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Google has a seperate classifier for parked domains to deindex them.

April 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I was looking through some post from a programmer friend.

Then I saw this.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-april-2012-15023.html

In the post Matt Cutts basically says some sites were de-indexed from Google.

They mistakenly classified some sites as parked domains & deindexed them all.

I know it’s sort of known but this just reinforces why you should think about development of a few properties.
Not minisites, not one pagers, but develop.

Google controls most parking feeds so they make the rules.
They changed it so you can’t use a redirect because if you use a frame they can’t deindex you.
You can’t promote it, you can’t advertise, you can’t tell friends, you can’t control your property.
In this situation how can you make more with your properties?

 

Filed Under: Development

Few things to catch up on in 2012 with development

April 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Hello guys it’s now 2012 & I’m going to try to increase your awareness for development. I do park a lot of domains that I can’t development but still always looking to develop a few more properties. These are things that I believe you should be looking into as you develop.

1. Use scripts CMS etc to create platforms.
Who cares if domainers think you aren’t a developer because you don’t design everything yourself. Your goal is to create functional sites that users like & use. Now scripts are cheaper than ever & in abundant. You can try Hotscripts.com or even CodeCanyon

2. Think Mobile (Smartphone)
Many theme developers & script makers are creating responsive themes and responsive designs already. This means the platforms will run out the box smartphone compatible. This allows you to increase your viewship.

3. Think Apps
Many scripts even now offer development of iPhone or Android apps for not much more. This is great because it reduces costs if the developer of the script is involved.

4. Advertise guys
One common thing I’ve seen is people who create great sites & expect everything to be organic. Promote yourself. Even if you find a site to put your banners on for $100 a month do it. Facebook advertising is great too and budgets are flexible.

5. Facebook or Social in general
Think about Social Media marketing. Try to incorporate many of the marketing tools available to you. Aquire targeted audiences via Facebook, Twitter, Mixi, Cyworld, or whatever.

Domains are great but if you get in a conversation with marketers be prepared to talk to them on their level. How can one compare domains to other marketing initiatives if they are unfamiliar with other mediums? I’ve started out trying to prep whoever reads my posts with simple introductions to develop. I believe you start simple get used to looking at results & it expands your knowledge. By know you guys should be pros though.

I’m spending most of writing time going over the Social Media expansion here in Japan.
You can find some of my latest writings at

InternationalSMM.com (International Social Media Marketing)

Filed Under: Development

Mark Zuckerberg does surprise visit to Tokyo

March 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Mark Zuckerberg does a surprise visit to Tokyo.

Thought you guys might be interested.

http://internationalsmm.com/88/japans-social-sphere-flairs-up-as-zuckerberg-does-a-surprise-visit-to-tokyo/

I went to the last event just two weeks ago.

Filed Under: Facebook

Why is $3,000 to $5,000 the sweet spot for domains?

March 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’ve missed a few sales last year always doing research on what I want for domains. On the contrast most buyers reaching out to me offer what they expect to pay for a domain. I began everything on the web as a developer so it was really common for me to register domains that I thought I could develop for my clients. Also back in 1999 ~ 2001 I didn’t know the value of domains I just registered what I really had in mind to develop.

These domains are starting to get request since last year. I’ve sold a few even a dot net or two to my surprise. The thing I’ve learned is people want to pay under $5,000. I had a much easier time selling the domains I just agreed to $3,000 to $5,000. Even for some good terms since I still have technology & finance related domains I’m starting to wonder should I just price them at those rates & sell on Flippa?

I also used this site http://dnsaleprice.com/ to look at sale history while back & really confirms lots of sales happen at that $3,000 to $5,000 price point.

Filed Under: Domain Names

New blog & stuff

March 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I started a new blog recently. It’s International Social Media Marketing. I thought it was perfect timing since Facebook is holding it’s first FMC in Tokyo on Friday. I just got my ticket & pretty excited to go.

My personal Facebook story is whether the readers of this blog like it or not these young kids built up an empire in the same time frame that we were all parking our domains***. I was actually in Boston when they launched Facebook & knew it was a student only site.  Many of the top people in the ad industry will be there.

