Kevin Muldoon

I traded websites for years at the SitePoint Marketplace and have continued to use their new site Flippa once they moved most of their services there.

It remains the best place available to buy and sell websites. I’ve found it really difficult to sell domains there though you can sell pretty much any website there. I’ve been keeping an eye on Flippa recently for any decent websites to buy.

A few sales have caught my eye. A blackberry community was a steal at $5,000 but although I recently purchased a blackberry, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about it every week and think it would have been difficult to find good writers for the site.

KeyboardForums.com is also being sold just now for a few thousand, which is a decent price when you consider how good the domain name is. The design is really cool though that will be obsolete when you upgrade to Vbulletin 4. When you consider the price of getting a new design and getting a new owned license for the forums you need to spend about $1,000; and that’s before you even try to monetize a site which I believe will be difficult to monetize until it gets larger. So again, I decided not to bid.

The last site I was looking at was Codnation.net. I’m a huge Call of Duty fan so it would have been easy to run. I did bid up to $3,000 but I was reluctant to go any higher as it will be hard to make money from a site like that. Most of your regulars are going to be teenagers or adults who already have the game, so it’s difficult to push any products to them. It would be a good place to promote other websites you own though, which is why I wanted it. Though I’d rather spend cash on websites which are going to bring in money on a monthly basis.

Research, Research, Research

Unfortunately, like eBay, Flippa has loads of junk for sale. In fact, the majority of listings are junk. People are spending a few hours building a site and then listing it for sale. Others are waiting for an affiliate commission to go through and then making ridiculous claims that the site will make thousands per month (but they are willing to sell it just now for a few hundred). Most people in this game and can spot these cons a mile away but I’ve seen a few people being duped.

False information is also a big problem for Flippa. I think it would be good if people could report things which are blatantly false. For example, I see many people using freely available designs which have been downloaded and used on thousands of websites and then claim that the design is unique. And unless you do your research, you won’t know otherwise. In fact, even if you do you might not spot it. I bought a cheap forum for a few hundred bucks a few years ago because it has some activity and a decent design. It was only later that I found out it was a free design being used by many communities but I just couldn’t find the design elsewhere when I looked into it before bidding.

Traffic and revenue stats are also heavily inflated on the site. Though if you ask for evidence you should be able to avoid being ripped off.

However, there are still some bargains about. I’ve noticed that sellers initially make their reserves and buy it nows unrealistic but towards the end of the sale they drop their prices, particularly if the auction isn’t getting many bids.

I’m working on launching my new blog soon, which will focus on the WordPress platform. Therefore, I’m not too bothered if I pick up a good bargain or not just now. In fact, it’s maybe better if I don’t so that I can put all my energy into my new blog.

Though if I do pick anything up I’ll let you all know

Kev

The other day I sold BloggingTips.com, one of my main sites and one which I have founded close to 3 years ago. I listed the site for just before Christmas though the auction only ended at the start of this week.

I was happy with the sale. Not only did I get a decent price for it, it was also bought by Zac Johnson, a well known affiliate marketer who I have spoke with a few times over the last few years via email. I was really glad that someone like him bought it as you never know how smoothly a sale is going to go through when you don’t know the person. There are a lot of scammers and timewasters out there so it was good knowing I wouldn’t have to worry about that.

I’ve already started developing my new site, which will focus on modifying WordPress. I’ve just threw up a basic design and logo just now as I don’t want to invest too much into the design until the site takes shape. I’ve written one article so far but I plan on writing a dozen or so good articles before launching and will probably do a few guest posts on larger blogs to push the launch (including BloggingTips itself).

I’ll also be buying a new pc as I’ve had the same laptop for close to 3 years. Been looking at the Apple iMac 27″ all in one but I’ve read a lot of reports with problems on it, which is a shame as I really like the look of it. Though due to these problems, my heads turning towards getting a good desktop pc and either a really good 27″ or 30″ monitor, or alternatively, two 24″ monitors.

With regards to BloggingTips, I think it was time to move on. It will allow me to work on new things and I can use some of the cash from the sale to invest in some new websites. I have looked a lot into getting involved more with PPC marketing but I still think my future online lies in writing as it feels less like work.

