Can’t Afford To Buy Physical Real Estate? Buy Internet Real Estate!

How To Buy Internet Real Estate

First Published: ADawnJournal.com Published Date : May 6, 2009

During a recession, property values tend to decrease, and those who can afford it don’t hesitate to grab the opportunity to acquire some nice properties at unbeatable costs. However, buying physical assets may not be a viable option for everyone due to the heavy upfront expenses you need to go through. But how about buying Internet real estate? Is it still possible to grab opportunities that exist due to economic turmoil and buy assets online with very little money and still flourish in the future?

The answer is:  absolutely yes. You see, domains are like virtual real estate that exists only on the web. There are many similarities between domain names and real estate properties: both of them aren’t increasing in quantity any more, we are dealing with the same quantity today as we were twenty or thirty years ago, and due to limited supply, the price has to go up one day. You just need to buy those that will be in demand in the future.

In order to buy domains, you need to know a few things I discussed in this article – How to Make Money from Domain Names. I believe financial crisis opens up opportunities to buy domains which wouldn’t be available otherwise. In a financial meltdown, businesses close down and people lose jobs. As a result, lots of good domains drop out as businesses don’t need them anymore or people just can’t afford to maintain their domain portfolios.

Opportunistic entrepreneurs grab this opportunity to increase their domain buildups. I purchased most of my high-potential domains in the past few months. Also, I hired many programmers to develop a few new web sites. I can do it now because of low hiring costs available due to the current economic crisis. Entrepreneurs should be always on the lookout to use negative circumstances to their advantage and turn them into positive circumstances.

We all hate economic crises like the one we are going through today. The difference between a successful and a failed entrepreneur can be determined by how well you can use this crisis to build a better future. Yes, opportunities even exist in the midst of a crisis.

How to Make Money from Domain Names

Make Money Online With Domain Names

First Published: AdawnJournal.com December 18, 2008

One thing I like about Internet Entrepreneurship is that you are not limited to only one or a few things. You can make money by doing numberless things, such as blogs, websites, eBooks, affiliate programs, Internet auctions, domain parking, and much more.

What Is a Domain Name?

Today, I am going to discuss how you can make money from domain names. The first thing you may ask is, “What is a domain name?” Let’s look at ADJ’s URL or web address. It is www.adawnjournal.com. Here adawnjournal.com is a domain name of ADJ. A domain name is something that identifies a site, its IP address.

How to Buy a Domain

You can buy a domain through domain registrar companies such as GoDaddy. There are lots of other companies offering domain services, but I use GoDaddy and they are one of the big players in the market. To buy, simply visit a domain registrar and you should able to figure out how to do so. If you are not sure, call their support line or send them an email.

What’s Next?

Once you have purchased your domain, you have many options by which you can use it to make money. I will describe the most important ones here:

·   Do Nothing – You can just hold the domain and do nothing, anticipating that one day your domain will increase in value and someone will buy it for lots of money. You have to be creative in buying if you would like to sell it for a higher price one day. You see, domain names are like Internet real estate and good domains will increase in value in time. For example, Business.com was sold for $7.5 Million and then it was sold again for $350 Million. I do not know who first bought it and at what price, but they almost certainly made a hefty profit.

·   Park Your Domain – If you do nothing and hold your domain, the domain registrar will be making money by creating a default page to direct visitors to your domain. Visitors often type wrong or misspelled domains into their browser and that’s how they end up on these parked domain pages. These pages look like real websites and some confused visitors will click on ads, directories, or search results (which are ads too). Once they click, the domain owner makes money. For example, moneysavingtipsnow.com is a parked domain which I own. So, instead of letting the domain registrar make money with your domains, why don’t you make money for yourself?

·   Or – You can use your domains to promote an affiliate program, sell your own (or someone else’s) products, or create a content rich site to draw traffic to generate income.

There are other ways to make money from domains, but those mentioned above are most used by entrepreneurs.

How to Park

There are many sites offering domain parking services; trafficparking.com, sedo.com, and namedrive.com to name a few. These sites have pages explaining everything you need to know about domain parking.

Final Word

You need to do a lot of research before buying domain names. There are thousands of free tools out there to help with your research. For example, there are tools that will tell you what misspelled names visitors are typing, tools that will tell you domains that are about to expire so you can grab them, tools that will suggest possible domain names to you if you enter keywords, and so many more tools that you can’t possibly imagine. To find these tools, just do a search by entering domain, tools, research, etc.

Something I forgot to mention: how much it does cost to hold a domain? It varies by registrars, but a ballpark figure is about $10 annually. Don’t get confused here, this is not to host a site; the $10 is just to hold the domain under your ownership.

Internet Entrepreneurship needs lots of research, efforts, and time. It does not make you money overnight, but if you can stick to it for the long run, a rewarding life awaits you.

What Is Netvibes

Netvibes - What Is It?

If you are reading this article right now, this is not the only site you browse. While you are online, probably you check your email, weather, stocks and a few news sites and the list keeps going on and on as you find cool sites everyday. It can be annoying to check all your favourite  sites one by one and it’s time consuming too. Tariq Krim, the founder of Netvibes thought the same way and he came up with this brilliant idea to put all sites on one page so you don’t have to browse from site to site to obtain updated information. Of course, you can argue that Google and Yahoo did the same by offering personalized page … long time ago but Netvibes does things better and easier way than those big guys and the looks are a lot better than Yahoo and Google.