It’s an all day event with a meet greet & mingling afterwards & wondering if Mark Zuckerberg will make a surprise visit. I dub this Facebook Japan week. The digital environment in Tokyo will change after this.

***Point is WE say we have the best but not many of us are doing much with it. WE need to do more in terms of development.

Filed Under: Facebook

Facebook advertising tips

March 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been pretty successful with Facebook advertising & wanted to share some tips with the few that read this blog.

When creating a Facebook page to get a custom URL for the page you need 25 people to like the page
If you don’t have friends to like the page use FaceBook marketplace ads.
Update content on the page for at least about a week or two then run ads.
At the end place a call to action like “Like us now!!” in Japanese it’s 「いいねして下さい』.
As you get more clicks & the click through rate goes up your CPC actually goes down.
Usually if you target the right people to your page you can get those 25 likes for less than $10. Yep that’s right I just ran some ads for a Boston based project & wanted to get the custom URL. It cost me $8.50.

Before you change the custom URL please think about it carefully. Once you decide on it IT CANNOT BE CHANGED. Capitalization periods everything. I just applied for the US trademark for this project so I want to make sure I get all the URLs. This time it wasn’t an IDN but sometimes with IDN projects we are competing with for that name.

For example you own Travel.com katakana in Japanese. Getting just “travel” is long gone but also even getting TravelCom you have to compete with the English site for the URL. One might get TravelCom the other might use TravelDotCom. One of my IDN sites I had to put Dot in the middle.

I know a lot of old people might swear off FaceBook but you are missing the new generation of internet users by not catering to it. I’ve been developing web sites since 1997 & we have so much more ways to market than ever before. If someone downs a way for you to increase your revenue simply ask if they can provide you alternative “NEW” ways.

Filed Under: Domain Names

Congrats J-Seed for New Japanese incubator Venture Generation

March 1, 2012 By 2 Comments

Last night I went to the launch party for J-Seed’s new incubator Venture Generation in Ginza.

http://www.j-seed.com/news/2012/02/venture-generation.html

Tokyo, Japan, February 8, 2012 – (JCN Newswire) – J-Seed Ventures, Inc. announced plans to support the entrepreneurial community in Tokyo with the March launch of “Venture Generation,” a start-up incubator targeting early-stage Japanese ventures and foreign companies entering the Japanese market.  Located in central Tokyo near Tokyo Station, Venture Generation was specifically designed to support entrepreneurs in Japan by offering a platform from which these companies can achieve their growth goals much faster than they would on their own.
First, Venture Generation is a co-working office environment, providing space at low monthly cost for companies that do not yet have significant cash flow or which are trying to minimize their start-up costs.  The facility has dedicated, furnished workstations, meeting rooms, Wi-Fi, and office equipment.  The central location will allow companies convenient access to Tokyo’s main business districts.  Companies within the Venture Generation incubator also have the advantage that they can scale flexibly since seating spaces can increase incrementally while they are growing.  This flexibility and the short-term contracts enable members to concentrate on building and driving their business.
It was a good crowd & I even ran into someone who based some of his company development off of my previous work. That’s really inspirational.
I also caught up with the WIXI gang & had a few with them, they always have quite a few new things coming up as they expand the market.
Congrats Jeff, Yoneyama  San & of course my Kohai Ryo. Keep expanding the venture market of Japan. I came from a J-Seed company so I’ll always support what J-Seed does.
Here’s a few pix from last night.
Here’s a few of the pix from last night
Filed Under: Domain Names, Events

Adsense for domains killed off my thoughts

February 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google as most of readers probably know already is killing of Adsense for domains.

I like to park my extra domains & I also support WIXI which is the first domain parking company in Japan but…

I have to face reality, it’s ALL About the clients.

Throughout the years I keep reading domainers who parked their domains use terms like “quality traffic”, “My Traffic” “Conversions”.

Truth is Google has dumbed down domain parking. I’ve wrote many comments saying when SEM try to optimize Content Network first thing we do is turn off ads to parked pages. This wasn’t an option originally. Also ads on parking pages usually don’t convert. This statement will be the same across anyone running SEM ads.

From the domainers point of view Google is killing off it’s bread & butter. To people in SEM or to the clients, it’s not going to be a big deal. You’ll get less, drop some domains which Google won’t index anyway, & that’s it.

