Daniel Felice

June Nameseek Stats

// June 30th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Projects

As the month of June draws to a close, it’s time to look over what was month number 1 for nameseek.com.au. After a few months of planning, the website was finally launched on June 2 due to a few delays. Hits were decent all month, and to be honest it went alot better than I thought it would.

In its first month over 700 unique visitors took to the site, totaling over 1000 visits, 6000 page views and over 17000 hits. I would like to say that the hits increased daily, however there did not seem to be any patterns. The weekends were slow, and Wednesdays seem to be the most popular, but apart from that there was hits were up and down all month long.

The majority of hits came from Google, with some from Yahoo! also. Top search engine keywords seemed to be  “domain aftermarket, “australian”, “nameseek” and “www.nameseek.com.au“. Other hits came from this blog, Australian Webmaster, NamePros and DNxpert.

As suspected, Australia’s made up the majority of the viewers, with the USA and Asia making up most of the others. A few hits here and there from Canada and the UK.

I am not going to bore you anymore with numbers. To sum it up, it was a better month that I thought it would be, hits were very good considering the site was not known until June 2. The daily average is good, and it seems as though there is some discussions about the site on a few domain/internet forums both based in Australia and around the world.

As far as revenue goes – well the site did not make any money this month from domain name sales. It still has not had its first sale, however from what I have seen over the past month since the auDA relaxed the domain name policy, the uptake to selling/buying .au domains has been fairly slow. I think it will take a good few months for the market to build.

I am happy with the first month and I look forward to July. If all goes to plan, the site will continue to build and generate interest, however I am making no predictions!

Tweet Tweet

// June 29th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger

I have been resisting the tempation to create my own profile on Twitter over the past few months, however today I finally caved in. As a web designer, for some reason I am against all of these quick and easy fill out a form type websites – such as Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and the list seems to continue to grow.

If I look back a few years ago, I was resisting to sign up to all of those social networking websites at one point or another, but eventually was overcome by peer pressure and just had to sign up against my will. I actually started coding my own blog type website before I just decided to go the easy route and use Wordpress. Now I don’t even code my own theme – how times have changed.

I figured why would I want to jump on the social bandwagon when I can just create my own website that can host my own photos (Flickr), my own videos (YouTube), my own blogs (Wordpress), and my friend’s comments (Facebook) - and best of all it was designed by me and only me. Though if my own idea was so great and a few years earlier, I’d be typing an entirely different post right now. However I am sure I had an idea similar to YouTube back in 1998!

The reason why I decided to create a Twitter profile was purely to network in order to increase the traffic to my blog – just so you all know! It actually is a very good tool, and I love the fact that if I am too busy blog, I can just send an update via SMS. For example, I will be overseas for a week at the end of July, so you all will have to rely on my short and sweet updates for a few days.

Twitter – Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.

As part of the registration process, Twitter asks you to enter your e-mail address and it will go through your address book to search for your friends who have a Twitter profile. It came back with one person – an old high school teacher of mine who taught my computer class and actually influenced my online and IT ‘career’. Now either I do not have enough friends or they just aren’t IT savvy enough to care or even know about Twitter – I think the latter and I made it my mission to at least help sign a few of them up.

So if you have not already created your Twitter profile, you should! It is a very useful tool to build online relationships with your friends, audience and other bloggers - and don’t forget to follow me!

Nameseek Press Release

// June 29th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Projects

I wrote a press release over the weekend for Nameseek in order to try to generate some more interest and awareness. Press releases are a good way to spread the word about your website or product, and also depending on the way you distribute it, it could be picked up by some of the worlds largest media outlets.

There are a number of websites that allow you to create and distribute your news, though I signed up to a free press release website called PRlog. PRlog offer the same service as most websites, including…

• Free press release submission with preview
• Free press release distribution (Google News* + Others)
• Submission to publication within 24 hours (Typical)
• Search engine optimized dedicated webpage
• Automatic PDF version generation
• Links inside the body and in the contacts section
• Logo, product image or any other picture
• Tag based formatting
• Schedule up to 1 month in advance.
• Password protection lets you share before release.
• Free account to manage your press releases from one place
• Edit or delete your press releases
• Multiple categories & tags (keywords)
• Spam protection on your email address
• Visitor statistics
• Unlimited unique press releases
• Customizable timezone 

It is as easy as signing up, filling out your company/website details, writing your release and submitting it. A few hours later after the release is reviewed you will get a confirmation mail and the release will be distributed. 

