Business Advice – I’m Asking You

With the summer rapidly approaching, I am looking for ways to grow my new business, Blue5.net. As a 17 year old, I have hit some major obstacles:

• I am not well connected with the business owners in my community
  I am fairly active in my community, but I just don’t have the kind of connections that I need to grow my business to it’s full potential.
• I am 17!
  Most business owners blow me off without giving me a fair chance. Also, I still have my senior year of high school, and at least 4 years at a university.
• It’s not cheap to get started
  I can always promote my business online, but most of my potential clients don’t know that they need a web presence. I am going to need to join the local chamber of commerce, and send out some flyers.

Now, I’m reaching out to my fellow domainers. Most of you have some experience running your own business, or some experience working at a business. I need your help and advice.

Use the contact form, or just post a comment. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Building Targeted Sites To Extend Your Business

If you are a small business owner, I’m sure that you understand the frustrations of launching your business.

I do a number of things, aside from building websites. In the summers, I teach swim lessons and I lifeguard.

Last summer, I built a website on (my city)swimlessons.com, in order to promote my services. To be completely honest, my site hardly even showed up in Google. However, throughout the Fall and Winter of last year, I kept writing new articles for my website, ans I watched as my Google rankings increased.

So far, I have received a total of 3 inquiries. That may sound insignificant, but swim lessons aren’t cheap, and my website cost me only $10 to build. That site has already converted into at least $225, and has the potential to make even more.

I also have a couple of clients who have decided to try this out, and they are seeing great results.

It is relatively easy to find geo-targeted niche domain names that you can build in to small websites that can grow your business. Try it out!

Chef Patrick Announces GoDrops.com Relaunch

GODROPS.COM RE-LAUNCHING ITS SITE

The Much Anticipated Re-launch of GoDrops.com Has Finally Come To Fruition

April 23, 2010 – It was announced several months ago the site GoDrops.com was going to get an overhaul. The construction work is complete and GoDrops.com is ready for its re-release. A partnership formed between Jason Cupp of GoDrops.com and Patrick Ruddell of ChefPatrick.com has come together to create a new and improved version of the site.

In 1998, frustrated with his inability to land any generic .com’s, Jason created a script that helped him track names that were dropping, giving him a list to choose from. At some point he decided to publish this list, which is where the idea for GoDrops.com came from. He successfully ran the site since, but in late 2009 realized it needed help monetizing and marketing. This is when he partnered up with Chef Patrick who has shared some of his creative ideas and input, redeveloping what is the all new GoDrops.com.

Patrick offered a little insight saying, “Jason created something really solid with GoDrops. This is a great service that domainers can use to get an edge, giving them an opportunity to snag some great names that might not have been available to them otherwise.”

One of the major changes with the re-release is a membership program. It costs $19.97 per month to join giving its members daily access to the hand selected pending delete domain names list. In addition, paid members have access to domain stats, such as value, age, CPC, searches and frequency. Paying members will have access to drop data 24 hours in advance and 5 days in arrears. Previously members had to come to the site between 2-3pm EST only in order to have access to any drop lists during the live chat session. There will also be a members only forum available for questions, comments and conversations.

With the re-launch came more extensions. There will be nine extensions available to start – .com, .net, .org, .us, .info, .biz, .me, .tv and .ca. More extensions will be added monthly.

A great feature that remains is the live chat session. This is the only site offering this feature in conjunction with the release of the drop list live. It adds a fun social aspect to the service.

There is still a free service available for non-paying members. Those individuals will continue to have access to only the .com and .net lists without the extra benefits the paid members get and only as the drop is happening. The live drop and chat session runs from 2pm EST to 3pm EST.

The GoDrops team would like to send out a BIG thank you to Name.com for providing all the raw drop data and discounts for GoDrops members and also Estibot.com for providing the statistical data.

For more information and to sign up please visit GoDrops.com

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I want to wish Patrick and Jason luck with the relaunch. It is sure to be promising!