Bido.com Launches And I Was First FTW!
So Bido.com launched yesterday and I scored the first domain ever. Yes, I am making history. Anyway, some of you loyal readers might be unaware since this is primarily an SEO blog (or rather a rant filled time wasting blog) so I’ll fill you in.
Bido does live domain auctions that are unlike any other I’ve seen. They only do one domain per day with a one hour auction. This is good for me because I can’t pay attention to the other forty million auctions going on. It likely will create a higher demand for each auction considering there will be more attention on it so that’s a good play by them.
The second unique thing is their seller guarantee. There is no reserve on all their auctions and when you place your domain for sale you list a “reasonable” price expectation. If they don’t sell it for that, then they pay you your expected price anyway. This seems risky on their part and good for us, but I don’t know how they determine what a reasonable price expectation is yet so we’ll see.
Finally, another unique point is the social aspect of the whole thing. They have experts that evaluate the value for each domain that’s up for auction. This is a little weird because everyone values things differently, and it’s hard to get a handle on it. Essentially it’s worth what you are willing to pay for it. There will always be inherent risk involved in domain speculation.
Let’s take yesterday’s auction as an example. The domain was discountimages.com. How good is this domain? Well, the “experts” all had values listed well above what I paid for it. The highest on a resale basis was $5000 and something like $20,000 for and end user. The lowest was Todd Malicoat who didn’t like the domain much and had it at something like $1000 max. Based on what everyone says, I got a bargain at $911.00 but it’s all in the eyes of the beholder right? The maximum I was willing to pay was $1200. When I bought it I just planned to sit on it for a while and flip it when the time is right but now I think I might develop it. I need to do quite a bit of research in the stock image world first, but I think it might be worth the time to develop.
Yesterday they didn’t have an automatic time extension (correction: they did have an extension) for bids below five minutes, which was good for me because I creeped in at 2 minutes and snagged it from “Horney”. Sorry about that Horney…I’d give you a link but I don’t know who you are. Today GolfIowa.com was up and with 5 minutes left the highest bid was $61.00. After a flurry of activity the final price was $460.00 so you can see the obvious benefit. I also got a lot of PR in the process so a big thanks to the nice folks at Bido for contacting me.
Congratulations on a successful launch and I’ll certainly be back. You’ve earned the Official Seal of Awesomeness. And congratulations to me for being more awesome than you.
Yo Fat Girl Look At Me, I’m Skinny. It Never Stopped Me From Gettin’ Busy
If you’re offended…STFU already. That’s shut the fuck up already for you idiots who have been living in a cave. It’s an analogy. Or metaphor. Or something, I skipped English a lot. Maybe I should say “Yea, I do a little blackhat, but I can whitehat circles around your ass.” There’s been a week of useless banter about SMX advanced last week. In reality, this sums up my position but I digress. We’ve got there’s no such thing as advanced white hat SEO, advanced SEO doesn’t mean spamming, to blackhat SEO isn’t advanced blah blah yadda yadda.
Here’s the deal yo…advanced can mean anything. Most “SEO’s” that I know come from a marketing background. What that basically means is most blackhat is going to be advanced. As soon as you start spouting auto generated content via arrays, PHP scrapers or whatever then it’s advanced for them. On the other hand “SEO’s” that come from a developer background (or marketing type SEO’s who have a solid grasp of what developers can do and have some minions) find the majority of “blackhat” things mentioned at SMX pretty basic shit. Then you’ve got the guy who’s never been to a conference. PR sculpting, bot herding, advanced analytics is all going to be advanced for them.
Rob (evilgreenmonkey) in particular got pointed at several times about his presentation in the “Give It Up” session. I know I’m not supposed to blog about it for a month, but since when do I listen. Basically he said that the coyote keeps getting screwed by ACME and their crappy dynamite. Yea, did you really think I was going to piss off Danny Sullivan and bring the Hammer of Injustice down on me? Again. But really what he said wasn’t anything even remotely new to anyone that does any blackhat already so get over it people. There were a few things that you usually hear in the corner of the bar, and in my opinion, that’s great. Knowledge is power, or didn’t you forget to read Meditations? Was some of it blackhat? Sure. Was any of it bad? No. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen. If you listen, you’re at a supposedly “advanced” conference so you should know the risks.
