27 January - The Scores are in and some Stats to report on.

So another week in my life has slipped through my fingers, and another entry is added to the BuytheMap blog. Over the last couple of weeks it seems the domain name empire has been stalling as more names have been added to the network but the effect has not been an increase in revenue. However my first few keyword specific names still seem to be bringing the visitors, for instance if you type in short online IQ test in google, my site is there on the front page. So I am keeping my fingers crossed, and working hard to get mu other sites up there on the front pages. If sites pay for themselves they can stay, if not I'll let them go when they are due to be renewed. So lets quickly check on where we are so far.
Total number of domains registered 26. Total spent on registrations £166 (thats a total of £329 dollars) so an average of £12 for each domain. I have also racked up one domain sale as well for $25. Since the project began I have made on average about $10 a month. So that means I'm on course for £120 dollars a year, so I'm making a loss!!! Not good news, however I am still in my startup phase, and there are a lot of positives that I can take from this.
So what about last weeks revenue, well a total of 28 clicks, this seems quite low and in total revenue was $2.59. So an increase on last week and going in the right direction again, but still some of my keyword sites are not doing well enough. I am pretty sure they will start to come online, and I have written some good content, so I need to work on the SEO. Creating backlinks, posting articles, and getting the word out!! Thats its - until the next time ;)

20 January 2007 - Wow this is just too easy, I can't stop making money!

So the domaineering continues, and the acquistions continue. Like a cash rich company I am stalking the market, Ebay, SnapNames, Forums, Registars, always looking for new victims to add to my growing monopoly of the domain name market. Swallowing more and more, costs of purchases becomes insignificant as the cash flow continues to grow, the more money I throw at this the more keeps flooding back and I cannot spend it quick enough. Trying to find different avenues for all these income streams the BuytheMap network moves in to website acquisitions, good, bad, big, small they are all wanted and recruitment in the BuytheMap offices is becoming a priority, as well as new larger offices and new hardware. I'm also now working 18hour days, connected to the net, checking my bank balances and planning a trip to the bahamas flying business class, where I will meet my supermodel girlfriend, and no doubt eat and drink the most expensive foods avaliable. Life is good!!!!!!

Of course all the above is a complete lie, and unfortunately I am not a rich twat yet! In fact times seem to be gettin tough, yes the acquisitions have continued (I probably need to curtail this now as the credit card bill is going up) this week I bought BiteSpray.com and AutomaticCar.net and they are yet to be developed. I did spend some time upating and upgrading some of my sites though at the weekend. As I hope new fresh content, will get my sites indexed higher in google and as a result I will get more traffic to my sites, and more clicks on my adds. However I also moved a few sites over to Sedo, as I was concerned I could be breaking trademark rules, so I wanted to sort that out. So this week traffic and revenue seems dissapointing. As much as I am buying new sites and adding them to the web of BuytheMap I am not seeing great increases in Adsense revenue. Blimey infact less than I expected at $1.25 for the last week.

Im hoping that some of this may be due to people being busy back from Christmas, and still alot of my sites are not indexed by google, it seems 3 sites from my early buys, and that have been indexed for over a month now, seem to be my cash cows, so I am perhaps realising that it takes a bit longer than expected to start earning revenue from sites. So thats it, until the next time!!! Hopefully things will change........and the dreaming will stop.

13 January 2007- Shouldn't I be a millionair by now?

So the plan was to register great domain names, recieve lots of traffic, sell a few for big money, and then retire on the proceeds. Well the reality is, and I am sure anyone who has been through this, is that its a lot harder than it looks! Slowly the buythemap network grows, and I register more and more names, however revenue at present is not increasing fast enough, or making some of my domain name purchases viable. I need to improve this otherwise each new domain registration is effectively just another wast of money.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one way to do this, the majority of my traffic should be coming from searches people are making on the likes of google and yahoo, so I am trying to get my sites registered on these as soon as possible. However to improve my search rankings, ie appearing on the front page I have to increase something called 'PageRank'. This is how google indexes your site, basically the higher the page rank the higher you feature in search engines as the search engines want to list highest the sites that are deemed to be the experts. To improve PageRank you need to build content on your site, work on keywords, and importantly build strong links to your site. At the moment I am having some successes on this - type in Epthelial in google (overture tells me this is searched over 1000 times a month on Yahoo alone) my site Epithelial.net appears 7th - Success! I'm chuffed with that but I need to work on getting my other sites up those rankings.

Also I very quickly wanted to again re-iterate in this weeks blog how big the domain name markets are. This week Dollars.com reported that the domain name Spicy.com sold for $81,000 - HotVoip.com a name I think sounds easy to have made up sold for close to $6,000. I have inserted a small banner from Sedo below to show the current live Sedo auctions - you should have a look at this some time.

