The first thing that hits you when you setup a fresh install of the new version is that the default theme has been changed. It really is a change to the better, I really like the new “Twenty Ten” theme even though I always tend to create my own custom themes.

New Menu Functions

Apart from this, one of the new features that I’m most glad to see, is the ability to create custom menus. It might not seem like a big deal to some, but for me it is. I often find myself wanting to add for example both categories and pages to the menu of sites that I create. Previously this was kinda tricky to achieve, and either required each menu item to be hard-coded into the template, or some plugin to handle it. But now it is just a matter of a few clicks to get it done!

Check out the video here bellow, from the WordPress blog, for a more detailed walk through of some of the new features.

As always, make sure to backup your site before upgrading to avoid any unfortunate problems! I’ve already upgraded most of my sites without any problems whatsoever, but you can’t be careful enough.

I’m very proud to present what I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks… The Kiditect Network! It is a small network of sites that I’ve recently launched. It currently consists of 4 sites, all of them are affiliate stores selling products for toddlers.

I have put in a lot of time and work into this, the first site (ToddlerBoots.net) took me a little longer than I had expected. But once the ground template and work flow now has been build up I can quickly launch new sites with a little less effort and the following 3 sites took no more than a few hours each to put together.

You can check out the different sites currently in the Kiditect Network by going to the main network site. That site itself might not seem like much to the world, but it serves it´s purpose. I’ll spice it up a little in the future as I go back to refine and tweak things.

Domains in the Network

As I said there are currently 4 sites live, all using keyword rich domains and with good search volume. All in all I have 5 more sites that is going live in a few weeks. With the exception of ToddlerBoots.net which I picked up at NameJet a few months ago, all the domains are handregs. So it’ll be interesting to see how they perform. They are already starting to rank on Google, with 2 of the sites already on the first page of results. I’ll make sure to follow up on the performance as the sites settles in!

The numbers are based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

It comes as no surprise that Twitter is growing each and everyday. In connection to the recent developer conference Chirp, some impressive statistics for the popular social media service was released. Along with this I also just found out about Paper.li – Which turns your Twitter feed into a cool magazine style website!

First of all, I have to admit that I’m personally not using/updating my Twitter as effective or often as I’d liked to. But I do like the service, and with that I’d could find more time to use it!

According to the stats just released, Twitter has some really impressive numbers. When the recent stats was published, this was some of the numbers presented:

• Twitter has 105,779,710 users – Along with 300,000 new users/day!
• 600 million search queries/day.
• 180 million unique visitors/month.

Check out this article on Read Write Web for the full summary of the stats.

Turn your Twitter into an Magazine

I don’t in fact know if this is a new tool or not, but I just found out about this little tool – Paper.li. What it does is that it turns your twitter feed into a Magazine site. It does this by scanning your tweets, and also your followers and the people you follow. It´s a really nice and graphic way to get a quick hold of whats going on in your following. For an example, you can check out my generated paper. The service is free, and if you’r an active twitterer I’m sure you’ll find this really useful!

For the past months I’ve occasionally been browsing through, and placing a few bids on Flippa.com. But I’ve never actually bought or posted anything for sale there. So I thought it was time to try it out for real by putting up a site for auction!

I’ve been thinking about putting up sites for auctions at Flippa.com for a while – But in the end I’ve always ended up posting the sites for sale on forums like NamePros or DNForum instead. I think that one of the reasons for that is that I’ve been wanting to avoid the $19 listing fee on Flippa. Mainly because it has been simple sites without any revenue to talk about sold for under $100.

Selling an Amazon Affilate Site

For my first auction I’ve decided to let go of one of my most successful sites – Dual DVD Player. The site has earned a little over $100 from Amazon Affilate sales, since December 2009. I listed the auction with a starting bid of $150, which I think is quite fare. There is also a BIN price of $600, which I would be happy to sell it for!

Since this is my first try at Flippa, I’ve got no idea about how it will end. The auction ends 7 days from now (16th Mars), and I’ll make sure to post an update when it´s over!

Uppdate

The auction got quite much action close to the ending, and ended up selling for $325. Overall I’m very happy with the result, and will list more sites for sale in the near future!

Have you sold or bought anything from Flippa? I would love to hear your thoughts about it here in the comment section!

The MissDomain.com charity auction for Haiti ended last week. The auction did very well in my opinion, and collected a total of €10 192 with 73 of the donated domains selling!

Top 10 highest sales from the auction

Most domains sold for under €100, 15 domains sold for €100+ with “ij.se” toping the list at €2530. Here is the top 10 sales from the auction…

• IJ.se – €2350
• Forsakringar.nu (“Insurances”) – €1100
• Webhotell.com (“Web host”) – €900
• Prylar.nu (“Gadgets”) – €850
• Uthyres.nu (“For Rent”) – €850
• Skidor.nu (“Skis”) – €800
• Festlokaler.nu (website PR4) (“Party Premises”) – €325
• BytJobb.nu (“Switch Work Place”) – €225
• Idol.nu – €190

My Own Acquisition – “Wallpaper”

As I mentioned in my last post about the Haiti auction, there where some good deals to be made on the mostly Swedish domains. I managed to by one domain myself – “Bakgrundsbild.se” (the Swedish word for “Computer Wallpaper”) – I got a good deal on that name getting it for the starting bid of €20. The keyword has 18 000+ exact local searches/month here in Sweden, and I have some good plans for development of the domain!