Internet Business

Well Project X from Jason Calacanis was finally released, it was Mahalo.com a human powered search engine.  Mahalo means thank you according to a post he made a while back. I have nothing but respect for Jason Calcanis and what he has achieved.  I have to admit that my first impressions of the new site were not really good.  But then I usually have a clear plan of having things being close to profitable within several months of launch. This site appears to have a lot of venture capital behind it due to his strong connections in those circles.  Also have to admire the amount of press that he can generate for the site launch.

If I am being honest, I just dont like the site, I dont like the name, I dont like the colors.  I dont like the main page with all those pictures which comes close to looking something like a domain parking page, something which everyone on the internet hates, well at least I do. I would have gone for a more cooler color scheme, none of that overdone web 2.0 look, and I would have gone for the simplistic look, much like google, site name, search bar, and then some of the major headings of the important categories. All things said and done, I am not a Jason Calacanis hater, I am a big fan, I was expecting something more like what he had done with netscape.com engadget.com etc Anyhow I hope mahalo.com becomes a success.

Read about this at Frank Schilling’s blog, it appears Mike Mann bought the domain seo.com the absolute ultimate domain for anyone in the seo industry. This is one domain that I would really like to own, as I am sure thousands of others would as well.  Not sure what the actual price paid for this domain was, I would have thought it would be somewhere in the six figure range, but this site lists the purchase price at a reported purchase price at US$5 million.  That price is definitely within his capability given that he sold buydomains.com for US$65 million plus. It appears he is using the site for his seo company webtargeted.com Guess I will have to content myself with my lowly seocompany.com domain which I registered back in 2003.

Well being a fan of John Chow, and an even bigger fan of Bill gates, I just had to enter the Microsoft Zune Contest. THis zune is the one that he won in some business meeting he attended in Canada, gee, some people really do have all the luck. John Chow’s blog offers great tips on how to make money on the internet . I have not blogged lately here, been busy with a lot of other things, but I do regularly read all the blogs in my google reader.

John Chow, root of all evil,  is holding a contest to win a Nintendo Wii. Even though I never win anything, I am entering the competition. The competition is sponsored by 1234pens.com, online retailer of promotional pens and more details can be found here. It will be interesting to see how this content boosts his ranking for the term “root of all evil” one of his posts currently ranks position number 51 in google for the term.

According to a post at domainnamewire, moniker sold domains at an auction totalling US$4.3 million.  Families.com was the highest selling domain at US$650,000. Greeting.com sold for US$350,00 although I think greetings.com would be worth more. The domain that struck me as being a bargain was et.com at $225,000. Apart from being short for extra terrestrial and the name of one of steven spielberg’s most famous movies et, it is also the commonly known abbreviation for entertainment tonight. It will be interesting to see who the buyer turns out to be.
Another interesting sale is blogster.com. This domain was purchased in 2005 for US$100,000 which at the time appeared to be quite a high price for such a domain. Well at the moniker auction, it was on sold for US$275,000. It is not sure whether the site was included with the domain name. The site has a PR5 and an alexa ranking of 25,250 which is fairly respectable, so it is hard to assess what was paid for the actual domain and site components.

This post at Guy Kawasaki’s blog contains some interesting comments by some very successful internet/technology start-ups. The most interesting one is Paul Graham from via web.

On raising money: “The advice I would give is to avoid it. I would say spend as little as you can because every dollar of the investors’ money you get will be taken out of your ass…”

Yes, I know that is a bit crude, but definitely one of the downsides of accepting venture capital. Then again, I think the number of highly successful ventures which ended up being worth outrageous amounts of money, all accepted venture capital, the most famous one that comes to mind is google, they would most probably not be where they are today without venture capital.

Techcrunch had the scoop on the launch of AuctionAds.com the new ebay auction banner ad program which appears to be a joint venture between Jeremy Schoemaker (shoemoney) and MediaWhiz.com. The site is very basic, the faq page contains a few of the key details on the program. Apparently initially they are offering 100% of the ebay commission fee for an initial period, not sure what the percentage split would be further down the track. I have read some interesting favourable reviews on this system when it was previously being run as shoemoneyads.com, so it will be interesting to see how this new service takes off. Definitely a fantastic idea, if the technology develops, could be a possible ebay buy out target for the technology and development team.

Looks like John Chow has done it again and outdone himself to beat last months blogging income of US$3,440.66. For the month of february, the shortest month of the year, he has managed to double his previous months income, to a record $7,011.05 which is not bad for a blog. I am sure once he breaks the technorati top 100, his income will hit the five figure mark, not to mention all the cool gifts he will probably be receiving in the mail.
His income from Reviewme.com was one of the top earners for his blog. There have been quite a few reviewme reviews of late which does have the potential to turn readers off, but not me, I am happy to see that he is making more money, and I dont mind reading a few advertising type posts in between the content.

Looks like one of the sites that I use, almost on a daily basis, when buying new sites/domains, etc just had a major facelift. xe.com is without a doubt one of the best currency conversions sites on the internet. With an alexa rank of 747 and a great two letter .com domain, it must be worth a small fortune, I am surprised it hasnt been an acquisition target by one of the giants of the industry like google or yahoo, perhaps even msn.

At earnersblog, there is an interesting post on how to get 1 cent clicks by using banner ads at adwords which appear on adsense content websites. Further discussion on the topic can be found at this wickedfire post.