We recently were bidding on a single word domain name and in follow on discussions with the owner I had a realization. Most domainers believe (or want to believe) that they are getting a million dollar pay day - today! Here’s some advice - Tell ‘im ‘e’s dreamin’

Years ago I had the pleasure of meeting the Roderick McAllery, owner of The Trading Post in Sydney - he told me his grandfather conceived the idea whilst in the battlefield trenches during World War II. Many diggers bought and sold via The Trading Post to make money.

It seems the domainers have lost that Aussie Spirit and have lofty ideas on what the true value of their largely unmonetized real estate is.

Tyron Ball, one of the young guns of the website buying and selling on the SearchForecast marketplace has provided a very good segmentation of buyers and sellers of websites and domain names:

The Industry Operator: Owned by a business/professional within their industry – as per dentist being owned by an actual dentist. In many cases this person is just forwarding the domain into their corporate website. Have probably had the domain for many years. Good chance they have already been approached by people wanting to buy their domains.

The Capitalist: Someone who has set up a website on a good domain, served some Google ads and bs content. Usually a bit of a tech geek / online marketing guy. Probably has some view of what their domain is worth – no doubt much higher than its actual value.

The Lucky Opportunist: Someone who managed to register a great domain name early on and has no idea what to do with it but knows they have something of value.

The Savvy Domainer: e.g. Dark Blue Sea. Usually an ads portal site. Going to want a lot for the domain if they even want to sell it at all.

For more information on buying and selling websites, visit http://marketplace.searchforecast.com

We recently reviewed over 50 webmaster blogs and webmaster seo forums globally, informing them of our website marketplace where webmasters can buy and sell websites. I wanted to share Triphp.com with you as I think it’s one of the better webmaster blogs available. Check it out if you have time.

I went to a meet up of iphone app developers in San Francisco recently and was left speechless by the number of despondent iphone app developers having problems selling and promoting their app on the AppStore.

Being a shareholder of Playhaven.com, I know to well how important it is and the limited opportunities for app developers to promote their iphone app or sell iphone apps they have created. Same same for Google! This is why we decided to allow iphone apps to be sold in the iphone app marketplace and hope that developers find alternative ways to buy and sell their technology.

I just posted this comment on http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/07/29/google-the-search-party-is-over/

Journalists should not make the mistake that Facebook is a better business than Google.

I really believe Google can increase revenues by partnering with SearchForecast to become/facilitate a marketplace to buy/sell the millions of publishers you send checks to each month. The engine room of Google is their AdSense Publishers who contributed 30+% of their revenues. This global ecosystem of publishers is the long tail which helped built Google’s dominance in the past 6 years and is a strategic asset. SearchForecast can help leverage these publishers. This is why we launched http://marketplace.searchforecast.com - where AdSense Publishers can sell/buy their websites.

It’s not just Google who need a future vision, it’s the publishers who need new management. To do this, many need to sell their websites and online businesses and have new people embrace their online business with new vigor and ideas.

With billions of iPhone apps downloaded and iphone app developers largely relying on word of mouth or the AppStore to list them in the Top 100, there is a massive supply of iPhone apps which need liquidity. SearchForecast’s marketplace to sell iphone app, aims to help solve that problem by allowing app developers to list their apps and facilitate an auction process.

“Buy low, sell high” is long associated with buying stocks and property but when buying a website, its important to focus on buying websites at auction that are atleast 1 year old, have at least 6 months of stable revenues and importantly has not moved hosting servers. When SearchForecast optimizes websites, we are very aware that the host IP address is an important part of the optimization equation.

We suggest people buying a website or those selling a profitable website, consider reviewing our list of website buying tips briefs as these hold insights into how to improve a website once you’ve purchased it but to also understand if the website has inherent SEO value. 

Yesterday, we launched the SearchForecast Marketplace allowing publishers - NOT domain names - to be bought and sold. Many AdSense publishers have built recurring revenue stream online businesses and are ready to sell their asset. Many buyers are looking to inject new ideas, enthusiasm and web 2.0 ideas into websites that have reached a point where the owners want to sell. It’s an inflection point in the evolution of contextual publishing.

Over lunch in West Hollywood in Los Angeles today with Eytan Elbaz, one of the original founders of Applied Semantics which invented AdSense, we spoke about the empowerment AdSense gave to global publishers, how those monthly AdSense checks have enriched their lives and bring hope, understanding and help people learn about new cultures.

We built the Marketplace so AdSense Publishers can realize their dream, capitalize on their entrepreneuralism and hard work with a pay day. We hope to attract buyers that aspire to joining the online publishing phenomena of passive monetization and bring new ideas to continue the growth of this industry.

Millions of people have worked very hard to build their websites - not speculated in domains - and have labored daily to build valuable traffic. The SearchForecast Marketplace is  another way we are embracing the publisher community and bring together people from around the world to learn, share and trade their websites. It’s a project for the publishers and we hope you all embrace and benefit from it…..