The release is as follows:

Domain name trading has bestowed sizable profits to hundreds of business savvy individuals across the world in recent years. NameSeek now gives Australian’s the opportunity to trade their own domain names after recent policy changes.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jun 29, 2008 - To coincide with changes in the Australian domain name transfers policy, we are proud to introduce NameSeek, the Australian Domain Name Aftermarket, opening Australian’s up to a world of trading possibilities by allowing you to buy and sell that potential money making domain name you have been sitting on.

NameSeek.com.au allows users to buy and sell domain names and websites, offering users free domain name listings, enabling them to manage their entire domain portfolio online.

Users are able to categorize their domains for sale and also supply “Minimum offer” and “Asking price” values for each domain listed. Once a sale is agreed, funds can be easily transferred using PayPal and transactions can be securely finalised via Escrow.

Coming from a background in the web design and development industry, NameSeek founder Daniel Felice has been tracking domain name sales around the globe for a number of years. Seeing the enormous potential for high sales in the Australian domain name market he was more then eager to open a secure auctioneering environment to benefit both customer and consumer.

NameSeek has a team of highly skilled industry specialists, including a marketing manager to boost site awareness and to build relationships with the Australian domain name industry.

We are looking forward to bright future, aiming to be Australia’s number 1 domain name aftermarket and to provide a safe and friendly venue for our Australian audience.

For more information on Australia’s domain name aftermarket visit http://www.nameseek.com.au or contact Daniel Felice.

Commission Monster

// June 27th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Making Money

Last week I signed up to Australia’s largest affiliate marketing network – Commission Monster. I decided to go with an Aussie network this time as the ads I could choose are more selected and specific to my audience – Australian’s.

As my primary website is an Australian Domain Name Aftermarket, I thought if I want to make any money via advertising I should probably find some ads that my users would actually click on. Don’t get me wrong, the MarketLeverage ads are very good however are mostly specific to the USA and Canada, with only about 30 ads or so for the rest of the world including Australia.

The selecting of ads to choose from is fantastic. From ANZ to AMEX to Vodafone, and many many more. Alot of the bigger companies require you to submit your website for approval before you can show their ad on your site, though the majority are there for your choosing.

Signing up to the network was painless. Just a quick form to fill out and then I received an e-mail the next day confirming my application. Unlike MarketLeverage, CM don’t give you an account manager – however help is there if it is needed.

The user administration is fairly easy to use, with the ability to select the ads by categories, campaign, banner size and region. Statistics can be sorted by today, yesterday, week, month, quarter, year or you can just select your own period. You can also sort your ads per campaign.

I have 3 or 4 ads on Nameseek. Hits are good, however I am still yet to make my first sale. I will stick with the ads I have on the site for the moment to see how they perform over the next week or two. I think it takes a few weeks to figure out what your audience is interested in. Once I find that out, I will be able to select my campaigns a bit more specific to what my users are going to click on.

So why don’t you sign up for a free affiliate account and monetise your traffic with Commission Monster`s affiliate network

With online marketing, the website hosting companies have benefitted the most, especially through services like pay per click as well as email marketing.

Welcome to the New Internet

// June 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // The Internet

Gone are the days of .com, .net and .org being prime internet real estate. As of today the face of the internet has changed forever. The ICANN board have “approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet’s addressing system” at a meeting in Paris today.

In a nutshell “this proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top level domain, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.”

So if I wish, I could submit an application for .danielfelice, which I could use to create blog.danielfelice.com or iam.danielfelice, or whatever I like really. It would most probably be approved providing that it I can prove I have a viable need for it and that it is not a trademark – oh and if I can afford it. It is expected that large organisations and Governments are going to claim their stake on names such as .city, .hotel, .sex, .food. and potentially enter a bidding war for them. Names up to 64 characters will be considered. If I wish I could register .iamdanielfeliceandthisismyblogandihopeyoulikeitthanksforvisiting – a bit too long isn’t it?

