This has raised some furious debtates over on Twitter with people claiming it is the affiliate networks responsibilty to check each and every affiliate to stop this kind of thing from happening. Sounds easy, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

How are the affiliate networks supposed to check each and every single page on any website in real time ? that is the only logical way to stop this kind of thing from happening, and even then there is no guarantee to stop it – what if the person checking the pages, doesn’t spot the ‘offending’ image.

There is no excuse for this type of thing to happen under any cirumstances, policing it is another matter which is virtually unenforceable and is certainly not the affiliate networks fault.

My view on this matter is totally impartial. I am merely stating a fact that it is something impossible to police, regardless how much it is needed.

EDIT 5.19PM 08/05/12 – LowCostHolidays.com now referring to Affiliate marketing / voucher code websites as  “spam marketing” Click here to read the comment

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

Since Tuesday, I have read literally 100’s of forum posts, blog posts, tweets,  Facebook updates, msn conversations and emails from people who have been virtually wiped out overnight. In my opinion, it has been a long time coming and everyone who hasn’t played by Google’s rules deserves everything they have been given (obviously bar the innocent ones, but a bloodshed makes no exceptions). Google is a business and appearing in their results (let alone being ranked number 1 in the natural SERPS) is a privilege and not a right, which the majority of people forget at times like this. Lots of websites have had a relatively easy ride up until 24th April, with lots of niches being able to rank with very little real ranking knowledge other than buying 1000’s of anchor text spammy links from a blog network.

Nothing has REALLY changed with this penguin update, Google has always provided clear guidelines on what they are looking for and how providing good quality content for its users means you will be rewarded for your efforts by lots of traffic. They have always told people to write for people and not search engines, as this will gain you natural looking links which will be rewarded with higher search engine positions.

The problem with this industry is there are so many people looking to make quick and easy money without having to do much – these are the people who are now looking to jump ship and try and find a new ‘easier’ business model to exploit. I personally see this as a good thing. The competition just got less competitive.

For me the main key to succeed working online are 2 things -

1. You have to be able to adapt to changes
2. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

You might think this blog post is written a bit pretentiously, but it is actually quite the opposite. This penguin update has affected me personally in numerous ways and in some ways I have suffered just the same as the majority of others – we all like an easy ride and I am guilty of some of the tactics myself. The difference is I haven’t put all my eggs in one basket and I have numerous other things to fall back on. This G day has always been inevitable and my attitude to risk spreading, reinvesting and exploring other avenues has yet again proven to be some of the best things I did and will continue to do.

So why do I think this Google Penguin update is a good thing ?

- It has made me realise more than ever, that we are not invincible and to carry on making a living online for the long term, requires adaptability and more rule playing as opposed to rule breaking.

- It has made me sharpen my pencil and pay more attention to doing things the correct way for the long term, as opposed to the sometimes easier way.

- It has encouraged me to pursue further opportunities and traffic sources which I had previously pushed to one side.

- Lots of new opportunities have opened up as a result of this update. Sites which were previously ranked for money keywords in their niches are now ripe for the taking if done correctly.

- It has already helped to alleviate my attitude to procrastination, and make me become much more attentive to working on the things that really matter as opposed to things like  Twitter, Facebook and Colour Blind Test (*blush*)

- Apart from the big brands, the playing field has been somewhat levelled in terms of SEO and ranking abilities in bigger / more rewarding industries.

- Some of my content rich websites have been rewarded from my previously seemingly disregarded efforts, and the traffic has now increased by tenfold on long tail traffic which didn’t exist prior to this update. This speaks volumes to me in terms of my future plans.

- It has made me brainstorm and expand on previous thoughts, and made come up with more than 10 workable and pursuable ideas which have 0% reliance on Google.

- It has made me look at certain aspects of what I do, and how I can improve on them and my own productivity.

It is always easy to look on the negative side of any change which affects you adversely, but a true entrepreneur will always try and see the silver lining and apply that new knowledge. It may sound strange, but I am actually quite excited by the opportunities that have been created / identified as a result of this update.

I suggest you take that penguin by the hand and give it a firm shake, as it could actually be the best thing that ever happened to you. If you are unable to see ANY positiveness from all of this and are unwilling to adapt then I suggest you stick to your original plan of jumping ship and moving into other things ideally offline.

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

As we are approaching Week 3 of this year’s ‘Apprentice’ (BBC1 9PM Wednesday’s for those who are unorganised) the stronger candidates are now starting to emerge, and there is a clear divide between the real entrepreneurs and the ‘wannabe celebrity’ entrepreneurs. For me personally there is only one candidate who appears to have the right attitude and mindset to go all the way and become the Apprentice 2012 winner, and that is Laura Hogg.

Week 2 saw the candidates given the task of creating a new gadget. The girls (Team Stirling) were torn between 2 ideas – A plastic bath screen which stops kids from splashing water everywhere (Laura’s idea), and a foot cosy which wrapped around the taps and provided a place to rest your feet in the bath. After doing some market research it was apparantly obvious that the foot cosy was a firm favourite, but the team leader Jane chose to ignore this and go with the bath splash screen anyway - much to the dismay of the sub team who had conducted the market research (including Laura).

