Last year, I had to register to SEDO to be able to make an offer on an domain. The owner and I did some testing and I concluded that the domain, for me, was not worth it for the price he was asking. Also, the Canadian dollar took a beating around that time and did not want to invest that much money. Yes, I'm missing last summer 1:1 exchange rate.

Once the testing was done, I made an offer based on the traffic he was sending from that domain.

The seller also had another related domain with half the traffic for sale but not making that much per day from SEDO parking. I made an offer and he accepted(day 1).

I had to enter my PayPal information to be paid when parking domains but also when buying the domain.

Once the seller agreed to my price, SEDO sent me an email. From there, I had to first pay the SEDO(escrow) and select the registrar.

Day 2

I had to send info to switch registrar.

Day 3

Got the authorized code to transfer registrar.

Day 4

All the transfers were done and the seller was paid a few days later.

For the first domain, they did not transfer the domain to my chosen registrar for some reasons. It could had been me too. But, I needed to wait 60 days more to do redo the transfer. The second domain was okay. If you have the same registrar, it's faster.

I since done other transfers because it's fast and secure. When I sold one of my domain, I had to pay a 10% fee for the escrow service. This way, I'm protected.

The aftermath

After I taking possession of both domains, I noticed I was not getting the traffic I got from the stats from SEDO that the seller sent me on one of them. I was only getting 10%. How could that be? Why the major drop? Did he mislead me? One thing for sure, I was mad!

Up to that time, I never got any troubles with the seller based on the previous testing phase. I sent an email to the seller since I paid for x amount for the traffic.  I offered him 2 options: explanations or partial refund based on the traffic I was getting.

But if he was dishonest, I was also ready to out him in public for being dishonest. Reputation is hard to gain but easy to lose. However, that was my last course and I wanted explanations first since he was honest before. Thus, I gave him a chance to explained himself.

My email was not received well and he did not like the tone. After reading my email, I admit I was a little too  direct. "Screwed me over" reflected the feeling I had at that time. Plus, I was accusing him of being dishonest when using those words.  But, I could had posted to my blog while never giving him a chance to give me his side. After that, I apologized and I was more diplomatic when choosing my words. Before that first email, I did asked a few questions but he never really answered all of them properly while answering others correctly.

He offered explanations and he pointed out a mistake I had made when receiving the incoming traffic. Yes, I admit, that part was my fault. After I made the modifications, I was getting the right amount of traffic.

I received 2 more replies later on. In the first reply, he accused me to be the dishonest one and that it was his last reply. The second reply, a few minutes later,  was that he was going to contact everyone that was sending me traffic to that domain. I never replied to either of those replies.

The lesson: Choose you words carefully. For both of us, English was not our first language. Maybe I used word that was more misinterpreted on his side.

Dealing with existing traffic

For those curious, I was only processing domain.com/index.html?uid=9999 when I should had process domain.com/index.php?uid=9999.I had only seen the .html

When you setup a site, you should check the 404 errors more carefully. With all my previous pre-owned I had bought, I never had that situation like this one.

Dealing with SEDO traffic

SEDO will give you the traffic they actually count as traffic. When domains are parked, they will show ads thus sending traffic is against the TOS.

Both domains are still receiving a lot from many traffic exchange services thus SEDO is not counting them. I can't do anything about it either since it's it's not from me. I do get regular traffic from backlinks too.

Also, SEDO will show the total hits for the last 30 days. So, if the domain was added yesterday, SEDO will show that total in the "last 30 days". If you see a low amount, it could be higher than that.

With those 2 domains, 95% is non converting crap traffic. At least, by using a few NB offers, I was able to almost double my money within 3-4 months from those 2 domains. I must mentioned that the second domain did not convert well. But, I took a gamble and I won this time.

Conclusion

Buying domains with pre existing traffic from SEDO or other services is good IF you can know where it comes from first. If you are lucky, the traffic is not being manipulated in anyway.

Otherwise, you might be stuck with a high priced lame duck. If it happens, you can always build links to get better targeted traffic but you will need to be patient until Google counts them.

Now, I check the traffic but it's not the major stat I look at. I check the number of backlinks, name, what it was used for and.... if it's in my budget because both were more than what I pay for pre-owned domains.  

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When I launched MyStarterBlog in February, I converted a static WordPress blog to MSB. That blog had 200+ posts thus perfect to make an importing WP test. That site was not updated since mid March of 2008.

