Domainer's Gazette-Home

The folding table I was using as an office desk wasn’t working. It had no drawers for storage, and the bracket arms supporting the top were a constant nemesis to my knees as I skootched under the table throughout the day.

Then the chair.

I was using a leftover one from my days at eTour almost 8 years ago. I bought it for $20 when they were cleaning house. Back then, it was a pretty nice ride - adjustable back with proper lumbar support, gel like seat cushion, and “hip” blue dot com color. Fast forward 8 years. The adjustable back began to fail in ‘05, which means when you leaned back, the height setting would reset and the back would come crashing down. It was equivalent to an unannounced free fall when you’re deep in thought work-wise. I punched the chair several times when this occurred. The gel like seat had turned into more of a stone like feel. Nice and solid. My arse would require shifting roughly once every roughly 30 minutes.

Considering I spend a majority of my day in a chair and working at a desk, I decided it’d be a wise investment to upgrade on both fronts. The chair was my first project.

I wasn’t really sure where to start. Slate had a pretty helpful article about the best office chairs out there, but in the end, I need a chair that can accommodate my tall body. I’d obviously always heard about the Aeron, but when I discovered they offered different sizes for different body types, I was pretty much sold. I just didn’t want to spend the $1K getting a new one. So I found an Aeron Size C on ebay for $655 and bought it.

Now the table. I was tempted to mod out and buy this interesting table from DWR called the ‘Liege’, considering it was a floor sample, and on sale for more than half off ($1,100 rather than $2,400).

But once I stepped back, I concluded $1,100 was waaay too much for an office table. It looked neat, but I thought I could do better. I like recycling stuff and buying recycled goods, so I decided to head over to a great vintage furniture store here in ATL called City Issue. There, I found this beauty old vintage steel desk that was used for years in Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center. Multi-layers, storage drawers, rubberized surface. All for the fantastic price of $350. So I bought her, and moved her in yesterday.

So, I now happily sit in my new chair, type of my new desk and celebrate my 100th post!

Traffic.

It’s what I chase. Some folks speak to type-in traffic, but like Andy mentioned, I’m a bit suspect of type-in traffic numbers. They just don’t quite seem to add up.

I tend to concentrate on domains which receive traffic from previous bookmarks, search engines, and inlinks. (And if these domains are lucky and receive type-ins as well, then it’s icing on the cake.)

The most common way I identify these type of domains is researching domain auction drop lists for names with current or existing traffic, domain name heartbeats I like to call them (think I heard that phrase somewhere - but can’t remember where)..

To do this, I have 3 usual stopping points. Alexa.com, Compete, and Quantcast - all site traffic estimation tools.

let me give you some screen shot examples of a recent domain I researched, and eventually bought.

In this case, I was using Alexa. The first shot presents the traffic estimates from the past 6 months, which in most cases shows a flatline/zero - but don’t let that throw you off.

(had to erase the name - sorry)

I typically jump to the ‘Max’ tab, located on the far right. This’ll tell me if there were any old domain traffic heartbeats back when the domain was fully live and operational.

and as we can see, it does have some heartbeats. Now, to get a rough understanding of traffic numbers these graphs represent, and to create some type of benchmark, I’ll toss another site into the comparison tool, a site which I’m aware of daily traffic levels.

In this case, I’m gonna throw in Tony Hill’s site, cause Tony was kind enough to share that his site received an average of 300 visits a day for the month of June 2007. (I typically use my own sites as benchmarks, but thought I’d use Tony’s in case any newbies out there don’t have direct access to raw traffic numbers)

Now, with this knowledge, I can see Tony’s traffic on the graph during June ‘07 is slightly higher, maybe double, than the domain I’m researching for the same time period. So, in this case, I’ll assume my site received around 150 visitors a day during that period, and could have the potential to receive double or triple that if I correctly design the site moving forward.

I typically repeat these steps with Compete and Quantcast as well, just to be safe and generate as many data points as possible..

Again, traffic is the name of the game. Traffic = Sales. Traffic = Leads. Traffic = Clicks. The more sites I can acquire with traffic flow, the better.

taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway on Craggy Dome Pinnacle (parkway is below)

this is about 15 minutes outside of Asheville NC..

I used to ignore 404 “site no longer exists” websites I’d stumble upon online. I viewed them as roadblocks.

I’d back button and dig deeper elsewhere in my research.

Then it hit me.

In simple terms,what are 404 ’site no longer exists’ sites?

They’re abandoned websites. They’re abandoned domain names.

They’re acquisition targets.

Most importantly, they’re acquisition targets *before* they hit the open market on TDNAM or Snapnames.

And since they’ve been abandonded, chances are you can acquire them on the cheap.

If the site has traffic, inlinks, and respectable topic rpc (revenue per click from adsense), it’s worth your time to investigate.

don’t let these suckers slip through your fingers!

They’re passive income waiting to work for you…

I’m finding it harder and harder to find properly targeted In Text ads..

this one recently made me slap my forehead..

maybe people in the Hurricane got hit with flying debris, and it threw off their vision, and now they need Lasik surgery?

apparently so.

oh my Lordy is this funny..for all you SEOmainers out there

props to Dave Dugdale for making this..

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