So how much will it cost me to register my own ”dot” I can hear you ask? Well it is thought that the names will cost somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000. ICANN will start accepting proposals in the first quarter of 2009.

I have not made up my mind as to whether I agree or not. I quite like it the way it is. The endless possibilities will definitely affect the current domain name market. However it might open an entirely new domain name market – imagine the price of newyork.city? Though with so many possibilities and combinations, surely “premium” domain names will be worth significantly less no matter what they end in.

Or will they?

How I Made $2.99 in 3 Months

// June 24th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Project Blogger

No its not a typo. Thats right. Two dollars and 99 cents. This is how much my blog has made me since it has been running. It’s not a great amount of money, it will barely buy me a cup of coffee, but it is $2.99 more than what I started with.

Actually no that’s a lie. The domain name cost me about $10, then another $50 for 12 months hosting. So all up I am down about $57. At this rate I will need 60 months to break even before I start making a profit, but then I’ll have to renew the domain name and hosting a few more times so I’ll still be in the red.

We always hear about the triumphs of making money. Everyone only ever boasts about how much they made this month, and then the next month they get disappointed when they didn’t beat their record. Do we ever hear about the struggles and how tough it is to make money online? I don’t think I have ever strumbled across anyone who has described the struggles of maintaining a blog and attempting to make revenue.

As I said in an April post, I had signed up to Bidvertiser, DealDotCom and Kontera as my primary money makers. Here are a few stats over the past few months for each of the above:

• Kontera: I made about $0.07 from Kontera. I had 371 page impressions which isn’t too bad, but only 3 clicks. Out of the 371 impressions, only 0.81% clicked a link, which brings the eCPM up to about $0.18!

• Bidvertiser: A little bit better. I made $1.64 with only 5 clicks! Bidvertiser brought me in the most money out of everything.



• Google Adsense: A few weeks after going live I signed up to Google Adsense. The Google ads got over 800 page impressions and 8 clicks. All up I made $1.28.

• DealDotCom: No clicks and no revenue from DealDotCom. They have some great offers everyday, however I have taken it off the site for now to give some other programes a chance.

So that is how the past few months have looked. Not great, but hey, its a start! Next time I do this kind of post hopefully I’ll be telling you that hits are up by 150,000 and I have made my first online million. Ha!

Helping Us Help Them

// June 23rd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Making Money

If you are like me and new to blogging and money making online, then you are probably just as confused as I am in regards to affiliate marketing and all of the different types, then there is text link, content links and referrers. Sure, all these dot com moguls like John Chow and Zac Johnson go on and on about it, though I still cannot find a post of theirs that actually explains the differences of CPM, CPA and CPC. Then they bring out these big words like PPC and PPS which just add more confusion.

I went in head first and just signed up to their recommended money makers – just because they said I should. I didn’t really know what the difference was nor did I know what I was getting myself into. Sure, they can tell all of us “wanna-be’s” whatever they want because they are making $30,000 plus a month and we’d be stupid not to take their advice. But then on second thought, the more people like us becoming successful is just taking money our of their own pockets. So do they really want to “help” us, or do they really want to help us help them?

What am I trying to say is this. If someone can explain to you how to make $30,000 a month by simply having a blog and putting up a few ads, of course you are going to listen to them and are going to want to visit their blog to get the latest tricks of the trade. The more hits they get, the more revenue they are going to make. The more hits they get, the more people they are going to refer to their preferred affiliate.

I am not saying what they are telling is all lies and that we shouldn’t read what they have to say, however by reading what they write, we are just helping them earn their $30,000 per month. We all can do our own research, excluding money making blogs, to find out the money makers out there, however these John Chow’s etc have the first hand experience and it is obviously working for them – though we are still helping them make money.

I read what they have to say, but at the end of day, that is what worked for them. It has already been done by them and they are just explaining to us how they did it. If we want to make money online, I think we are going to have to figure out what works best for us and come up with our own ideas. The internet is a very big place, however the dot com mogul’s seem to be a handful of people.

If we are going to make money we have to come up with our own ideas.

New Look

// June 22nd, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger

As you may have noticed, I have changed the theme of the blog. I think the other theme was a bit out-dated and didn’t really have what I was looking for in a theme.