Unlike a conventional site, this one is mostly consisting of pictures so the content is not very search engine friendly for long tail keywords. I keep that site because it's a door to a niche that most IM might stay away.  If you have read my blog before, I wrote about that niche and blog once about it.

Some stats

Because that blog mostly relied on very cheap CPM ads for revenu, the loading speed is very important.  The more pages that are viewed, the better the visitor will stay or click on an ad.

The results are preliminary but I noticed that I had an increase in revenue of 66% versus February. Of course, the site was converted to MSB on February 21. I also changed host and February is shorter by a few a days.  Even if I take that into account, I can say that my revenu did overall increased.

To be fair, I checked my history and March is my biggest earning month so far. It beat the December record by 12% and January by 14%. Those were the 2 previous months with the highest earning. Also, a lot of people have Holiday vacation thus had more time to surf.

The page viewed for March was 3.34 pages/visit versus 2.50 pages in December.

The month of April/May will give me more data but I do expect to earn a little more from that site. I did not add links to that site for a very long time either.

Conclusion

Any additional increase in revenue is a  good thing in this economy even if it's small.

The upside of using MyStarterBlog now is that I don't have to deal with upgrading Wordpress anymore.

So, if you have a simple static WP blog, why not convert it to MyStarterBlog?

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Today, you might had noticed the Free Traffic Bar banner I put on the site. I started to play with it to see how I could use it to get free traffic to MyStarterBlog. Since I use my browser all day long, why not drive free traffic at the same time?

What is it?

The idea is simple: You install a plugin(Firefox, IE) that will show me a small toolbar ad in my browser. When I browse in Firefox, I earn credits that will show my own ads to others too. Now, I do expect the CTR(click trough  rates) to be low but would expect the conversion to buying MSB a little higher.

At this time, they have 45236 members. I'm guessing that a lot are Internet marketers but you can select the type of ads your want to be shown. This way, the ads are more targeted.  Plus, social bloggers could use that to their advantage by showing non money ads to be different.

Free vs Paid

The free version offer limited options unlike the paid version where you get a lot in return like free monthly credit, more ads, discount on ads....

I recommend that people try the free version first to see if they like it or not. After a few months you should reevaluate how much traffic you gained.

The one time offer

But if you have the money to spare, you should consider the first one time offer. It's not cheap since it's $297 but does offer 1 million credits, 25000/credits each month after that and more. I did not think about it so it's too late for me. But, I can still upgrade later but with 500 000 credits and lose some of the exclusive.

Here is how it can pay out for you if you buy the 1 Million credits.

You sell a $7 ebook.  If .001% of the 45000 buys your ebook, the one time offer would pay for itself.

45 x $7 = $315

I can be wrong but the 1 million credits would show your ad more often than not in front of users.

Btw, they do offer other lower monthly plans: $3.99, $9.99, $19.99.

Conclusion

In my case, my ad for MyStarterBlog is being shown to "Web Site Management::Content Management Systems/Blogs" only. If I can make a few sales just for browiing, I don't have any problem with that.

Watch the video and download the Free Traffic Bar.

P.S. I made this post Part 1 because I expect to make an updated post later on.

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Last year, I started to buy all kind of expired domains. In most cases, I never heard back from former owners. But for the few times I did, I got 2 different kind of messages. So, this post is for former owners that want their domains back.

Why you lost your domain name?

If you lost your domain name, it's your fault not the new buyer. The main reason is that you forgot to renew the domain. It's that simple in 99.9999% of the time. So, check that your domain is using current payment information or your contact email with the registrar is still good. In many cases, the host/registrar are the same.

Contacting the new owner

It's not STEALING so don't accuse the buyer of that in your first email. Learn ALL the facts first.  If you are polite, the new buyer will consider this. At least, I do. If you are a jerk, this will not be in your favor.

That's the 2 kind of message I got: Polite(mostly) and Jerks.

Getting the domain back

In a few cases, I had won the auction but the new owner was able to get it back during a few days. Check if you can first from your registrar.

Making an offer

If the owner agree to sell you the domain back, make a reasonable offer.

In most cases, I paid more than the registration fee. For example, I paid last year $250 for a domain name but I earned it back within a few months. It had traffic exchange but still some traffic I could use.

Also, I do research before and after buying a domain. But, sometimes the domain is parked because I did not have time to get around to it after it was bought.

I don't work for free so that's where the reasonable offer comes in. I want to be paid for my time and for the price I paid for the domain. It's only fair and it's business.

