Paul Middleton's Website

Welcome to Paul Middleton's website

I have so many websites already  it's questionable whether I really need another. The problem is that none of my existing sites are suitable for offering a showcase of all the sites I manage and develop, my skills and my potential value to prospective clients.

I've been managing internet businesses since 2001 when I launched my first company with a colleague in the UK. Since then, I've gone on to create many websites ranging in content from pure ecommerce to a global business development community.

I'm currently very keen on collaboration and I'm working on a couple of collaborative projects at the moment. I'm a sucker for any nice, generic domain name that's available...I just can't help myself.

My philosophy is that what's good for the customer is good for the search engines, and therefore doubly good for business, and this has proven a successful strategy for me time and time again.

The following is a list of the websites that I manage at the present time:

• www.camera-warehouse.com.au - An ecommerce store selling digital cameras, digital video cameras, and accessories from major brands like Canon, Nikon, Pentax, etc. The website is linked to a store in Sydney's CBD. Total revenues for this business will exceed $AU2.5million this year (2008/09).
  I am responsible for all aspects of this website except content (product creation, pricing, etc). The site has been developed paying close attention to on-site search engine optimisation (SEO) factors, and I'm proud that the site does well in the search engines for most product-specific search terms, plus a few key generic terms.
  My involvement with this site is the basis for the creation of many of the websites that are listed below.
• www.dsl-warehouse.com.au - Another ecommerce site built on the same platform as camera-warehouse.com.au, but concerned with broadband networking hardware. This site used to offer product from well-known brands such as NETGEAR, D-Link, Belkin, etc, but now specialises on DrayTek, for which the company is the NSW distributor. The other brands are now available through ITbuyer.com.au (see below).
  The dsl-warehouse.com.au website also incorporates a reseller only site.
• www.royalexpress.com.au - This is the website for the Royal Express store that sells digital cameras in Sydney CBD. The store is Kodak minilab store, so offers photo printing services, photo frames and albums, and passport photos. It is also the home to an online photo printing service that is run externally for the store.
• www.digitalcamerasydney.com.au - This is a relatively new site that I've started to post articles on new digital cameras and camera technology. This is in part for external SEO purposes to feed back in to Camera-Warehouse, but also to create a new identity that may be used in the future. There is an issue with the Camera-Warehouse name that causes some confusion for customers, so changing the name could be beneficial. "Digital Camera Sydney" is one option. The site runs on the Domain-Parking content management system (CMS) (see below), which includes Google AdSense for revenue generation.
• www.digitalcameranews.com.au - Another new site that aggregates news feeds from sources within Australia and globally. This is only a few days old as I write, so it's too early to ascertain how successful it's going to be. This site also runs on the Domain-Parking CMS.
• www.digitalslrlenses.com.au - A very recent acquisition. This site may be used to create a dedicated site for information or sales of SLR lenses.
• itbuyer.com.au - A general IT product store (over 25,000 products) that uses periodic updates from a supplier's feed to reduce management overhead - the site basically runs itself, which is just as well, because I don't have the time or spare resources to run it!
  The initial idea was to create a 'Costco' type IT superstore targeted at regular buyers of IT products. These customers would pay a regular subscription fee (quarterly, bi-annually or annually) to have access to [effectively] cost prices of products. This idea was suspended following concerns raised by our suppliers, but is likely to be re-instated very soon.
  Customers may also purchase goods at standard prices, which are also competitive.
  This site may soon be added to a number of shopping comparison sites to aid awareness, but, with over 25,000 products, this needs to be approached with caution so as not to blow the marketing budget too quickly (even at 10c per click, one click per product would cost over $2,500!).
• www.scentsations.com.au - Another ecommerce store selling designer perfumes, after-shaves, gift sets and make up. I often make the claim that this is the cheapest source of these products in Australia, and I'm normally right. Historically, this site has been used as a test-bed for new SEO techniques. Unfortunately, that has meant that it doesn't do exceptionally well in the search engines, but the site is entirely automated, so takes little to no effort to maintain. Only products that are in stock (updated via an overnight feed from my supplier) are shown on the site, so there's rarely an order placed that can't be fulfilled immediately. The site also uses my favourite technique for repeat business to date. A very simple, but very effective, one liner in the checkout.
