It seems like shortly after writing a post with the words “my workload is about to ease” a tonne of new projects land on my lap! I’m not complaining of course - I like to keep myself busy - but my head seems to be throbbing more often than not…

I think I should be honest with you all though… I’ve spent the last couple of weeks seriously considering retiring from blogging. I just don’t seem to have the commitment or spare time to make this journal as successful as it once was.

Ironically it was my birthday today, meaning that it’s been a whole year since I blogged for the very first time. So much has changed in the last 12 months though - from testing positive for HD to the launch of Britster, and everything in between.

I guess the bottom line here is that I’m not really sure what to do with this blog. All I know is that I don’t intend to spend the next six months sporadically posting comeback messages - that’s just not fair to the people who take the time to visit! Perhaps I should buckle to pressure and monetise the site - maybe the promise of financial reward will help me focus? Or perhaps all it needs is a visual reboot..?

I need some opinions here… Have you ever considered dropping your blog? How do you keep your interest? What do you think I should do??

Share This

Wow… It barely feels like a couple of weeks have passed since I last posted here - but in reality it’s been almost two and a half months. It’s amazing how quickly time passes when you’ve got your head buried in projects.

My part-time career as a Website Flipper was going well, until the powers that be on Digital Point decided to give me a lifetime ban for having a duplicate account (one that was more than a year old, and which I never posted with because I lost access to the email account I used during the sign up process). I wouldn’t mind, but I lost several months of perfect trading history and buyer feedback… So I decided to take a break from site and domain trading for a while - but it was fun (and very profitable) while it lasted!

I’m currently running three very successful websites: Britster (a social network aimed at the British), Chat-alot (a global social network with a slant on dating and chat) and an adult forum (I won’t post the link here as it’s definitely NSFW - let me know if you want a peek). The last of these is currently an Alexa Top 60k site, with more than 3000 visitors a day - so it’s been quite time-consuming!

I haven’t been a very good blogger recently. Many people have given me great feedback and many compliments on this site and my posts - but I simply haven’t had the time to post on a regular basis. Hopefully this will now change, as my workload is set to ease of now (I feel like I’ve said that several times in the last few months, so I don’t expect anybody to entirely believe me). I miss reading my favourite blogs, I miss having a place to post my thoughts and I really miss the friends I made when I first started blogging.

Share This

Barely a day goes by recently where a new social networking or image host springs up, only to fade to nothing and slip past everybody because of a fundamental lack of originality!

So I found it quite refreshing to learn this morning that somebody was doing something unusual with a website! Glogster is a fantastic new way to express your mood, feelings and ideas visually. The simple and intuitive interface quickly takes you a long way beyond what could be created with basic text and videos. It’s still officially in beta - but I personally feel that it’s already as slick as it needs to be!

Creating a glog allows you to express those ideas and thoughts that are difficult to describe with words alone, opening the doorway to a whole new method of communication. Choose a background, select some shapes and characters from the online galleries, add text, upload your own videos and photos, and add just a splash of music and you’re done - simple as that! In a matter of minutes you can make a colourful mix of ideas that reflects your unique qualities. The site also makes it easy to share your glog with friends, and there is even a way to embed it into your blog or website.

As if that wasn’t enough they’re also running a launch competition, with the top 100 highest ranking glogs at the end of the contest nabbing their creator an iPod and a fifty dollar iTunes voucher. I don’t generally participate in online competitions, but if you want to know more than take a look at the How to Win page that Glogster has put up on their site.

I had a thoroughly good time creating my first Glog, using images and video relating to the London Underground (and no, I’m not a trainspotter). The whole thing took me less than 40 minutes, including uploading the source files..! To create the same thing in Flash would probably have taken me about 5 hours - and I really don’t think it would have been half as much fun!

So give Glogster a try, and then come back to tell me what you think of it!

Share This

To be honest I could only come up with two possible answers. Either David had enjoyed his holiday so much that he’d decided to stop blogging completely, or somebody had managed to gain control of his domain in his absence (tougher than it sounds to achieve).

Then I checked my feed reader (David’s blog has been there since I wrote my first blog post). I notice a post titled ‘David Airey.com hacked‘ which took me (lo and behold) to his blog - on the .co.uk version of the domain! Here’s what he says there:

On the day I left [on vacation], a hacker logged into my webhost support site and asked for the details to transfer the www.davidairey.com domain.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have allowed them to steal my domain, but they must also have had access to my Gmail account, from where they could verify the transfer. The passwords were different, and it’s one of those things I’d love to know how it was done.

At present, I’m using www.davidairey.co.uk for my website, and will continue to do so whilst I initiate court proceedings.

In the meantime, please bear with me as there are many internal site links that lead to the old .com address, and almost all my blog post images are unavailable. I’m working on it, and hope to have everything back to how it was in the very near future.

So… That clears that one up! Pop along to his blog in it’s (hopefully) temporary new home, and let him know you’ve tracked him down! All the best to you David - have a great Christmas and New Year, and try not to let the domain situation get you down during the festivites!

