Daniel Felice

Current NameSeek Showcase Domains

// August 16th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

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NameSeek Re-Design

// August 12th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

If you have visited NameSeek in the last 12 hours you will have noticed a few changes to the site! I have finally got rid of that orange, designed a new logo and changed a few things around.

The original site was put up over a weekend as I was having issues with the script and did not have much time to design the site the way I wanted it. I really hated looking at it and it needed to be changed so I spent last night designing a few new graphics and adding a feature or two.

What you see now is only phase 1 of the re-design. Phase 2 will be coming in the next week or so if all goes well. I am planning on re-designing the main page as well as adding a few more features to the site that I won’t go into detail too just yet!

The site is performing well this month with over 1500 domains added already in the first 10 days of August and unique traffic is on track to being the best month to date.

There will also be some sort of announcement over the next few days in relation to the site – so stay tuned for that!

Big Month for NameSeek

// August 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

While NameSeek is doing fairly well in terms of hits and the amount of domains on the site, there is always room for improvement. I am not one to sit down and wait for things to happen, so in order to ensure the site goes from strength to strength I am going to make a few changes to the site over the coming weeks.

While I won’t go into too many details just yet, expect a few visual changes as well as a few announcements that hopefully will drive more users to the site as well as increase the number of domains listed for sale.

Competition is fairly strong at the moment and I believe NameSeek is one of the top three Australian domain name aftermarkets. I think we are probably sitting at third place within that top 3, and while that is great, I am trying to move the site to the top of that podium.

Our competition has the advantage of owning at least 75% (if not more) of the domain names listed on their websites, and I am not about to go and purchase 1000+ domains in order to have the most names listed. I believe the quality of the names is more important than the number of domain names listed on NameSeek.

For example, one particular website quotes that they have over 3000 .AU domain names on their website, however they own over 2000 of those names. NameSeek has about 1100 domain names listed at the moment, of which about 1080 are owned by users who have posted their name on the site.

So while it is nice to have 3000+ domain names, NameSeek has more or less the same amount of names - if you take out those owned by the people who own the various marketplace websites. However not all domainers will know this when they list their domain name and it looks more impressive from an end user point of view if a particular website has more domain names than another.

At the moment are lacking sales. That is the biggest issue we are facing and what I am trying to improve on over August. Hopefully with the changes I am going to make I will be able to report a few sales at the end of the month.

Stay tuned!

July NameSeek Stats

// August 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

July was an interesting month for NameSeek. Hits have continued to build on June and there were a lot of very nice high quality domain names added to the listings.

There have been a few sites that have been launched in competition with NameSeek, however this has not seemed to had any effect on hits for the month. If anything hits have improved.

Traffic

There were less unique visitors to the site in July, however the number of visits improved as did the number of page views.

Traffic still is mostly coming from Australia, with about 90% of all hits – which is a good thing as the site is directed at an Australian audience. The rest of the traffic is made up by users visiting from the USA, UK and Asia.

Over 65% of all hits were from direct type-ins or bookmarks, with only 3% coming from search engines and the rest from referrers. Top referrers were Australian broadband based forum Whirlpool and Australian Webmaster. The remainder of referrers were mostly Domain Name based websites such as Domain Informer, Domain News, DNForum.com and DNTrade.com.au.

Site Stats

Domain name listings on the site increase by over 100% in July, which most of them being good quality names that should fetch some good prices.

The number of users registered on the site doubled, with all of them listing domain names for sale.

There are currently a handful of bids, however we are still yet to report our first sale. I am a little disappointed that NameSeek is still yet to complete any sales. I removed any commission charges half way through the month, however while the number of listings increase, there were no interested buyers. Hopefully this will change in the coming month.

Revenue

Now that listings and sales are 100% free of any charges, except adding a domain to the “Showcase”, I have to concentrate a lot more on my advertising programs and affiliate marketing.

I am currently running a few ads on the site, however these are yet to convert into any sales. I clearly have to do a complete overhaul of the advertising programs ont he site and will be doing so in the coming weeks. This will be the only stream of income from the site so it has to be effective.

The ads are getting clicks, however no one is buying anything from the websites they are clicking. The ads on the site at the moment, apart from Google, are sales based, though I am going to look at CPC advertising.

So all up it wasn’t a bad month for NameSeek. While the site is still not making any money, nor has it had any sales, hits remain strong and it is continuing to grow.

