Blogging Along

So a nice sale this week through SEDO from JobsinHull.co.uk

Although I’d of love to have kept it I needed the cash flow and also focus (as usual) on fewer projects. Not sure what my biggest sale of a domain is but I know it’s never been over £1k  and £650 was a good buy and sale in my eyes.

Over the past 2 months I have been at “The One Point Ltd” working on and batting projects about. To fast forward to today I now work with The One Point on their marketing and development. With me been into the whole SEO, mini site, back linking, websites, VoIP, domains etc this was an ideal opportunity to gain a desk away from working from home, be in a real office environment, have a good team to work with and help set my aims on target with The one Points and my own goals.

One of the first deals stuck was with my HullFencing.co.uk site that daily is getting leads by phone, email and the unknown shop visits now to a local Hull company HPR Fencing Ltd. Giving them a unique number from The One Point so we can monitor our marketing from the site helps reinforce our no brainier method and costs for a Hull Domain mini site.

The monthly fee covers, domain renewals, hosting, editing, a new phone number and any SEO to help propel the site on to page 1 of search engines for key phrases.

On the affiliate front I’m a bit disappointed with BlueDress.co.uk not converting at all and a slight dip in adsense rev too.

This month (a bit delayed i know) Humber TV will move from Mk1, BETA, or what ever you want to call it and should be a nice breeze of fresh air but most importantly offer some great services to the Humber area. In video advertising, commercial videos, DVD production for distribution, Media company access to help with advertising packages for their clients and enduser media submission.

To finish off on it was nice to warn KCOM about a major security hole for email and hosting accounts with Karoo accounts. Hopefully they will be on the case and enforced a fix by now.

Completed a few short 45 second long promo videos for the Freedom centre. These just highlighted future events and turned out really nice. Gave me a boost on pushing this type of video to other businesses and the good thing is they can use them on their web site and are featured on Humber.TV too.

Looking to cut back on my domains I’m letting a lot drop that in my eyes I could do without renewing as 10 would cost £70 for 2 years! On the flip side all my Hull domains are now listed on HullDomians.co.uk and give the ability for visitors to show an interest and place an offer in through a form system. To start my campaign off to either rent them out or sell them I’ve placed an Ad in the Hull Daily Mail for a week starting 19th February.

Just bought 2 domains YorkshireSEO.uk and YorkshireDesign.co.uk for £60 which I thought was a bargain and should be able to get them ranking and sold on to a local business. (if I don’t use them myself)

Looking through my SAGE accounts I noticed I’d dropped a bombshell and missed nearly everyones hosting renewals from last year. #fail But should be a nice boost for a few bills I have come up or have now.

I took a punge and turned off my shop plugin for JokeShop.org.uk and made posts as normal posts but mirrored the path so not to upset Google etc. Instead of actually selling products myself I’m giving” Paid on results” affiliate links from Silly Jokes. Traffic from my site is directed to them I make a sale and I get a cut of it but has proven shite TBH.

I may turn the shop back on if by the end of this month I don’t make one sale.

I’m quite a laid back “do anything for anyone” kind of guy, but over the past few months I’m seeing more and more reason to look after No1 more. Dog eat dog world it’s turning into I just need to look at every situation a little more before jumping in to the rescue or offering.

I found my CV on an old memory stick and decided to apply for a few jobs in SEO, Marketing etc just to see what response I get as theirs no harm in trying to see what bites I get from it. I actually wouldn’t mind going into a decent company to work on SEO and online marketing for companies. I would do a bad job too! ;o)

I decided to pull the internet connection from Beverley as I was only using it twice a week for 1 or 2 hours and was costing £40 + a month. So just a waste really.

Final thought for me about my Hull Domains, I may need to educate business about mini sites and “do what you say on the tin” domains buy hopefully enough will get it and opt for the rent option to try and test.

Looking at ways to always make extra pennies from mini sites I was surprised to see £4-5 from a broadband site I’d set up a few years back. Looking into this a little more broadband clicks pay quite well from £1 to £5+ which does make it worth while.

Broadband in general and even mobile broadband isn’t really a niche no more and so >Geo<broadband.co.uk sites do well as they haven’t been tapped into that much as your Talk Talk’s BT’s and Virgins cover the whole UK.

proving that it does pay well and works I bought 3 domains of cities over 100’000 in population and setup 3 mini sites with a simple html template.

• LutonBroadband.co.uk
• BradfordBroadband.co.uk
• BrightonBroadband.co.uk

Once they show up in Search Engines and have a bit of age I’ll add the to a WordPress install and make regular posts to them about the pit falls and tips of broadband etc.  I’ve lost my login for Affiliate window and so need to send an email so that I can also add affiliate links which do pay more money but they have to sign up to get the commissions

Luton, Bradford and Brighton been fairly large towns should prove a popular search group with people online and if proven a winner easily cloned  ( not the content the idea ;o) )

Need to rant so here’s 1

-start rant-

Why do people think just because the phone isn’t agaist their ear its ok to DRIVE and use a mobile by having it on speaker phone and holding it infront of them AGGGHhhhhh.

-end of rant-

New Year and New goals will be in the form of a marketing service that weirdly enough rolls all the things I have been doing for the past 2 years into one! SEO, Domains, mini sites, Video, Photos, Content writing etc They goals will be having a ques of businesses wanting to get involved.

First stop will be to create 3-5 example showcases of how it looks and works as everyone likes to see examples of anything they are buying into. FACT!

On the domain front I am letting a lot of them drop if I think they are way too much effort to even start to gain any revenue or are not gems. I would say 5% are niche domains / Websites like PlayParachutes.co.uk (not dev yet) that will become cash cows for advertising rev or actual e commerce sites selling products on stock. The other 95% are the GEO domains like my HullBeds.co.uk which will be slowly moved over from the BIG ‘G’ to REAL – LOCAL companies where they will be featuring on other sites I have.

3 Words I hated since I started out in business in early 2008 is VAT, TAX and Books. If I could give anyone any advice in starting up a business, it’s “Get an accountant ASAP”. You may think £100-£200 a month to do ALL your accounts is steep but boy is it worth it in the end. It frees you up to do other work YOU get paid for and is one less stressful thing in your life.

Be careful (as I have found out) you do get shocking accountants that just don’t talk to you and you get some FAB ones.

Other Goals and plans that I do hope will help Humber TV are ones with local groups or business. I can offer News and video coverage to help promote their services and they can offer me the use of the facilities there. Maybe the use of  a Board room, meeting rooms, Gym, etc it’s a little bit of back scratching that costs both parties no cash.

As I always look at situations to see how they can be turned into profit, the snow and ice was a hard one but…..

I’ve noticed lots of gutting hanging off buildings / houses and thought they will need replacing in a week or so and decided to knock up a very quick single page website on “Guttering in Hull”.

HullGuttering.co.uk

I’m hoping as it is so niche that once indexed it will shoot to page one on search engines and get a few clicks to at least pay the domain reg fee back. I know for a fact businesses that fit guttering will have a busy few months ahead of themseleves!

Update: Since putting it LIVE it’s made £1 LOL but is on most phrases page 1, so we’ll see how it does when people start to call in the new year to get guttering fix or replaced.