If you are looking to promote your new Internet property after you purchased that brand new domain, a blog is a perfect way to do it. Wordpress makes it incredibly easy. Once you do, you’ll want to start driving traffic to it so that you can make your domain more valuable when you sell.

One of those ways is through developing backlinks. There are good backlinks, and there are evil backlinks. Evil backlinks will kill your google ranking, kill your readership, and make you a pariah among the blogging elite (not that thats important).

So , thus comes my rant on BlogRush.

BlogRush is a twist on blogroll and feed widgets that provide links to other people’s blog feeds. In this case, BlogRush is simply a feed aggregator, so you are receiving a random selection of feeds with a certain category that is in theory a category similar to your blog.

NomKit is a new blog, so I’m (desperately) eager to drive traffic to it. My goals in driving traffic are to 1) learn a little SEO and 2) drive interest to my soon to launch site, NomStock.com . It is not currently one of my goals to generate Adsense or similar income.

So the promise of BlogRush is to drive targeted traffic to your site for free. Someone reading another blog with a blogrush widget on it will see feed links that for the same category that the blog that hosts the widget. They click on the link, bingo, the destination blog receives that reader’s ‘targeted’ traffic.

Great idea; I’m not sure how unique it is, but very nice. I like it.

Bad implementation.

Here’s what it looks like on my blog (keep reading past the graphic..):

Whats wrong with this picture? Put another way, How many BlogRush links are shown, and how many of them are obviously SPAM?

I see 5 BlogRush links, 3 are SPAM , or look like SPAM ( I am not going to click the links to find out; tip: if you write a blog post, don’t make the title read like SPAM if its not ) Thats 60% of the displayed links, not counting the 2 plugs for BlogRush itself.

(aside: Why is it so damn ugly? Adsense spam is bad enough but even adsense allows you to customize the look.)

Ok, if the other 2 links aren’t spam, they certainly come close to what i will refer to as sausage- links that may be of interest to the same demographic that reads my blog, but they are not in any way even remotely related to domaining.

Note: Don’t take the above rant as an implication that I’m not going to ad advertisements to the blog some day… but if I do, hopefully it will be in a way that enhances the site, or at least doesn’t detract from it. What a concept…

You can read more about LAMPcheck at the project’s home page, which I’m hosting on NomKit.

http://www.nomkit.com/welcome-to-the-lampcheck-project-home-page

This is one of my most used tools. I have it saved as a shortcut on my start menu so I can launch it anytime I want to brainstorm domain names. Its fast, free, and uses few system resources. I simply start it up, click Names/Add Names from the menu, and start typing in as many name ideas as I can come up with. I then let it check those while I leave the ‘Add Names’ dialog open so I can continue to add names while the first batch processes. It checks names in real time, so its very reliable and uses smart timing so as not to get your IP address blocked by the whois services. Unlike many freeware tools for domain names, its well thought out , relatively intuitive, and overall very well developed (There’s nothing worse than suffering through what looks to be someone’s visual basic 101 homework assignment).

2. Enom Review

I continue to be astonished with enom’s incredible ‘instant on’ DNS system that literally takes your site live in a matter of minutes after registration. No more 2 day wait for the registrar’s dns servers to kick in. I can find a name, register it with enom, create the site at site5, and browse live to it in 5 minutes - the longest part of the process is creating the site at site5’s admin panel. With some simple publishing tools, I can have decent content in under an hour. In a future post, I’ll detail my workflow and all the tools I use.

I wouldn’t recommend enom’s online tool set for finding domains, but it can’t be beat for registration and administration. It is definitely more expensive than most, but its won my loyalty for quality of infrastructure, DNS administration interface, API, and in my opinion, a relatively low noise factor for ads (unlike GoDaddy) , and minimal hassle for transferring domains after a sale (probably 2 clicks).

For all you *domain tasters, they also offer a low $.25 fee for cancellation through their API within the grace period.

3. DomainsBot.com Review

DomainsBot (with an s) - An improved NameBoy … I just started using this tool , but already it has proven worth the time. Use the ‘Advanced Search’ feature and limit your search to 2 or 3 max keywords, and it will find high quality available domains.