I think a lot has to do with the .AU domain name market still being in its early stages. Once the market picks up, so will NameSeek. Until then I think I am going to have to ride it out and not be too discouraged.

In August I will concentrate on promoting the site in the search engines as only 3% of all hits came from search engines, and also look at the advertising programs on the site. I am also planning a refresh of the design of the site which may help improve things a little.

Thanks for all your support!

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:

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!

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.

Strong Start

// June 9th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects

A week has past since I Nameseek went live and so far it has been a decent start. Hits have been fairly strong considering it is a new site. I think word is slowly starting to spread around the webmaster community, however we only have a few listsings at the moment, with the latest one going up today.

Over the past week we have had nearly 1000 hits which is not to bad in its first week. Every day the hits are more and more and users seem to be browsing most of the site. The audience isn’t specific to Australian users, with about 30% coming from the North America.

I think it will take a while to get word out that you can now actually sell .AU domain names so it might take a while. There is also a requirement from the AUDA that names must be at least 6 months old before you can sell them, so I am guessing alot of people will register a few names in the coming weeks and then sit on them for a while until they can sell.

There still does not seem to be another domain marketplace for the .AU out there as yet, however I have noticed a few on eBay over the past few days. I am tempted to sell an few “deals” on eBay to generate some more awareness, so keep an eye out for that.

I have played with the layout over the weekend and made a few small changes. I have also teamed up with www.australianwebmaster.com who will show our 468 x 60 banner in return for us showing theirs. I think it is an easy and effective way of getting some free advertising as both our audience will be very similar.

I setup a Google Adword account during the week also. This has brought in about 30 hits or so, however the ad has been shown on about 100,000 searche. The click through rate isn’t great, but it is a start. I started with a small budget of AUD$30 and will monitor how it goes over the next month and might increase it if I am getting results.

So all in all it has been fairly OK in its first week. Now it is just making that first sale!

Nameseek.com.au is reality!

// June 3rd, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Projects

After a few months of developing, designing and testing, Nameseek.com.au is finally up and running. It took a while to get the site how I wanted it. I ended up buying 5 different auction scripts, and didn’t like any of them. One of them was not too bad, and I would have used it, however the guy who sold it to me turned out to be re-hashing someone else’s script and didn’t know how to support it!

I found a great script on Friday of last week so decided to just spend the money and buy it. The script is from www.smartscript.net and works very well, and the support so far has been fantastic. It is was easy enough to get running and has all the functions I need for this site to do what I want it to.

The site had to be up by June 1st, so it was a race against time to get it running how I wanted it. I had a few late nights as I had planned a holiday for the weekend which got in the way of designing and testing the script. I ended up launching the site on June 2, only a day late.

So now the tough part begins – driving hits to the site! I have enough trouble getting hits to this site, now I have to do it all over again. Though as this is a niche site, I think it will be easier.

Google AdWords:

Adwords is Google’s advertising programme. You basically sign up, add your short site blurb, add a few keywords, give them some money and then your site appears in those Google boxes on the right hand site of the search. I signed up with the lowest budget for now. I will monitor the page impressions for a month or so, and if I am getting good results then I will increase my budget.

At the moment Google AdWords is my only form of advertising. I am going to target some domain name registrars and some webmaster based forums and discussion boards over the next few weeks.

Wish me luck!

Nameseek.com.au

// May 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // The Internet

As mentioned in the last post, I have been working on my new domain name auction website over the past few weeks – Nameseek. I am currently testing the script, and will aim to launch on June 1.

You can visit the site at the moment as I have not locked it down while testing so at the moment it is free to add a item.  Actually if you do have a domain you are looking to buy/sell check it out and it might even help me with the testing!

At the moment I have not set up any advertising, text link ads or affilate programmes. I will worry about getting the site functional and working and spend the first month or two driving some traffic to the site. I don’t have a plan of attack yet, but I think I might aim at some web and domain message boards and forums to try and spread the word, and even target domain registrars.

The target audience to begin with will be users who are looking to buy/sell the .au domain name. I will use this as the basis of promoting the site, even though the site will allow users to sell websites and sripts.

As the site hopefully gains some interest and hits, I will find a decent domain name reseller and sell domains on the site, as well as hosting and use my own skills to offer web design services for users who are looking for a complete package – though that is a few months down the line! For now lets just concentrate on one thing at a time!

So don’t be affraid to check it out – http://www.nameseek.com.au!