I’ll admit it - I’m slow, and today just emphasises that fact. Twice in one day, I’ve tried to register a domain, only to find it had been registered within the month.
The first one was work-related and no big deal. But the other one was Robert Hof dot CA. Good idea, right? I was just reading an article on Bootstrap Marketing by CIRA, the organization that runs the .ca TLD. It occurred to me that I should get roberthof.ca and point it to this blog at Robert Hof Dot Com.
Nope! Registered 28 days ago.
Well, I realize I’m not the only one sharing the name, but it depresses me to no end that he got it before I did. I know having the .com is more meaningful, but given my roots in the online industry in Canada, I should have acted more quickly on this.
I’ve begun the Purge. One useless website down, several more to go. Congratulations to the new owner of smileysign.com - may you have more luck with it than I.
Last night it hit me - I haven’t been doing enough to get my .com businesses off the ground. Three hours stuck on Lakeshore listening to the Internet Business Mastery blog will do that to you any day! So with that in mind, I’m making a promise to myself to get off my lazy arse and get moving. In one direction. Not spending 3 hours on one idea, getting it to 40% completion, and moving on to the next.
I’ve got 30 domains, and none of them make me more than $20 a month. I really need to Just Do It.
The domains can be categorized thusly:
Personal / Vanity: 3 - Keep whatever the cost. Includes this domain - RobertHof.com
NSFW: 7 - should be dumped.
Developer Bailed Out: 8
I Bailed Out: 4
In Development or Live: 5
Wow. So, less than 20% of my domains are likely to generate revenue. That’s an embarrassing ratio. I could revive 6 of the 8 Developer Bailed Out domains, as they’re all for one project.
NSFW (Not Safe for Work) sites - I don’t have what it takes to compete in this space, and frankly, I’ve lost interest.
I’m getting old. Every new band sounds like a pale imitation of another, better one. Take my last Saturday’s outing as an example: The Snow Patrol show at Ricoh Coliseum, Toronto. I’ve only been back in the “real world” for two months now, so it’s been ages since I’ve seen anything other than Lefty Lucy or Will Black singing mediocre “worst of the 80s, 90s and today” to poorly produced backing tracks. So I thought it would be easy to impress me. Wow. A band I’ve heard of! What a letdown.
First Up: Silversun Pickups. Hello? Pixies clone?? Right down to the kinda-cute female bassist.
Next Up: OK Go. A pale imitation of Sloan.
And Finally: Snow Patrol. Damn, these guys sound like Coldplay on downers. Too much time spent on production, not enough on building energy. Not until Run, and the last song, did they really open up and actually look like they were having a good time.
I’ve been involved with the Internet access business since ‘95 - a quick google of my name will prove that. But what else am I up to? Do I _really_ want you to know? This has been my internal battle since I gave in and started this blog a few months ago.
Blogs, and in general, the Internet, are like tattoos. I don’t have any tattoos - I can’t think of anything I’d like to wear until the day I die. Likewise, I’m concerned that some little tidbit of information I let slip here on Rob’s Blog and Flog or perhaps on a discussion forum will come back to bite me 5 years from now.
To quickly assuage your fears, no I’ve never modeled nude, and the likelihood of that happening any time in the future is remote.
But the things that are concerning me now - see, I’m going to let something slip here - are not ones I can talk about publicly. Single life. Business plans.
All that’s left is my current job (which is much better than my last job, but still a job), cool new gadgets I’m NOT going to buy, links to weird and wonderful sites that everyone has already linked to, and barely witty observations.
So maybe that’s why I don’t write much. I just don’t trust you.