It didn’t always go well - in fact the first few times I was charged large sums for not working scripts or crappy looking designs. But I’ve learned from my mistakes and now finding good, reliable and affordable programmers, designers, content writers and data entry people is pretty easy for me.I use scriptlance.com for most of my new projects, be it writing, seo, or development. Like all other freelancing sites scriptlance is full of time wasters and people looking for quick money without work. However if you stick to the guidelines below you’ll be able to avoid them easily and find the best people for you work.

Here is my fail proof method to getting any programming/design/writing/data entry work done:

1. Register an account at scriptlance.com
2. Post a new project with a reasonably detailed description and be sure to use the prepaid option to show you’re serious. Make bids open and viewable to let the bidders compete amongst themselves. No need to enter budget unless you have a strict range in mind. Also note that you won’t be able to delete the project details later, so if you want to share some sensitive data in the description you can either upload a file - files are deleted after the project is closed - or send it through the message board privately.
3. Give it at least 1-3 days to accumulate enough offers.
4. Check the members with the best reviews. Simply ignore people who have average rating below 9-9.5 out of 10, or if they are very new and have less than 5 reviews - you don’t want that kind of service.   Pay most attention to those members who have perfect 10/10 feedback with over 10 reviews or at least average 9.8. Also pay closer attention to the feedback comments, freelancers with more comments implying that the webmaster would hire them again usually provide the best quality work and service.
5. Pick some of bidders with top reviews, reply to them for more details. You can request examples of their previous similar work, a quick demo (if it doesn’t take more than ~15 min to make they’ll usually do it with no commitment from you), or more details on how they plan to complete the project.
6. Discuss the details through pmb with at least 2-3 bidders you’ve picked and once you’re clear on all the details and got the best price quote - pick your winner. Do not, under any circumstances, agree on paying part of the money upfront. Use scriptlance escrow to place the whole amount, or 50% of it in escrow and it will only be released when you’re satisfied with the project.
7. Be sure to agree on all details before choosing a winner - requesting additional features afterwards might be too late.

To sum it up:  pick freelancers with best reviews, who did related projects and discuss all details before closing. Good luck!

eFav.com - $4950
_The_ Best name for a social bookmarking site! Could be developed into something like Faves.com or Fark.com, or even Del.icio.us or Digg.com. Or build a site like allmyfaves.com or SocialMarker.com to list and help users manage all the bookmarks from other sites.
Short and easy to remember - the perfect opportunity to launch your own social bookmarking site and capitalize on the hot trend, or sell it to the next big thing like twitter!
Buy this and I will also help you find an affordable and good quality developers to make an excellent custom site for the domain and even help promote it.
Ever wanted to have your own social bookmarking start up? This is your perfect opportunity!

Bulg.com - $4950
Popular short word for Bulgaria, comes with a professionally developed mini site that currently ranks #4 for ‘Bulg’ in google and many other queries in Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Bulgaria has a population of 7.6 Million people, is a member of the EU and NATO.
Bulgaria is one of the most popular turist locations in Europe for it’s enormous historical and cultural heritage stretching back from the beginning of written history (6-5 millenia ago), throughout the Greek and Roman times and the Middle ages and up to Modern times. The cheapest housing in EU and excellent climate for both winter skiing and summer beach activities.

Afff.com - $2950

AFFiliate Forum. There are now many affiliate forums, like wickedfire.com, or wealthyaffiliate.com and new ones are openned all the time. Many charge as much as $100 per month for membership and attract hundreds and thousands of members.
With Afff.com you could stand above all these - short and premium domain instinctively related to the industry. Instasnt brand recognition and trust.
You could also build an affiliate forums list or blog to profit from the highest referrer commissions in the industry. Wealthyaffiliate.com even pay $175 comission per each member you refer.
These could be extremely profitable, one such forum launched recently made $25k in the first 2 days only - read on here

also
Adult Friend Finder forum
AFFF Aqueous Film Forming Foam
AFFF Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival
AFFF Aqueous Fire Fighting Foam
AFFF AKR’s Free Form Framework

AARR.com and DDRR.com $4995 for the pair
Two super rare domains with many acronyms. There are only 34 names like these with 2 premium letters repeating.

