Come for the Ride…

It doesn’t matter how many people are on your team or how much money you have backing your ventures… If you have a project in mind and you set a deadline, it seems without fail that the project will always take at least 2 times longer than your original plan.

Microsoft is constantly pushing back large launches of their software. Some of my current clients who do web dev. in house are pushing back re-launches months after the original proposed time line.

Is it poor planning? No, not necessarily. Then again, I’ve yet to work in a large scale launch where the time line is measured in years instead of weeks. I would assume even those long term projects suffer setbacks.

Is it under estimating the enormity of the job? I would venture to guess that at least 60% of the seasoned project managers know enough about the various technologies to estimate each job properly.

So what is it? That right there is the real mystery. Why is it that all projects take longer than the planned period? I know builders of some of the world’s crazy sky scrapers have people working day and night and weekends to get the buildings up. While some software houses can be slave drivers (EA), it doesn’t seem like they have a 24/7 crew pushing the release.

Either way, if someone knows the secret of the lost time, please share it with me.

After a week long domain auction bidding war; (with one bid from me) I’m now the proud owner of EasyAutoSales.com. The name is not particularly short or witty but its clear in its offerings and that’s all that matters. Now we just have to build a site around it.

TechCrunch had an article today about a new video classifieds autos website that launched or is in the process of launching. The website called HotSwap, focuses on selling autos through the use of user generated videos.

This brings up a good question. Is the public ready to do the work required to populate a site with video commercials? We know YouTube was a big hit with user generated videos… but I would venture to guess those are a bit more fun to make than 30 second to 4 minute long commercials.

On another note, the HotSwap site does have Web 2.0 design elements which is cool and it’s something different than the other auto sites out there. Also, the TechCrunch article says the used autos ad market is at $370 billion a year. If that number is accurate, then this project is heading towards a great place.

Edit: I saw another article today that says U.S. online advertising currently tops off at less than 20 billion dollars. I think they meant to say $370 million dollars earlier…

You may have noticed that I have yet to mention the domain name of the new autos website on this blog. The reason is simple really… I’m still not satisfied with the 3-4 autos related domain names that I have acquired.

For new businesses that do not have huge multi-million dollar backed brands, there are two trains of thought in the business/web world with regards to domain names.

1. Pick something simple, obvious, and one that people will likely type in when they want the product of service. (e.g. sex.com, books.com, cars.com, meetup.com, overstock.com, etc.)

2. Make up a random word and hope that A. the .com version of the domain is available B. hope that the pronunciation of the word is catchy enough that people will brand it once it becomes huge. (e.g. google.com, yahoo.com, squidoo.com, digg.com, flickr, de.licio.us, etc.)

There are a couple of HUGE benefits with the first method:

1. Search Engines assume that your domain with the keyword relevant to the search is also selling products relevant to the search; and therefore places you in the top of the organic search results. (e.g. cars.com = sells cars and not poker supplies or sweet tea)

2. People who don’t use search engines but are searching for products may just type in keyword.com to see what comes up so again, you’ll be benefiting from receiving a lot of typed-in traffic that you don’t have to pay for.

I remember when I was trying to start my babysitter finder site I had inquired about buying babysitters.com from the person who owned it. The guy wanted $120,000 for the name and this was at least 2 years out from the dot com boom. As much as I’d love to have that kind of cash to invest in just a name, it was definitely out of my reach.

The down side to the keyword domains is sometimes these names are very hard to brand and if you’re a brick-n-mortar company, the names may be hard to take with you off-line.

The second method above is a bit more complicated and somewhat outside-the-box. However for the most part, I think these random names are spawned from last-ditch, desperate attempts at securing a .com name. It’s not that these letter combinations necessary sound cool or that mis-spellings are cool but for new businesses who want a place online, these left over letter combinations are what’s left from the pool of good, solid word names. Imagine coming to a dinner party late… you end up picking the plate of what’s left. Now imagine starting a business 10, 25, 50 years from now; I wonder what brand choices they’ll have by then.

The sad truth is .com names are still many times more popular than other domain extensions. Try as they may, companies that use .us, .net or .biz just doesn’t have the same “professional” feel as the ones that end with .com’s.

It’s because of such and the highly competitive nature of autos related websites that I’m still hunting for my next .com name even though I already have a couple of .net’s and odd .com’s in my pocket that could potentially do the job. I guess time will tell if I end up making the right choice and if the money I spent acquiring these names will be worth it.

This weekend while I was searching for more car related domain names I stumbled upon a web creation package that generates niche stores online. Even though the site seemed like a very mature version of a parked domain, the package that was sold on BuildANicheStore.com warranted a second look because it generated content that was unlike other parked domains that I’ve seen.

For anyone whose try to do businesses online, we all know what a parked domains look like. If GoDaddy or some other registrar isn’t making money off of your domain, then some other company like Site Parker is. The idea of making money through affiliate links and paid-per-click clicks is not new; but trying to make a parked domain seem as a full blown legit business is quickly becoming the next phrase of this maturing industry; and it piqued my interest.

Even though I wasn’t completely sold on the idea, because I did have 3 or 4 domains laying around that I could throw something up and make a few dollars from… I ended up splurging the $97 to buy this package to see what the software is all about. I figured if nothing else, I will take an early plunge in learning about Linux and/or SEO which will be needed for the autos website.

Well, the package setup was easy and it only took about 5 minutes to setup. Most of the waiting in the first 24 hours was actually waiting for the domain to propagate correctly so I can see the fruit of my 5 minutes worth of work. Overall, I am pretty impressed. The package makes becoming an eBay affiliate quite easy and if you pick a good niche, there’s no saying you can’t go far with this.

As it stands now, I think I’m going to do some very part-time/spare time promotion of my domain to see if additional traffic will help generate any sales for the site. I did receive some typed in traffic to my domain last year which resulted in about $8 in AdSense sales (hey, it paid for itself) so having this store will hopefully bump that number up some. I’m not expecting much but hey, what’s 5 minutes of your time worth?