The girls lost the task and Jane was asked who she was bringing back into the board room, and she chose Maria and Katie. Given that Laura was the one who came up with the idea of the bath splash screen and it was potentially the reason the girls lost the task, she was not chosen to go back into the boardroom – this is quite rare in The Apprentice, as they usually get made a scapegoat, but not this time and I think that speaks volumes about Laura as a candidate.

Laura conducted herself very professionally throughout the task, and even though she came up with the idea of the bath splash screen, she was rooting for the foot cosy over her own idea – another thing I think speaks volumes. To identify and admit that someone else’s idea is better than your own idea is a very strong trait to possess and shows maturity, professionalism and a good business mindset, especially in ‘The Apprentice’ situation.

So for me, there is only one clear winner so far of the Apprentice 2012 and that is Laura Hogg !

You can follow Laura on Twitter, or check out her business website (Glasgow based affordable bridal boutique) here

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

Details below and good luck to Paul !

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

I also knew that he was a bit of a mystery amongst the old time catchers (also posted on Acorn Domains in the past), so I decided to pay him a visit (because I really wanted the .co.uk) and his address on the whois was only 13 miles from where I live, so thought what the hell, I have noting to lose.

To cut a long story short, he is a nice normal guy in his 60’s who was looking to get out of the game. He gave a me a full list of his names and asked me if I was interested – naturally I said yes, but would need time to think about it, and look through the list in detail.

So I went away and done just that. We met up again a few days later and agreed a deal for the lot and I now own his entire portfolio.

A combination of having a bit of initiative to actually track down a domain I really wanted and being in the right place, at the right time, ended up with over 1100 domains as a result.

I will be looking to sell the majority of names once I finish sorting them all as there are some real crackers in this portfolio.

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

Within a matter of hours the tweet had been retweeted thousands of times all over the globe and was spreading virally so fast, that by Saturday evening, Papa Johns issued this statement on their Facebook group wall “We were extremely concerned to learn of the receipt issue in New York. This act goes against our company values, and we’ve confirmed with the franchisee that this matter was addressed immediately and that the employee is being terminated. We are truly sorry for this customer’s experience.”

Mr Miyagi will be turning in his grave at this story

The Papa John facebook page has over 2 Million worldwide fans, and a quick search on Google News will show how much global news coverage that this story has achieved from all the major TV stations, Newspapers and Websites.

All this hugely negative national coverage, all started by a single Tweet about a huge company with a single employee who decided to write three words “Lady Chinky Eyes” – makes you realise how powerful Twitter can be !

If you want to follow me on Twitter then you can find me here @TheFrankPaul

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

The new iPhone 5 is powered by a combination of Comic Sans and the Android operating system. Steve Jobs has also stepped out of retirement to reveal the iPhone 5 and said at press launch “We are so excited about the launch of the new Comic Sans and Android powered phone. It has a brand new function which enables to see news stories before they actually happen. A number of you may have seen the story the Daily Mail ran on the Knox trial yesterday, and I can confirm that this was due to the power of the super computer we have built into the iPhone 5″

Jobs also added “You may find this hard to believe but I am actually saying this from tomorrow and what you are seeing is an illusion right before your very eyes”

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

My youngest daughter recently started collecting the Moshi Monsters ‘Series 1′ Moshlings which are little plastic figures all with different names. There are a couple of moshlings which are classed as ‘ultra rare’ and they are very hard to find.

A week ago we had taken a family visit to a local toy shop for her to spend her birthday money, when she decided to pay a pack of Moshlings. When she got in the car she opened the pack, and was very excited to see that she was lucky enough to have an ‘ultra rare’ moshling called “Big Bad Bill” inside.

As she understands the meaning of the word ‘rare’, she quickly suggested it could be worth money (she’s my daughter alright) and she might be able to sell it for alot more than she paid for it (A pack of 2 moshlings cost £1.99 so they are worth around a quid each). We looked on eBay and saw they were selling in the region of £7 – she was ecstatic and asked me to list it straight away.

All week she has been super excited, and asking myself and my wife to check eBay every 5 minutes. The listing ended about an hour ago and she was over the moon that the end price was £10.51 + £1.50 postage and packaging = £12.01 a fantastic 1200% return on investment (ROI)

The best part for me, was her realising she now has £12 to spend on 6 more packs of moshlings so 12 more moshlings to add to her collection AND the possibility of finding another rare moshling to start her trading off all over again.

Whatever happens, I am pleased the buzz from trading runs in the family, and who knows we might have someone to take over my reigns in years to come

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist

Domain Trading is one of the most lucrative forms of online income, and has very small maintenance costs attached to it. At present a .uk domain name costs in the region of £6-8 (depending on your chosen registrar) to keep registered for 2 years once you own the domain name.

I have been passively involved in domain trading for a number of years, but have become more actively involved in the last 2-3 years.