Share This

So that time is drawing ever closer again, with just seven short days until the mayhem kicks off (at least in my house anyway). In a complete break with tradition though I’m totally prepared! I started buying presents for my kids back in October, and got the last few a week ago - and I’ve even got the wrapping paper…

I thought I’d better do my thing for the environment this year, so I’m sending a digital card to everyone, instead of consuming hundreds of trees worth of paper that will only get thrown away in a couple of weeks!

If you’ve commented on my blog since it launched, or read my posts - or even if you’ve only lurked via a feed reader - then this is for you. Make sure you turn up your speakers and then…

Click here for your festive greetings!

Have a great Christmas and an even better New Year! Here’s hoping that 2008 is filled with everything you wish for.

Share This

As promised a couple of weeks ago, this post begins a series of articles on the subject of Website Flipping. At it’s simplest level, flipping a website involves the following steps:

1. Find a site to purchase
2. Evaluate, negotiate and complete the sale
3. Add value to the project
4. Find a buyer and make a sale

Finding a Site to Purchase

In order to narrow your focus a little, it’s a good idea to decide on some sort of specialisation. Perhaps there’s a particular type of site that you already have experience with - forums, blogs or e-book sites for example. Buying in an area that you’re already familiar with will give you a much needed step up the virtual ladder, at least over somebody who’s a stranger to them. If you don’t have existing experience then sites that provide a service like image hosting, file storage, content resources, tutorials etc may be a wiser investment. E-commerce sites that sell an actual product are also good to work with.

You may also find it helpful to narrow down your search by a particular vertical market, looking at all sites covering a particular interest or hobby for example.

For me to become interested in a site it must have two things - compelling factors and issues that need solving. A site may be getting plenty of traffic but lacking decent content, or perhaps it has traffic and content but poor monetisation. Maybe the site offers a good product or service, but hasn’t gained traction in the marketplace.

When looking at a site, you should keep one question in mind: where’s the hidden value? Every site has compelling factors and every site has issues; find what’s compelling about any website you’re considering, and think about how you can take advantage of it.

Things to Remember

• Buying a “fixer-upper” isn’t a wise move if you don’t have the skills or financial resources required to solve any technical issues a site may have.
• Buying a web site with huge level of traffic only makes sense if you can move it onto a new server that can handle the traffic, and then properly monetise it.
• Buying a site that sells a script or a digital service means you’re going to have to provide support - including fixing any bugs or errors in the product itself.

Where to Look

There are many ways to find good websites to flip, and it’s quite easy to spend much more time on the selection process than is really necessary. For every good deal there are hundreds of dud ones, and out of ten bargains you may only end up finding a single project that appeals to you.

Because it charges for listing sites for sale, the SitePoint Marketplace should be the first place you look - the cost of listing a site there means that many of the duff deals have already been eliminated. You still need to tread carefully, it’s definitely worth monitoring if you’re a novice getting into flipping for the first time.

There’s a number of other forums and sites that include sales - Digitalpoint and Namepros to name a couple. Listing a site for sale on these boards is free, so you do tend to end up seeing a load of rubbish on there - but every now and then a little gem pops up for the taking! One site I avoid for flipping purposes is eBay. It has hundreds of listings at any given time, but is generally a complete waste of time.

There are some other marketplace sites that might be worth checking out: BizBuySell, WebsiteBroker and WebHostingTalk all have some interesting listings, but also generally require a bigger budget. You could also use Google - searching for terms like ‘this site is for sale’, but be prepared for anally retentive Webmasters who think their 2 hour project is worth several million!

Conclusion

So, that covers finding a site to flip. Future posts will include information on negotiating and completing a sale, adding value to a project and the process of actually finding a buyer to flip to.

I really hope you’ve found this both interesting and useful. Feel free to ask questions if you have any - and I’ll be happy to answer them!

Thanks to these people for their comments on my previous couple of posts: Vivien, Damien, Toni, Sunny, Paul B, Vagner, Lisa, Roger, Laurence, Jacob, Steph, Ludovic, xBrain, Stuart, CCNA Exploration and Zer0_II.

Share This

Both the stock market and real estate industry have long been populated by day traders and “flippers”, those that buy and sell in a short period of time in order to make a quick profit. With luck, this process can then be repeated over and over for a reasonably stable income - and you might even get rich!

Flipping Fun

A unique breed of entrepreneur is starting to emerge - one that takes the concept of flipping to the area of buying and selling online businesses. The shrewd investor will locate an underperforming business, buy it, work their magic to improve performance and then sell it for a good margin. It is by no means easy and certainly requires a lot of research and due diligence, but the rewards are there and it’s a lot of fun too!

The big advantage of buying a site is you don’t have to establish an audience and wait for the site to be indexed within search engines. Most webmasters, even those that don’t know their SEO from their XML, will understand the benefit of link exchanges. Even the most poorly managed sites should have some form of backlink network developed and return a result in the major search engines. It may not be a top ten search result but it will be a result ready for you to optimize and improve.

I intend to write a series of articles on website flipping, covering top acquisition strategies, places to shop for sites and details on how to avoid the common pitfalls. If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered then let me know!

Your Advice?

