The Dot Com King

Who is Kevin Ham & why have we never heard of him?

Kevin Ham is the Dot Com King. He reigns in the kingdom of Domain. Until recently I have never heard of him, bet you haven’t either. He rules his kingdom from the seat of Reinvent Media Group, a Vancouver based company that owns over half a million domain names and who is arguably the most powerful and successful member of a small, albeit growing elite group of Domainers; landlords of valuable real estate on the internet. Kevin appears to be a very private man.

I recently sat with royalty and didn’t even know it. No, it wasn’t with Kevin Ham, but with Conor Shankey, the CTO of Reinvent Media. Conor is no mean dude himself when it comes to internet savvy and his role in it. We were both guests at a birthday party at the Cellar Jazz Club in Vancouver. Over dinner he sat across from me. I reached over my dish of lamb shanks – no, there was no asparagus; I did not ask him for a date and besides his lovely wife was seated by his side - and engaged him in polite dinner conversation.

Turned out that Conor was in internet marketing and that’s when all semblance of politeness dropped as at the mere mention of anything internet my ears perk up and my “inquisition mode” – as my husband likes to term my natural curiosity - kicks into overdrive. I was floored when I learned that his company owned over half a million domain names, the largest domain owner in the world. My eyes must been the size of saucers as the sheer enormity of that number sank in. He then told me about Kevin Ham.

Conor Shankey is the founder of the very successful Visual Knowledge which was acquired by Reinvent Media in 2008.

OK … enough with the name dropping. What am I getting at? For several years now I have been following the development of virtual real estate. Ed Dale
and Kevin Wilke to name just two big guns in the internet marketing world are big players in this niche, but I first heard of virtual real estate at a seminar I attended almost two years ago in Los Angeles. I honestly don’t remember who it was that spoke about it. What I do remember is that the concept immediately began to churn cogs and turn wheels into motion as the very idea galvanized me completely.

I wrote about virtual real estate on this blog:

- There’s Money in Them Thar Blogs - April 13



That was Danielle Friedland I was referring to.

And again in:

- Owning Google Real Estate: - April 04

Dealing in virtual real estate is a growing business. From domains being auctioned off at seemingly ridiculous prices – Kevin Ham is known to have paid as much as $350,000 for a single domain name – to buyers wheeling and dealing with existing performing sites such as Danielle’s celebrity babies blog and pulling in a mil or two and oftentimes more.

No matter how you look at it, it’s a big business. I began to assemble a portfolio of domains shortly after my return from that Los Angeles seminar. I thought I was doing ok with 27! ...lol... These are all domains that actually have a web presence as sites and require my attention. They are monetized and bring in money, but not enough yet to outsource any of the functions.

It never occurred to me to buy domain names and hold them for future resale whilst systemically monetizing them in the meantime. My previous understanding of virtual real estate has expanded exponentially. Henceforth I’ll view my modest domain portfolio with a little bit more respect and continue to buy, hmmm, that would be "invest." It’s a lot more affordable than the stock market; the downside is negligible and the upside at best stratospheric. It is after all still a game, a domain name game, and its not just kings who can play at it.

It’s a thought … have I expanded your horizons? Just a wee teenzy bit? I hope so.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

PS. Now that’s cheese worth biting into!

Quick Links:
Reinvent Media Group
Cellar Jazz Club
“I reached over the asparagus and asked her for a date” John F. Kennedy
Kevin Ham
Conor Shankey
There’s Money in Them Thar Blogs
Danielle Friedland
Owning Google Real Estate:

The 100 Hour Rule - Webcast

Earlier this week, March 18 to be exact, I wrote about the importance of picking your battles to win the war. What inspired that article was a posting by Kevin Wilke on the Nitro Marketing Blog “The 100 Hour Rule.”

As a student of the Nitro Marketing Blueprint Course, I receive emails from Kevin.
Yesterday this arrived in my inbox:

“Due to the extreme popularity of Nitro Marketing's
recent blog post about what it really takes to go
full-time in your online business, we are going to
do a full 1-hour LIVE webcast training and break it
down for you into even more detail….”

I thought this was one of those pieces of information that should be shared with you. Attending the webcast is free --- just an investment of one hour of your time.

Register here to attend
These are just some of the things they will be covering:

- What are the exact steps to go from scratch (or wherever you are right now) to having a full-time online business this year?

- How can you eliminate the 5 biggest pitfalls that are holding you back from going full-time online?

- What exactly does an insanely successful internet business look like? (the visual "map" will give you instant clarity the moment you lay your eyes on it)

- What do you need to do right now to see CONSTANT progress in your online business?
(And stop 'spinning your wheels' doing a lot of "busy" work and getting nowhere)

- What do the most successful business owners do to accomplish more in ONE DAY than you normally would in one MONTH? (Especially if you've got a super busy life)

And a few other surprises they have up their sleeve!

If you have a strong desire to succeed online then get registered. I have.

Just click: Register for The 100 Hour Rule webcast to reserve your "seat."

Happy Blogging!
Valentina

PS... maybe they'll talk about cheese!

