If you control all the domainsthen you control the internet

Kevin Ham The man who owns the Internet

Much has been made of Kevin Ham, The man who owns the Internet. Paul Sloan did a front page spread about him in the June 1 2007 edition of CNN Business 2.0.


While the article is focussed on the value of his 300,000 domains and the current revenue from a wild deal with the Cameroon government, from the perspective of Metis Internet Partners, the end of the article is the most interesting.


Ham is now focussed on creating value from his internet real estate, as Sloan writes:

When Ham buys a domain now, he's not doing pay-per-click math but rather sizing it up as a potential business. Reinvent Technology aims to turn his most valuable names into mini media companies, based on hundreds of niche categories.


Among the first he'd like to launch, not surprisingly, is Religion.com. Ham recently leased the entire 27th floor in his Vancouver building and is now hiring more than 150 designers, engineers, salespeople, and editorial folks.


Much of that effort is going into developing search tools based more on meaning and less on keywords. "Google is only so useful," Ham says.


The aim is to apply a meaning-based, or "semantic," system across swaths of sites, luring customers from direct navigation and search engines alike. Religion.com would then become an anchor to which scores of other sites would be tied.


"It's time to build out the virtual real estate," Ham says. "There's so much more value in these names than pay-per-click." Seeman's patent application even mentions the possibility of turning Web traffic from Cameroon and other future foreign partners into full-fledged portals.


It's all part of the master plan, as Ham aims to become the first domainer to move from the ranks of at-home name hunter to Internet titan. Smaller players have been selling out to VC-backed groups, and Ham expects that the best names will eventually be owned by just a handful of companies.


If he bets right, he might very well be one of them. "If you control all the domains," he says, "then you control the Internet."

 

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Submitting your site to blog directories

Recently we have been asked a lot about submitting blogs to directories and the impact on internet marketing and search engine optimisation. As usual sites that offer to submit your blog for free to thousands of directories for a small fee are not the way to go.


The are a number of things that you should do before submitting your site to blog directories.


1. Prepare your responses


Most directories ask for similar information:

  • Blog name
  • URL
  • Feed URL
  • Description
  • Tags/Keywords

Prepare your responses to these questions in another document and then copy and paste into each directory submission.


2. Create a list of generic directories


The best approach to submitting your site to blog directories is to visit the following:

These sites have the best blog directories listed so that you can easily add your blog to a number of directories.


3. Search for directories in your field


Search Google with the field or topic of your blog, along with the word "directory". This will give you any additional blog directories to submit your site to. Add these sites to your list, as Google especially values links closely related to the topic of your website.


4. Begin submitting your blog

 

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