Impressive Stats
Its no wonder 15,000 people visited on the first day of it’s launch in September, 2005 and more than five million users signed up. 60% users are from the US and there are users from more than 100 countries. 10 percent of users keep Netvibes page active throughout the day and use it as entry point into other sites.

Ecosystem
Netvibes offers ecosystem – made of pre-programmed modules which are made by users and you can put them on your own Netvibes page just with a click. Modules can be as different as news feeds, blog feeds, stock charts, weather reports and hundreds of different things. Lets say you added an RSS feed on your Netvibes page and you think it is cool and would be be useful to other users..you can publish this RSS feed on ecosystem with a click. Very simple and easy.

Months To Verify?
I have created Netvibes modules for www.adawn.net and many other sites and some of them stopped working without any reasons. To keep my module active, I wanted to delete the inactive one but I could not find delete option anywhere. Finally, I had to create another module for www.adawn.net. Also, sites submitted   in the beginning of October have not been verified yet by Netvibes team. A module is not available to other users until Netvibes team verifies it and if takes months to verify… its a sign that Netvibes needs to hire more people to keep up with heavy traffic.

Not Alone
competitors are not napping in the meanwhile. Lots of other sites are popping up with similar concept and they have the financial and technological support to compete Netvibes. Webwag, Pageflakes, Protopage and many more are working at a tremendous pace to catch up with Netvibes.

Future Unknown
It would be interesting to see how Netvibes starts earning money. Investors already pouring in millions of dollars and Netvibes has not mentioned anything yet about how money can be generated. I would not be surprised to see the only exit point being sold to Yahoo or Google.

Originally published on www.adawn.net. I am transferring all my articles from Canada’s Personal Finance Website. You will see articles from www.adawn.net being posted here once in a while. Thanks.

Investopedia, StumbleUpon, FeedBurner and Last.fm

Recent Internet Acquisitions

Recently numerous acquisitions took place online and some of these websites are very well-known. Let’s take a quick look at some of these deals – which are making big news.

Investopedia and StumbleUpon

Two famous websites are no longer Canadian. Although everyone knew these acquisitions were coming, it was not expected to occur so fast and in a row.

Edmonton based Investopedia founded in 1999 and draws roughly 2,500,000 monthly viewers. Investopedia provides financial education to investors. On April 11, 2007, media giant Forbes bought Investopedia. Terms and conditions of the sale were not disclosed. You can visit Investopedia by clicking here – Investopedia.

Calgary based StumbleUpon founded in 2001. StumbleUpon is something like but not exactly a search engine. It searches for sites based on user’s personal preferences and other user recommendations. This has been known as discovery search, which can be seen as next generation search. Currently StumbleUpon has more than 2.3 million registered users. On May 30, 2007, EBay bought StumbleUpon for $75 million cash. You can visit StumbleUpon by clicking here – StumbleUpon.

FeedBurner

The rumour that Google is buying FeedBurner has come to an end in May. How much Google paid for this deal is unknown but if you perform an Internet search by putting Google and FeedBurner, $100 million in search results will catch your eye.

It is not surprising that Google wants to enter the rapidly growing RSS Feed ad market. FeedBurner has gained so much popularity that it will be an easy access for Google into the RSS world. This is a very smart move and my guess would in the future, Google would want to buy sites like Technorati, Netvibes etc. We have to wait to see how many more sites Google acquire. You can visit FeedBurner by clicking here – FeedBurner.

Last.fm

If you like music, you would love last fm. Last.fm is an Internet radio, but wait, it is no ordinary Internet radio like you have tried before.

Last.fm keeps track of what you listen and based on your taste, it suggests you tracks and presents other users who are similar to your taste. This feature is very unique. I listen to New Age type of music and I know how hard it can be to keep track of all new albums and artists. If I was keeping track of my music all by myself, I would have never found some of the artists from different parts of the World. And now, I have a network of thousands of users like me to suggest albums and artists and i am sure music will never sound the same with Last.fm. There are lots of other features such as you can ask Last.fm not to play a track if you don’t like it or you can express your love for a track and each time Last.fm will make a note of your likings or dislikings and it filters out the worst to give you the best the next time. US media giant CBS Corporation bought Last.fm on May 30, 2007. You can visit last.fm by clicking here – Last.fm.

These sites attract massive traffic on a daily basis because users find these sites useful and beyond ordinary. When companies like EBay, Forbes and CBS buy any sites, definitely they have business on mind. While doing business, I hope these sites will still be useful and able to meet users’ expectations, like the way they have been.

Originally published on Friday, July 6, 2007 on www.adawn.net. I will be transferring all my articles from Canada’s Personal Finance Website. You will see articles from www.adawn.net being posted here once in a while. Thanks

A Dawn Journal & Entrepreneur Journey Merging to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com

A Dawn Journal & Entrepreneur Journey

The time has come to move my highest traffic website, ADawnJournal.com, to AhmedDawn.com. Another website, EntrepreneurJourney.com, will be forwarded to AhmedDawn.com as well.

I have been working to save and move all articles from these 2 websites for a while. As I am more concentrating on www.YouTube.com/ADawn, I don’t want to deal with writing and actively maintaining too many websites like I did in the past.

However, I will still be holding a handful of domains that I believe will have value in the future. I don’t need to maintain these domains, as they are just parked domains.

I might make some videos as well on the Internet and related topics in the near future. It all depends on how my YouTube channel is growing and if these types of videos will be suitable at that time.