Perth.com goes for $200,000
November 26, 2007
The domain Perth.com was recently sold for $200,000. Moniker had a sale of city and country domains.
By owning a city or country dot com, you are eligible to join Associated Cities. An organization that actively promotes geo-targetted domain names.
It will be interesting to see who the new owners are and what they do with the site. Perth, Australia would be the obvious choice, but there is also Perth, Ontario and Perth, Scotland. Perth, Australia seems to dominate the Google search results.
Perth is one of Australia’s fastest growing cities, helped by the current mining boom. The sale could well have been a bargain as I am fairly confident that if the site was developed out to a city portal, it will do well in advertising sales.
Change of government in Australia
November 25, 2007
There will be a change of government in Australia after Labor’s big election win over the weekend. It is probably one of the few times in Australia’s history where a government has lost an election while the economy is actually performing well. Perhaps it is performing too well pushing up inflation, interest rates and housing prices. Working people were unhappy with changes in the labor laws benefiting employers.
It is hard to know what impact a change in the government will have in the economy or people’s lives directly, but we will probably see more protection for the environment, emphasis on climate change, more government spending resulting in possibly higher unemployment and higher taxes.
Kevin Rudd will become the new Prime Minister and he is one of the few or only western leader who can speak Chinese. I doubt it matters in the whole scheme of things. At that level you still need translators and interpreters, but at least he will probably place more emphasis on Asia related issues than his predecessor, John Howard. Possibly a shift from emphasis on the US and back to Asia. It is more of a political issue because trade is all about money and supply and demand. China needs all of the resources Australia can supply for all of the new construction going on. The previous government benefited from this regardless of the policies they had in place.
I don’t get the impression that Rudd is much of a technologist after hearing him talk about his internet policies. It is one area which I believe the government shouldn’t be involved in with regards to policing the internet. What they should be doing is trying to build faster, more accessible and cheaper networks to bring Australia up to speed with other countries.
Status update
November 21, 2007
I haven’t written here for a while. I have been putting most of my effort into my Beijing site lately. If you look at the site, it might not seem that way, but I still spend to seem a lot of time reading stuff on the web, going through magazines and just wondering around Beijing.
I sometimes find that when I have so much to do, I get overwhelmed and end up doing very little. I have tried to make various plans but they tend to only last a day or two.
I have had nearly 11,000 views in my YouTube channel I created and getting a few subscribers. The sheer traffic YouTube has makes it a useful marketing tool, but you still need to people to visit your site.
I have a lot of admiration for people like Problogger who seem to be able to pump out great articles day after day. It really makes me wonder how he does it.
Fake Steve Jobs blog video
November 19, 2007
I started watching this video after seeing it on Problogger. It is funny to watch, but aside from the humor it is a good example of how traditional and new media are converging.
A successful blog has to appeal to other bloggers
November 12, 2007
I can’t remember ever seeing it before, but it kind of just of occurred to me that a successful blog’s audience is usually made up of mostly other bloggers.
Who else understands RSS, feeds, technorati, linkbacks, comments and PageRank other than people who actually have a blog?
Of course you will get some people who bookmark your blog and some people will find you through search engines, but to get a lot of RSS readers and comments you need to be able to write about stuff that for most of the time interests other bloggers.
I think you have to be honest that people who don’t blog, just don’t get what it is all about. I think in many ways this is why Problogger, Shoemany and John Chow are so popular.
Perhaps some celebrity and political blogs could prove this theory wrong, but I think my theory holds the majority of the time.
Anyone want to prove me wrong?
Keep Your Hands Out of Your Retirement!
November 11, 2007
You work hard all of your life building up your retirement fund and the last thing you want to do is jeopardize your financial future. Many people will have financial difficulties in life and their first instinct will be to get into their retirement plan, this is never a good idea for many reasons.
Any time you withdrawal money out of your 401(k) plan or any other retirement plan you might have, you will encounter severe penalties from the government. These penalties can be very costly and you also will be shrinking the amount of money you will receive later in life. You also have to factor in how much money you will make off the investment of leaving the money alone. Emergency financial situations can often sway an individual to make bad decisions but there are other solutions available besides jeopardizing your retirement plan.