Buying the domain

If you and the seller agree, you should use an escrow service. In my case, I used SEDO. They charged me a 10% fee. I think it's worth it since one or the other might back down or not complete the transaction.

Conclusion

Being polite will be more in your favor to get your domain back. Those that buy older domains will use them to make money whatever the name is.

For example, Google does not mean anything yet it's making money because of what it offer on the site. It will be the same with your domain name.  You might just had use it for personal use but I can use a domain to make money from it.

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Just a quick post to mentioned that AuctionSiteWriter v2.1.0 is now available.

It offer new features for MyStarterBlog:

• Add: In Write auction site, support MyStarterBlog: This will generate a MSB blog and then you can load it into MSB to add more content and use it's themes.  You will need the MSB eBay Plugin from NicheMate
• Add: In Plugin Code Builder, added the support for  MyStarterBlog(default)
• Add: In Site Statistics, you can analyse the WhoIS Expires date only, open the selected sites in batch in your default browser
• Add: In Write auction site, you have access to a simple HTML editor for the template, Build was change to Generate to be like MyStarterBlog
• Change:  In Write auction site, support up to 200 words
• Change: Many visual aspect has been made

The main goal was to quicly add support for MyStarterBlog. So, instead of creating a phpBay API site, I will create a MSB blog. I will go to each auction sites I created with phpBay or BANS and convert them to MSB. I will be using the auction theme that buyers get with MSB. They still need to buy the MSB eBayPlugin.

Here is the thing: Big G deindexed most BANS, phpBay sites last year in a vast swoop of the hand. Most of my older sites were affected and some from late last year.

Even with that, January was my record earning month with just Yahoo, MSN traffic. Yes, I added a few auction sites since that but the last 3 months was mostly spent on programming MSB.

Using ASW with the template, I will generate a basic auction site. Then, by using MSB, I will had content specific to each products with an About, Contact and Privacy pages. This will give "credit" to my sites in the eyes of Big G.  I believed that Big G did not like my "thin" auction sites I was creating or it just don't like phpBay API/BANS at all.

Are my deindexed site be reindex by Big G? Maybe but once they are converted to MSB, I will ask for reinclusion anyway. It may take time but I have nothing to loose since most make money from other traffic. Plus, the new look will appeal to visitors and look more professional thus they will tend to bid more.

While most run away from creating new auction sites, a few people I know continued and are making more money from them.

It's up to me to do the same. What about you?

Download AuctionSiteWriter now!

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If you want to have a family blog/site or are doing Internet marketing like me, you need to get web hosting. I found cheap web hosting($1.25/month) and reseller hosting($8.70/month). But I also want a minimum of service/quality behind it. If you did not want the lifetime THC offer from a few months ago or found it's too much money for you, this will be a good alternative for you to get you started.

I found this hosting company a few months ago  but I wanted to test it first. Since it's now done, I'm planning to plan to move some of my domains to my new reseller package in the coming weeks. The backbone is from The planet who also serve Host Gator(my current host) which I know is a solid hosting company in the industry.

Space, Bandwidth and Saving money

In order to be able to give us a cheap price, the space(300MB) and bandwidth(3Gig) are lower than the "big boys" compared to their the basic plan. But at $1.25, it's only $15/year when you pay once a year. The space and bandwidth is enough for someone starting a few targeted blogs with MyStarterBlog for example. If you get bigger, you just upgrade to an higher package.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, hosting companies will suspend your account if you overload constantly their server. For example, if you get 20 000 visitors everyday, don't be surprise if they ask you to move to a dedicated server. At that point(20K), you should be able to make a lot of money to pay for it anyway.

Me, I want targeted paying traffic so I'm able to pay less money for my hosting. For example, I'm paying $24.95/month with one of my HG reseller package. But after looking at my stats, I was only using 1 Gig/month out of 250GB allowed.  By getting the $8.70/month(15Gig/month), I will be saving a lot of money that I can reinvest in my business(buy more domains). I will still have space/bandwidth to grow.

Why I'm using a reseller package?

Unlike a shared host, all my domains are independent of each other. If one of my site get very popular(20K/day) for some reasons, only that domain will be suspended and not my whole account. If I want someone to do custom work for me, I just give access to that domain only.

If I decide to sell a domain made using MyStarterBlog, I can offer hosting for a few months to a year and make money again.

I mentioned flipping(selling) because I know someone who already used MyStarterBlog to flip a simple site and made $125. Does this make you think a little? I sure now!.:D.