I am always being asked about domain trading, what it entails, the appeal of it etc , so I thought I would post a ‘real world’ example of a particular pair of names I bought and sold recently and the domain trading story that surrounds them.

On August 17^th 2010 I purchased the domain names rouletteonline.co.uk and blackjackonline.co.uk for £50 each from Acorn Domains. I could see both names had instant appeal from numerous angles (which is a trait you inherit from being involved in the domain trading industry over time) so I knew they were good investments. One of my initial ‘tick boxes’ I always ask myself when buying a name is – ‘Do I think I can sell that for double in 12 months or less’ – if the answer is yes, then it usually sways me to buy a particular name I am interested in.

With this particular pair of names, I knew I wasn’t going to develop them, so I just added them to my Sedo account so people could easily get in contact about the domain names, and then I could forgot about them.

On December 7^th 2010 I was emailed by a fellow domain trader asking how much I was looking for rouletteonline.co.uk, and after some negotiating we agreed a part exchange deal for £1500 and the following 5 domain names:

volunteerjobs.co.uk
fittedwardrobe.co.uk
massagechair.co.uk
webcamgirls.co.uk
maritalaids.co.uk

Not a bad trade for a name which cost me £50 less than 4 months earlier.  I have not done anything with those 5 names since acquiring them and yet again I have received offers ranging from £50 to £1,200 on each of them except webcamgirls.co.uk which hasn’t received any offers or interest so far.

Fast forward to May 2011 – May 25^th 2011 to be precise. I receive an opening offer on Sedo for blackjackonline.co.uk of $500 – again not a bad offer considering what I paid for the name, but again I knew it was worth more than that so I countered $6,000, to which the interested party countered again with $1,500 (approx £950 at the time) along with the comment ‘This is my final offer’. I thought about it overnight and decided not to accept and to counter back $4,500 with the comment ‘This is my final offer’ – to which the seller cancelled and broke off negotiations.  Sigh.

August 2^nd 2011 – I receive an opening offer for blackjackonline.co.uk on Sedo for $2,000. Now this is the type of opening offer that gets my attention. I counter back $15,000 (hoping to meet somewhere in the $7,000 – $10,000 region) and the next day, the interested party counters $5,000. I had a good feeling that this person is very interested and quite serious about buying the name, so I then counter back $12,000. A couple of hours later I receive a counter offer of $8,000 along with the comment ‘This is my final offer’. Now I admit I did think about countering back $10,000 ‘This is my final offer’ but I then thought about risk vs. reward – why try and push another $2,000 at the risk of losing the $8,000? I think the majority of domain traders would have countered back in this situation, but when I considered the fact I paid £50 for this name and I had received an offer which was just shy of £5,000 and was 100x what I paid for the name less than 12 months prior to this, I would be a fool to push my luck, so I accepted the offer. I waited in anticipation for the Escrow payment to arrive with Sedo, as I have been waiting up to 2 weeks for payment on previous names I have sold on Sedo. It arrived within 2 hours of agreeing the sale. Amazing!

The sale was published officially on Dnjournal (the most comprehensive website for reported domain name sales from around the world) and reached number 6 of that weeks ‘Country Code Top 20 Sales’

So from August 17^th 2010 – August 3^rd 2011 I had turned £100 into £1500 + £5000 + those 5 names I listed above, which I wouldn’t sell for less than £1,000 each so that makes a grand total of £11,500 minimum from a £100 investment over a 12 month period and this is with no input or effort, just some vision and some intuition.

Again this goes to show you can make very good money from a very little start up cost, just using some initiative and waiting for the right names to come up and then reinvesting and scaling it up.

I have said it so many times before, and see so many people continue to make the same mistake all the time. There are 4 main parts to succeed in domain trading at this level.

1. Reinvesting – Always reinvest the majority of the money you make from domain trading, into more domain names. I see too many people sell a domain name for a few K and then spend it all on pointless things and then have nothing to show for it apart from a few hangovers and a nice designer watch worth nothing, and then having to start all over again.
2. Investment spreading – I never stick to one ‘type’ of domain or niche. I sometimes reinvest the some of the profits from domain trading into an earning website which requires no input but earns some level of passive income every month. This obviously contributes to the overall income from domain trading, albeit in a different capacity.
3. Scaling up – When you have more money to play with, then I would advise to buy better quality names for even bigger ROI’s.
4. Research – Make sure you invest in names which actually have commercial value and the bigger the better. Niche names are good also and can get good results, but it is far better to have a name with 100’s of potential buyers as opposed to just a handful. A quick Google search for the keywords will give you some indication of how popular the domain name could be.

As a direct result of this recent sale, I have spent approx £2,000 of the money made from this bit of domain trading on 2 smallish websites (both with generic domain names) which are currently making approx £150-200 a month between them. This should be able to be improved hugely with a little bit of tweaking, as the traffic they are getting is not being monetised well at all.

Post from: Frank Paul – Online Entrepreneur. Domain Name and SEO Specialist