I have downloaded this theme from Dezzain Studio after searching all over the net for a good looking theme. I was about to design my own when I stumbled onto the Dezzain Studio website. All of their themes are top quality and very professional looking.

I have added some six 125×125 advertisements from various affiliates that I have signed up to over the past few days. Market Leverage are responsible for four positions, Nameseek one, and Bidvertiser the final position. If anyone else does want to advertise I will open up 2 more positions on the right sidebar.

I have removed the Bidvertiser ads from the site and replaced them with Google Adsense. I wasn’t making anything from the Bidvertiser ads so I thought it might be a good time to see how the Google ads go.

I have also removed DealDotCom from the site also and I have not received anything from them and would rather use the space to advertise a 125×125 ad.

Kontera is the only original ad that remains on the site. I have had a few hits and made a little bit on the Kontera Content Links so at the moment there is no need to remove it.

So after a few months it was time to change a few things around to see if it generates some other interest. I still have not been blogging as much as I would have liked, though with Nameseek up and running I should now be able to concentrate on danielfelice.com.

How Long is Too Long?

// June 21st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // General

Attempting to build an online empire is no easy task. It requires a lot of time and dedication, not mention many late nights and early mornings working on new ideas and trying to figure out the best ways of driving hits and revenue to your online space.

Speaking from experience, working a 9 – 5 job and trying to maintain a few websites that, at the moment, don’t make me any money, means that I am in front of a computer screen for around 12 hours a day. Just to give you an idea of how much time out of my day that is, here is my daily itinerary.

7am – Wake up
8am – Get on the train to work
9am – Start Work
1pm – Lunch
5:30pm – Finish work
6:30pm – Arrive home
7pm – Dinner
8pm – Pickup the laptop and get working on my own projects
12am – Bed

I work in IT, so I am spending 8.5 hours a day at work on a computer doing work. When I get home after work and dinner, I get back on the laptop for another 4 hours or so to do some work on my own websites and online projects.

So I guess the question I am asking is how long is too long? It is healthy to spend so much time in front of a laptop working?

At the moment I am spending 20 hours a week, of my own time, working online trying to make some money. As my sites are only a month or two old, they need alot of work and I am spending my time trying to build a community around the site and let people know it actually exists. Once it starts to become known and I am happy with the amount of hits it is getting, it will pretty much run itself as maintenance will be fairly minimal.

Will I stop there? Once I am happy with my current project, will I start all over again? Probably.

However, the point of me attempting to make money online is to one day, hopefully soon, be able to leave my 9 – 5 job and concentrate 100% on my online projects.

It is a massive sacrifice in order to get your online project up and running. My girlfriend feels neglected and I am constantly tired. Though my girlfriend and I both agree that it will be worth it if one day I can stop working and concentrate on my online portfolio as if it was my full time job.

Market Leverage

// June 17th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Projects

So it has been three weeks since Nameseek was launched and it is starting to pick up some pace finally! Currently the site has 8 registered users, and 122 domain names! Hits are increasing daily and I am getting some a few e-mails a day with various questions.

I have recently signed up with Market Leverage  who provide us with a choice of hundreds of different advertisements. What i like about Market Leverage is the fact that we can choose our own ads we wish to appear of the site, and each ad has its own payout figure.

Sign up was very easy. All I had to do was fill out a form and wait for a phone call. I got a call from a lovely lady called Jennifer who asked m a few questions and told me over the phone that my application was successful and to expect an e-mail from my account manager. I got an e-mail 30 mins later from Michael, my account manager who told me to let him know if I had any issues.

Next step was to choose my ads and add the code to the site. I decided to go for a few higher profile ads like eBay and Google to give the site a more professional feel and to make it look like I have some big backers behind my little venture. An hour later the ads were up. So now it is just waiting for a few clicks before I start seeing some $$$.

So we now sit tight and see what our ads bring us. I have the ability to pick and choose what I want to rotate on the site and there are new offers available every day.

I would definately recommend them if you are trying to make some money out of your blog or website. The staff seem very helpful and I love the fact that I have full control over what shows on my site.

Join Market Leverage today!