• www.domain-parking.com.au - Another site started this year following the reported 'gold rush' of domaining in the lead up to the changes by auDA.org to allow domain name trading. Of all my websites, I probably use this one the most and it's undoubtedly the most useful. A combination of content management system (CMS) and passive income generator, the site template is used by over 50% of my current sites (including this one).
  The public side of the website offers free domain parking, but I've not pursued this particularly as it's necessarily quite technical, and therefore difficult to use, and I don't have the time to educate people. Bad, I know, but the usefullness I gain from the site makes it more than worthwhile! One day I may have the time to promote and share it with others.
  I also use this site as a base for my domain name consultancy business, including trading, appraisals, acquisition and other services. My first client for this business was an iconic Australian company for whom I acquired a few domain names. The frustrating bit is that, due to the nature of the work, I'm unable to share their identity in case this impacts future negotiations!
• auappraisals.com.au - This is a one-page website with a form for requesting appraisals of Australian domain names. Another site that was created purely out of speculation, but which paid for itself within 72 hours of launching!
• www.passive-income.com.au - This site is an informational site on creating a passive income system, created in collaboration with Speakers Coach, Pete Miller. I'm hoping this will form the foundation for a information product store to sell ebooks and reports I create myself along with Pete, Sarah Zawadzki and other collaborants.
• www.photography-courses.com.au - This site lists photography courses from schools around Australia. The basic premise is that they list their courses for free and pay a self-determined level of commission to me for any bookings received through the site. Setting commission at zero is possible, but this prevents wider promotion of the courses through the affiliate network, which includes Camera-Warehouse. Commission for externally derived bookings is split between myself and the affiliates.
  Another site that works well and does well in the search engines, but it's difficult to track bookings and I need to improve the administrative side of the site (I haven't collected commission for quite a few months!).
• www.digitalcamerarepair.com.au - A single-page site (currently) with a form for requesting a quote on digital camera repairs. This is automatically forwarded to the Camera-Warehouse repairer of choice in return for a small commission. The page was previously hosted on the digitalcamerasydney.com.au website, with a redirect from this domain to that page, but this was reversed in the last 48 hours. Hopefully this will improve the page's current #32 standing in Google for 'digital camera repair'.
• webequity.org - This is a global online business development community I created that's based on revenue and/or equity sharing. I started this site so that I had access to a pool of resources to help me develop some of the business ideas that I had that I didn't have time to develop myself. Initially restricted to Australia, the site now has communities in the UK, US and Canada, but, as I've done no promotion in those regions, they're not very big. At time of writing, the Australian community is over 200 members strong and has over 20 projects posted.
• blipt.com - This site offers to pay internet users in return for referrals of websites that are badly designed or domain names that are under-utilised. The idea is that I approach the website/domain name owners with an offer to fix up their websites (in return for money). If this is successful then the original referrer of the domain name receives a percentage of the revenue generated. This site was never intended to be an overnight hit by its nature (I didn't want to create a community of bounty-hunting web surfers), but I have received a number of referrals already, including facebook.com!
• www.stoploss.com.au - A blog for my forex trading experiences. I was very keen on this when I started, but the site fell into disrepair as my interest in forex trading wained and I was consumed by other projects. Coincidentally, the site was registered weeks before the movie 'Stop Loss' was announced
• www.boxed.com.au - This is my ecommerce/internet marketing consultancy website. I go through phases where I update his site regularly, but it does suffer from a lack of recent content because of all the new sites I've created this year!

Other sites that are in the pipeline (that aren't secret)...

• www.photocalendars.com.au
• www.purityrings.com.au
• www.promiserings.com.au
• www.digitalbookstore.com.au
• www.digitaldarkroom.com.au
• www.neogeography.com.au
• www.photographycompetition.com.au (that's a little bit secret!)

Many of the sites listed above target specific terms in the search engines using a suite of proven techniques that I've developed over the years, and most do very well. I'm in the process of creating some guides on different aspects of ecommerce, search engine optimisation (SEO) and internet business in general, but I prefer to work directly with other people. If you have any questions about how I do what I do, or if you need any help improving your own website, please get in touch.

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