Resident Tourist http://residenttourist.com Domaining & Life on the Web Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:37:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5.2 en hourly 1 Domaining At The Drop http://residenttourist.com/2009/07/30/domaining-at-the-drop/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/07/30/domaining-at-the-drop/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:37:23 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=897 I’ve been watching domains drop every day for almost two years now over at GoDrops.com and it’s turned out to be not a small source of domain registrations for me and for some members. First, I have to thank Jamie from DotWeekly.com for getting me hooked and up to speed on the drop-catching process and great “insider” information. (Other domainers have also recently starting blogging about the esoteric science of drop-catching).

Before April 1st, drop-catching decent names was near impossible due to massive domain tasting by Enom, Maxim Internet, various NameMedia companies, Pool and a host of others. Tasters did usually drop their domains for refunds during the grace period, and this provided a second chance to grab whatever you had your eye on. The same taster might register the domains again, a practice called domain kiting, or other tasters would grab these deleted names (e.g. Maxim would catch Enom drops, etc…) It was fun to watch the circus from the view of my whois scanner/database. Tasters now have to be more selective — some taster registrars even collapsed and lost their names — which means there are now more domains available at drop time.

Don’t kid yourself about the domains you are able to get off the drop. Even though it’s the best time to get higher quality domains – before the masses have combed through the various distributed drop lists – these are still domains that no one thought it worth to spend even $18 for a backorder at GoDaddy and most recently Name.com. Good quality brandables and long-tail keywords do fall through the cracks from time to time – that’s the whole rational for drop-catching for yourself in the first place!

Happy Drop-Catching! Keep it real and keep it dot COM!

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/07/30/domaining-at-the-drop/feed/ 0 One Month and Ten Domains Later… http://residenttourist.com/2009/07/10/one-month-and-ten-domains-later/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/07/10/one-month-and-ten-domains-later/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:25:25 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=890 Despite tracking a zillion (approx.) names in that time over at GoDrops.com, only 10 new names have been added to my domain collection (dare I call it a portfolio?). I’ve been keeping busy developing a real-estate Wordpress-based site and, of course, keeping up with what’s dropping and the bargains at auction.

Here’s a run-down of my latest 10 domains and why I pulled the trigger on them:

GenericOutlet.com (reg fee) - Think “generic drugs” or “generic medications”. Great Google searches and “outlet” makes a strong e-commerce brandable.

AbandonedWarehouses.com – This is where all the bad guys set up shop and, in the end, where Detective Caine rolls in surrounding the place eventually taking the crime boss and his cronies down. Also, this domain could serve a property-search site…

HomeLoams.com (reg fee) - typo of “Home Loans”

ShowbizShop.com (reg fee) – strong e-commerce suffix making a great celebrity/entertainment shopping site

EmeraldMart.com (reg fee) – Can 5 million searches on emerald keywords all targeted to jewelry be wrong? I am a little cool on the “Mart” suffix paired with luxury items, but it’s still a very consumer-friendly domain.

MoneyCompanion.com (reg fee) – A total brandable. “Money” is a great keyword and with “companion” makes a great domain that could host a how-to money-management site.

SUVOutlet.com (reg fee) – Are people still buying SUV’s? I hope so! There are some obvious end-users that come up if you Google this. Again, a nice consumer-friendly “outlet” paired with a big money item.

AltoonaApartments.com (reg fee) – I mentioned that I’ve been working on coding a real-estate site. These kinds of names would be perfect to lay down on top of that code and seek end-users: brokers, realtors, or maybe a self-listing type of site. (I grew up not far from Altoona, PA)

CreteApartments.com ($40 at Snapnames private seller auction) – Ouch! This one hurt the wallet! Great tourist destination (I’ve been there, it’s awesome) and super Google search frequency. “apartments” works in europe and serves a different customer than “hotels”, so there may be some differentiation to work with there…

OrnamentOutlet.com (reg fee) – Another simple product e-commerce site. Christmas ornaments come inexpensive to mildly expensive and, more importantly, they’re easily shippable. A good consumer-friendly domain.