So anyway thats it another week over - oh nearly forgot to mention I bought another name, I know.....so this week whilst at work (encroaching on work time now) I ready on BBC news the Macquarie Dictionary words of 2007 see here is quite interesting. One of these was Climate Sceptic which I had a quick check of an it was avaliable so.....I now own ClimateSceptic.com - I plan to setup a little site talking about global warming on this, should be interesting. I've done some small tweaks to my site this week, but thats about it news over. Revenue I here you ask......very dissapointing dropping down to $2.50 and only 40 clicks. Oh well onwards and upwards...........

7 January 2007 - Bah Humbug Back to Work Blues, More Purchases made!

This week, well last week really I was back at work - man that was hard after such a great break. However I couldn't help but dip in and out of my Adsense account every few hours to see how things were shaping up. With many of my newly bought domain names up and running online now and the adverts twinkling on the pages I can't wait to watch the money roll in!

Ok a little nieve I know and the new year hasn't quite seen the rush of money from my domain name adverts as I would have liked, however I made myself feel a little better with some new buys! Now previously I have been using Overture to search for keyword specific domain names and have been finding that anything that made any sense had been taken. searching hundreds of domain names only to see taken, and then the odd one pop up that a) didn't make any sense and b) didn't really have that many searches meant I though a new tack should be taken. So I have turned to using Adwords, and its keyword suggestion tool. If your thinking of using Google Adsense it makes sense to get an Adwords Account. This shows keywords and phrases that people are searching on and how strong the advertiser competition is. So what did I buy, well some of my best yet me thinks.....

www.PSPInternetAccess.com / www.CheapGhdStraighteners.com / www.MobileSatNav.com

I'm quite pleased with the MobileSatNav website as I think there is a lot of opportunity for this site, especially as this software has taken off in the U.K. and the technology is now being applied to mobile phones so fingers crossed. And I think they all make sense and people will search for these names on google.

This week I also setup my first ever blogger account. This is the most famous blog software on the internet, and owned by google. I have recreated my buythemap blog on my shiny new blogger account, you can see it here. The benefit of this is to publicise the buythemap website and it lets me create new links for my websites I have set up on an external source. This aids my Search Engine Optimisation & PageRank (perhaps I will talk about that in my next post).

Anyway results for this week, in total I made $9.67 my best week yet, and as I like to do projections using these figures would suggest revenue of over $500 a year. Of course ignoring renewal fees and reg fees. Perhaps I will set out all my costs in my next entry (going to be a big one isn't it).

Right thats it for now, perhaps this week I will abstain from buying any new names!

31 December 2007 - The First Month draws to an End, happy New Year!

Ok so firstly no apologies for not updating my blog last week I was away for Christmas Skiing, no broken bones luckily, but unfortunately I must report that this holiday was not paid for by some shock domaining profits, more so by the credit card! Anyway it was definately exciting to get back and see if I had made any money for the week! However let me fill you in first....

I have two new purchases to report, these were a random couple of ebay buys I mentioned them below, ebay is a quick and good place to pick up cheap names. So I have now added my first two 4 letter domain names to add to my portfolio. As there are no longer any 4 letter .coms avaliable I am hoping these may prove good little investments as I hope prices will increase. So I bought GTR4.com for $25 and ST03.com for $9 - I didn't want to reveal the names until finalised. Typing both these words in google brings up quite a few results, GTR4 brings up 15,000 related results, and it appears this was the make of a Triumph car so may work with some development. ST03 brings up 82,000 results but what I do with this at the moment I don't know. I know I know I keep buying more and more names!

Anyway lets get around to the money part. It seems my earlier keyword domain name purchases are starting to get a little bit of traffic and these appear to be my cash generators. From 9 December to today I have made a total of $7.98. This includes two days where I have made $1.68 and $1.87, the latter a new record was made on 28 December. So again it is a case of capitalising on the good days, understanding where the money is coming from and looking at finding some more great keyword domain names. Also a few of my newer domains are still yet to list on Google so I am hopeful this will aid the cause.

You may also notice I have added quite a few links below to blog directories as I try to get listed on these, perhaps you have come from one. Anyway the learning curve continues and the money is going up (not a quick as intended) but still in the right direction. Revenue for December is $10.15 + $15 for a name sale (lets not mention spend for now :) Frenchie

16 December - Week three clicks down, revenue up!

So I was all excited last week about buying a domain name for $10 and then selling a week later for $25. Of course quite a lot of effort for $15 profit but more importantly it proved to me that I could buy a domain name and resell it for a profit, even if it wasn't much. However I also learnt another lesson, and this is that you cannot transfer a domain within 60days of buying it or having transferred it, this is a rule set down my ICANN the domain watchdog. Luckily the ebay winner seemed reasonable and I will transfer the name in the new year.

