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I Just Gave Frito-Lay AllTheTostitos

You thought Auburn won all the Tostitos? Not so much, since I just gave all the Tostitos to Frito-Lay… twice.

How I Got All the Tostitos in the First Place

If you have even a passing interest in American sports and you don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably heard the expression “all the Tostitos” a fair amount over the past ten days. Moments after Brent Musberger uttered the corporate-referencing final line (“this is for all the Tostitos”), social networks (primarily Twitter) started to blow up with #allthetostitos references.

As soon as Musberger said it, I knew it would go viral — so I jumped right on it, registering the @allthetostitos Twitter handle and http://www.allthetostitos.com. A lot of domainers and developers would have stopped there — maybe putting a parked page up on the domain and cashing in a bit… not me. Instead, I built out the website (staying up until 4:30 am after the BCS championship game) paying homage to the meme (using Twitter’s API, YouTube’s API, and some static content).

20 January, 2011 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Building Websites,Domains,Featured Comments (5)

Five Web Development Tricks I Wish I Learned Sooner

I’ve been involved in web development since 1997, when I built my first personal website (a table-based monster, by today’s standards). In the years since, my skill has advanced considerably — I now build web applications using the object-oriented PHP-based Zend Framework. In 14 years, you learn a lot of tips, tricks, and shortcuts. Here are five that have made my life immensely easier (and will help you in your development projects, too).

14 December, 2010 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Building Websites,Featured Comments (3)

Website Sales Market Snapshot 12-05-10

Life has been a bit hectic of late (more on that in another post), so I apologize for missing the month of November in Market Snapshots. I have all the data and will post updates with sales information for those weeks later today. This week had a few interesting sales – namely a cat product e-commerce site that scored 90 bids, and one of the most blatantly fraudulent listings I’ve seen in a while. Read on for more details:

06 December, 2010 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Featured,Market Snapshot Comments (4)

Website Sales Market Snapshot 10-31-10

This week’s snapshot is an interesting one to say the least. Although it didn’t secure the top price of the week, FaceMash.com clearly headlined Flippa’s sales to close out October, garnering international media attention.

02 November, 2010 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Featured,Market Snapshot Comments (1)

Knee-deep in Stats: Past Sales Teach You How to Sell Your Website

I recently gained access to Flippa’s archive of sales data (thanks a million to the guys at Flippa), and I’ve been having a blast pouring through the stats. I’m going to share what I learn in a regular segment called “Knee-deep in Stats,” where we’ll look at the trends and historic data that reveal how to get top-dollar for our website sales.

For the love of God, Put Analytics on Your Website!

Travis wrote a post some time ago entitled, “Hey Knuckle Dragger, Install Google Analytics Before You Sell Your Website!” so it’s not like this assertion is breaking new ground, but I think you’ll be surprised by the data.

I took a look at all sites sold since January 1 of this year with a claimed monthly net profit of at least $25 and at least 100 unique visitors per month (to weed out the startup sites that would otherwise skew the data). Here’s what I found.

27 October, 2010 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Featured,Selling Websites Comments (9)

Website Flipping Market Snapshot 10-24-10

After last week’s down performance, it’s nice to see the market bounce back a bit at Flippa, which offered up one of its most interesting auctions ever. Here’s a quick run-down of the week’s performance with my thoughts on the top-performing auctions below.

26 October, 2010 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Featured,Market Snapshot Comments (3)

How I Increased My Opt-In Rate by 269% in 5 Minutes

Your best prospects are the customers you already have.

Whether you’re selling product or leveraging traffic to move advertisements, this simple principle holds true — the people with whom you have done business in the past have a significantly greater likelihood of doing business with you in the future. People who had a positive experience on your blog in the past are the ones more likely to find value in the future, to become loyal readers.

It’s the reason I advocate making your site sticky before implementing any large traffic campaigns for a website. Do all that you can to ensure that you have continued access to these new visitors in the future. Here are some ways to do that.

20 October, 2010 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Building Websites,Featured Comments (5)

Starting a Forum? Here’s What You Need to Know!

This guest post was written by Michael, who has founded several successful forums and social communities.

So you’re interested in starting a forum? Good for you… it can be a very fun and rewarding experience. However over the years, I have found that almost no one truly understands the amount of work and dedication it will take to build a successful forum from scratch.

The whole idea of “build it and they will come” just doesn’t work anymore. As someone that has created social communities small and large (from “do-it-yourself” forums to large venture-capital backed communities, and ones in-between) here’s some invaluable advice I’ve learned along the way. These tips won’t guarantee success, but they will help you avoid some of the most common pitfalls people make:

20 October, 2010 Posted by:
Michael D Filed under: Building Websites,Featured Comments (6)

Website Flipping Market Snapshot 10-17-10

A much slower week at Flippa in terms of large sales, but there’s still a lot of interesting things to review in this week’s Website Flipping Market Snapshot.

Before we dive into things, I want to point out a few changes to the Snapshot. For starters, you’re not going to have to scroll past the “most active auctions” to see the “top sellers” anymore. Frankly, bids don’t pay the rent. You want to figure out how you can sell your sites for more money, so we’re giving you those listings first.

You’re also going to see a LOT more data going forward. I’ve adjusted the “top selling websites” to include the 25 highest sales for the week, not just 5. Both tables now show number of bids AND sale price, and I’ve added a column showing the revenue multiple for which the site sold. I hope you like the extra data.

19 October, 2010 Posted by:
Eppie Vojt Filed under: Featured,Market Snapshot Comments (2)

Credit Cards Sites: Flip ‘Em, Keep ‘Em, or Start ‘Em?

The following post was written by Michael, founder of CreditCardForum.

The credit card industry has taken part in affiliate marketing since the early days. At first it was a lucrative form of monetization for any half-way decent financial website, but by the middle of last decade, the sector had become largely oversaturated. It seemed like everyone and their mom was hawking credit cards on their blog, and in turn, generating those commissions became a whole lot harder. Then there was another blow; the financial collapse. During this time most banks ceased their credit card marketing altogether. That brings us to today… in 2010 are credit card sites still a moneymaker?