While I don’t plan to update this blog everyday I had a bit of spare time so I thought I would. At the moment I think I’m the only person who has even looked at my auctions but I’m sure the closer they get to their end time the more eyes will see it and they will hopefully bid. I am confident however that they will get bids considering all the other rubbish domains I see getting bid on.

Qutie a few people seem to be trying the same method I am at the moment which actually sparked another idea  which I will probably try out. I’ve checked the usual places for domains today and didn’t find anything of use. One thing which is quite apparent is that their are huge numbers of crap domains out there. Domains that are completely non sensical, I’m not even sure how people come up with such crap domains!

When I try to explain stuff I do on the net to friends and mention the term ‘HTML‘ they tend to get a glazed look over there face, they have no idea what I just said. But do you really need to know HTML?

In my opinion you don’t need to but it can make things a heck of a lot easier. When I first started playing about online I went to some Yahoo HTML tutorial where I could change colours of words. When I first did it I thought that was awesome, I could make words change colours and even blink on and off if I wanted to .

Now I’m pretty proficiant with HTML and it’s all been self taught simply by going to online tutorials and such. I could confidently whip out a site in less than a day if I wanted to. Even now though I’m constantly learning new things about HTML and even CSS which makes creating a site easier and a lot faster.

But the fact is you don’t need to know HTML to earn money online. I know some people who make decent incomes online and can barely use a spreadsheet! The fact is they hire people to do their work for them or they know just enough html to get by.  So while you don’t need it , I would advise trying to learn a bit here and there so when ever you get a bright idea you can go with the flow and you don’t have to worry about hiring anyone else to do the work for you . It will save you both time and money.

Many people ask whether they need hosting to make money or not to which I respond that you don’t need it but it’s better to have it than not. You see a lot of people like the word “FREE” and of course there are a tonne of places that offer free hosting of your sites. My advice is to stay clear of them. In my earlier days I also used to sell traffic to other webmasters and learnt from other people who run these ‘free’ web hosting services that they will actually devert some of the traffic a site may recieve and use if for their own purpose. Another thing these free webhosts will do is that they often place a tonne of advertising on your site to help offset their costs.

One thing is for sure, if I see a site with a free web host I steer clear as it means the person running the site isn’t serious about their business and yet they expect me to part with money while they are to cheap to part with any to help run their business?…please.

Now I’ve been through a tonne of webhosts and at the start I used to love cheap webhosts but often you get what you pay for. Support is the biggest problem, I’ve had hosts that have gone down for days and they don’t contact you to tell you what’s happening, your left in limbo with all your sites down which means your losing money!

Now I’m quite serious about who I host with and their is only one that I haven’t had any problems with and thats Hostgator. They have 24/7 support which is what you need plus they have a range of plans to suit anybody. While they aren’t the cheapest I don’t care because their uptime is exceptional and response to any problems quick.

Personally I use Reseller hosting which basically means that I can set up hosting for other people. Keep in mind I knew absolutely nothing about hosting when I began but now I’m pretty competent. The best thing about having reseller hosting is that I can set up multiple accounts at a whim. For example this site, I thought about starting it on the 28 April so I could launch my first idea on the 1st May so all I did was purchase a domain, set up a hosting account and install this site (I waited an extra day for my logo to arrive) and bam , this site was up and running. If I didn’t have my reseller account I would have had to go and find a webhost, wait for them to set me up an account a send me my login details etc which would have meant an extra day or two lost. So I thoroughly reccommend getting your own reseller hosting if you plan on running multiple sites (as I do).

Anyway if your  contemplating doing this then jump on with Hostgator, for around $8.00 a month you can host unlimited and if you want to go reseller I think it starts at $25.00 a month. Just click on the image below to have a look.

Well I finally finished getting all my domains listed on Ebay yesterday but I forgot to mention that I hadn’t used Ebay to sell anything in a good couple of years and man how things have changed! I spend a good few hours trying to get my first auction up and running and it was rather frustrating. Eventually I got it done and from there on in it only took an average of 5-10 minutes to get each auction up and running.

Another small problem I ran into was with a domain that I purchased, it was an expired domain with good links and a page rank of 3 ,but after purchasing it didn’t show in my account. I contacted support and was told that it should automatically transfer within 2 WEEKS! That’s a bit of a bummer as I wanted to get it sold ASAP after all that’s what flipping is all about but it looks like I will have to wait until it shows up in my account.

Checked for some more domains today but found nothing that took my fancy but I’ll keep on looking!