the most accurate, up to date information, anywhere. You certainly won’t find any information on domains that expired last week!

3. Enhanced Checking & Data Integrity

We radically improved our existing “fake pagerank” checker algorithm. It used to do multiple checks to detect fake PR, but now its just about bullet proof! I love it! The other great thing you can do is exclude domains that have fake PR from your search results.

4. Enhanced Reporting

Aside from the typical accounting reports like YTD, 30 days, 90 days etc.. we have added some customized reports. You can how report on specific date ranges, as well as “all time”.

5. Keeping Track Of Your Costs – Including Development !!!

We have added the ability for you to keep track of development costs AND hosting costs. Both cost structures can be applied to individuals domains. Now you can see how much you REALLY spent on development!

6. Keeping Track Of Additional Revenue – eg: Product Sales & Affiliate Commissions

Some of our more advanced investors wanted to “separate out” affiliate sales, product or service sales, parking revenue etc… So that is exactly what we did. You can now enter all this information in and allocate it to a specific domain. Of course you can also report on it too and see your real ROI !!

7. Enhanced Portfolio Filtering

Its no secret that domainers can have very large portfolios. As such, some people wanted to have the ability to “cut and dice” their portfolio in different ways. For example, lets say you wanted to view a list of .com domains only, along with their expiry dates. Yes – you can do that. Maybe you just wanted to see a list of domains with a specific keyword or letter in them? You can do that too. We listened, and within 5 days rolled out an upgrade to the “My Domain Portfolio” section.

Summary

There are a lot more changes than I can post here and many more being worked on right now. The satisfying thing for me is that our users are REALLY benefiting from Domainer Income.

If there is anything that you would like to see, please feel free to get in touch. Of course, we can’t do absolutely everything, but we do have a very active development team and plan on continuing to grow and expand our services.

When Are You Going To Do This? [Video]

If you are not making enough money from domaining, then I have a few questions for YOU:

1. When are you going to stop collecting domain names?

2. When are you going to monetize that group of domains you bought months ago?

3. When are you going to stop trawling through auctions late at night, buying domains that just end up sitting there doing nothing?

4. How are you going to get the knowledge you need to monetize your domains and start earning REAL $$$ from them?

At what point do you admit to yourself that you need help? Well… that’s exactly what I’m offering a limited number of mentoring students.

Apply now at http://www.MentoringBySimon.com – be quick, applications are closing!