Tuesday, December 06, 2005
December in Myrtle Beach
 We joined my sister at Miyabi's last night for her annual birthday dinner, and the drive to the restaurant once again reminded me of the alarmingly rapid increase in traffic and number of people that are in Myrtle Beach during December. The rate of traffic growth and people descending on the Grand Strand in winter appears to be increasing with each passing year.
Just About 20 Years Ago...
When we moved to Little River from California almost 20 years ago, I remember driving in winter from the north end to the south end of Myrtle Beach and never seeing another car, and most of the time never hitting a red light the entire way.
Back then, everything was closed on Sundays, and very few businesses stayed open year-round, except for some gas stations and larger stores.
Pretty much all the businesses were locally owned and operated, and we either knew everybody we ran into, or we knew of them.
Little River had no stop lights, only one blinking light hanging on a wire at Highway 17 and Mineola.
On the north end where I live, there was no Lowe's, or Home Depot, or Wal-Mart; Dews was where you bought all your hardware and appliances; Waterway Furniture on Highway 90 was where you bought your furniture.
Cox Cable was the only cable company in the area, and you had to use a clunky metal box with a slider to change channels.
The only library on the north end was the small one on 2nd Avenue North.
There was Village of the Barefoot Traders; but no Barefoot Landing.
The Bypass was pretty much barren and Broadway at the Beach was ten years from existence.
We knew of several large, vacant lots on the waterway; selling for well under $100K.
We drove our cars on the beach in winter and loved it! There weren't any protected sea oats until the beach renourishment program over a decade away.
Those were the days!
Well, there were TWO things that weren't so great -- I was the only person I knew that had a home computer; and there was no internet.
:) sunshine
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Direct Navigation Market Gaining Exposure
Steering off the topic of Myrtle Beach today, I ran across an engaging article that just came out in the December 2005 issue of Business 2.0. The article was penned by Paul Sloan, a business and technology writer who previously worked at U.S. News & World Report and CNN's Moneyline.
 Paul was in Delray Beach, Florida, in October to cover the TRAFFIC 2005 conference, the successful follow-up to the historic, inaugural TRAFFIC 2004 conference 12 months earlier. The result is Paul's well written article about the often-misunderstood industry of domain names (which many consider the real estate of the Internet), domain investments, and portfolio building.
Those of us in this industry have watched many people's eyes gloss over when we try to explain what it is we do, with most people falsely thinking the bulk of our business is either designing web sites for clients, or buying and selling domain names, or charging for advertisements on sites. We actually do very little of any of these three former activities, and none of them have much significance to our business or our bottom line.
Although we develop a larger percentage of our portfolio than the pure PPC model Paul writes about, we also - like our colleagues with 100% PPC portfolios - build multiple, continual, self-sustaining revenue streams. We applaud Paul's piece and believe it'll help to somewhat clarify the mechanics of our industry.
I remember in the days before AdSense, I was talking with a web developer outside of our industry, explaining to him why companies like Google and Overture pay for quality traffic. This guy had only experienced his clients having to pay Overture for traffic, and didn't seem to grasp the concept that Google and Overture also pay for quality traffic. I wonder where he thought quality traffic came from? It doesn't just appear out of thin air, that's for sure!
Hopefully, with Paul's article out, as well as the concurrent Wall Street Journal article on the domain industry, a lot more people will start to understand just how solid the direct navigation market is, as well as the security it provides. Security because you don't have the worry of a large marketing budget nor do you need to be concerned with search engines and their constantly changing algos.
Good type-in domains are getting more scarce by the day, so unless a company invested in domain names early on, my recommendation is to shell out a chunk of change and purchase a few quality domains now, before they're all swallowed up by portfolio buy-outs and investors with the really big bucks. Time is running out for buying good domains at affordable prices, and if a company doesn't own good domains now, chances are they may never experience the continual flow of natural type-in traffic.
Without type-in traffic, the traffic they do get will be determined by many factors, all of which are not under the direct control of the company. Factors like whether or not search engines like their site, or whether or not their PPC budget is adequate to secure the top keywords in their industry, or if they can get enough related web sites to link to their site in a veiled attempt to look like a popular site, and many, many other factors likely to come into play.
I cannot understand why a company that wants to prosper doesn't do everything in its power to control as many natural type-in domains in their particular industry as they can afford. In the long run, it is the smartest and most economical method of assuring continual traffic and profitability.
