Thousands of webmasters hunt for expired domains. There are a few online services that post lists of expiring domains, others accept your bids for these domains.

It is no brainer to understand why – with the expired domain you get:

- aged domain
- with some traffic
- and link popularity

It is a great way to give a boost to your working or new projects. There are some fears that Google as a domain registrar might control whois information and devalue those domain names that change their owners (that would make purchase of expired domains useless for link and traffic reasons). But there is no evident proof and it is still believed that Google does not practice it yet.

With these obvious advantages you get from an expired domain, no surprise that there is a high competition in this sector and you should be prepared to spend some time and to pay a good amount for a nice expired domain. And the process of acquiring expired domains is not that simple. There are currently four key market players:

- enom.com
- snapnames.com
- godaddy.com
- pool.com

They all operate in a slightly different manner that confuses beginners on the expired domain market. A good start to learn who is who and how expired domains sell – Beginner’s advice on how to go about backordering expiring domains

If you would like to go deeper – Mike Davidson’s How to Snatch an Expiring Domain is an excellent post describing his experience of acquiring an expired domain – how domains expire, how market leaders differ, how to be prepared to deal with your competitors.

Where can you get the lists of expired domains? Either at the websites of the mentioned domain name resellers or here – you also easily check the domain name characteristics – traffic (Alexa), Page Rank and link structure.

For those who buys expired domains in other ways – for instance directly from their previous owners I recommend this short and useful PDF on The Insider’s Guide to Domain Transfers

Summary: It is hard to predict the results of your expired domain purchase – some report success, others – failure and disappointment. A good idea is to leave the domain name alone with no changes once you get it. Make changes in a few months, gradually.

Sometimes the result is completely unexpected, but predictable.

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[tags]domain names, expired domains, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, make money online, work from home, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

There is quite much buzz about Squidoo. Seth Godin has posted a few times on this topic (no surprise – his name is behind this project) and there are discussions in the webmaster forums and popular blogs

Squidoo is a kind of a social website that is based on user generated content – members create LENSES. What is a lens?

A lens is one person’s view on a topic that matters to her. It’s an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and thousands of products from hundreds of other trusted merchants. You can pick whatever content you want to put in your lens to bring context to your topic. Then, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, your lens gets him started and sends him off in the right direction. It’s a place to start, not finish.

Who should build a lens? Well according to Squidoo – anyone.

In some ways it reminds me of wikipedia.org Do you agree? Not an imitation, but basically the same idea.

Why should you care about this website? It talks much about sharing profits with the publishers of lenses. But it is a simple trick to attract visitors to post their lenses. There are no reports of people who made any decent amount of money using this service, but there is evidence of this sort – 0.11$ income generated with a lens

I guess it is not the money that will make you rush and join the service.

One reason why you should join and create a lens is the ability to get a link to your website from an authority website and receive some traffic – the website has good search engine rankings for many terms (it can be hard for you to beat them with your own website).

Summary: Squidoo is a service to experiment with the link and traffic aspects in mind. It is a good idea to see how it works for your website (and later to add more websites if you have).

I will make a lens and check if there is any sense to spend more time and efforts with this service.

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[tags]squidoo, seth godin, traffic, links bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, text-link-ads, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, duplicate content, earn your living online[/tags]

There are many great posts on how to build links. One of the recent excellent posts was Todd’s ‘Types of links and how to get them’

Yes, I agree that links are important, but I do not agree that you should spend hours and hours hunting for links: reciprocal, directories, forums, article submission. Firstly, it is time consuming; secondly, it is too inefficient way to spend your valuable time.

Google (and I think everyone agrees that when searching for links we are primarily interested to achieve high rankings in Google) neglects reciprocals, forum signatures, most directories. Article directories? I am not sure, but they are next on Google’s list if they are still counted.

If you go after .edu or .gov links – you need a specific website to find good links with that extension, especially, .gov. You certainly can experiment and go Rand’s way to get 20 .gov links in 20 minutes, but I do not think that this is the way you would like to handle this sort of links.

The types of links according to Todd’s classification:

1. Authority links
2. Directory links
3. Reciprocal links
4. Run of site links
5. One way links from friends or related sites.
6. Edu and .Gov links
7. Radio station, television, magazine, or newspaper links
8. Press release links
9. Article bio links
10. RSS/ Blog aggregated links
11. Comment and Profile Links
12. Presell Page Links

Summary: It was an efficient way to build your link popularity by means of contacting webmasters and submitting to all types of directoies in the past – when all those link types mattered and the webmasters were open for link exchange. Now I prefer to focus on content and website development concepts (in the long run it will result in a bunch of good quality natural links) and not waste the time on fruitless e-mails to webmasters who never open those messages and send them all directly to trash bin.

If you think that you urgently need a few links (new project, etc) – buy a few on eBay or from text-link-ads. Anyway it will be cheaper than your wasted time.

Run a few websites? Just check our free one way link popularity service – probably you will get the desired links there – relevant and permanent.
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[tags]link exchange, link types, marketing niche, telecommuting, networking, online communities, forums, web forums, traffic, links bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, text-link-ads, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, duplicate content, earn your living online[/tags]