Domain Names The Booming Internet Real Estate

I recently was reviewing DN Journal's eye-popping report of top 20 domain name sales. A Canadian city domain name (Penticton.com) sold for $75,000 and a name for an Atlanta neighborhood (Buckhead.com) looks to be making it's way into the $250,000 range (coming up in their next report).

It's amazing about the domain name business, what may look worthless may not be as long as one potential buyer thinks it's a goldmine.

Here is their Top 20 list from March 12 to March 18 of latest domain name sales:

1. Penticton.com - 88,000 CAD= $75,823
2. Stocks.mobi - $70,000
3. IAB.com - $67,250
4. MobileTones.com - $60,000

5. Girls.mobi - $49,000
6. LocalPhone.com - $39,000
7. AsianGames.com - $30,000
8. Conn.com - $29,500
9. Salmiya.com - $29,138
10. CreditCard.info - $25,500
11. DeeJay.com -$21,611

12. MyBadCredit.com - $19,900
13. ScenicHomes.com - $18,000
14. United-Kingdom.com - $15,500

15. CreditCardApplications.net - $14,000

16. Physiotherapie.com - €8,500 = $11,315

17. iTeam.com - $10,650
18. DevelopersGroup.com - $ 8,900
19. NoFun.com - $ 8,780
20. Mint.net - $8,155

And seems like buyers have been snapping them up in the 4 figure range from auctions at front-runner SnapNames.com, eg. sslencryption.com which sold for $2,555. Surely then my domain name LHJL.com should easily sell for around 4 times that amount...at least according to LeapFish.

Making Money On The Other Side Of Ebay

Years ago I sure made a couple of mistakes. I didn't purchase ebay stock when it was low-priced or join their affiliate program where some are now making 5 or 6 figures per month. I guess I was too busy selling products on ebay never crossing my mind that if I was making money, then ebay was making much more. In any case I did eventually purchase ebay stock just for the sake of not having invested in the first place, made a small profit but nothing to write home about. Maybe it's not too late to make money on the other side of ebay...through their affiliate program that is.

Can you believe it their top affiliate reported commissions of over $1,000,000 in one month...all from promoting ebay. No large investment, selling products, shipping, dealing with customers, just using various marketing techniques to get people to join and buy on ebay. Sounds too good to be true and something I just had to try out. After working hard for years, who wouldn't want an easier way to make money.

Well nothing is ever as easy as it sounds but I can see how these people are making it big as an ebay affiliate. When you look at it this way you don't even need a website to get up to 65% commission on ebay's revenue and up to $22 commission on each new active user, all from your referrals.

I joined around 2 months ago and have been using various advertising tools & banners to promote ebay on some of my sites. I even have one on this site. Can you guess which one it is? I especially like their Editor's Kit which I use on two of my sites. My progress so far has been good.

If you don't have a website then you can use the Flexible Destination Tool or Keyword Tool for ebay landing pages which you can promote through PPC or free advertising sites like USFreeAds.

And if you have a website, then start adding on the Editor's Kit and ebay banners. If your site already has traffic, then all the better because this will certainly add to your revenue. If your site has minimal traffic then start promoting your site using the different methods that I have already mentioned from previous posts. The Ebay brand is well-known so really is not hard to promote.

Maybe you and I may never make the 5, 6 or 7 figures in a month as an ebay affiliate but any extra profit is always good. It's funny though being that I was an ebay seller (and still am) for many years, here venturing out and coming full-circle back to ebay. As they say... go where the money is.

First if you are not a ebay member click here to join. It's free and who knows maybe you might even find some good deals. In order to use tools like the Editor's Kit, you have to be a member of ebay. Then review and join ebay's affiliate program and start on the road to making more money.

No-Cost Traffic Generating Tip # 2

One of the best ways to get traffic and move up the page rank with search engines is with back links. Back links are incoming links to a website or web page and are also called inbound links, incoming links, inlinks and inward links. The number of backlinks indicates how popular or important the web site or page is. Search engines often use the the number of backlinks to determine a site's search engine page ranking.

