Daniel Felice

First Affiliate Sale!

// July 8th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger

After my post yesterday, it really does seem that hard work is paying off! I checked my e-mail this morning and got notification that I have made my first sale from my blog!

I made US$13.50 from one of my affiliate ads over night, and along with Google Adsense being fairly decent this month already, I am up to about $15 this month alone!

I am in the process of looking for some more ads, so the 125 x 125 ad spaces are likely to change over the next few days as I try to generate better performing ads for my audience.

It is true, you really can make money off the internet! I am still in the red, however if this month keeps going the way it is, I actually might start to make a profit soon!

Nameseek Policy Change

// July 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

I have decided to remove any commission charges from sales made at Nameseek. I think it is too early in the Australian domain name market to be charging for sales, and I think the site has been suffering a little due to the 10% commission charge on any sales.

The site is now free for users to sell their domains, however I have lowered the cost of a showcase domain to AUD$5. I think that is fairly reasonable is someone wants a little more exposure, and shortly I will be advertising the showcase domains on a few websites as part of the package.

Hits and listings are fairly solid at the moment, so I hope the removal of the commission charge will encourage more users to list their domains for sale.

Any costs for the site such as hosting and advertising will hopefully be covered by the revenue generated by the affiliate ads I have on the site. They have not done much as yet, so I will have to see what I can do to increase revenue. Google Adsense seem to be the better performing ads on the site at the moment.

The current showcase domains are:

Hard Work is Paying Off

// July 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Project Blogger

The first week of July was great for danielfelice.com. This month alone, the blog has had more hits than in the past 3 months it has been active. I put this down to Nameseek and also my increased efforts to generate more content for people to read.

As far the as the revenue goes, it is slowing climbing. I can now afford 2 cups of coffee! But it has doubled in the past few weeks alone, which is a good sign. Most of the revenue is coming from Google Adwords, and few cents here and there from Kontera.

Next I have to find a way to optimise my affiliate ads to suit my users. I have had the same ads up for the past few weeks, with the best performing being “Watch TV live on your PC“. Although I have not made any sales from this ad, it has been clicked the most.

I will start to change around the ads every week or so to try to figure out what the best performing are. I think “Domaining Manifesto” will be fairly good, as alot of the hits I am getting are related to Nameseek.

I have also been reading a few ebooks in my spare time to find out how the pros make money blogging. I have downloaded the new ebook from JohnCow.com to try and improve my blogging, and also try to make it into a business rather than just a blog. I also plan of downloading a few others to read over the next few weeks.

Hopefully I can learn a few things and implement some of their strategies to improve my blogging and my approach to making this a successful resource for my audience. Thanks for all of your support!

A Must for All Domainers

// July 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Domaining

I read the ebook “Domaining Manifesto” today written by John Motson of DNxpert.com. I would recommend this domaining ebook to anyone who is interested and serious about making money from buying and selling domain names.

Domaining Manifesto tells you everything you need to know about domaining, taking you from the basics of registering and parking your domains, to the skills required to negotiate sales and purchases. Tricks of the trade and secrets only known to pro domainers are exposed, and John provides readers with the resources and tools unknown to the novice domainer.

Whether you are new to domaining, or have been doing it for a while, Domaining Manifesto provides a step by step guide to successfully develop your knowledge and skills in order to make money from trading domain names.

This is a must have resources for any domainer. Everything you need to know is a 86 page ebook, meaning you won’t have to search for hours looking for all of this information.

You can get the ebook from domainingmanifesto.com for $27, which also includes a copy of Domain Alarm software worth $19 and subscription to expired domain name list provided by DNxpert.

Click here to view more details or

For beneficial internet marketing, everything needs to be perfect, from the web site hosting to the domain names as well as the method of advertising employed.

How Do You Blog?

// July 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Project Blogger

Having done this for the past few months, I am finding myself constantly thinking of what to blog about next. Everything I do online or at work now becomes related somehow to my blog. I always have a few things in my head each day, and even start planning a few days ahead.