4. PremiumDrops.com Review

I started using this site because of the recommendation that it supported *domain tasting (which it effectively doesn’t since every request err’s out with a message that they have maxed their 10k limit) If you can ignore the expired certificates, buggy login (continues to tell me my email address is invalid) , confusing UI, and cranky list results it can actually find you bankable domains. I primarily use it for its ‘Pre-compiled list results’, not its search features, which appear either outright broken, or not worth the effort.

They also have a useful domain terms page which explains things like LP (link popularity, link saturation,etc) : http://www.premiumdrops.com/terms.html

5. ExpiredDomains Review ( freeware expired domain finder)

This is a freeware program that will find expired domains . Its UI is clunky and not intuitive for the casual user ( you need to create search ‘rules’ that you then apply against a downloaded set of expired domain names) , but its relatively fast and uses few CPU resources.

Others…

NameBoy

Not used so much anymore, but one of my old time favorites, if for no reason because it was the first ‘name spinner’ tool that I used that actually created bankable domains. Its still worth a shot, but I don’t think the algorithm has been updated in years.

*Domain tasting is something that I’ll delve into in a future post, but essentially it is a rather controversial but completely legal and legitimate process that allows you to register a domain for a few days for free or very low cost

http://www.alledia.com/blog/general-cms-issues/joomla-and-drupal-%11-which-one-is-right-for-you?/

Make sure you check out the IBM link at the bottom, a great run down of whats needed to implement a collaborative website quickly.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/osource/implement.html

http://www.feedbus.com/bookmarks/I’ve been canvassing the available scripts for social networking sites, and what I’ve found doesn’t look too promising. The best bet looks to be Drupal or Joomla with a community add-on.

Here are the ones I’ve come across. I’ve only installed phpIzabi which doesn’t appear to provide modular customizations beyond templating.

I’m not looking to build a myspace clone, which has apparently been the chief motivator for most of these products. I do want to add a community platform to my domain toolkit so that I can add a community without thinking too hard about it.

Here’s the list in no particular order

phpfox http://www.phpfox.com/

ablespace http://www.abk-soft.com/

e-friends http://www.alstrasoft.com/efriends.htm

Dolphin http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

phpIzabi (Alicia) http://www.phpizabi.net/

Handshakes http://www.dzoic.com/

BuddyZone http://www.vastal.com/buddy-zone-social-networking-script.html

Webscribble http://www.webscribble.com/products/webdate/features.shtml

Joomla + Community Builder http://www.joomlapolis.com/content/view/181/37/

Elgg - An open source networking platform - http://elgg.org:81/mod/mediawiki/wiki/index.php/About_Elgg 

Moodle - Course Management System for Social Learning http://moodle.org/ 

Social Bookmarking:

Akarru - http://trac.blogmemes.com/trac_script 

GetBoo http://www.getboo.com/about.php 

Feed Me Links http://feedmelinks.com/FAQ/  http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=153430 

DiggClone http://www.talkingpixels.org/diggclone/index.php

Link manager http://www.gentlesource.com/link-manager/

My Threads - http://mythreads.sourceforge.net/ 

Complete List of Bookmarking services http://www.feedbus.com/bookmarks/

Microsoft has made a Windows Live ID SDK that is compatible with ASP.NET, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

This is very exciting, as it promises that a new web site can instantly leverage Microsoft’s 380 million + base of installed WLID users. What this means is that the barrier to building membership has dramatically been reduced - I only have to prompt WLID visitors to my website to log on, instead of registering. If they are already logged in, I can greet them as an existing member.

I’ll be hacking with this SDK in the coming weeks and will provide updates. The biggest question to me is whether this service will require ongoing partner fees. I found one question on a live forum that remains unanswered. If it does, its a deal breaker for new startups and domainers who want to churn out membership sites. I’d suggest they start the fees at 10k+ membership. This would vastly grow their partner user base and make WLID a standard in a short period. Barring this, WLID will go the way of passport as smaller sites will simply use OpenID, which is already being used by a claimed 4500+ sites.

Some background:

Windows Live ID is essentially the next version of passport, which aimed to be a single sign on service that could span Microsoft partner domains. If I created a site and wanted to leverage passport’s existing authenticated user base, I could pay Microsoft about 10k/year+ for the privilege. They in turn would give me an SDK and an encryption key that would activate the service for my domain. (this is in general how it worked, if someone knows the pricing schedule and specifics, please comment).