On Webmaster world or SE Roundtable you’ll see viewpoints of people handling these ads.

Again I have plenty of domains parked, but I can’t say my parked domains is bringing any type of “Quality conversions”. First no one has the conversion data except for Clients, People in SEM, & Google. I’m one of those folk in SEM it’s just a reality.

Filed Under: Domain Parking

WordPress Tips & IDNs

February 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

I’ve been having good results on developing & wanted to share some tips on wordpress.

I’ve used so many CMS systems since 1999 I can’t count. Currently I primarily use wordpress even the first version of IDN Forums had a wordpress blog in 2005. At the time there were only a few domain bloggers. My other sites at the time ran on Drupal, Mambo, or even on phpbb at the time. Anyhoot with the latest buzz on WordPress like it’s something new I’d like to share a few tips to ease you from plenty of frustration.

1. Buy a membership to a Theme site like Studio Press or Elegant Themes or even Graph Paper Press. One Price & get all their themes will save you in the long run. I used Studio Press since the month it originally came out. Truthfully I’ve made my money back tenfold. The Genesis themes are not as easy to modify as non Framework themes but they have really great support.

2. Custom Post Types – These things suck. Really they do. There are regular posts & Custom Post Types. Before all plugins attached themselves to regular post. Now Plugin makers want their plugins to be attached to Custom Post Types. The problem with that is that you have to modify every aspect of your site to get the Custom Post Type to act like a regular post. Custom Post Type Plugins don’t always show up on the front page of your site or even are selectable in lots of style options you want to make. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you get there.

3. Keep your installation up to date. I actually do it for several other blogs but the IDN readership is low so I haven’t exactly kept up with the Jones here. Keeping it up to date will have a benefit to search as Google does look at version numbers in their algorithm it seems.

4. Don’t use the same plugins you used 3 years ago. Test out new plugins. You might surprise yourself that some new plugin developer has made a better SEO or Analytics Plugin. Test Test Test.

5. Buy Good Plugins. Go to a site like CodeCanyon & but plugins. If you use those is sites to dominate non English markets you can pretty much create some great sites. Also try to test out Free versions that have an upsell you might find a few great plugins that way.

6. Blogging is about being social. Another thing I don’t really stick to on this blog but do for others. Give credit to others & they will write about you. One of my sites I’ve pretty much has a over 80% rate of having Japanese give me a link back.

7. IDN compatible plugins. There used to be like 2, then about 3, 2 to 3 years ago. There’s about 10 plugins on WordPress that enhance IDN Compatibility.

A little bit busy this week, still the beginning of the year, but wanted to feed yall with knowledge. (Hopefully) I’ll post one of the sites after I create about 4 of them.

Filed Under: Development, Domain Names

One month results in development

January 31, 2012 By 2 Comments

Quick post basically for me to look back at this later in the year.

Took an IDN that wasn’t being updated & revamped it & worked a bit harder on Social Media strategies.

Some of the results are

1. Grew a FaceBook community from scratch since January 5th to January 31st from 0 to over 300 members
2. Grew a Twitter account from 250 Followers to over 400 Followers in one month
3. Generated more than 30 retweets from influential people in that vertical (Important & can’t stress this)
4. Obtained almost no site backlinks other than Social
5. Generated over 80 engaged users in FaceBook (Likes, Shares, etc)
6.  Concentrated on usability & making the site better for users to use.

Results
Site went from 30 uniques a day to 150 uniques a day
70% of the traffic comes from Social Media
Main term ranking rose from past 100 to 19 on both Google & Yahoo.

The goal is not to immediately start sticking in ads to get paid. It’s to create a network of sites that have authority & users use. The subject of the first site isn’t even important, it’s creating a system. FaceBook allows me to retain my target users & immediately inject my content into their content timeline. By having authority figures in those verticals post reshare or use your Social Media pages it builds authority to you site.

I’ve found a person who is a big collector of the subject of one of my domains. I’ll create the system, do the Social Media marketing aspect & create content guidelines. He’s create the content. I’ll duplicate this with others.

I know some of you are developing & I appreciate those who read this & continue to control your domains.

Filed Under: Facebook
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