Since it support WHM, I can use Domain Dashboard with it.

Conclusion

At this time, I'm using a few host to diversify my IPs. Also, many of my domain names are on 1and1 because I get free Whois privacy and pay less per year. But, a lot of them are hosted elsewhere and now have a new hosting home.

But for $24.99/year(hosting+domain name), a person can now have a blog on it's own domain. If you can save money at the same time, why not? Visit my new host now! Use coupon xxxx to get $10.95 off on the basic seller package(so free)

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In December, I started making money with email submits. It was new to me and did not know what my results would be. For the offers, I'm using NB. In fact, I unexpected received my first payment in mid January. The amount from December was $62.20USD. I must mentioned that I started on the 8-9th of December.

When I setup a site now, my overall goal is to get $1/day so I was more than happy with $62.20USD. Since it was a USD check, I had to wait 21 days minus the fees($2.50 plus the exchange rate) to convert to Canadians dollars.  Having said that, it came to $75.97CAN.

Around mid January, I had to change the offer because the advertiser stopped doing campaigns. I was lucky because I found another alternative but the downside was only for US and Canadians visitors. Other visitors that clicked on the offer were redirected to a free software offer. I got a few dollars from that too.

I also tweaked my landing page to get a better conversion ratio. That also helped more than expected with the new offer.  Plus, their landing page was better/faster for visitors to submit their information.

My test site is receiving low quality traffic so the number of visitors that click to the offer and then submits it is very low. What can I say, the targeted people for that site are lazy even with free things.

What was my results for January?

I even experimented with a CB related offer for 1.5 days in the last week. Since, it was not a free offer, I made $0 during that short period.

So, in January(29.5 days), my test site earned me $168.45USD. That's around $5.71USD/day.

Btw, I like NB even more now and you should join them.

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Sometimes, it's my unfortunate duty to warn others about scammers that I recommended in the past. That's the risk we take as Internet marketers. Today, it's the ProductReview.com.au Affiliate Scam.

How ProductReview.com.au worked?

You were paid $0.05AUD(5 Australian cents) for each visitor you were sending to their site.  If an Australian person would write a review for a product, you would get $0.50AUD(got 2 of them). If you registered to be an affiliate, they would deposit $10AUD in your account until your had reach $50AUD.

The referrer(me) would not get anything if you became an affiliate. I just got an email but I figured that was for a future option or they had stop doing that.

Send me that traffic

When I started, they were no restriction on the kind of traffic you were sending to them. So, on the advice of the person who introduced me to this affiliate program, I also used traffic exchange.  For $5.95US, I sent 1000 visitors thus would be making $50AUD in theory. This tip spread like wild fire.

Unfortunately, the total of recorded visitors were about 40% based on the traffic exchange. The visitor had to stay 20 seconds on the site to be counted. But, I did not mind since I was still making $20AUD or $13.98US(today's rate) on a $5.95US investment.

If you check your stats on your site, you would see a big difference between multiple stats software. Plus, their site was sometimes down.

Soon after I was prepared to do it again but on a larger scale, I guest they were alerted because they added this new restriction: no traffic exchange. Okay, but they did not deduct the amount from my account. This should had been easy for them since they recorded the referrer site. I guessed, at that time, that they took it as the cost of not being too specific.

From that point on, I was sending them normal traffic without using traffic exchange.

And it happen!

In November, I was almost at $40. I had recently bought 2 domains with good traffic(800 visitors combined/day). At first, I used them to make test and I still do.

Then, in December, I was near $45.  So, I decided to "unleashed" that 800 traffic over a weekend by redirecting visitor directly to them. On Saturday, I had reached over the $50 mark. On Monday(Dec. 8), I received this email:

Our systems have detected that your affiliate account has been engaged in fraudulent activity or violates our Terms of Service.

They had also canceled my account on the spot thus lot the $50+ I had earned. I expected to be near the $60AUD by Sunday night.

Giving them a chance

To give them a chance, I emailed them 2 times to see if we could be able to reach an agreement with them.  I also explained that I was sending traffic to them from 2 new domains thus my sharp increase in visitors over that weekend. I did not mind if they deducted the traffic exchange I had used 8 months before.  But, they never replied.

Even if I was getting nothing for referring someone, I still received an email from them that a new affiliate used one of my affiliate links. The funny thing is that my account was canceled yet I received such email from them soon after.