Since Windows Live Id was first announced, it has not had a similar partner program, so was limited to only Microsoft’s so called online services which include MSN, Hotmail, and the Live.com services which now include refreshed versions of MSN services plus a ream of new online products intended to compete with google+ (google + the web 2.0 startups)

Here’s some interesting things to note:

• 35% of all the domains that were listed sold. ( 157 / 450 )
• Of the ones that sold, 82, or slightly more than half, sold for more than
  their reserve.
• 75, or slightly less than half of those that sold, had 1 bidder and
  sold for their reserve.
• The auction pulled in 24% of the total reserves of all auctions.76% of the
  auction assets were left unsold.
• The average sold domain sold for 45% of its reserve

Either there are a lot of domainers that are over-estimating
their portfolio values, or the auction didn’t pull in enough heavy hitters. I
vote for the former, and the fact that the quality of domains were fairly
mediocre.

I attended the auction live for the first 3 or 4 hours (I believe they were nearly to the 200th domain on the list) , and then caught the remaining bidding online.

Jay has seen a lot of blog press recently, and I wanted to summarize here some of that feedback as well as my own thoughts on how it could have been made just a tad more profitable.

1. Attract rich people.

Although Invention.com ($500k) , and Rebates.com ($1 million) sales were exciting to watch, there appeared to be only 2 bidders (from where I was sitting) that came to the auction specifically for those domains. Why is an auction necessary if you can’t generate enough public interest to make the hassle of a public auction worth it for the seller?

2. Talk Revenue.

Don’t ignore the revenue and business models of the domain’s site. There was only casual mention of a handful of sites’ revenues, and even those mentions were made as an after thought after the bidding had begun.

3. Don’t spend more on catering than on the auctioneer.

To add some additional clarity to that rather harsh statement, don’t hire one who is apparently more accustomed to auctioning used cars than domains. Promoting domain metrics with phrases such as “look at the google on that one’ doesn’t give a seller much of a comfort level that there was due diligence paid to the promotion of their precious domain.

4. Don’t take your online bidders for granted.

Do a dry run of the live auction system, and give those poor people some time to actually bid. There just may be some online bidders that are trying to bid up the house, and calling the auction based on house interest is going to guarantee that you just reduced your net. There was much positive feedback about the online auction, but I saw it from both ends and from my perspective, the online bidders were at a disadvantage. I don’t have the stats, but although there were 4 times the number of people bidding online than those in the house, the house appeared to me to have won most of the bidding wars.

5. Don’t attach a lot of importance to Sedo’s ‘most wanted domain’ list, and ‘approval ratings’ gained from surfers’ assessment of a domain’s worth.

LoveStories.com supposedly got a 85% approval rating, and was ‘#19 on Sedo’s Most Wanted Domain list’ , yet it received not a single bid. The only thing that matters is bidders. The number and quality of bidders. Thats it. If you can’t get someone to raise a paddle or type in a bid and press ’submit’, the name is worthless.

6. Make the live chat open to active bidders and sellers only.

7. Limit the number of domains that one person can submit.

Are (6) domains similar to ‘<your_city_name_here>Housing.com really needed? You mean there were nothing else that qualified that would have brought in more than the 7K+ (combined) that these did?

8. Be cautious about encouraging low reserves.

Instead, place those efforts into recruiting higher quality domains and more sophisticated sellers that are grounded in the realities of the market.

Nearly half of the 157 sold domains sold for reserve, meaning they had one bidder who submitted the minimum price. Besides an indication of either low quality domains or low public interest, or both, a seller who cut their reserve has no reason to do so in the future, and little reason to stay with the same auction house.

9. Provide venue and category specific offerings.

ManhattanPersonals.com, CanadaBeer.com, and HollywoodHousing.com are not only geographically diverse, but are category diverse and are unlikely to draw enough interest to drive any one of these much more than reserve. In the cases of these 3, none of them sold.

10 . Increase bid increments.

$50 increments can mean lots of bidding, lots of wasted time, smaller result. Jay is talking $100 increments next time. I’d like to see $500 increments.

For Jay Westerdal official auction results, see his blog