Many of my blog postings are stories about sites that I created. This one is about a site I wanted to start, but never did: BoneoftheMonth.com . I registered the domain in 2003 and the the concept was to create a site where peop[...]

In my previous posting, I talked about how it is hard for many websites to take things to the next level, in terms of increasing sales and profits. Most websites, assuming they are able to stay in business for a few years, reach a[...]

One of the biggest problems in running an Internet business seems to be in taking it to the next level. By that I mean that many sites eventually get to the point where they make some money, but profits and sales level off, and th[...]

In one of my earlier postings I talked about how I had not had much success developing my domain names to get traffic from the search engines (to increase income). I still am not making any significant revenue from those sites, b[...]

Below is a list of some of the domain names that I have sold over the past few months. These are all domains I owned personally. A few sales were through brokers, most were from people who looked up that I was the owner and then c[...]

I have bought around a hundred websites over the past few years, but I have never bought any companies, and here’s why. When you buy an entire company instead of just buying their assets (like their website), you are exposed[...]

A few years ago I decided to take a shot at creating a viral video, to get extra traffic to Bored.com (and maybe get mentioned on TV, put in a movie, given a record deal, or any of the other fun things that viral video tend to lea[...]

For many years I have had most of my 10,000 domain names “parked”, which means they basically just have ads and search engine type links on them. I would always get a few offers a month on these domains from people who[...]

I am not a big fan of partnerships. I know many big companies (Apple, Google, etc.) have been built that way, but it has never worked out very well for me. Many people don’t like partnerships because of potential personalit[...]

I am not much of a book reader, but I like to read the business books when I travel or am in the car. I was in the middle of buying some books on Amazon.com when it occurred to me that I would save money by buying a Kindle eBook r[...]

Here are some of domain names I sold over the past few months: Taboo.net – $15,000 NoPrivacy.com – $2,000 BigWallet.com – $1,000 AutoUnlimited.com – $1000 GetProtected.com – $3000 HotToys.com – [...]

Back in 2005 Amazon.com launched a website they call Mechanical Turk, which is basically a job posting board for small tasks that people can do from home, such as writing reviews, transcribing podcasts, describing photographs,answ[...]

I rarely buy domain names anymore, but recently I bought GameTheory.com for $6901 at a Sedo.com auction. I bought it because I thought it was cheap and would do well in Google if I built a mini-site on it (Game Theory is the mathe[...]

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 webhosting (for small sites), but eventually my sites got big enou[...]

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 pr[...]

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 ov[...]

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 th[...]

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. B[...]

You might be wondering how I sell a domain name. 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 time they ask me to call them[...]

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 th[...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 19[...]

I have heard that some domain owners make a lot of money by taking one big domain, putting lots of content on it, and optimizing it to get listed well in the search engines. A few years ago I decided to try this with 3 domains: Ai[...]

I own over 9500 domains (see my list at NameShopping.com), and only around 500 of them are developed. The rest are parked, where I make money from ads/links on them. But, the problem is that these type of domains don’t get l[...]

Free Web Hosting Sites Over the years I have bought several free web hosting sites, where users can create and host their own websites at no cost. It was initially appealing to to think I can put ads on all the sites that webmast[...]

I bought several image hosting sites 3 or 4 years ago, but I eventually ended up selling them for less than I paid. It is a huge hassle to run them. I was constantly having hacking problems and server overload problems, and I also[...]

I own around 9,500 domain names, and 9,000 of them are parked (unused) and the other 500 I use for real sites (like CheapFlowers.com). Domain parking is a way to make money from any unused domains that you own. The way it works is[...]

In my previous posting I talked about the partnership I was involved in to sell Adoptme plush toys. The toy company went out of business, and I ended up losing the $37,000 I had invested plus I paid another $25,000 to buy the Adop[...]

The subject today is partnerships. I have been involved in 3 partnerships (Cyberworx.com, FindRentals.com, and Adoptme.com) over my 13 year Internet career, and none of them have ever worked out very well. I’ll start by talking [...]

In my previous posting, I wrote about Virtual PO Boxes. Another similar handy service I use for my own business is a lockbox, which is something my bank offers. It is basically a PO Box I use just for checks that are mailed to me,[...]

I was looking to get a PO Box for one of my businesses, and I found an even better service that might interest anybody with a home business. A PO Box works well, but if you move later in life then you need to deal with changing yo[...]

In 2001 I created a virtual pet site at AdoptMe.com, where kids can adopt free virtual pets (dogs, cats, horses, fish, etc.) and learn the responsibilities of pet ownership by feeding, walking and taking care of their pets. It qui[...]

No matter how big my company gets, I will never work in an office. I love working from home. No commute, no dressing up, no meetings. I started my company 13 years ago in my apartment in Boston, but after a few years it got to the[...]

Hi, I would like to introduce myself. I am Eric, the owner Impulse communications, Inc. I run several hundred websites such as Dumb.com, CheapFlowers.com, and Adoptme.com and also own over 9,000 domain names such as BuyWine.com, W[...]