Part 3 : Expansion plans and the future

How do you go about promoting your sites and services? What special skills and techniques did you need to learn, and how did you go about learning them?
My first approach was reciprocation with high-traffic web sites which is a good move but not a major traffic winner - more of a trickle. I've found the best form of promotion is through online pay-per-word search engines like Goto.com where keyword advertising can attract the right customer very cost effectively, if done right.

Of course, I've built my own tools like Submit.FreeURL.com for free url search engine submission, meta tag analysis, keyword generators and link popularity tools for assisting in good search engine placement, as most of the stuff out there costs users money and is rubbish.

Each search engine has its own rating system; I feel comfortable with Altavista most of all and have achieved some nice results. Learning how each search engine works is an art unto itself - again, take time and learn. I even had a request today from a major traffic generating service asking where did I get my tools from and could they have working copies. Do they think I'm daft or what?

You have many ambitious plans for expanding your network of sites, and you are working to make them more commercially successful. What do you see as the key ways to generate revenue from your sites?
There are many clever ways of generating revenue from web sites that I'm not prepared to divulge in this interview. Now if you're a Venture Capital company or want to partner up, email me directly and you'll get a better answer! ;)

Because I work on a number of sites at the same time, interesting new ones coming up are my FREEScratchCard.com & INSTANTScratchCard.com sites. Notice that lovely word FREE again?

You recently approached a VC firm for funding. What were your plans for using that funding, and can you fulfill your ambitions without securing outside investment?
The VC Company I met in London was a complete joke. It consisted of 2 people, and the other half of the "Venture Capital" was a guy who claimed to be well connected in the Internet world but in reality seemed to know nothing. The meeting was a farce!

The plans for funding are simply to complete the existing development and expand to a reasonable sized team producing commercial sticky solutions with a view to company flotation.

This dream can still be realized without outside investment but on a much slower time-scale. A serious cash-injection is sometimes really required to launch a product. One such product that requires this is my "Cool" Message Board system that is fast establishing itself as something very special in the instant community market.

You own several hundred domain names. How do you see the future of the domain name market, especially given the introduction of new domain names in the near future? How important is it to the success of a site to have a good domain name?
Interesting. The anticipated new arrivals (.shop, .web etc.) will be bought up just as quickly as the dot com names. Money talks and you can bet that those domain name speculators have already lined up their dictionaries and online spiders to register everything in sight as soon as the doors open hoping to capitalize on yet another internet market. I expect more domain name squatting and listings at afternic.com!

We also have the introduction of RealNames into the marketplace, removing the need for cumbersome URLs, which at first sounds like a great idea but... Have you tried registering a generic phrase, like "Free URL"? Realnames won't allow it! Have you tried sharing an existing realname? Realnames won't allow it!

Registering domain names has been a gold-rush of a business and profitable for the registrars most of all, which is why I devised a search engine for analyzing over 1 million recently expired or deleted domain names. The system also uses wildcards to allow easy searching of unregistered dot com addresses.

I believe that a domain name should reflect its content and it's obviously beneficial to have one that is short and memorable. Unless you have a massive advertising budget, it will be quite hard to make a more obscure name work.

If you had one piece of advice for a budding webmaster, what would it be?
Try another job!

The bottom line is that becoming any good at it requires a number of disciplines far beyond simply "webmastering" and making a few web pages. You need to be able to manage, co-ordinate, schedule, plan, design, execute, prototype, learn, draw, program, advertise, market, analyze, predict and much more. To find all if not most of these characteristics in any one person is very rare indeed.

Finally, what are your future plans? Where do you see yourself in a year's time?
Probably still in the same situation, or thereabouts, as no one can afford to pay me! Why pay ten people when you can pay one person five times as much? Even the most successful web sites take at least 18 months to become successful so you have to be realistic about your timelines. Incidentally, the question should have been: "Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?" Answer: "On a beach with beautiful babes."

Continued...