Weekend Musings for Sunday, July 10th 2011

Good morning! Yes, that’s right, I’m awake at 7:00AM on a Sunday, in fact I’ve been awake since 6:00AM. We’ve been working on Xelot non-stop for the last few days so I’m using this morning to catch-up on a few things before we dive back-into it. So if you’d like to step inside my head for a minute, come’on in!

  • Doing what you love is the most important thing you can do. At the end of the day people get too wrapped-up in trying to impress everyone with everything they are doing. I’ve always taken the approach of just doing what I enjoy and at the end of the day, this means never having to work a day in my life. When I wake-up in the morning I can’t wait to get started, learning, building incredible brands, and managing different people all over the world. I see so many people, friends, family, etc. that hate going to work, hate what they do, want a change but feel trapped – life is too short for this, if you don’t like what you’re doing, make a change!
  • AppSumo is really cool. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of AppSumo yet, if you haven’t it’s definitely worth checking-out. As the name says they provide Daily Deals for Web Geeks. I personally really like the video content they offer. I’ve purchased a number of videos, I’m one of those people that likes learning from videos more than books or articles, it’s just me but I find it more engaging and effective. They tend to have some great deals and if you want to stay on top of the latest trends in web, this is the spot.
  • Google+ is also really cool. Okay, I know, the inside of my mind is on another one of its cool-rants, it happens. I’ve been playing around with Google+ this week, I really like it, Google really seems to have put the time-into learning what customers want, and I’m sure this is just the beginning. I think I have a few invites left if anyone wants one too.
  • People love to hate. Not sure why but there are a fringe group of people that read Domaining blogs that love to throw stones for no reason. They claim that people like me aren’t experts and don’t have a proven track-record in the Domaining world. For the record, I’m not an expert! I’m a guy that set goals for himself in this industry and has hit them and continued to increase them. This year I’m on-track to well-exceed $100,000 in a single calendar year. It’s looking like about 70% of this will come from monetization, 20% from domain sales, and 10% from educational sources like my blog and my book. I am proud of what I have built-up, I started in 2007 and in four years have built a six-figure business, in my mind that’s a pretty damn-good track record. I’ve done this all while being as transparent as possible and sharing all the mistakes I made along the way and what I learned from them. Just for the record, this blog is my biggest loss-leader by far, I make less than 10% of my income from it and it takes up the biggest chunk of time…that being said I have a lot of fun with it which is why I write it!
  • There are some GREAT domains dropping, not sure opportunities like this will be around forever. I have been picking-up some great .COM drops lately. Important to note that I’m not buying names for $50 – $100, most of what I’ve bought over the last few weeks has been between $500 – $2,000. I recently got an offer for $18,000 for a domain I purchased for $1,400 and I turned them down. I know the domain is worth more, plus I want to make passive income with it and then sell it for even more. That’s my strategy, please don’t take this as expert advice or anything other than me sharing what I’m doing right now. This is the first time I’ve had an offer this high on a domain that I recently purchased off of a drop though so it was pretty exciting, and difficult to have the guts to turn the offer down, but I have a methodology that I like and has worked for me, and I’m sticking to it!
  • Setting-up a VPS has been fun, but a lot of work. I’ve been learning to become a bigger server geek. While I do have a sys admin I’m one of those people that likes to learn everything I can so I know what’s going on behind the scenes. I’ve been setting-up a VPS (Virtual Private Server) and have been learning a lot, huge thanks to all the people on the Web Hosting Talk Forum that have provided their time and patience as I figure everything out!
  • Condos are damn expensive in Los Angeles. We are looking to buy our first Condo in Los Angeles and it is amazing to see how expensive it is given how much people talk about the real estate market being down. We’re looking at one bedroom, one bath places in our area (Westwood and surrounding areas like Brentwood) and looks like the going price is $500,000 – $750,000. Once again, that’s for a one-bedroom. We’d rather have a house but the cost of that is about 1.2 million and up for a two bed one bath starter home. I’ve signed-up for an account with Realty Trac and am looking at some foreclosures and auctions. Thought I’d reach-out to anyone on my blog who has experiences with real estate in Southern California, I have no track-record buying physical property so could use all the advice I can get!
  • Star Trek has been added to Netflix. Yes, this is a big one for Daina and I who are both big Star Trek fans. No we’re not those weird trekkies who have creepy merchandise and attend conventions. That being said we do love Star Trek (particularly Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager) and were excited to see that Netflix now has Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise. We’re watching Voyager now from episode #1 onwards, this is a great one however I think we both like Deep Space 9 the most…told you I was a geek, okay, we’re both geeks 🙂

Okay, and there you have it – a look inside my brain. As always feel free to comment, share the inside of your brain, or just say hello! Comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton