I have been running websites since 1995, and I can easily say the biggest headache I have had over the years is web hosting. For the first few years I used shared web hosting, but eventually my sites got big enough so I needed a dedicated server. Ever since then, it has been one problem… Read More: Web Hosting Sucks »
I have a webmaster secret that I will reveal here for the first time. As far as I know, I am the only webmaster to have ever done this. Here it is: Almost everybody has used a site where you get a username and password, but you probably don’t know what a pain in the… Read More: Fake Passwords »
One of my crazier business ventures was buying a florist even though I had never owned a store before, never worked in a store before, and knew nothing about flowers. On top of that, I bought the store through a business broker over the Internet without ever seeing it (the store was in California and… Read More: How I Bought A Flower Store »
In the late 1990s, virtual currency sites such as CyberCash.com and DigiCash.com were all the rage, where they offered alternative payment systems for consumers to use on ecommerce sites instead of paying with a credit card. At the time, consumers were a lot more cautious about giving out their credit card information online. Plus, there… Read More: The Story of DigiCredit.com »
Since I started my business in 1995 I have read very few books, maybe 3 or 4 at most. Instead I constantly read business magazines, online blogs and news websites. There is so much info out there to digest it is hard to keep up. But, sometimes it helps to take a step back and… Read More: Business Books »
You might be wondering how I sell a domain name. Or maybe how I even get a domain to the point where it is sellable. Most of the time, the buyer looks me up as the owner of the domain (using a service like betterwhois.com) and then emails me an offer. At least 1/2 the… Read More: How A Domain Sale Works »
Many people will probably disagree with what I am about to say, but I think people place too much value on giving a website a makeover. Obviously it is always good to improve a site, but people tell me all the time that if I do this or do that to my sites, the site… Read More: Are Website Makeovers Worth It? »
I have owned the domain name FindInfo.com for many years, and have tried creating various search engines on it, but none of them have ever made any money. I know it is hard to compete with Google and Yahoo, but search engines are a billion dollar business and with a killer domain like this I… Read More: FindInfo.com – My Human Powered Search Engine »
In January 2008 I sold Bored.com and 170 related sites for $4.5 million. This represented over half of my company (I still have 200+ smaller sites and 9000 domain names), and the vast majority of my profits. Bored.com was easy to run, had 10 years of steady growth, and there was little risk that the… Read More: The Psychology of a Multi-Million Dollar Sale (Bored.com) »
Because I run my own Internet company, I often get asked the best way to make money online. Oddly enough, I have no good answer for that question. I was able to be successful mostly because I got in on the ground floor (back in 1995). I started by creating web pages for small businesses… Read More: How to Get Rich Online »