A payday loan or cash advance can be the perfect solution to an individual in need. You can use these loans very responsible if properly planned. A payday loan or a cash advance can be justified when compared against dipping into your 401(k) or any retirement plan. You can do the math and find out that the steep penalties that the government places on early withdrawals from retirement plans will be nowhere near the much smaller interest rates of a cash advance or payday loan. These small loans, while subject to much criticism, are designed to assist individuals in a short-term financial crisis. With such loans you can get the money you need fast and take care of your financial situation.
When you find yourself in financial need, think about the long term affects that you will have by digging into your retirement plan. Judge the situation accordingly and you will realize that the responsible way to borrow money in these types of situations is to get a cash advance or payday loan.
More on hub pages
November 8, 2007
I have written about hub pages before. I took a bit of a break from the site and then have come back again to it recently.
I had a feeling that it was hard to get traffic to the sites you create, then I saw this post. The fun thing I like about the site, that it really is a community site with people sending each other comments and helping each other out. The regular people seem to concentrate on producing quality articles, rather than just promoting their sites.
It is an excellent way for people who have no clue about how to make money on the internet to get started. It is great for testing new ideas. Better to write an article there and see how it goes before you go off registering domains and so forth.
The other thing which makes it fun is the scoring system. You may not be making much money, but the more you contribute the higher your score goes. The more traffic you can get to your hub, the higher score you get for the hub. It feels like a bit of a game.
I can only see the site becoming more popular and it could be worth investigating how you can profit from the site more.
Recent money making blog sales
November 5, 2007
I generally don’t like writing about what another blogger has already written, but Problogger wrote a post on making making blogs that have sold recently. I was thinking of writing a similar post, but I guess now I need not bother.
Bloggingfingers.com - $6000
Ryanshamus.com - $2500 (who said you can’t sell a blog with your name as the domain!)
Onemansgoal.com - Bidding currently at $8000.
I would like to add one more to the list that Darren missed and that is cwire.org, which more than likely sold for more than $2300 which is what is listed on sitepoint at. Does anyone know what it sold for? The blog sale posts were deleted.
I remember when Onemansgoal.com started and it got a bit of attention amongst other bloggers. People visited his blog to see how this guy was going to reach his goal. I also remember him writing a lot of comments on the more popular blogs. It could be an easy model to copy, but I think it is a bit of cop out setting a lofty goal, gaining interest in your site and then selling it before the goal is even completed. But then again by selling the blog for $8000+ he is going to get even closer to his goal.
I don’t have plans to sell this site, but it is good to know that if ever needed money I could get something for it. I started the site in late 2004 (on blogger) but I did pick up the domain fairly early and just redirected it to blogger (back when I thought godaddy was a good company!)
I have been penalized for selling links, resulting in a drop of PR, but I have some pretty good incoming links. One way I have found lately to getting more links to your site, is getting your site into various lists. People then tend to reproduce those lists on their own site. The reproduced lists tend to be static and don’t get updated by the owner. Creating your own original list is also a good way to get new links to your site.
It is going to be interesting to watch if the new owners will be able to maintain the interest levels in these blogs.
Update: The deal for onemansgoal.com fell through and it has been re-listed. It will be interesting to see if he can get $8500 for it.
Another 4000 sale as reported by 45n5. The blog started just in July this year.
Just spent a chunk of money
November 1, 2007
I just spent a chunk of money on a domain. The seller approached me and it seemed like a good deal. The problem is I am already busy with my Beijing site and maintaining all of my other sites. I just know that if I passed up on the opportunity, I would regret it later.
The seller made a good profit and I think I got a good deal on something which is likely to appreciate, especially if and when I develop it out. The site was actually established some time ago as you can see it in archive.org. The domain still has PR3.
Whoever said there aren’t any good domains left to buy, isn’t looking. You can definitely still buy quality domains in the after-market and domains that are dropped.