Quick Links:
To Register for the free webcast:The 100 Hour Rule free webcast
Pick Your Battles post: Pick Your Battles to Win The War

Pick Your Battles and Win the War

Pick your battles carefully if you want to win the war.

In the world of Internet Marketing the battles fought are over search engine rankings, traffic and lists. There are more. What we want to win is a big fat check - every month. A blog is a good starting point.

I just read Kevin Wilke's latest post on the Nitro Marketing Blog. It is so simple, yet so powerful ... and so wise. The title? The 100 Hour Rule.

What Kevin says is that to be successful in Inernet Marketing, you have to have razor sharp focus on one outcome and take action to support that outcome. He talks about the 100 hour rule: put in 100 hours of REAL focused work into your Internet Marketing and you will be rewarded for your efforts with MONEY, yessirree - isn't that what we are in this for? Depending on where you are in your Internet Marketing career, you may be looking for a different outcome. I for example am looking for my first $100 month from my Blog Along With Me project. That includes this blog and the spinoffs from it.

How does that translate when it comes to action? What action would deliver that amount month after month after month and continue to grow.

This is a young blog and my new one Money Muscle Gym is even younger. What I am looking for is more traffic, more subscribers. Nothing new there. Everyone looks for that --- even the gurus with their minions of subscribers are always looking for ways to increase traffic and increase their list. Well I think job one is to increase traffi, because sure as there are little green apples, more traffic will ultimately get more subscribers. So the outcome I am really gunning for is traffic.

There are many ways to increase traffic. Kevin's suggestion is to pick one and concentrate your efforts on that one way, until you really get good at it so that its almost on autopilot, then add another.

What am I going to do?

I am going to concentrate on my strength - writing. I may never win a Pulitzer but writing is something I enjoy, feel comfortable with. From now on you will see more posts here as well is on my Money Muscle Gym. I'll be blogging and I'll be submitting articles to Article Directories. Ahh! Stay tuned. The next posting is all about Article Marketing.

In the meantime, hop on over to Kevin Wilke's article ... it is brilliant

Happy Blogging!

PS... 100 hours to making money, 500 hours to kissing your nine to five goodbye!
Go read it!

PPS... Kissing 9 to 5 Goodbye is good ... you can buy all the cheese you want!

Quick Links:

Internet Marketing
The 100 Hour Rule
Money Muscle Gym

Avoid Time Thieves - Focus on Blogging

Avoid time thieves, focus on the job at hand: Blogging.

Valentina, What are you talking about?

Read on.

If you have been trolling on the internet for a while dollars to donuts says that you get a lot of emails in your inbox every day. I know I get gazillions and while a part of my wants to scream "stop the SPAM!" another part of me knows that at least half of those emails - if not more - are there because I subscribed to them. I talk to extremely successful internet marketers and they all tell me that they too have overflowing inboxes and that they even pay attention to the spam because they want to see how others are marketing and sometimes, there might even be a good idea.

But you are not a guru (yet), and neither am I. ( Hint: The gurus have staff) These are all time thieves. Every course I have ever taken told me to apply the brakes to the emails. Emails are a distraction and take away from productivity. Kevin Wilke told us to be ruthless and to unsubscribe to everything.

Avoid these Time Thieves

- Jokes sent by your friends - don't forward, better yet, don't open. In fact send an email to your buddies and tell them that you are going to focus on a project online and that in an effort to keep emails down to a minimum, to please withold sending the jokes, the chain letters, the beautiful poetry and whatever else it is that clutters your inbox from your well meaning and loving friends.

- Newsletters that have nothing to do with Internet Marketing or better yet, with blogging. If there are some newsletters that you really enjoy reading, take note of the URLs, and then when your blogging muscles begin to strengthen, then you can start re-suscribing again, s-l-o-w-l-y, one at a time!

- Clicking on an item that caught your eye on MSN ... it probably has nothing to do with Internet Marketing.

You will be surprised at just how much time you will have carved out for yourself, time that you will now be able to put to good use and focus on your blogging. Time is the biggest investment you can make in this business and while it does not take actual hard cash out of your pocket, applied properly, it will put money in your bank. Now, is that good or good?

Keep the On Topic Stuff:

There are some things you should continue to subscribe to, a prime example would be if you are currently taking a course then you need to accept and read continuing updates, new material and so on. That is a given. If you are shadowing this blog and setting one up yourself, you need to subscribe to the RSS feed or the "follow me" button.

I am currently on three courses. They are all related and are specific to Blogging. What I write here is a distillation of the three. I am writing about the baby steps that I think are the best way to start your blogging career. They are all courses for a fee. I don't like to recommend things that I have not either actually done myself or at least reviewed in detail.

A Course Recommendation:

I will however share one of those courses with you today. I got the idea for this blog from Caroline Middlebrook. I admit it, I am plain out and out copycatting her (though not necessarily each step) - and I have told her so. If you want to blog along faster, I can certainly recommend her Bloggers Bible. She has both a free and a paid version. The paid version is delivered all in one go and you can proceed as fast as you want ... you'll be ahead of the postings on this blog and perhaps banking dollars a lot quicker.

Quick Links:
Kevin Wilke - Nitro Marketing Blueprint
Caroline Middlebrook - Bloggers Bible