Domaining.org.uk

Three books have appeared on the horizon in recent weeks that I thought may be of interest to domainers.

The first two will help developer domainers who want to build out their domain name portfolio, and the third is an up and coming discussion of the domain name industry.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett is one of only a handful of books on blogging that tackles the issue of people wanting to make a living from blogging. Topics covered include, handling technical issues, examining different ways your blog can earn income, evaluate your blog’s success, keep content fresh and interesting and using a blog to generate income indirectly. Darren and Chris are both professional bloggers and Darren has played an important role in promoting different techniques for making money from blogging through his massively successful site Problogger.net. 

Online forums can play an important part in developing and adding value to a website. Forums help build site content and that content can help improve a sites position in the search engine rankings. As a consequence many sites include a forum in addition to information pages, article pages etc. Many sites simply contain stand alone forums and although online forums are not always big money makers, successful, popular forums can occupy an important place in their niche and position their owners as experts in that niche. Thats why I thought Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards by Patrick O’Keefe would be of interest to developing domainers. However, this book is not about making money from forums. It is about creating quality, popular forums that people want to join and participate in - what you do with the traffic generated by the forum is up to you. Overall, there is plenty here for new and more experienced forum owners and the topics covered include developing communities, forum promotion, managing moderators, dealing with problems and there is a very brief section on forum monetization.  

The third book I found is an overview of the domain name industry. It is about time domaining hit the mainstream press and The Domain Game - How People Get Rich From Internet Domain Names may possibly have a massive impact on the domain name market. As yet the book is unavailable but should be on the market shortly. So all we can do at the moment is read up about the book on its website, TheDomainGame.org. The Domain Game, written by Wall Street Journal reporter David Kesmodel  ‘chronicles the exploits of the world’s leading domain investors’. It also explains how people can get involved in domaining.   Whether it teaches seasoned domainers anything they do not know already, remains to be seen. However, if the book becomes popular it is likely to impact greatly on people’s perceptions of domaining and what domainers do, hopefully in a positive way.

I have not bought these books yet, but they are definitely on my list of books to buy when time allows. ProBlogger and Managing Online Forums are both available from Amazon in the US and UK. The Domain Game should be available from Amazon in these countries in the next few months.

Just spotted this - for UK residents only I think.

If you have the ‘right stuff’, you can help Nominet spend £5 million of its profits. They have decided to set up something called the Nominet Foundation ‘to better utilise (Nominet’s surpluses) to…

provide public benefits to UK Internet stakeholders with an emphasis on ensuring the proper use and availability of the internet, education, information technology, and research and development projects particularly for the young, the elderly and the socially deprived’.

So they need 4 trustees to help them spend the dosh, er, allocate the surplus. In addition to strong interpersonal skills you will need a commitment to the objectives of the Foundation and the ability to communicate effectively with the key stakeholder groups and an understanding of the aims of the Foundation and its partners i.e. research, academia and Internet users and stakeholders. So nothing too difficult there!

More details about Nominet can be found here and you can find out more about the vacancies, here. Oh yes, the deadline for applications is March 28th 2008.