Building a Domain Portfolio
If you're thinking of building a good domain portfolio, remember quality over quantity. It's better to have one good domain with natural traffic than 1000 names without natural traffic! If not all, then the majority of domains in your portfolio should have natural, type-in traffic; names that don't rely on search engines, paid links, reciprocal links, press releases, or advertisements of any kind for visitors.
All of the above methods are useful tools for temporary traffic boosts, like during a sale or promotion, but if search engines, links, press releases, or paid ads provide the bulk or foundation of traffic to your website, you're headed for trouble because you are not the one who controls your traffic.
How to Tell if a Domain has Type-in Traffic
The easiest way is to check your statistics or the raw logs on your server. If you have a domain with natural type-in traffic, from the day you activate hosting, you'll continually receive visitors with no referrers in your stats and raw logs.
If referrals are from URL links or from search engines, then what you're getting is temporary traffic. Oh it may be temporary for a few years if you've hired someone to play the engines on your behalf. But it's still only temporary. Remember how many companies were #1 on AltaVista for their industry's top keywords, and increased profits because of their top placement? Are they #1 on the top engines now? Is the fall of AltaVista an isolated event? Where's Excite in your referral logs? How about Lycos? Don't be fooled into thinking what's working today with search engines is going to work next year, and the year after, and beyond. The short history of the Internet has already taught us otherwise.
On the other hand, unless the Internet collapses or we mutate to 100% speech recognition software for browsing, direct navigation and natural type-in traffic is going to be around a long, long time. It will be here tomorrow. It will be here next year. It will continue year after year, even as new search engines rise in popularity and current search engines die off. And the traffic from natural type-ins is more than just steady, it actually increases in numbers and value year after year.
I'd like to thank Paul for coming to one of our conferences and for sharing a glimpse of our little-understood industry with a wider audience.
Exposure of a misunderstood industry is always good, but I see another effect on the horizon as well: The more who become aware of the value of good domains with intrinsic targeted traffic, the higher prices will rise; and buying good domains with natural traffic may soon be beyond the reach of many of us.
But for now, we're still buying. If you have a good domain or a list of good domains, shoot me an email at investments@directnavigationmarket.com, include the number of unique visits per month and your asking price.
And have a great day!
:) sunshine
Friday, October 28, 2005
Thank Goodness Wilma Slowed
 We just returned from a week-long Internet conference in southern Florida and luckily Wilma slowed down and missed us by a couple of days.
It's one thing to be at home when a hurricane is heading our way... It's quite another to be out of town, in an oceanfront hotel, in the projected path of an impending hurricane, wondering if a mandatory evacuation will force you from your hotel! Friends from around the world were worried about getting flights. I'm glad we all got home safely.
Now I know what people visiting Myrtle Beach feel like when one is headed this way! It's never fun when a hurricane is heading toward you, but believe me, it's not QUITE as worrisome at home.
On the bright side, we updated our DeLorme software to 2006, installed it on my Vaio laptop, and had tons of fun navigatng! And...my husband won the drawing for an Ipod Nano (which hasn't been released to the public yet) that I quickly claimed as mine. My son is so jealous, he has the mini, lol. The nano is a cool little unit, I love it. :)
:) sunshine
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Myrtle Beach Heat Wave !!!
 Wow, what a heat wave we're having! Heat indices over 115 degrees !
Still, it hasn't stopped the tons of vacationers who are booking hotels for the next week or the tons of people already here who are hitting all the fun attractions, water parks, and nightclubs !
We're pretty much staying indoors until more family comes down to visit in
the next two weeks. Even then, if the heat keeps up, we'll only venture out early in the morning or late in the evening.
Thought we'd mention: Buying or selling real estate in Myrtle Beach is TOTALLY hot right now. We put our rental condo on the market, and it sold the day we listed it, for our full asking price, to the first person that looked at it. Great stuff :)
And, besides the weather and real estate, we're seeing that winter rentals are totally hot right now, too, with snowbirds already planning and booking in Myrtle Beach for the winter months ahead.
If you're coming down this week, bring extra-strong sunscreen! If you're already here, put more sunscreen on!
:) sunshine
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Spring in Myrtle Beach - Hurry UP!
Well we had a few cold spells, now it's warm again, but with severe thunderstorm warnings today. I knew that warm breeze was too good to be true :)
The Myrtle Beach Restaurants guide that launched in December has really taken off, averaging more than 300 visitors per day. So many wonderful people from all over have written more than 200 restaurant reviews, too.
Now the fun starts here, with the Saint Patrick Day's Parade this weekend, which is the first festival of the Spring season here in Myrtle Beach.. And it's always a really fun day! We'll be taking pictures and posting them this weekend.
Have a great week !
:) sunshine
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