Hace.com - $6950
over 200 Million results in google, multiple acronyms and meanings, and many developed sites on other extensions.
Also receives some type in traffic on sedo.
Dozens of potential end users you can market this to.

Bune.com - $3450
Top quality premium CVCV.com domain. Over 3 million results in google and many meanings, a popular last name as well
Bune has a nice sounding to it and would fit well for any brand.
Also gets some type in traffic on sedo.

Zwee.com - $995
Top brandable name for a social network. Easy to remember and pronounce. New social startups pop out frequently and many have good funding - this an excellent opportunity for a timeless investment, just sit and wait for the end users to contact you while the amount of available for sale LLLL.com’s that can be used for this type of site is diminishing.
A huge plus is also that it’s a one syllabus word, better than hulu, bido and visa. How many one syllabus LLLL.com’s have you seen for sale? Can be the next buzz word with the right marketing!
Zwee is also an excellent name for a music band, or a company brand.

Top LLLL.com sales for your information (that are not words):
Riva.com $200,000 2008
iGen.com $100,100 2008
Dora.com $100,000 2006
uNet.com $100,000 2008
Xian.com $83,500 2008
moka.com $72,223 2007
vida.com $70,000 2008
fern.com $50,000 2008
loco.com $50,000 2006
bedo.com $45,000 2009
mygo.com $31,000 2006
cmdx.com $30,350 2008
kwik.com $30,000 2007
conn.com $29,500 2007
cobb.com $28,500 2007
sida.com $27,000 2006
jojo.com $25,500 2008
bing.com $25,375 2007
ozmo.com $25,000 2008
racy.com $25,000 2008
reos.com $25,000 2008
osco.com $24,500 2008
boya.com $22,500 2008
ebio.com $22,500 2008

- listed on multiple forums
- Post sold to claim a domain - payment expected within 24 hours.
- Winner to be determined by time stamp
- Payments accepted by paypal masspay from established members or wire/escrow - buyer pays all fees.

Domain Registration Confirmation

Dear Customer,

This notification is generated automatically as a service to you.

Because of unusual number of invalid login attempts on you account, we had to believe that, their might be some security problem on you account. So we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your account security.
Please click on sign in to domain servers to continue to the verification process and ensure your account security. It is all about your security. Thank you. and visit the customer service section.

please contact us within 1 days.

If you need to address this matter, or in any way need further assistance or technical support, call us any time at (480) 505-8877 or email us at support@godaddy.com. We appreciate your business!

Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com DomainAlert team

The emails also have the “regular” legal addition which makes them look rather authentic:

*Free hosting, photo album and blog services are ad-supported. Ad-supported Web sites contain
relevant online advertising on a small portion of the site, but DO NOT include obtrusive pop-up ads.
**Not applicable to premium domains, bulk domain purchases, discounted domain products, Sunrise/Landrush domain registrations, .ME domain registrations, discounted memberships or maintenance plans; additional disk space and bandwidth renewals, custom page layouts, custom headers, posters or gift cards. Discount reflected in your shopping cart – cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or promotion.

Copyright © 2009 GoDaddy.com, Inc.. All rights reserved.

In general these emails look pretty good, much better than the regular scams, where after seeing the “dear sir/madam” you can figure it’s a scam right away. This email even had a smaller frame with a 10% off code and a few real links to GoDaddy.com

Take 10%** off your next order at GoDaddy.com.
Simply enter gdbb366 in your shopping cart or mention the offer code when you call (480) 505-8877.

The question remains however will these guys ever learn to spell and actually write in decent English? However many people don’t read email and just check the title, open it and click the link if it looks authentic.

Last, but not least - be sure to mouse over all links in email before clicking them!

domain newsletters

While there is usually nothing interesting to buy for resellers, or domain flippers - if you’re looking for a good name for development, or investment it could be a good opportunity. Anyone can usually submit their domains to be published in the newsletter for a 10% fee in case of a sale an a 1-2 week exclusivity promise. If the domain doesn’t sell you pay nothing as a seller. The prices are almost always higher than what a domain would sell on the forums, or auctions, however sometimes bargains can slip through.

DomainsNewsletter.com by Kevin from BigTicketDomains.com wins the award for best prices and quality. There are names in varying price and quality ranges and with prices starting at only $50 even small time, beginning web developers can find good names to purchase. Even if you plan to find good names to try to resell to end users you may find them here. There are also frequent top quality generic domains for 5, and even 7 figures.
Kevin sent out 18 emails since I joined 4 months ago, or an average of about one email per week. However it’s not quite a weekly newsletter since there were 9 emails in March, none in February and only one in January this year.

DomainsForMedia.com newsletter by Eric Rice from DnCartoons.com is a close match by quality vs price as there are many good quality generics present for $xxx-$x,xxx ranges. The emails usually include larger lists of domains and note that offers will also be considered.
I’ve received 75 emails since joining in July 9, 2008, which is an average of about two emails per week.

The other two popular newsletters are by Evan Horowitz from HuntingMoon.com and Rock Latona from RickLatona.com.
Huntingmoon’s newsletter is notable because it lists the domains sold through the newsletter, along with prices, every month and also the pending delete domains, some with a drop catch service where to bid on them, such as SnapNames, or NameJet. Both these features are quite useful since it’s always interesting to see which domains actually sell and you have an opportunity to review some of the top expiring domains and pick some to bid on for free. The domains prices are usually in high $xxx to mid $x,xxx and vary significantly in quality, however resellers aren’t like to find bargains here, but end users can pick good names for development.
I’ve received 87 emails from Ivan since subscribing on October 11, 2008, which is an average of about an email every two days.

Rick Latona’s newsletter comes last in this review, but no the least. On the contrary it’s like the most popular one and has the highest number of subscribers. This newsletter usually includes a small section of text with Rick’s comments on latest event and links to his latest posts. The domains come in different forms, shapes and ranges. Lately also including names in other languages and tlds. Namely Spanish word domains which are usually priced at low-mid $xxx. Generally the quality varies, but there are frequently fairly priced domains almost in every email. This newsletter is supposed daily, however there are frequent brakes, probably because of Rick’s traveling. I’ve received 190 emails in little less than a year, making it about 4 emails per week on average.

And to add in conclusion: if you’re a domainer newsletters are a good place to try to sell your domains quickly, however it’s usually not the place to search for bargains.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am contacting you on behalf of a small web development firm with which I work.

We have just recently instigated a development plan whereby we are slowly but surely building a large network of simple, information based websites.
The intention is to create a Wikipedia style encyclopaedia of information. The difference is however that rather than be located on one central domain, we intend to develop these sites on individual, keyword rich domains.
Our aim is to create a network such that if you want information on ‘Childrens Birthdays’ for example, then you can simply type in childrensbirthdays.com and find all the information you need.
At the moment search engines like Google provide an unnecessary middle man. We aim to make finding what you want even simpler than it already is!

We are contacting you with regards to the domain name RockyHill.com. Having completed a check of the whois database we obtained your details as being the owner/administrator of said domain name.
We are interested in purchasing this domain name from you as it is an ideal domain name for our development.

We would be prepared to offer you 50 USD for your domain name. If this is acceptable, please do let us know and we will provide information on how we may proceed.
We do not consider ourselves naive or unknowledgeable, and appreciate that some domains are being used for other things than websites: email for example, and again we appreciate that you may simply not want to sell your domain.
If this is the case we ask that you let us know such that we can pursue alternative domains.

Independent of your decision, I thank you for your time and wish you all the best.
Thanks

Jennifer

The “Dear Sir/Madam,” usually makes it all clear from the beginning, but in this one somehow it seemed like it might be a real offer. From the whois it appears that childrensbirthdays.com belongs to Rolnick, Danny from GB. But there is no way of knowing if this is the sender of the email, or they just picked a random good looking domain for an example.

All the US city domain owners have been emailed to so many times that I doubt there is any chance to buy a domain this way nowdays. The times when you could get a great bargain by emailing the owner are mainly gone and this is obviously an automated bulk email so it didn’t even deserve a reply, he can’t be seriously offering $50 for a top GEO domain like that.

After some checking I’ve found that apparently these guys emailed quite a few domainers. Some even say they only got a $10 offer, so I guess I should be happy

Peter Miller Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 6:31 AM
To: domainadmin
Dear sir,

we are interested to buy your domain name AARR.COM and offer to buy it from you for 65% of the appraised market value.

As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

sedo.com
pedma.com
accuratedomains.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Thanks,
P. Miller

Net Builders will be announcing the new contest keyword today, some 9 hours from now. 10 pm GMT on March 15.