Obviously the more you have the better but not just any link as should be relevant to the content of your site. You can certainly pay for links with sites like Text-Link Ads but that is not going to guarantee a significant increase in traffic nor those visitors are going to purchase your items or use your service...so it could be money wasted.

Using the tool backlinkfinder I entered google.com, which came up with 362,959,137 backlinks and a PR 10. Might take awhile to achieve numbers like that and just a tiny fraction of that is more than enough.

Notice I just gave a link to backlinkfinder...see how easy it is.

Here are some no-cost ideas to get back links:

1. If you have a number of sites, link similar ones to each other. That way the ones that do have more traffic can bring some to the other ones. In either case this is a way to keep your visitors around longer. You can do this is by putting text ad links on each site to promote the others.

2. Visit similar topic sites and see if they may want to exchange links. Of course ones with high traffic & page ranks most likely would not agree without a price so I wouldn't target those.

3. Use forums but certainly follow their rules as to what links they allow.

4. Use sites like Yahoo Answers. Answer questions about topics that you are familiar with and reference your site with a link.

5. Start a blog and exchange links with other bloggers. You can start by visiting like-minded bloggers, read one of their topics of interest put your comment in with a link to your site. Also review or mention other sites and link to them. They may inturn reciprocate. List your blog in a few of the blog directories.

6. Write articles about topics relevant to your site(s) and submit to free article directories.

Any of these ideas should easily help start a good link building strategy.

Here's A Quick Way To Get Your Sites Indexed

Sometimes it can take forever to get a new site indexed by the search engines. In looking for ways to get them indexed faster, I came across this great tool that can help. Blue Hat Seo developed QU.I.T. Quick Indexing Tool which can get your site indexed from 24 hours to a few days. That's alot better than waiting a few weeks or longer. I recently submitted a few of my new sites using this tool and will update as to how long they took.

Update 03/08: So far 1 of the sites has been indexed and took close to 72 hours. Awaiting the results on the other ones.

Update 03/10: The other 2 sites took a little over 5 days to get indexed.

Overall I recommend this tool as is faster than submitting the standard way.

How to get up to $200 Google Adwords Credit

If you haven't used pay-per-click through google adwords, here is a strategic way to get a pre-built fully customizable website that you can make money from plus receive up to $200 Google Adwords credit.

Wild West Domains offers Pro Reseller and Basic Reseller plans where you receive as a bonus for joining a google adwords credit. The credit works out to be worth more than the price you pay for any one of these two plans. For example, the Pro reseller plan credit is worth $40 more and the Basic reseller plan $20 more. It means you already are ahead and can use your ad campaign to earn money promoting the store, any of your sites or affiliate programs. After receiving your credit, you can immediately get started by opening a Google Adwords account. The price of the plan you pay is for one year so gives plenty of time to promote your store and can be renewed at your option. I myself joined and used my adwords campaign to promote a couple of my sites (one of them gets a great click-through rate) plus affiliate programs. The money I earned already paid for my plan...all due to the Google credit. And there's no obligation to spend more once you have used up your credit. Click here to get more information about the Pro Reseller and Basic Reseller plans and what a pre-built store looks like.

I believe this to be a cost-effective method that can easily turn into a no-cost method. I have been successful because I used my credit carefully by always analyzing and fine-tuning my ad campaign. Except one night when I was doing a search to see what keywords are getting a lot of hits and noticed that Antonella Barba was number 1 due to the American Idol scandal. When I googled her name, noticed there was no advertisers and wondered why. So for the heck of it, I thought I'd put the keywords into my campaign overnight since it was cheap enough to try to see what the results would be. Well since I was the only advertiser in the number 1 spot, those keywords got considerable impressions and hits that by morning I had to quickly remove them before it blew my whole campaign budget out the window.

In conclusion, when looking for keywords for your pay-per-click campaign search for ones that are very specific to what you are promoting, which are in demand, low in price and not a lot of advertisers that you get lost in the shuffle with. Afterall you are looking for your target market to purchase your products, not to find ways to pay more.