Now, on to the ever controversial post from Bruce Clay because apparently I get under Lisa’s skin. That’s okay Lisa, I like you anyway. Here’s the part that got under my skin:
Black hats get under my skin because (a) they’re not SEOs (b) they very often provide a bad experience for users and (c) they make the rest of us look bad by association.
Right. (a) Whatever. I don’t need an SEO label. Call me a Search Engine Humpty Dancer for all I care, I’m still really good at it whatever color the hat it is. (b) we often provide a better experience for users than all you holier than thou (Shari Thurow) whitehats. For example, say I’m delivering targeted content to my return users based on their browsing history. This gives them far more targeted content and a better user experience, but it is considered blackhat cloaking to Google without question. There are plenty of examples of better user experiences that break Google guidelines. (c) If you look bad by associating with me and the rest of “my kind”…well you’re probably right about that one but I don’t think it’s because we do SEO in a certain way. I think it’s more because we call out things as we see it.
From a client perspective I’d rather hire someone who is well versed in blackhat to control my website than a whitehat. The majority of us conduct business with full disclosure about the risks of everything we do. I know some idiot whitehats that make us all look bad too…one’s been living in a cave. Come on Doug, go ahead and comment so I can ignore you some more.
Moving on…SMX Advanced was a good time. If you weren’t hanging out with us a lot then you’ll be confused. But here is a little something for Rhea, who is one of the coolest people around and always willing to share knowledge and battle the douchebags. (And she worked her ass off for that press pass Loren, you should give her one for PubCon too).
And for Brian, who seems to have brain malfunctions around Rhea…but he really does know his shit. It’s a Mute Lion. Blind Cheetah. Impotent Cat.
Next up is Think Tank in Sunny San Diego (Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diago, which of course in German means a whale’s vagina.) in September (invite only, email me if you’d like to come and I’ll make introductions) and then on to PubCon for some debauchery.
Back In Action, Canada, And Mosquitoes
As you may have noticed, I’ve been absent lately. Some of you know it’s because Google aimed the Hammer of Dawn at one of my sites and blew me into oblivion. After nearly a month and a half of hell work correcting “violations”, they decided to play nice and let me back in. I’ll be doing a post on how to successfully file for reinclusion, but I think I’ll wait until the rest of my competition gets tanked first
I also did a little Canada fishing last week. Some things I didn’t know about Canada:
* When the forecast says 60 degrees, that really means 50 degrees, which really means 40 degrees on the water, which really means 30 degrees with a 20 mph wind from the North.
* Canada has mosquitoes the size of a school bus.
* They have lots of really big fish:
All the boring pictures of me catching fish are on my flickr account. I’ll be back to posting soon after SMX Advanced next week. Hope to see everyone there!
Do Not Click Here
No, I don’t have a post done, I’m busy. I told you not to click, it’s your fault.SMX Social next week. I’ll be there Monday - Thursday. Hit me up on twitter or shoot me an email and we’ll have some Jager. Don’t try to keep up, you’ll regret it.
Yes, those girls are now following me around because I’m paying their salary with the amount of Jager consumed. They also gave me an IV bag so I can just get to the point. See you next week. ありがとう
Friday Tea Time - Failure Edition
I don’t know how you people have time to post 17 times a damn week. In lieu of an actual post, here is to me on writing another blog post. FAIL. Here are some of my favorite FAILS and other stupid things you get in email forwards.
The End. Have A Nice FAIL.
[($ + Money) / Google Hatred] = Rank
Since I don’t have time to post because Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided bring the pain, here is something for your enjoyment from Search Engine Journal:
