It seems every week some hustling web entrepreneur publishes a new “blog post” about how to be a better entrepreneur, how to be more successful, how to make more money, etc. These are expensive if you read them — they waste a lot of your time. Success is not about money, but they don’t know that, and so they are not really worth listening to, are they?

I just revisited an old Jason Calacanis comment about SEO / affiliate people being really smart but small time… that in his eyes, they were not really successful because they didn’t make the big plays (like he does?). Sad… really sad.

I suppose not everyone appreciates that there are plenty of words of wisdom already published by masters of language and communication, often packaged in enjoyable wrappers. You can get them on your Kindle, or at your local library if you area small-timer like me.

Here’s one of my favorites:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

That’s “If” by Rudyard Kipling.

Last year sometime I said that any domain, if it is wanted by someone, is worth about $1200. That’s the price that justifies a quick buy. Want it? Twelve hundred bucks and it’s yours…. or you can spend a few HOURS looking for another one, a few HUNDRED on consulting fees when your SEO or marketing person “helps”, or about $1200 (nowadays about $1600) to challenge a domain squatter via the dispute process.

Apparently 2009 is the year the aftermarket woke up, as AfternicDLS is now doing $550,000 a week in aftermarket domain sales. The bulk of those are sold between $1000 and $3000 each, and are perfectly useful if not “generic” domains. Someone can use them, so they have value. And getting them now, has value. A few examples:

standardstorage.com $ 988.00
southbeachtans.com $ 1,000.00
commongrace.com $ 1,000.00
healinghaven.com $ 2,588.00
performancescience.com $ 2,788.00
nativehealing.com $ 3,190.00
inventoryliquidators.com $ 4,000.00
skimarketing.com $ 2,100.00
accountingmagic.com $ 1,180.00
designerdoggy.com $ 1,000.00
maryfitzgerald.com $ 1,000.00
premiumdeveloper.com $ 888.00

Now that we have an understandingof the value of an unused (previously registered) domain name, for someone who wants to use it, we need to establish the value of a previously-used domain name (for someone who wants to re-use it).

What is basic SEO performance worth? Another $500 or $1000?

If the name is Google indexed and ranks #1 for itself n Google, what additional value is that worth?

If it ranks for long-tail keywords in the market it obviously serves (for those domains whose names obviously serve specific markets), what additional value does it have?

Note that it is only because of exact-match bonus and pre-existing content/links that a “previously owned” domain will be ranking, but in those cases, it surely has value, right?

Let’s not debate whether or not Google drops domains that change ownership… let’s leave that for risk management, and consider the value of the ranking (if kept). Another… several hundred? Thousand? It would cost at least that to “put back”, not counting the time delays involved.

Finally I find an article that does a decent job of noting the importance of business management and strategic vision when discussing “the future of the newspaper industry”. It’s so easy to say old media doesn’t “get it”, is a dinosaur, etc. It takes a brain to say:

So as the giant media conglomerates continue to watch their kingdoms crumble, and the self-styled scribes of truth chronicle their every misstep and blunder, the rest of us will continue to vacuum up their former readers and advertisers. We’ll continue to grow. We’ll continue to adapt. We’ll continue to profit. And we’ll do it all while upholding the standards of journalism that make newspapers so important. And therein lies the future of newspapers – one that’s not so gloomy for everyone.

I think every newspaperman of the period prior to 1990 would have noted that the news business is about people. To those who built all of the “newspapers” owned by the corporate media conglomerates we see crumbling today, I bet this was obvious.  Thank goodness we still have some of those types around, and can expect to see a recycling of newspapers, starting with your local community press.