Just some quick thoughts I wanted to share with you today.  I’m nearing the end of my vacation, so you can look forward to having a regular daily domain auctions list starting tomorrow (if I didn’t already post one today).

But quickly, I wanted to give and share some insight with you about a recent experience I had just before going on vacation.

I was researching the various domain auctions to prepare for the coming days list when I noticed a domain that looked quite familiar.

As I usually do when a domain catches my eye, I added the 7 character .com domain to my watch list, and continued my search and review for more expiring domains.

For whatever reason, this one domain kept coming to the forefront of my thoughts.  I wasn’t sure why I kept thinking about it or what connection I had to it, if any, until I strolled into the laundry room.

For the past 5 years and counting, I’ve participated in bidding and buying domains via GoDaddy Auction.

Since it was the first domain auction platform I used to purchase expiring domains, it’s all I know.

That’s not to say that I’ve not ventured over to browse NameJet, SnapNames, Sedo, Flippa, or others.

It’s just that for whatever reason unknown to me, I’ve always seemed to gravitate towards GoDaddy Auctions to bid and build my domain investment portfolio.

Of course, my experience hasn’t always been good. I’ve had the good, bad, and ugly when being an engaged and active domain investor using GoDaddy Auctions to buy expiring domains.

Okay, this content is quite long… So, grab a cup of coffee and get ready for your mind to be blown with simple concepts to grow your business while reducing its marketing spend. 😉  

Are you ready?  Let’s get started…

I know the entire story about rising advertising costs as I’m sure your wallet has felt the impact too! No matter if you’re a local, regional, national or global business, search marketing is quite competitive and expensive.

Why is search marketing so expensive?

Let’s think about this and walk through the spend. The masses are blindly paying for pay-per-click advertising with YellowPages, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Yelp, Yodle, and other 3rd-party advertisers.

Then there are companies, and this may include your company too, paying substantial fees on a monthly basis for search engine optimization.

That’s just online marketing spend. We’ve not mentioned offline advertising such as billboards, radio ads, door hangers, classifieds, newspapers, magazines and television ads.

There are so many businesses competing to be at the most visible spot of the hottest and most visited media known in the world. The sheer number of companies competing is growing daily due to new businesses launching throughout the world.

And time is of the essence as no business can afford to wait for months and years to grow their business.

To answer the original question of why search marketing is so expensive, I have businesses look at one thing: their domain name.

I’m on vacation this week and a bit of next week.  In lieu of daily domain auction lists not being provided, I’m sharing some thoughts and a recent experience I encountered with domain names and business in general.

As I prepped for next month’s domain renewals, I encountered a few Austin area cleaning domains. Truth be told, I forgot that I owned the domains.

These names are considered geo-keyword domains, including the city and a keyword phrase.  For the said domains, the keyword phrases are “cleaning,” “cleaning company,” “house cleaning.”

It’s a another year, and with a new year comes an opportunity to remove ourselves from the old to make room for the new.

Performing a very early “non-digital and digital spring cleaning”, I stumbled across a physical copy of the November 2013 edition of WebsiteMagazine.com.

To my surprise, never opening the magazine before today, I opened the physical copy of this magazine and saw a full page ad for 1and1.com (see below; sorry for the blurry image but I think you get the point).

Welcome back!  You may be a bit groggy this morning, but shake it off.  We’ve got work to do and a lot of it. It’s time to get back in the swing of things and back to the normal week-to-week life.

We’ll get things kicked off today with 9 domaining actions that I religiously perform when I end and start a new year. I’m certain the ideas and thoughts to be discussed will help you tremendously.

You may already perform some of the domaining actions.  If you are, then you’re reaping the benefits of increased profits, reduced costs, and less stress with a more succinct organization.

If not, then today’s your lucky day.  This is a fair warning that this guide is a lengthy read of nearly 2,200 words, but hang in there, it’ll be well worth the read.

Using these 9 domaining actions, I give you quite a bit of insight, and tips and tricks for how I successfully manage my domain portfolio from year to year.

We’re kicking of this year with a bang, releasing a MUST-READ ebook topic: Local SEO Marketing.

Yes, there’s an abyss of local SEO marketing content covering a vast number of options for small businesses to locally market services and products.

The list is long, including marketing and advertising options such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Yodle, CitySearch, MerchantCircle, Door-to-Door hangers, and many more…

But I’m not covering those topics in this book. I’m sharing and showing you another less traveled road that only a few are dare to travel.

That’s right, I’ve worked quite hard over the last year researching and experimenting with a variety of techniques and strategies to command local market share for a range of businesses.

And I wrote an ebook to share with you and the world about what I learned in my quest to understand local SEO marketing for myself and others.

In short, getting more revenue and customers in a local market can be quite the challenge for the every day small business and it’s owner (that’s you and me too!).

After all, I’ve been there with my own businesses, and executing local SEO marketing is not an easy nut to crack.  Why, you ask?