That’s it! My last 10 names. I think I did alright… =)

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/07/10/one-month-and-ten-domains-later/feed/ 3 GoDrops.com – Your Daily Live Domain Drop http://residenttourist.com/2009/06/08/godrops-your-daily-live-domain-drop/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/06/08/godrops-your-daily-live-domain-drop/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:35:57 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=883 GoDrops.com is my personal whois scanner gone wild. Everyday, I host the Web’s only “Live Chat and Drop” event where I stream live my dropping domain picks for the day. Not only do you see domain dropping and picked up live by big companies like Buy Domains, Zag Media and Portfolio Brains, backorder services like Pool, Namejet and Snapnames, and domainer/drop-catchers like Dan Rubin, but you also get to chat along — you never know WHO will show up

You cannot find a higher quality dropped domain list anywhere and you can’t get any fresher than the LIVE domain drop. This is the best time to register dropped domains. There is NO filtering going on. I make my picks ahead of the drop time, turn on the whois scanner, and let it rip unfiltered to you everyday from 11am PST to 12:30 PST.

We’ve got a fresh new interface brewing right now, complete with the Live List, a Daily Report of what dropped and a Search. Check it out now over at http://godrops.com!

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/06/08/godrops-your-daily-live-domain-drop/feed/ 0 Domainer Plugin for Wordpress http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/21/domainer-wordpress-plugin/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/21/domainer-wordpress-plugin/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 05:11:06 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=875 WP-Domainer is a free Wordpress plugin I’ve developed that’s basically been a bag ‘o tricks for my various sites. With WP-Domainer you can insert a message at the top of every page, upload favicons for Wordpress MU installs across multipe domains, and list domains in a post or page using a flexible Wordpress shortcode.

Like I said, it’s absolutely FREE! Download WP-Domainer Today!

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/21/domainer-wordpress-plugin/feed/ 0 Out ‘n About with Alltop.com http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/20/alltop/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/20/alltop/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 07:35:21 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=856 Not long ago, I helped Alltop.com acquire the domain name alltop.net. Soon after, we were sporting our new Alltop T-shirts all around southern California and, as the picture below clearly shows, off the beaten path as well. :)   Thanks Alltop!

alltopsafari

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/20/alltop/feed/ 1 My Snapnames Picks for Today http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/19/my-snapnames-picks-for-today/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/19/my-snapnames-picks-for-today/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 16:06:34 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=847 I’ve started scanning domains at Snapnames that are ending soon. I may go after a couple, but here’s my short list for today. I just applied to get a Snapnames affiliate ID, so in the meantime, I’m using DotWeekly’s code =)

I’m also testing out my Domainer Wordpress plugin that makes listing names in blog posts easy. Look for a release of that here soon…

Without further ado, here’s my short-list for today! Most of these are less than $50 and end today or in a couple days:


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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/19/my-snapnames-picks-for-today/feed/ 2 Take Five… New Themes! http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/11/take-five-new-themes/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/11/take-five-new-themes/#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 03:27:11 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=802 Hot on the trail for a Wordpress theme for my Travel domains — thanks to Booking.com for getting me signed up and ready to go, by the way — I noticed many new themes both gratis and premium being released in the last few days. Here’s a run down…

screenshot006
Zenko from WpZoom.com

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Blog News from Gabfire.com

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Berita Business from Biz Artic

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Workspacer from Wordpress Theme Designer

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eBusiness from Elegant Themes

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/11/take-five-new-themes/feed/ 4 Finding an Affiliate Program for Travel http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/09/travel-affiliate-program/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/09/travel-affiliate-program/#comments Sat, 09 May 2009 17:48:38 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=785 At the GeoDomain Expo a couple weeks ago, I found myself sitting down with a representative from Booking.com over lunch. They’re big in Europe covering all the large hotels and the smaller independent ones (i.e. the long-tail). I’ve got a solid collection of undeveloped travel names now and it’s time I rolled-up my sleeves and get them built. Yesterday, I applied to their affiliate program and hope to be in contact with them early next week.

