This is 1Offs, a weblog about niche web marketing, online entrepreneurship, web design, user monetization experience, SEO, niche websites we like, and more.

Here’s something that caught my eye today. The popular blog about Donald Trump’s search for proteges, TheApprenticeBlog.com has been sold for merely $1,636.00. Granted that with each season’s passing, The Apprentice is getting less and less news-worthy. The proof is in the pudding with the last season languishing in the ratings.

However, in the hands of an expert SEO, a domain with as much content, community following, and proven revenue should be fetching more than $2000, don’t you think? The blogs generate more than 5000 page views per day and is also a respectable PageRank 5 with nice rankings in Alexa. Or do you think it was fairly priced, or bought too high? Love to hear your thoughts! You can see the eBay listing for the completed sale here.

Here’s an interesting story. Chris from the Get Rich Project Blog is a relatively newcomer who’s looking to earn some income from online ventures. He shares with us on Yaro’s BlogTrafficSchool forums about how he spent $38, and with 6-8 hours of work, created a fully functional online store.

Here’s the catch, he’s already made the money back within 2 days! The project started on June 10th and his update on June 12th shows that Chris is a nice guy, as he promises to donate all store revenue for the duration of the world cup to charity. It may not be big money, but surely inspires aspiring online entreprenurs just what is possible within a day!

FeedBurner didn’t make use of their Alexa ranking of 666 all day today — of all the days when everybody is talking about the mark of the beast! Didn’t they know that there’s no such thing as bad PR? Otherwise, link-baiting would not exist! They should really learn from The Omen. Sigh… .oh well, it’s all over now!

Just noticed today that FeedBurner’s site is ranked at #666 in Alexa rankings. (Click on the picture for a bigger screenshot of the proof!) Coincidence? Or perhaps an Alexa prank?

If this is indeed a prank, it brings further question as to how reliable is Alexa’s ranking, especially for purposes such as the Text Link Ads Calculator?

When it comes to publicity, ShoeMoney knows best! He just started a contest to find someone who can outrank his own sites on the search keyword ’shoemoney’. This SEO contest has very simple rules. Anybody up for a challenge?

P.S. Just followed a commenter on that particular post and found Thor Schrock who gave away that ShoeMoney has 1200 domains. How many domains does ShoeMoney really have?

If you blog at Blogger.com (aka Blogspot) and maintain a niche blog with decent pagerank, traffic and the blog is regularly updated. And if you are looking for a different way to monetize your other than Adsense, Chitika or affiliate programs. Then you might be interested to know about a project in the works to bring an existing advertising program to your site. The program is currently not being utilized by many Blogspot accounts.

The reason while test subjects are needed is because it needs to be tested out in the field, and your feedback can also be used as testimonials!

For more information, please make contact by (more…)

Just discovered a series by Dave Davies at BeanStalk about how to game the big 3 search engines and produce SEO results! The posts are basic but well written and discusses many activities that new webmasters can begin to implement. It’s well worth a (more…)

Traditionally, site promotion has been about getting your pages to rank high on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) at all cost. Google has maintained its grip on webmasters and bloggers by dangling this quest like a reachable oasis in front of us. Well, not anymore! Bloggers now have alternative SEO methods and new philosophies in their quest to reach a wider audience.

The last post about Squidoo ended with a suggestion for Squidoo to focus on being a lens search engine. Aaron Wall also interviewed Seth Godin, and Seth explained that

[...] Squidoo for the lensmaster is a place to point to your blog or your company or your organization. [....] For a surfer, it’s more direct, more trusted and easier than a search engine in some ways. It’s a place to start, a place to leave, and easy directory. [...]

In the same vein that Squidoo is a search engine for lenses, Technorati has become the benchmark search engine for blogs. There are different benefits to optimizing for Technorati, and the process can be easier than optimizing for traditional search engines like Google. (more…)

Seth Godin’s social-blogging/advertising venture, Squidoo, has been acting deader than its namesake that are thrown on the ice of the Joe Louis Arena (oops, those are octopii!). Squidoo helps normal people build web pages called lenses. Lenses are another way to describe a niche site - one person’s view on a particular topic. Many have since tried their hands at being a lensmaster, but being a niche webmaster would have been more profitable thus far.

Squidoo has recently started payouts to its lensmasters. The top lens is currently earning around $30 per month. Which begs the question on what Squidoo has been doing wrong. Here are a few observations: (more…)

Some heated discussion about Markus Frind’s claims have popped up at ShoeMoney’s blog. 1Offs.com will not be taking sides on this but would like to invite ShoeMoney to clear up his story about the 10,000 domains claim, since he is all for honesty?

The post does raise the interesting perspective of whether Markus is really able earning that kind of revenue. Do you have an opinion?