Hello from Fukuoka

[Fish]

Hello everyone. I'm an American who is based in Japan who stumbled across this website while looking for something else. Nice to be in a place so filled with quality posts and little noise.

I was in the food export business in Asia and the US before losing my shirt in China and deciding to look for something else. I started looking at the internet and went through the usual guru mill until I started flipping domain names. At one point I noticed that a domain I couldn't sell for much over $100 was bringing in that much each month after I put up a little Wordpress site for it. (I actually got that domain for $1 on Ebay - nobody wanted it!) It made me think that maybe I was too quick to sell domains and should look at developing.

It's great to see the real discussions here. Even on domainers' forums, the noise level is ridiculous and they are filled with misinformation, even from some of the top guys.

Hope I can contribute something here that equals the good stuff I've seen so far.

Bill

[Clinton]

Hi Bill, let me be the first to wish you a warm welcome. You sound like someone with a lot of experience. Congrats on your WP site. What's the next project?

[Fish]

I wish I knew. I have several adsense or affiliate sites up, but all need some solid SEO grunt-work. A good domain name only carries a site so far, unless it's an uncompetitive keyword. Even the WP site I mentioned is 80% dependent on Google's good graces - not something I want to rely on.

I think I just need to take my sites one at a time and grow them into little income earners. That takes time, but finding end-users to buy domains also takes time. $800 back on a $8 name is nice, but once it's done you're back to square one again. With a developed site, I can make money whether I sell it or not. So site flipping is interesting to me. Not only the selling, but building the monetization out.

So, I'll hang out here and see what I can learn - thanks!

[hooperman]

Hi Bill and welcome to the forums