What better time is there to plan ahead then the end of a year, and beginning of a new one. 2010 here we come, and here is a short summary of my initial plan for the year.

Domain Names

I’ve already started to slow down on the buying side. Being on a small budget as I am, it isn’t category-killer domains that I’ve bought. But I have some domains that I think are nice, and will do well in the future when they are developed. I will still buy if I find some names that I believe in, but my focus will be on quality over quantity this year.

As many other new domainers I went out on a smaller shopping spree, and bought just about everything that sounded cool, when I first got into this business. Although I’ve already gotten rid of most of the really bad ones, I still have some domains that I probably never will get around to develop or do anything with. If I can’t sell them before their expiration date, I’ll just let them drop. I don’t want any dead meat in my portfolio anymore…

Looking Back on Current Sites

This past year I’ve mainly gone from project to project, and never really looked back that much. This will change from now on! Now comes the time to go back and polish, tweak and maximize the sites that I’ve already have online, that I think has potential. I will leave some of the sites to just sit and do what they can to survive on their own, or at least until I find both time and ideas on how to take them further. One focus will also be to tighten and strengthen the small networks that I have, and build stronger connections between the sites.

Development of new Sites

Quite recently I’ve picked up a 2 different domains that I really like and that has nice search volume and related advertisers. These two will probably be my main focus, and I’ll spend some extra time on them to make sure that they reach their full potential. I don’t want to give away to much details at this point, but if you follow my blog I’m sure you’ll notice when it happens!

Mainly my idea is to focus more on a few chosen projects, and do them justice, instead of only moving on to new projects all the time!

I thought that it would be fun/interesting to see what blog platform that is the common domainers choice. So I looked at all the Domaining.com feeds to see what kind of CMS (Content Management System) that are used.

While looking at the at all the 127 feeds that Domaining.com currently aggregates, I took a closer look at the 111 that actually resolved and have a blog. From what I can see, my stats show the following:

• Blogs on WordPress (hosted on WordPress.com or self hosted) – 85
• Blogs on other platforms (including Blogger.com and TypePad.com) – 26

According to this about 76% of the domainer blogs uses WordPress as the platform for their blog. That is quite an impressive advantage for WordPress! The minority choices included TypePad, Blogger and Joomla. Some  examples of blog´s that doesn’t follow the main stream is RicksBlog.com and Domainreport.ca.

Among the few that doesn’t use WordPress one really stand out to me, and that is DNJournal. The reason to that is that it seems to be made with FrontPage, at least according to the generator meta tag. In my world, using FrontPage is equally bad to as using Comic Sans as the font. But hey, whatever works for Ron is best for Ron as the old saying goes!

First of all, welcome to the official release of the OFJZ blog! I’m very happy to finally have gotten time to finish and launching the site. So what can you expect to see on OFJZ? Well, my plan is to mainly blog about Domain Names and Domaining, and all of the lovely stuff that is related to it.

I’ll focus most of the posts on Domain Development, and will share my view on it. I’ll try to take examples from my own experience and experiments as I go along and turn my domains into sites. As I do most of my development with the help of WordPress, you can also expect to see some WordPress tips & trix as well!

My Background

My name is Johan Z – There you also have the explanation to the JZ in OFJZ. I live in Sweden, thus English isn’t my main language, so I hope that you will excuse any possible spelling and grammar errors.

I don’t claim to be a domain expert in any way. I’m actually only approaching my 1st “domainer birthday”. I did buy my first domain in the year 2000, but back then I really had no clue about the value of domains. For my first domain I actually bought the .net version, even though the .com was available, just because I thought NET sounded way cooler then COM!

Part Time Hobby Domainer

Web design/development is and “always” have been a big passion of mine. So whenever I launch a new site I always try to design and code the WordPress templates myself, when there is time for it. I work full time as a web/print/graphics designer. So I do claim to at least know more then the average person about designing! :)

I do know how to build a site, but monetizing and optimizing my domains in a good way though, is something that I’m still learning… This is where this blog comes in, as I’d like to share my steps towards some day hopefully being able to make a living out of this domaining hobby of mine! Even though I do enjoy my job, I wouldn’t mind switching to being able to make a living as self employed in this field!

If I can pick up some feedback along the way I’d be grateful. And it would make my day if I can inspire or teach you something! Once again – Welcome to OFJZ!