Month: November 2009

As we reported early yesterday morning, Sedo brokered the deal of Russia.com for $1.5 million dollars.  NewMedia Holdings, the sellers of the domain name own an impressive portfolio of domain names with a focus on geo domain names ranging from PuertoRico.com to Scotland.com. 

NewMedia uses a Turnkey Travel Site Platform for their Geo Domains

The same framework is used on all of their geodomains – a framework that you can use to get your geodomains up and running for a cost.  According to NewMedia’s Web Consultancy at Paley Media,

Each of the Country Domains appearing on this site were created and are managed by Paley Media using our technology platform.

Our technology platform is supported by a proprietary content management system that combines industry standard web publishing software with server side tools. This solution provides our customers with full control over the design, structure and interactive functionality of thier travel sites.

Our turnkey platform includes the following features:

◦A Fully Integrated Booking Widget;
◦Advertising and Banner Managment Administration;
◦Server and Project Administration;
◦Unified Member Registration;
◦Hotel and Establishments Directory;
and
◦Traffic and Web Site Analysis. 

NewMedia Uses WordPress, Too, for Sites

Like Birds.com and Autoracing.com

Keeping it simple, NewMedia also uses WordPress as a solution for most of their non-geo domain names like, Birds.com, AutoRacing.com, and Airplanes. 

NewMedia Holdings’ Notable Properties

NewMedia’s properties include:

Airplanes.com
Algeria.com
Autoracing.com
Bangladesh.com
Birds.com
ChinaTrade.com
Ecuador.com
HorseRacing.com
Morocco.com
Musicians.com
Nepal.com
Nicaragua.com
PuertoRico.com
Scotland.com
Snowskiing.com
SouthAfrica.com
StockMarkets.com
Ukraine.com
VirtualCountries.com

Twitter has revolutionized the social networking world with it’s popular microblogging platform – and with it’s own search Engine in real-time it’s got big plans for the future.

But Twitter Vanity URLs have been surprisingly successful at ranking in the search engines. Who is the Domain King of the Twitter Vanity URL world?

Writers Write, Inc

While you might own some of the best category-killer domains in the world – there’s an entirely different land rush going on with Twitter, and there are several Twitter Domain Kings who got in early, registering names from twitter.com/science to twitter.com/blackfriday. In the Twitter Vanity URL world – there is one Domain King and it’s Writers Write, Inc.

They have some of the best vanity urls on Twitter. Here’s a look at just a sample of their category-killers:

twitter.com/toys
twitter.com/science
twitter.com/shopping
twitter.com/fashion
twitter.com/beautytips
twitter.com/bestsellers
twitter.com/gourmet
twitter.com/gadgets
twitter.com/blackfriday
twitter.com/health
twitter.com/pets

Twitter Vanity URLs rank well for keywords

If you don’t think that registering a keyword rich vanity URL doesn’t matter, perhaps you should consider what Writer’s Write, INc. has done.

Their twitter.com/blackfriday ranks on Page 2 of Google. And with Twitter gaining more credibility – they stand to do well.

Twitter skeptics can be pretty rowdy.  They claim they don’t see the value of using another social networking tool, despite the popularity of Twitter and the rising numbers.  They claim they don’t get the idea about following people or having people follow them back and that it’s just a waste of time. 

A lot of the skeptics say, “Who cares what other people are doing?”

Well, you’d be surprised what other people are doing – especially when they’re trying to do the same thing you’re doing in the Domaining business and they’re tweeting about it.

Getting Domain Development Help Through Twitter

We have tons of followers now, nearly 25,000 on Twitter for our Domaining account – which translates into traffic each and every time we send out a link. Whether it’s one visitor or a hundred visitors – it works out great for us, because we haven’t paid a single penny for advertising.

Last night we decided to ask our Twitter friends for HELP with SEO on one of our websites — ArmyVehicles.com – and the response was extraordinary.  Within seconds (not minutes) dozens of people were crawling ArmyVehicles.com providing us with ways to improve the SEO on the website. Not just regular readers with no background in SEO or website development, but people with years of experience in both fields.

A BIG THANKS to everyone who provided feedback, especially Tia Wood who gave us some much needed advice on things to fix (working on them now). Not just one piece of advice, but several – all value-added for us.

Followers: Quality? Quantity? You Just never know

Some of the best conversations we’ve had on Twitter are people we would’ve never expected to reach out to us. And we run several Twitter accounts to help promote all of our sites — most numbering in the thousands of followers and quickly growing.

Say what you want about Twitter, but the site is a huge help. Whether you’re plugging a product or looking for advice. It’s hard to argue with its benefit until you really try it.

Nowadays, you get alot of people telling you Domaining can only be done with lots and lots of money, rather than doing it on the cheap.   Everything is so focused on the short-term and huge profits that there’s not a lot of focus on hand-registering names and the long-term — at least from what we’ve been hearing.

But did you know that for $10 or less you can still hand-register names that could break records in terms of sales some day just like some of the names purchased years ago that are selling today?

Domaining: Patience can be the Key, not always money

Due to the fact that not everyone has lots of money, most of the new domainers getting into the field, can’t afford to buy the candy dotcoms of the world or even lesser names worth $25,000.   But did you know even some of the Big Time domainers who got into domaining in the nineties still hand-register names?

They’re still using some of the same tactics that helped them to get rich years ago.

Just because you don’t have thousands of dollars, doesn’t mean you have to miss out. Lots of new domainers are doing the same – and if you don’t think any of the big time Domainers aren’t still doing it, take a look.

The Castello Brothers

On DNUnderground in a story that appeared online yesterday, David J Castello offered the following comments about some debate over a quote by Rick Schwartz, which also highlighted their hand-registration tactics:

it’s not all about people like Rick or me and my brother who got our names in 1995-1997. Every year we also hand reg names that we could easily flip in no time for 500%-1000% profit, but we hold them for long term gain/development. Even the best stock can’t do that.

Rick Latona

In an interview with Chef Patrick that appeared online in November 2008, Rick Latona admitted he could very well be one of the most prolific hand-registering domainers:

I hand registered 4000 names in the last 30 days. I am finding new ways to make money on HR names all of the time. You’ll find out what I’m registering now, years from now when I’m trying to sell them. I can give you a clue though, they are all .com names or ccTLD names. I never touch mobi, info, biz or alternative gTLD names. ccTLD names have a lot of growth potential.

If you have $500 or less, give it a shot

Chances are pretty good that a number of the big time domainers who don’t talk about hand-registration, are still just as involved in the business of hand-registering names as they were 10 to 15 years ago.