The planet / ev1 servers have had a massive power outage due to some kind of explosion at their main datacenter, some 9,000 servers are down, digitalpoints sql server is probably affected.

http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=90185

Digital point forums seem to have had a major issue today, don’t know about you but when I try to access it, all I get is ‘Database error’…

Good luck to them!, but on top of that sitepoint is down for maintenance!…

So my usual morning of having a coffee and checking out what’s for sale around town is dead in the water…

I might have to actually do some work… dammit.

Ok, so my promise to keep posting after I returned from Australia hasn’t happened…

Mostly because my trip to Australia was in part to bring a separate deal to fruition – and that deal was to sell my development company, which finally has happened J

So, while I’m no longer a owner of that business, I’m under obligation to work with it for a few more months until it’s all settled and then I’m off to my next big venture(s)…

My development company wasn’t strictly a web business – we built and ran dot coms, we were an offline business I felt, we sold development services to other businesses and most of those sales were generated offline (90% were).

My other current businesses are a mixture of offline and online, I have a couple of online stores that also distribute our custom products internationally, and I have a sushi train restaurant in town, so it’s a little diverse – which is great.

Right now the biggest things in my mind is what should I do with the other businesses, keep them going or sell them off too, and what will I do next?

Well the other businesses I think I’ll keep, they are doing fine and they are a nice source of additional revenue.

As for what to do next, I have a million and one ideas so it’s a matter of choosing the best one I guess.

Not even the best one, I think I might do something that makes me happy, something I enjoy.

So I’m finally back from a little over a week in Australia, my home. I’ll hopefully get back into blogging this week. Australia was a good but hectic trip, nonstop with clients and friends, the client side was good, worked out some new and extended some existing projects, and the friends side was crazy, lots of early morning partying!

Okay so it’s the end of the month, I’ve done a fair few posts, some good some bad, some abusive some pointless, but overall I hope it’s been enjoyable to read and you’ve taken something away.

I’ve also done some minor renovations, updated the navigation, and added my Facebook link so if you like me you can add me as a friend! Why not?

Next month I’m going to try and see if people are interested in the form side of the blog, I’ve only got back into posting again at the end of Feb, and the forum has been stagnant since the end of last year, so I might try and post some more links to the forum.

Also, subscribe to me in a reader dammit, would like to see my feed count rise a little!

Some posts of interest this month:

• A good investment - if you like renovating
• Repeat customers is where your profit is
• Diversification, it’s easy, make it happen
• Project wonderful: good idea, bad execution
• What’s your advertising really worth
• The price of buying a site is more than just its revenue

See you Monday!… Subscribe! RSS!

The quality of some of these sites on entrecard.com are pretty subpar.

Sure there’s a good number with traffic, and some with some quite nice designs and content, there’s even more that have next to nothing to say at all, and on top of that are sporting really horrid layouts.

There are thousands of good themes out there for all the blog platforms so I don’t see why people deploy these blogs without a half decent one.

I must have gone through over 200 sites today to try and find some good blogs to read, and I came away with nothing. Nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing that captivated me and made me wants to read.

Some of the sites in there I do already read, and I like them, but aside from those, I found almost nothing new, just wasted a few hrs trying to discover some.

I did say almost, there were some alright sites that had content worth reading, not just regurgitated crap.

http://www.entrepreneur.com.sg

http://dotcommogul.net/

http://theblogentrepreneur.com/

http://www.toasteggme.com/

there were a few more but I lost the links… heh.

Ahh 2 months and out ADSL still isn’t working, thankfully there’s wireless!

It only took a total of 6 weeks to move office, but it’s finally done and we’re all back up and running!

Well, the ADSL is still not connected yet, that’s 2-3 more days off yet, but we’re on wireless which is fine for now!

With some luck I’ll get back into posting about online business, I really hope so!

Okay so I almost forgot about blogging this morning, I think I need some kind of note somewhere above my desk to remind me, at the moment there’s windows with a street view.

We’re moving office in like 2 days to a new building not too far from here; it’s larger which is good because I’m taking on more staff in January, and I’ll organise myself a bit more so I have a whiteboard next to my desk or something I can write reminders on…

Why am I taking on more staff? Well I have a team of programmers at the moment, and I’m soon in need of support staff and accounting etc to help manage the launch and operations of some new projects.

The new projects that I’m launching are varied a little; we have a few applications in development that I’m still keeping a little hush hush for a few more weeks yet, but they are pretty cool and hopefully with a bit of marketing they’ll attract some users!

That’s the plan anyway!

I’m the kind of person who buys dot com businesses on a regular basis. I think in total I’ve bought over 50 and then sold pretty much all of them again – for a profit of course!

I usually buy a site, re-do the design, add some new features, do some marketing and then sell it again for a profit once it’s making more money.

Not every site is a potential money maker and this is my case in point.

Defiantly don’t bother buying

This sale is simply a waste of time, for the money you spend on buying it; you can pay an offshore programmer to code the same system at a much cheaper cost.

Why do I judge this as a waste of time? And why of all the sites I wouldn’t buy am I blogging about this one?

Simple, this is the epitome of what not to buy, it’s the ultimate example.

Weed out the bullshit

• He wants $3,000 for a site with no revenue (some sites are worth it, but this isn’t)
• The design is worthless (2 minute job) so all your investing in is a simple system anyone can build for $1k
• “Winning bidder backed out, so I am relisting for a quick sale” The last bidder realised his mistake thankfully
• “The website is fully 2.0 functional and has a built in community” (the definition of ‘web2.0′ is community, so he likes speaking bullshit he knows nothing about, there’s a 99% chance there’s nothing web 2.0 about the site)
• “The back end on this site is amazing, when a group buy is over you can automatically send invoices to all people in that group.” Oh my god it can send out invoices automatically, I haven’t seen anything do that before…
• “Lastly, the best part in my opinion is that the site allows members to suggest group buys that they want to see.” Wow so you can make a suggestion. Again a cheap 5 minute feature to code, still noting of value described
• “The revenue potentials are endless.” Don’t buy into any website for sale that says something like this, especially one that’s not even making money.
• Another big alarm should be the next line “Here is an example of how much money you can make” Again, it’s not making money so don’t buy into this bullshit and his random figures
• “If you can build up a member list of 20,000 members, you can easily sell this thing for a couple hundred grand.” Big hint here is the ‘if you can’ and then the big random figure ‘couple of hundred grand’ seriously where do these numbers come from

After you take away the parts of the description that are meaningless, are bullshit, and add no real value, your left with nothing really of interest said, and what was said more than anything were pie in the sky money figures – 20k members you can make hundreds of thousands blah blah blah.

If I could get 20k members into just about any website I could make hundreds of thousands. Don’t buy the bullshit. Buy something else.