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.

How Spring Cleaning Your House Can Boost Personal Contentment

Rearrange Your House, Rearrange Your Life

The way in which you live your life is governed by so many factors that when you get into a rut it can be hard to know where to look first for improvement. Ordinarily, people tend to make improvements bit by bit, concentrating on improving one area of their life. Sometimes, though, it can be as good a bet to concentrate on something large, something that takes a good deal of effort but will have consequential effects that reach into the rest of your life, and can metaphorically blow away some of the dust in your daily routine while literally blowing away actual dust.

One way of doing this is to literally get your house in order. The human mind is often compared to a dwelling, and this is fitting because many of us spend a lot of time inside both. If you can get your house looking ship-shape and spring cleaned, then the effects can extend into your everyday life and make for a real boost to your personal contentment. Apart from anything, it has been proven time and time again that putting in physical effort releases endorphins and can get you smiling, even if the job itself seems like a gargantuan task to begin with.

It helps to go room by room. If you are somewhat daunted by the prospect of totally rearranging your place of dwelling, then you should start small. Rearranging your bedroom or your kitchen is a process that can take less than half a day and make you feel like you have really accomplished something. If you believe in Feng Shui, it can even be an opportunity to test out some ideas and literally spring clean your life.

As well as the above factors, there is another side benefit – the fact that in spring cleaning rushes you will almost always turn up one or more things that you thought had been lost forever. Some of these things will bring up happy memories, and if the memories they dredge up are less happy it is still an opportunity to do something about it – a small bonfire of the bad parts of the past may be just the thing you need in order to move forward happily and with confidence.

Moving from room to room you will feel as though you are getting a fresh start, another chance to get life rolling again, and you will also almost certainly free up space. We all talk about liking a bit of space in our lives, and although the term is largely metaphorical it can also work literally. If you are sick of weaving your way past things in order to get to your seat, then the difference that is made by opening up floor space can have emotionally beneficial effects as well. When everything is done it can be the ideal excuse to sit back, relax and enjoy some treats that you have promised yourself (possibly as a bribe to encourage you to work). A party may be in order, and one thing is certain – you will sleep like a fairy tale character once it’s all done.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on July 25, 2009.

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.

Scoot Airlines Review: Instead of Buying Business Class, Do This.

Scoot Flight: Singapore to Melbourne Boeing 787-800

This leg of my four-country trip from Singapore to Melbourne, Australia, I decided to fly a low-cost flight instead of business class. Singapore Airlines’ subsidiary Scoot seemed to be a good option.

I was contemplating Scoot’s business class called Scoot Biz, but decided to go for Scoot in Silence. And I was glad I did.

My flight was 3 hours late. But the delay appeared on the screen at the last moment when people were already at the counter. There was no one from Scoot to be found anywhere to confirm the delay. I saw that some people started sleeping on floor at the waiting area near the gate counter because it was already midnight.

After a long wait, I boarded the plane and was happy that I chose Scoot in Silence. It costed me around $80 for the seat selection in the Scoot in Silence quiet zone. I had my seat right behind the business class section after the divider. There was no one in front of me and even the seats next to me were empty.

Scoot in Silence does not allow kids under 12 and the seats are better than economy with 34-inch peach rather than 31-inch regular economy. And being in the 1st front row bulkhead seat in Scoot in Silence, I had no one sitting in front of me and I literally had infinite leg stretch space.

The Scoot Biz cabin was right in front of me and I noticed the seats are not lie-flat business class; it’s more like premium economy. They just have a little more space in between and in front compared to my seat. Definitely it’s not worth paying extra for business class. You will get the best value for your money if you spend around $80 (Canadian) and pick a seat in the Scoot in Silence zone, especially where there are no seats are in front of you.

I ordered food online months ahead and its quality was not bad. The overall cleanliness of the aircraft exceeded my expectations, including the bathrooms, and I did not find anything to complain about.

 Except for the delay and the absence of anyone from Scoot to properly communicate with the customers, everything else was a pleasant experience, and I won’t mind flying again with Scoot.

Wellington, New Zealand Travel Guide

Wellington, New Zealand Travel Guide

If you are staying in Wellington and having trouble to find things to do whilst you are on holiday then why not take a look go and visit the main attractions in Wellington. If you are not sure which are the main attractions in Wellington then in the next few paragraphs we are going to talk about some main attractions that you can visit. This will give you a good idea what you can do in Wellington and should make you want to book some attractions that you have not already thought off.

The Wellington Zoo attracts all ages young and old. They have different events during the day as well as taking a tour round the zoo its self. If you are looking for a gift or something for yourself to say that you have visited the zoo then you will able to go to the shop which is located in the zoo. When at the zoo you should get inspired on how big the zoo is and how much room the animals have to move around in. Due to the large size of the zoo you will able to get a map so you do not get lost within the zoo.

If you are staying in Wellington you should go around the whole island and see the beautiful sites and views. The best way of doing this would be to make an arrangement to take a tour with the tour guide Jennifer. She will bring the best out of Wellington and will provide you with loads of information about the history of the island. If you are looking for a bar tour in Wellington then she will also set up this special tour for you.

Museum of New Zealand is another main attraction that you should go and see. If you are thinking about the cost of this holiday in Wellington then you should worry on more when going to see this attraction due to the fact that it is FREE. Even though Museums can be boring for kids they have an area for them where they do arts and crafts whilst you go and look at the amazing artifacts in the museum. This will allow you to not worry about your kids breaking anything as they will be pre occupied with having in fun within the museum. Once you have left your kids or even if you do not have any kids you will able to go around the museum and be inspired on what is actually in the museum and will help you take your mind of things back home. But for FREE it is defiantly worth a visit.

If you are one of these people that are not sure on if you like tasting new foods why not face your fears and go on a Zest food tour whilst you are in Wellington. This will make your experience more enjoyable and will allow you to see what people actually eat in New Zealand. You go around walking from store to store and taste some of the most exquisite foods that you will eat.

I hope you will take these attractions into account when you are looking to take a trip to Wellington in New Zealand.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Travelnowsimply.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on March 12, 2010.