I’m still looking for Wordpress magazine and news themes for inspiration, but I’m closing in on a couple. One thing I look for in any travel affliate partner is the availablity of content and the ability to do deep linking in their booking engine. Not only do I want a booking widget to paste into my Wordpress theme, but listings as well that appear under my own domain.

Having that content on your own domain, gets you a little further along than being just a thin affiliate and allows you to get traction with Google with a greater variety of keywords. Also, the deep linking into their site would give me the ability to send users to more targeted areas such as individual and geographically targeted hotel listings and that should increase conversions.

I’m off to watch the daily domain drop over on GoDrops.com… Stay tuned here for more development updates!

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/09/travel-affiliate-program/feed/ 0 Developing My Most Expensive Domain http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/07/travel-part-1/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/07/travel-part-1/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 13:55:42 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=748 This is going to be the start of a series of posts describing how I go about developing my most expensive domain so far for 2009. The name is ExploreHungary.com and it set me back a cool $25.00 at Snapnames recently.

For me, this is as near premium for geo/travel without having the exact city or generic “travel” keyword domain. Early last year I purchased a related name for over $600, but I think this one is better, not because it cost 25x LESS, but because it’s more catchy and feels more active. The other name is HungaryGuide.com, by the way…

So, to get this  site up and running, first you’ll need an HTML template or CMS theme.  Since I do everything in Wordpress, what follows is how I find suitable Wordpress themes.

Choosing a Theme

The way I keep track of new themes is by reading ThemeTracker.com daily. This is a site that I run and it helps me keep on top of the latest theme releases by the most popular Wordpress theme authors.

WebLogToolsCollection.com is another place to get more releases, but these vary in quality wildly from day to day. Another way to find themes of course, is to turn to Google. A search for Wordpress themes reveals these recent lists from WpHacks.com, SoothBrush.com, WpZoom.com, another at Wpzoom.com and RiteTurnOnly.com,

From all these sources, I’ve compiled a short-list of FREE themes that I feel are worth testing out for my new travel site, ExploreHungary.com:

There are, of course, premium themes and they do look better. But, I’m on a very tight budget. For next installment, I’ll have a working theme up and running with some “travel” content.

Stay Tuned!

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]]> http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/07/travel-part-1/feed/ 7 No More Bad Hair Days! http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/06/haircut-reviews/ http://residenttourist.com/2009/05/06/haircut-reviews/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 18:14:41 +0000 Jason http://residenttourist.com/?p=773 A couple days ago I grabbed HaircutReviews.com from the daily domain drop. The day before, by coincidence, my wife was complaining about how she couldn’t find the salon a friend had reccomended to her online. For the local places she could find, the reviews were either non-existent or not very helpful. The next day, I saw this name in the drop list and, well, I couldn’t resist pulling the trigger.

Google shows some decent searches for related keywords:

hair reviews            74000
hair review            49500
salon reviews            22200
salon review            12100
hair salon reviews            6600
hair color reviews            3600
hair care reviews            4400
beauty salon reviews            1000
beauty salon review            590

All these domain names are taken, of course (except for BeautySalonReview.com which I don’t consider in good form). Here are a few of the registrants of the popular variants:

hair.com, WebMagic Ventures, LLC
haircut.com, RoboCut, Inc.
haircuts.com, privacy/parked
salonreviews.com, at Markmonitor.com

Haircut.com goes back to 1995. Check out the Flowbee! Ah, that brings back As-Seen-On-TV memories…

Back to HaircutReviews.com… a great name, a service everyone needs, and in good form. I’ll be building a review site using Wordpress, so stay tuned!

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