Best of luck to Zac with BloggingTips – I’m sure he will do really well with it

Kevin

Last week I wrote about how annoyed I was that Azoogle wanted me to sign up for a third time as my account had been locked (due to inactivity). As I explained in my post last week, it seemed that they wanted me to do that because they couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of reactivating my account themselves.

I’m not sure if they saw my post here (I doubt it) or if the person in the helpdesk spoke to their manager about my account but I was very surprised and pleased to receive an email from an Azoogle Affiliate Manager today apologising for the support I have received so far.

The affiliate manager explained that since I opened my account (in 2006) they have changed a lot of their sign up requirements so they made the decision to make older affiliates who weren’t active sign up again. I can kind of understand this process as it undoubtedly saves them a lot of time though I do think that they should reactivate an account right away if an affiliate requests it.

That being said, I need to give some kudos to them for contacting me and reactivating my account. I value customer support a lot so I am pleased that my initial view of their support team seems to be wide of the mark; and hopefully I can make some good money through them.

Someone from their affiliate team also spoke to me on msn for 30 minutes explaining what they do, how they support affiliates and advice on what offers to target etc. I might test out some of their offers and build some mini sites around them. Could be a few months until traffic comes in and I can see what is converting well; then I can optimise the site.

Anyway, glad I can try Azoogle out now as most of the top affiliates use them

I’ve been doing a bit of research into PPC marketing recently. I have promoted affiliate products for close to 10 years now but I have mostly did this through websites rather than just landing pages and PPC marketing.

So I tried to sign up to Azoogle Ads 2 weeks ago to see what offers were there I could promote. After completing the whole sign in form I was told that I had already signed up and my account was locked. I contacted them and more than 10 days later was told that it was locked because I hadn’t been active with them and I would have to resubmit again.

Since I had already went through the whole registration process only to be told I couldn’t sign up with the email address (which I use for all my affiliate accounts) I asked if they could just activate the account I already had. Another day or so later I was told:

As it has been a fairly long time since you have used your account we do need you to reapply.
Please use another email address than one that would link you to your old account and we can change it later.

This is complete bullshit in my opinion. Their support team just can’t be bothered unlocking my account so they want me to go through the whole registration process again, sign up with a different email address and then contact them to ask them to change my email address. Do I really want to go through all that only to be told that they can’t do it and I would just have to use the new account. Their support team didn’t even have the balls to reply with a name, they just ended each email with ‘Thank you, AZOOGLE HELP’.

I had heard good things about Azoogle but this experience has soured my opinion of them. If that’s the way they treat new affiliates they can stick their network as far as I’m concerned. I really have no time for companies who can’t be bothered to help their clients. I have no idea what their general support is like but this kind of thing is usually a good indication of the support you can expect so I’m going to save myself some hassle and work with an affiliate company who wants to work with me.

UPDATE:

Azoogle send apology and reactivate my account

A few days later after I wrote this post an affiliate manager from Azoogle contacted me and apologised for the poor support I received. They also reactivated my account. Follow the link above to read more

I am selling another website via Flippa (formerly SitePoint marketplace). Although it costs $19 for a basic listing and much more to give it exposure, it is by far the best place to list a website or domain for sale and you get a much better response than listing a site on a forum.

I am selling my Twitter blog Time To Tweet. In my last sale I chose 2-3 weeks as the end date and used a buy it now. This time I decided to end the auction within 4 days, remove the buy it now and pay an extra $30 to display the blog for sale on the home page. Within a few hours it has already had 4 or 5 bids so I shouldn’t have any problems selling it.

I am also selling Mixa.org, a great little 4 letter domain name which I picked up in an expiring domain auction last year. I’m sure it would prove to be a great domain name for a music related website. I have a dozen or so 3 or 4 letter domains so it will be interesting to see if Flippa attracts domain traders as well as website traders.

I have been doing a lot of planning and research the last few weeks into what I will be doing workwise over the next few months. The first thing I did was decide to get rid of any sites which take up my time but aren’t part of my long time strategy.