Now secondly, today I have won a couple of new domain names on Ebay! I know I know I should concentrate on making more money from my current portfolio, however I still feel that I am in the testing phase and so I wanted to buy some 4 letter domain names. Now apparantly as all 3 letter names have been sold, it is expected the price of 4 letter names will increase. So I have spent $30 dollars on 2 new names. I am currently finalising details so will let you know what these are when the purchase is completed. Then it will be good to see if they get any traffic....

My two other new names BalanceNewShoes and AntiFreeSpyware seem to be getting no traffic at the moment, despite these keywords proving popular for searches. However they have not yet been spidered by the big search engines (this means indexed) so am still hoping this will change things when they are.

So I still consider this project a success at the moment, this week my clicks were less than the previous weeks, however they have been higher value - so maybe focusing on higher value keywords may pay off - I just need the traffic! So this week I generated $3.05 yes more than last week but a little dissapointing. However hopefully my new names will come on line and perhaps people use the internet less over xmas as they are out shopping. This still puts me on course for more money this month, fingers crossed.

9 December 2007 - My Second Week of my new career.....

So another week down, as we head in to xmas and the domain buying continues! Importantly I sold my first ever domain this week. Colonising.com was sold on Ebay, exactly one week after registering it for $10 I was able to sell it on Ebay for $25. Ok not a huge sum of money but that sale has now provided me with some money to buy more sites.

As mentioned in my last blog entry I wanted to see if I could buy some more keyword specific websites, put some content on them and some adsense advertising and see what would happen. So this week I bought another two domain names, after a lot researching (my whole saturday) I was able to buy AntiFreeSpyware.com and BalanceNewShoes.com - I know not the most exciting names but if I am researching correctly, and doing the right things I will hopefully start to see revenue soon.

Using the Channels on my google adsense account has been a great find and I am continuing to monitor the success of my other names. I have also noticed that since completely restructuring Buythemap google is still yet to index my site and so a lot of my pages are currently listed wrongly on google, and so I think once this is updated I should see my sites feature higher in searches and thus more traffic and better pagerank for the buythemap network.

Finally I set up one of my sites Plooka.com to have content around Tramadol, this drug creates huge bidding wars for adwords (about $4 a click) keyword so if I can drive some traffic to plooka hopefully I will get some big clicks on this site.

Therefore this weeks revenue was a measly $2.50 although my pages were there busiest ever and I recieved more clicks than the previous week. Plus the $15 I made from selling a site. Although I bought two new ones so I broke about even!

2 December 2007 - Good News and Bad .....

Ok so I have now bought a number of domain names, some of these I have developed, and some I have simply parked. Those that I have developed I am hoping to make some Adsense revenue off. This is where you have a website with google advertising on it - like on the right there. This week I learnt how to setup channels on Google Adsense so now I can tell on which pages people are clicking my links. Excellent this means I can now track which of my websites is making me revenue. Also for my first month I have now made a total $10.19 in revenue so this all seems really good. This is over one hundred dollars a year. This month December I would like to double that amount!

However.....at the moment it looks like all my revenue is coming from one site WindowMediaPlayerDownload now when I bought this domain name I actually thought it was rubbish and thought it was a mistake. I chose the name because the keywords had really high search results on Overture but I didnt think anyone would actually type this name in. However they are - each day about 10-15 visits to this site and most people click the links which is great. But this means I am making about .50 cents a day, and my other sites are not. So I need to focus on how I can recreate this success.

Therefore this week I bought DownloadMediaPlayerWindow.com yes I know again it seems like a rubbish name but if I can recreate the success of the above then I will be on to a winning forumla. According to Overture this term is more popular than the first.

Also this week I bought Colonising.com my first ever dictionary domain name. This is listed on Ebay see here - I wanted to see if I could turn around a quick sale - so I will keep my fingers crossed for that.

So going forward I think I am going to see if I can get some more Keyword specific websites setup in order to increase revenue and become a domain name millionaire! I am also going to look in to keywords that generate more money when they are clicked, at the moment I am getting about .4cents a click if I can target more popular keywords some recieve $7 for one click I can make some serious money!!!! He says......

25 November 2007 - Week 1 and the results are in....

So this is my first official week writing about my exploits on the domain name market, and it's time to talk cold hard cash. Now from all the domain names that I have bought, so far I have not sold an actual name although all names are listed on Sedo.co.uk for sale. I expect my main income stream will be from google adsense, like the adverts you see displayed on this page. To very quickly explain how Adsense works, on each of my webpages that I have put on my newly purchased domain names I have put the google code on these. This means that google will put adverts on my page to match up with the content. Other website owners setup google adword accounts and pay google to display adds. For everyone that clicks on an add they pay google. In turn google displays the ads on my website and when someone clicks on them I take a cut of the money. I will talk about Adsense I am sure a lot in this blog as this will be where I make money from and the plan will be to make my sites popular so that I get the opportunity for more revenue. And of course I will talk about keywords and how some clicks can be worth more than others, as a taster have a quick look at this. Anyway enough of the boring stuff how has week one gone.