I’ve been on a bit of a buying spree recently, and have bought a great selection of domain names, full sites and content too - all for an amazingly small amount of money!

One of the sites I now own is Feedbytes.com. - a great little blog focused on articles relating to the Search Engine industry. But I have a decision to make, and I’m hoping that you might provide some input!

I think Feedbytes.com is a great domain - short and memorable, the way that a good name should be! But should I continue to run it as a blog, or dump the blog and develop something new? If you favour the latter option, then what should I create? My primary idea at this time is a sort of fusion between Technorati and Netvibes - but I’d really like to hear what you think!

Share This

What does design mean to you? For me design is both the process and the final product of an endeavour to fulfil a personal or professional brief. Whether you’re creating a piece of graphic work, a website, or a design for a new product, the underlying principal is the same – and the creative process is everything. So how do we make ourselves better designers?

Despite very different backgrounds, most designers offer the same advice – reading the brief and planning your work on paper are two frequent suggestions. Design is wonderfully subjective though, and we all have different ways of getting better results. Here are some of the things that have helped me become a better designer…

1. Using Metaphors

In the context of design, a Metaphor is just another name for a theme. There are two ways to make use of metaphors in your design work: either a holistic approach (e.g. this slightly fishy site) or a pure design one (developing an appropriate colour scheme and layout style). Both of these approaches can work wonders for your designs, and successfully combining the two is almost guaranteed to lead to a memorable and enjoyable end result!

2. Keep Brainstorms Short

Bouncing ideas around with a colleague (friends and family if you freelance) is a great way to come up with new ideas, but the secret to making brainstorming sessions productive is to keep them as short as possible. A couple of short (and fresh) sessions will result in more focused storming than a single mammoth session ever would. I find that using software tools (e.g. MindManager and SmartDraw) are great for solo storming!

3. Take a Shower

I actually get a lot of my thinking done in the shower. Running water (apparently) increases brain productivity, which might explain why great ideas (and rubbish singing) are often born during a shower. Try reading a project brief before stepping into that cubicle, and see what happens!

4. Keep It Current

Visiting sites like Pixel Surgeon and Design is Kinky and reading magazines like Digital Arts and Create will help you to stay up-to-date with design industry. Don’t fall behind as many designers do - but don’t chase fads either!

5. Walk Away

If you find yourself tearing your hair out over a particular design (not a problem for me admittedly), then simply get up and walk away from it for a while. Go and do something completely unrelated (like the washing-up or eating) and then come back to it with a fresh perspective.

6. Bulging Eyes

Once a design is nearly complete, I find it good to step back from the whole thing, take a deep breath and stare at it until your face turns blue and your eyes start bulging like that bit from Total Recall! During this time you should look for elements that could be tweaked, polished, scaled, added or removed - but only if it adds to the design. I personally find myself looking for colours that could be made stronger or knocked back, or bits that could be nudged around to balance the composition.

7. Stick to What You Know

Avoid projects that are not within your core skillset or style. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve struggled with inappropriate briefs - but now I simply avoid those types of jobs. Choose your clients as carefully as they choose you, and always try to turn a negative experience to your advantage by never making the same mistake again!

What advice do you have for designers who want to get better at what they do? Does it help to think a little unusually, as opposed to taking the standard set of advice? What do you think?

Thanks to these amazing people for commenting during my somewhat flaky last couple of months: Ludovic, LaurenMarie, Wynn Currie, Marty, Johno, Damien King, David Airey, Jennifer, Vivien, Steve M, Toni Farrington, Dirk, Aaron, Franky, Robyn, Charity, Tara, Tess, Leanne, Randa Clay, Ron Smith, Asgeir Hoem, Ren, Sunny@HSO, J David, Vic Grace, Vagner, Genevieve, Chelle and Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

Share This

There’s a goblin at my window,
A monster by my door.
The pumpkin at my table
Keeps on smiling more and more.
There’s a ghost who haunts my bedroom,
A witch whose face is green.
They used to be my family,
Till they dressed for Halloween.

Have a good night folks!

Share This

Well folks, today is a special day for me and my blog, which has now been online for 6 whole months! It doesn’t sound like very long, but in terms of blogging it’s quite an achievement!

In the true tradition of blogging milestones, I feel obliged to share some stats that cover the last half a year:

• I’ve had 49,016 unique visitors to the site
• They’ve looked at 101,932 pages
• I’ve written 57 posts
• My most popular post (80,000 views) is this one
• I’ve had 933 comments left by visitors
• The first comment was left by Zep
• Askimet has caught 2096 spam comments
• I’ve got 302 feed subscribers
• Alexa ranks me as 201,043 most popular site
• Compete ranks me as the 267,244 most popular site
• Technorati ranks me as the 27,786 most popular blog (with an authority score of 205)
• 82% of my visitors are using Firefox
• I’ve managed to successfully resist monetising my blog!

I’d like to send heartfelt thanks to everyone who has left comments, sent me messages, or just read my blog - the feedback is what makes blogging worth all the effort, and what keeps my spirits high! I look forward to writing another post like this in 6 months time…

Share This