The contest would be simply about ranking in Google for that keyword 3 months from now. The person to rank the first there will get $1,000, second $500 and third $250.

As SEO contest usually are it should be an interesting experience and may show everyone some new tricks to rank better in Google. Even if you don’t know much about SEO, it’s one to watch - SEO skills and knowledge are essential nowdays for any web project to succeed. Sulumits retsambew was chosen to be the keyword people will need to rank for in order to win it.

$675 each:
ezoh.com
fpoo.com
ataz.com
ozav.com
ufut.com
enuh.com
egek.com
pirh.com

$485 each:
leiw.com
ufdo.com
ufno.com
iaby.com
giuk.com
kwap.com
guuw.com
drsh.com
osej.com
cihh.com
nnof.com
oadf.com
eift.com
ltgm.com
etmh.com

$195 each:
yiok.com
wlsp.com
iokk.com
neqa.com
behy.com
iikb.com
oikb.com
ebkp.com
dhmu.com
pkht.com
tcke.com
rngw.com
fnlu.com
buoe.com
crfk.com
mnnk.com
oslw.com
ykio.com
mbnu.com

$95 each:
mxft.com
vtks.com
xexm.com
xixm.com
eozl.com
fdru.com
rudp.com
rhhu.com
thhu.com
fzin.com
nstj.com
llzm.com
epvl.com
pdir.net
clyo.net

Post sold below to claim a domain, or on Dnforum

About a year ago things were quite different and domainers were encouraged to invest by ever rising prices on both short domains and generics and recent buyouts (such as LLLL.com and premium letter LLLL.net’s) which proven to be quite worthwhile. Minimum prices for LLLL.com’s reached $65 during peak times and there was a healthy supply of buyers. So back in those times it made sense to buy lots of NNNNN.com’s as well and hold them because prices would rise eventually. Which is what many domainers did buying up to 1k of them each. I had 875 of them at a total cost of around $6k - several other investors purchased more than 1000 of them and now realize the mistake and decide not to renew most.

Now, when the renewals came I decided to drop almost all of them, only leaving a few.  I expect thousands of them to be available for registrations within the next month. The ones that represent a zip code, or have certain meaning would still be valuable, but the rest are going to wait for the next buyout phase.

Now for those who saw my posts a year ago know that I was investing in those digit domains heavily and even encouraged others, predicting that prices would rise. And I did believe that at that time, now of course I see this was wrong and it’s time to cut the losses.

Some people reading this would probably think “ha, what a dumbass, lost $6k on useless domains and he still calls himself Domain Magnate”, but I’ve long since adopted a different business approach, one that has always proven most valuable in the long term.

Failures and losses are a part of life, business especially. Only one who does nothing can never fail. Moreover, while success has its challenges too, failure is more important to growth since all failures occur to teach us valuable lessons and if we take the time to analyze them and ponder on the causes and consequences the empirical growth will be well worth  the material loss.

And so a word of advice to all those who took a loss on their domain investments over the past months - use this as an opportunity to reassess your strategies and plans and make sure not to repeat the same mistakes twice. Now when prices are down again and many top quality domain names are available for purchase it’s a buyers market and a great time to invest. But as the financial crisis continues this situation is likely to continue for a while, so no rush - review hundreds of domains and buy a few.

This and other similar experiences, like the falling prices for LLLL.com’s which I’ve also invested in significantly, caused me to reevaluate my business plans and concentrate more on increasing the revenue from sites and other online properties to increase the cash flow. Most investments and projects I’ve been involved in over the past year and a half have been quite profitable and easily covered the other losses, but it is the failures that help correct the course and aim bigger.

Developing sites for affiliate and adsense revenues used to be my main business, though substituted by domaining for a while. It also showed the importance of more conservative investment strategies and long term planning. And to finish this a famous quote:

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
– Robert F. Kennedy

Naturally this is the biggest (and possibly the only) .travel sale to date. Despite the shocker it appears to be true as was reported by credible sources: businesswire, reuters.

Different explanations were proposed, from a ‘fake sale’ to ‘money laundering’, tax evasion et. But I can add that I’ve seen enough stranger things happen in domaining over the last few years to know that anything is possible. However don’t get your hopes up, good domains are still good and bad is going to remain bad..