Well I have updated most of the pages on buythemap so that they are displaying the ads. I have also changed the structure of the site (behind the scenes) so that I can add more guides and articles. More content = more people finding my website and seeing my ads. Plans for next week are to keep an eye out for some more domains to purchase and get on the marketing trail - and also not to spend so much time playing Call of Duty 4 which is awesome. And of course I will update the blog........ok ok the money part.

Week 1 - Total Revenue recieved $2.92

Its not the most amount of money in the world but all rivers start with a trickle. At the moment the clicks I have recieved have been quite low yielding, however if you look at the page I linked to above if I could get clicks of higher value this will also help immensley so that may be another approach. Frenchie

21 November 2007 - Blog Entry 2 and what I have done so far!

Ok so as I have mentioned in my first blog entry below I have already started the game and I have entered the domain market. So obviously I am new to this so I wanted to do some experimenting, I wanted to try different names and how they would work for traffic. And as always with me I probably got a bit over excited and bought too many names but as they say you have to speculate to accummulate.

So the first purchases were Plooka.com as I thought this was a brandable name and a .com these tend to be the most prestigious. The second was what I hope was a cool one Hipoh.com again a .com and I thought a quirky name that sounded like something. My third purchase was digbooks.com as books are such a popular thing to buy I thought I could make this in to a website for digital books. Now at the moment I have not done anything with these names and they are currently listed on Sedo.co.uk - this is somewhere where you can buy and sell names, and whilst you await a bid for sale Sedo put adverts on your site and if someone clicks on them they will pay me some money.

Now the next thing I did was see what people search for on the net, online IQ tests were popular and using WindowsMediaPlayer. So I wanted to see if I could get some sites where people would search on google and would come to my sites. Thus I bought ShortOnlineIQTest.com and WindowMediaPlayerdownload.com I have listed these two sites on search engines, written some content and put google adsense advertising on them. Hopefully as people come to the sites they will again use the links and I will get money.

I took two further strategies, 1. I wanted to see if I could buy names where if people mispelled the names when typing in to the search bar they would again come to my sites. I looked for some popular sites and mispelled them, this caused me to buy Telergaph.co.uk and Rightmoev.com - Lets see how the traffic works out, as you just don't know until you try.

2. I wanted to buy some one word domain names that again I could get listed on search engines and as people typed in the names they would come to my sites. If I can get one word names the chances are if you google that one word my site is more likely to come up. So I bought Parol.co.uk and Epithelial.net - two subjects I have no idea about but after a lot of searching I found they were avaliable and again - lets just try it. So these are my first sites!

Ok so I know what your thinking... what a strange choice of names, why these? The reason for this is that there are some very rich people out there that have spotted this market a long time ago. They got in early and they have taken up many of the best domains, a bit of a modern gold rush. Very little quality is left, apparantly all 3 letter and 4 letter .com domain names have been sold and most dictionary names are gone. So I have been searching thousands of possible names to find what is avaliable and chose the best. I can't explain everything straight away but as I contribute to the blog more, more of my methods will be revealed. Now will England beat Croatia in the football, I predict 2-0 to England...(and I promise I won't change that)! Ahh as I was just typing this Croatia score.....Doh!

20 November 2007 - Blog Entry Number 1 My new Boy Project

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A quick Introduction - I think thats how these things start

Hi there - firstly introductions, my name is Frenchie, that's me just on the right there! Secondly welcome to my blog about my site BuytheMap.com now I'm sure your a bit confused aren't you. What's BuytheMap.com?? - well this was a site I setup in 2006 I auctioned countries on ebay and provided pictures and links for the winning bidders on the Map. Hence I sold the World and people bought it! To read my story on this you can go to my old blog here. Its a fun story full of highs and lows :) as well as lots of random musings.

At the moment (Dec 2007) countries are not for sale however this may change! Currently I have a new venture.......

This is my first blogger acount and replicates my blog at buythemap see here and details my experiences as a 'Domaineer' - sounds like a superhero doesn't it! A Domaineer buys domain names and tries to make money from these. For instance did you know that some domain names have sold for millions, many for thousands. There are also a number of other ways to make money from domain names, these include parking domains, and earning revenue from people typing the name in to the browser and landing on your page then clicking ads.

On this blog I am going to demonstrate how this works, and provide regular updates on how things are going, revenue, successes, failures, and insider tips. So please bookmark my site and feel free to email me - Frenchie@buythemap.com