Conclusion

That they changed the rules yet never deducted past traffic exchange was not professional of them. Affiliates, like me, who stopped that practice were now sending them the "required" traffic. After all, I did send them at least $30AUD (600+ visitors(40%) or 1500 visitors(100%) ) over many months.

Even if I had made $0.02USD per click with Adsense, I would earned $30USD(1500 visitors).  At least, the Adsense stats are better than them and if you get click fraud, you can still email Adsense if it happens to you.

If I had known that I would had been penalized 8 months later, I would had dropped them then instead of wasting my time oops ... traffic/ clicks.

Here is my theory about the ProductReview.com.au Affiliate Scam:

They will find any excuses(past usage of traffic exchange) not to pay affiliates like mentioning you used fraudulent methods.  Plus, since this happened, I now think that their stats(40%) are faulty on purpose and that it's them who are doing the fraud on their affiliates.

Too bad because they were a good alternative to Adsense.

I would like to hear from others. Were you in the same situation? Did get paid? How many times?

P.S. If you get too many 1-2 cents clicks with Adsense, it's because your whole account has been smart priced. You are sending low quality traffic to advertisers.  You should keep Adsense for your high paying niche sites. You can use NBN(my review) for content.

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In August 2008, Google deindexed most of my BANS/phpBay sites. Like I mentioned before, it was my own fault and take full responsability. Since then, I added only 7 sites to my very small network of 29 sites(36 total). I also added it on 3 of my WordPress blogs using phpPay Pro WP plugin(worth it).

I did not do more link building using BMD or FBF for some time on most of my sites. The last point is very important here because the traffic is still coming from other search engines like Yahoo/MSN.  Imagine when I will make new BANS/phpBay sites with more content on it to make Google happy.

Show me the numbers

I will not used real numbers but I'm going to go with my biggest earning month as the baseline.

May: 61.22%
June: 100% I earned the most that month
July: 85.48%
August: 40.2%
September: 25.78%
October: 31.95%
November: 69.6%
December: 107.1% (up to Dec. 31)

Are BANS/phpBay dead?

Some will say that those kind of sites are dead now.  Those that tell you that are complete morons or they just want to keep the competition away. If you look at only Google traffic, it's partly true but Google does like WP blogs and the phpBay WP plugin can be added to your blog.

In fact, I do have BANS/phpBay sites(not blogs) still indexed. Most were created after the Google deindex using the phpBay API (v2.5).

I only use phpBay API and the WP plugin now. I don't use BANS because I prefer the phpBay API.

I can build Canadian specific post because I also make money from Canadian visitors too. Plus, phpBay WP has 14 parameters you can control/override. That's one reason I added Plugin Code Builder to AuctionSiteWriter to make that step easier.

Alternatives

You could also use other alternative(free/paid) on your blog but look at the features first. For example, phpBay has a free version. It was too simplistic that I upgraded to the Pro(Bundle). Because I wanted to give a better experience to potential buyers, I needed to filter out some keywords.

Conclusion

Some will point to me that the increase is because many are shopping for the holidays online. This is a fact and I won't argue that point.

But conside this:  Because of the recession, most people will try to find a better deal on new or a used product. Thus, creating a targeted BANS/phpBay sites will be one more way for you to make money.

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I wanted try my hand at making money with email submits but none of my current affiliates had one. For example, CB is mostly for software and ebooks.  So, I registered with NB since I heard of them before and I knew they had some.

I was expecting to register and get an email a few minutes later or much later informing me that I was in the program. It was not like that. I first received a call to tell me I was in. I had to speak in English but that went well.   They want to check if I'm a real person and I'm okay with that.  The day after, I got another call from my affiliate manager. He wanted to introduce himself and see what were my goals. Again, I had to speak in English a bit longer with my French-Quebecois accent.

Making Money With Email Submits

If you don't know, an email or zip submit is when people must give some information(name, email or zip) and you get paid for that action.

I have a pre-owned domain where the traffic is still coming largely from traffic exchange. So, I created a new main page to offer a related email submit for them. When they click(just 0.6% of the time), 12.5% of  them will take the offer. That site is averaging $3.14 per day since I started using it for that.  Some days, I make zero but on other days, I make more. The visitor do have a choice to take the offer or not.

Depending of the type of domain/traffic, I'm sure you could earn more or less than that. For example, you could have some poll on your site. Whatever they answer, you send them to the offer. They give the information and you collect the money.

For me, making money with email submits was easier than I expected. Yes, it was worth my time to register with NB.

P.S. No, I won't tell you the offer since you need to find one targeted to your traffic.

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