Therefore I sold ProTycoon.com, a blog I purchased last year but never really updated, a few days ago. Thankfully, I managed to recoup what I paid for it.

I am also planning on selling Time To Tweet in a day or so too, a Twitter related blog which I started a few months ago. I’ve managed to build up close to 10,000 Twitter followers for the sites associated Twitter account, which should help with the sale of the site.

Selling up sites which take up my time allow me to spend more time on my main blog Blogging Tips. Today saw the release of my first e-book through Blogging Tips: ‘Basic HTML : An Introduction to HTML for Bloggers‘. It’s a 63 page book which covers the basics of HTML, something which I think most bloggers need to learn the basics of. It should prove to be a useful resource for readers and a good traffic source for the site for years to come. I plan on writing more guides and e-books for the site over the next few months.

Another site I hope to develop more is Blog Themes Club, a WordPress theme store which I recently launched with my associate Sarah Anderson. I am planning on putting all my energy into both of these sites over the next few months, not least because they complement each other. I think it will be a long time before Blogging Tips makes a good income from advertising, certainly not the level of income I want to generate. However, the site should prove to be a great place to sell blogging related products directly on the site or indirectly through a sister site.

Lastly, by selling these sites I hope it allows me to post on this blog more often. Though, no doubt the posts will continue to be random!

Kevin

From PC Weenies.

WebHostingTalk, probably the largest web hosting community on the web, was recently attacked by a group of malicious hackers and had their whole database (including backups) destroyed.

The hacker(s) was able to destroy the offsite backup, onsite backup and the main database. It’s a stark reminder how backing up your website is important but I also think it’s quite worrying. I mean, if the largest hosting community on the web cannot stop hackers destroying everything then what chance do small website owners like myself have.

Smaller websites are perhaps slightly less likely to be attacked but there is still a chance it could happen. A few years ago my poker forums got attacked by Turkish hackers who found an exploit in a chat script which I had integrated with the site. They shut down the site, wrote ‘Fuck USA’ and linked to their hacker community. I just wish they spent a few minutes on my site to read my about page and realise that I’m from Scotland!!

I have my own server and a backup hard drive which backs up all my sites every night. However, I know I need to make offsite backups more. This is something I think most webmasters are guilty of not doing. I just get out the habit of doing it because the sheer volume of data my sites take up. It just isn’t practical to backup too often as it would literally take me a day of downloading to back all my sites up with my current connection.

I have already paid extra to have my own server backed up my hosting company but the attack on WHT shows that this clearly isn’t enough. I don’t mind paying a bit more for peace of mind, particularly when it comes to my livelihood.

When you make a living online, it’s important that you take steps to protect your online portfolio. Which is why I am considering looking into an online service which does offline backups. Chris Beasley recommends Mozy but I’m gonna have a look at some alternatives and check out some reviews etc before I make my decision.

I’ll let you know if I find an reliable affordable service for backing up files offline.

Link : WebHostingTalk Attack Details

I had a DNS cache issue the other day which was stopping me viewing my own websites. I assumed my websites were all down but that’s not the case. My host, WiredTree, recommended a great site for checking if your website is really down. It’s called Downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

It’s a quick and easy way of seeing if your website or blog is online or if it’s just a cache or browsing issue you have. Soe for example, typing in
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/kevinmuldoon.com will tell you if this blog is down.

I’m sure some of you will find it useful

I decided to change the direction of my blog ProTycoon. The blog had started life as a making money online blog and when I took over the site a month ago I continued writing about those topics. However, making money online I don’t really enjoy writing about.

There are hundreds of making money online blogs out there already. I didn’t want to just repeat what has been said time after time on other blogs but I didn’t feel like I had anything to add either. Which is why I decided to change the focus of the blog to Domain Names, a topic I enjoy reading about myself.

There’s a chance I will lose a few subscribers because of this topic change but the blog is still pretty new anyways so it isn’t a major concern. Previously I was finding updating the blog a chore so I know this will prove to be a wise decision and I’m excited about developing the site more.

You can read more about my decision at the link below.

Link : ProTycoon Changes Direction