Free Content Generation

John Tziviskos is a veteran domain investor, with one of the top premium portfolios of Greek IDNs. Recently in response to posts here and on Acro.net , John showed me his proof of revenue from the last year. I was impressed that a number of John’s top Greek IDNs netted a total profit of $22,000, and thought that many other IDN investors could benefit from a Q&A.

After my first year in the IDN investing business I came to realize that the much speculated ‘traffic tsunami’ would take a long time to happen and it wouldn’t be a tsunami either. It would be a natural progression of increasing traffic spread over years.

So I decided to experiment with developing a few of my domains which were good generics but were receiving little or no traffic. Naturally, I started with Greek IDNs since Hellenic is my native language.

Thus, I realized that in order to earn something from my idns while waiting for them to become ‘fully IDN’ (IDNtld plus functioning IDN email), they would have to be developed, since parking earnings were pitiful – excluding Cyrillic domains which, due to Opera were receiving great amount of type-in traffic.

Q&A: How John Tziviskos Earns $22000/Year From Greek IDNs - IDNBlog (blog)

When it comes to content from business to customers, there is a dearth of sustainability. The free content generation will diminish over time, unless there’s a clear return on investment to it. Quality content is hard to produce. Companies that can afford to hire someone to be a web presence will generate quality content. While, social media will continue to be important as a channel for monitoring end consumer needs, wishes, and experiences after using the products.

Full Story: Social Media tuning for better reputation management - Reputation Management (blog)

The theory is that social media lets people discuss my products and services without my intervention. I can now enter into a dialog with my customers, that will let me optimize my products, respond to my markets, and manage my reputation real time. The magically I?ll be successful and have a thriving business. That sounds really good on paper.

One big difference is the cost. Maintaining an ongoing social media presence is a huge use of time and effort. If I were a big company, I might hire someone full time to do nothing but tweet, twitter, Yelp, Blorp, and Blubber. But as a one-man shop, I have to do all this myself. Then I have to track the responses and figure out which channels are actually getting attention (that will change in six months, requiring another full round of marketing research), and then generate content content content.

At some point, I?m apparently supposed to develop products and services, which is where I make the money. And by the way, those products and services better contain content I haven?t given away for free in the process of generating all this social media.

Full Story: The Future of Social Media. - 4Hoteliers