But most of my good ideas are the ones that I forget. I am constantly thinking “oh that’d be good to blog about”, and then I forget I even had the thought when I sit down in front of my laptop and begin typing. They are the ideas that I have when I am on the train to work, or while outside enjoying some nice “fresh air”.

Recently I have started writing down my thoughts. I find it easier to remember my thoughts if I have them down on paper in front of me. I think of so many things a day it is impossible to remember everything.

I normally think of something, or see it online or at work, and then write it down if I think it is blog worthy. Later on when it comes time to start typing I do a little bit of research and come up with the finished product.

However, I find alot of my best blogs (well I think so) seem to be the ones I come up with on the spot or when I am under pressure. Early on when I first started this blog and had nothing to blog about, I would sit in front of the laptop searching the internet for some type of inspiration.

I’ll be honest – I am one of probably 99% of bloggers who at some stage think “what is the point, no one is reading, there are already thousands of people writing about this”. I was struggling to come up with ideas. If you look at my archive you will see the huge gaps between April, May and June. For the month of July I am aiming to blog at least 5 times a week, however I am think I am going to regret saying that come the end of the month!

So how do you blog? Do you think of ideas and start typing? Do you spend hours surfing the internet looking for inspiration? Or do you sit in front of a blank WordPress page, forcing yourself to think of something?

Technorati Profile

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Project Blogger

I just signed up to Technorati and claimed my blog. Check out my Technorati Profile!

For those of you who don’t know what Technorati is – it is an internet search engine for searching blogs. Technorati claims that it indexes about 112 million blogs and according to them, danielfelice.com is ranked 2,315,271.

If you are already a member of Technorati, then don’t forget to Add to danielfelice.com to your Technorati Favorites

Spending Nothing to Make Money

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Making Money

We have all heard the phrase “you have to spend money to make money”. That’s easy to do providing you have the funds to do it. But how does the average blogger or website owner promote their product without spending a cent?

I do not have an avertising budget, nor do I have a marketing team to help me promote my product. I do not have a team around me helping me come up with new advertising campaigns in order to attract visitors to my site.

So how do I make money without spending anything on advertsing or maketing? I am currently not making any money through my websites (minus the $2.99), and I cannot really afford to spend money on advertising at the moment. The money that I have spent on building and developing my websites has come out of my own pocket and I am currently running at a loss.

What I have spent has all been aimed at advertising. I went through 3 scripts before I found one that I was happy with for Nameseek. All up I spent over $500 on the scripts, $50 on Google Adwords and say another $50 on domain names and hosting. So all up I am down $600 and after month 1 –  I have made enough to buy me a cup of coffee.

So how do I get spread the word without spending anymore on advertising? The fact is I do not want to keep on pumping money into the site without any return. It is not feasible and doesn’t make any business sense. I would like to start earning some money from my sites, and then whatever I make out of them put back into advertsing. For the first 12 months at least I would most probably put 90% of what I earn back into the site, and keep the other 10%.

It is a bit of a catch 22. You need to spent money to make money, but don’t have any money to spend in order to spend on making money!

For now I am going to concentrate on free advertising. I think people will respond to a forum post rather than a 468×60 banner ad at the top of someone’s website. When was the last time you clicked on a banner ad?

Lately I have been targeting forums related to the topics of my websites. I think forums are a great form of free publicity as the user’s are all there for discussion about various topics and a quick post doesn’t hurt. Just make sure the post make is related to the type of discussion. Don’t just create a new post saying “Visit this great website”. Try to make the post part of the discussion and keep it in context of what the users are saying.

Link exchanges are another great form of advertising. If you can find a website that is related to yours, but not in direct competition then approach them for a link in exchange for you adding their link on your site. I have done this with Australian Webmaster. Australian Webmaster is a webmasters forum, it’s users would be very similar to Nameseek’s, so it was a great way of targeting my advertising to other Aussie webmasters and domainers.

So for now I am going to sit tight and try to advertise for free wherever I can. I just have to make sure I keep it up so I do not fall behind to my competition.