For those of you following my blog, its been pretty obvious I am scrambling to find my calling in life. This year really has been a transitional year…..since Google China leaving, business environment in China getting more difficult, and my trip back to USA to reflect on things since I’ve been away for two and a half years. Marshall from all jewish links talked with me over the weekend in Shenzhen and said my blog is addictive, like a “cyber soap opera”. Glad people are enjoying it, as I have always tried with this blog, I want to show the real story.
So coming back to Shenzhen, I chatted to Attila a friend I have made as both of us are moving from Shenzhen to Manila and moving more from manufacturing / sourcing and into internet / SEO / domaining. He was invited to a domainer meetup in Hong Kong, and gave me a last minute invite since he saw I am just back from USA and it may be something up my alley.
I was tempted to pass on it, as I am just getting back from jet lag and that exhausting 2 months in USA running from state to state, meeting to meeting, and the whole NY warehouse screwup. But it really seemed interesting, a domainer networking event with events including a cruise in hong kong on Sunday night, day trip to Macau on Monday, and office tour of the PPX.com domain advisor company and meeting on Tuesday about the domain industry and new projects they are working on.
For those wondering, what exactly is domaining? As the name says, it is buying, selling, holding, developing domain names in the internet world. Many times it is buying them for the direct type in from users searching for something, and having the keyword domain having advertisements on the page that then pay the domainer a fee if someone clicks on them.
This is another industry where everyone says, DAMN, why wasn’t I buying up all those .com domains in the late 1990s? Just like baseball cards, or Magic cards (yes, I’m a dork and I played Magic back in the early/mid 1990s) If only I had been buying domains back then instead of cards. People in the event owning some pretty awesome domains like tourguides.com , species.com , blackjack.com – none of these sites are fully made, but simply holding pages with advertisements. There are full time people making decent livings doing this business, and it truly is the definition of passive streams of income.
But I really connected with a lot of people in the event….I guess I network openly with anyone in the world, and therefore my network isn’t exactly focused on internet and marketing….but this event completely was, and I could chit-chat about domaining, SEO, hosting problems, merchant account fraud issues, and more and they people I was conversing with could understand my stories, relate, and give me advice and feedback! WOW, no longer do I have to keep on teaching other people, learning on my own, and feel like I am draining my brain of information.
I was also able to meet some domainers in the bar and restaurant sector, doing local event marketing, and interested in working with me on newyorkbarstore.com as they are in Canada and have a telemarketing center and experienced staff in the industry! Wow, this would be amazing, very early stage discussion right now, but also a big positive from the event.
Also many of these domainers are not into SEO, and asking me many questions how to better monetize their domain portfolios…..this is my kinda stuff….and have a bunch of new people to follow up with. Keep on searching.