Many years ago when I first got married I said to Roselyn, “You need to understand something about me…..I’ll only keep on doing what I’m doing if I’m enjoying it.” This doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit working if I have a bad day but it does strike at an important life issue.

We spend a large amount of our time working and I’m amazed by the number of people that hate their job and yet turn up every day. I’m amazed for two reasons. One, they are disciplined enough to keep on doing something they don’t like, two, they are in a position where they have to do it and three, they feel they can’t move onto something else.

Obligations are a scary thing and one of the lessons I’m trying to teach my own children is the financial noose that all those unnecessary things can place around your neck. You don’t really need a fancy car, brand new phone or the very latest computer. Going without is often a really good thing to do as it teaches us patience. Going without often gives us the flexibility to move onto to other things where we really enjoy life and work becomes play.

As many of you have seen, my daughter Sarah, is now working part-time with me on Whizzbangsblog. The other day she had a great big smile on her face and she said to me, “Dad, I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying this!”

I replied, “There’s nothing like working hard and having a fun time doing it.” Make sure you drop her a line and say "hi" on the blog here.....just look up Sarah Gilmour.

For many years, work has been associated as one step up from slavery and jobs were a thing you just had to do. Yes, we need to earn money but work in itself is often its own reward. This is why so many people volunteer for worthy organisations…..it’s not work to them.

The other day I had my nine-year anniversary at ParkLogic and I can honestly say that it’s been one heck of a ride. Each day I work really hard but I love my job and I keep on having fun. There’s nothing quite like doing a great job for a client and having them thank you for the work that you’re doing. I would also like to thank all those people that wished me well on my anniversary!

Have a great weekend!

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.

Today I had the pleasure to make a video with my daughter Sarah. Since it has been so long since she has last featured in one of my videos, we thought we would do an update of the last one! If you haven’t already watched the video you can view it here. The video is about ‘Generation Y’ and if things have changed in how they use the Internet over the past few years.

Have a watch of the video and let us know what you think! Sarah has now registered for an account with Whizzbangs blog and would be more than happy to answer any questions or comments you may have!

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.

Freddy Schiwek, the CEO of Luxembourg based Domain Invest, just showed me his new website keyworddomains.com. It’s an impressive, simple to use marketplace that allows domain names to be bought and sold without any commissions.

Freddy has been involved in the domain industry for over a decade and I have the privilege of counting him as a good friend. Several years ago he took the bold step to raise a considerable amount of venture funding to build a substantial domain portfolio under the Domain Invest brand.

The portfolio now includes single word domains such as jewel.com and short domains like jdm.com….both of which are highly valuable. Whiskey.com is one example of a number of particularly high end brandable domains in the portfolio.

I asked Freddy why he built keyworddomains.com and he replied, “I wanted a website where it was really easy to buy and sell domains and where good quality domains didn’t get lost in the masses of sub-quality domains. The problem with many of the marketplaces is buyers find it difficult to find the high quality domains and this results in the good domains not getting the exposure they need to get sold.”

Since Keyword Domains doesn’t take a commission on sales then in my opinion there is very little downside to setting up and account and adding your own domains to the platform. Although don’t be surprised if any low quality domains are rejected……Freddy does seem to be focused on providing value to potential buyers.

Check out Keyword Domains at keyworddomains.com.

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.

This past week I’ve had the “pleasure” of wading my way through numerous legal documents well over 56 pages in length and my desk is becoming buried under a mountain of paper. Don’t get me wrong, paper has its place (I think), but I’ve decided this past week to commit a form of genocide by going on a rampage to decimate as much of the white stuff as possible. Just when I think I’m beginning to get the upper hand in my war the mail arrives.

I remember as a child I used to get so excited about “getting something in the mail”, now all of the envelopes seem to have windows on them. Grrrrrrr! Like the tentacles of some malevolent beast the subtlety of my enemy infiltrating my life is really quite scary.

For example, earlier I wandered into our dining room, glance at the table, to see it’s covered in paper from school assignments and studying courtesy of our youngest daughter. I have six boxes of business cards, computer manuals filling bookshelves and you guessed it, a stationary cupboard filled to overflowing with paper.

There seems to be a never ending flow of flattened, bleached, mulched trees threatening to engulf me in their pristine whiteness. Now it’s time for me to fight back.

My first assault on paper were the numerous notebooks that I end up carrying around (I have heaps of these). They’re stuffed full of bullet points and diagrams from countless meetings. All important, but all of them are going out the door.

So in a fit of a berserker’s frenzy I went down to my local computer store and bought a Microsoft Surface tablet with an e-pen. Combined with OneNote, it’s my first salvo to getting rid of the stuff that seems to endlessly clutter my office and my life. Notes are now categorised and things to do lists are syncing across my desktop, laptop, iphone and Surface tablet. I finally seem to be getting the upper hand……

My principle goal in my war is to not just get rid of paper but to simplify my life so that I can spend more time focusing on what’s really important rather than moving stuff from one pile to another. So in effect, I’m committing genocide but killing as much paper as I possibly can.

The next time a lawyer sends me a 50+ page legal agreement in the mail I’m going to politely tell them where they can put it. Send me an e-version that I can quickly search and mark-up but for heaven’s sake don’t send it printed on paper.

So as I wage my war my wife casually reminds of the fact that I’ve just ordered twenty printed copies of my SciFi book, Battleframe, so now, in truth, I feel like I’m trading in illegal weapons. Anyone want a table of contents? How about an index? There’s plenty of words to go around and it's all written on paper…. :-)

Have a great weekend!

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.

I just listened to the Rightside quarterly reporting results webcast by CEO, Taryn Naidu. To summarise, there’s been some cost cutting and quarter on quarter growth is the same for the registrar business and declining for the registry and aftermarket.

To be fair to the Aftermarket business it’s off a bumper third quarter and so the revenue of $9.3m isn’t a bad result when you consider it grew at 9% compared to Q3.

Verisign reported on 17 Dec 2015 that the number of domains registered worldwide across all TLDs has grown 5.2% year over year. The Rightside registrar business unit is growing at a sluggish 1.9% (up from 16m to 16.3m domains) by number of domains. Some questions need to be asked why the registrars are not even close to keeping pace with the natural global growth rate.

In terms of revenue, the registrar business grew by 2% in Q4 and overall for the year by 9%. It can be inferred that the increase has largely been off the back of TLD price hikes (eg. .net by 10% in Q1) which has resulted in an overall 3.7% increase in the average revenue per domain.

The registry business revenue of $2.5m is still not having a large impact on the overall revenue and is unlikely to in the near future. It’s still early days but the decline in the quarter on quarter growth rate from a high of 45% in Q1 to 5% in Q4 must be concerning.

It was pointed out on the webcast that the benefits from the recent layoffs and some of the marketing efforts were not evident as yet. The jury is still out on the marketing initiatives but I believe the layoffs, although sad for those impacted, were a move in the right direction by the company.

During the webcast there seemed to be a large emphasis on China and how Rightside is poised to move aggressively into that market. Given the decline in growth in the new gTLDs it almost feels like Rightside is looking for the Chinese market to provide some of the sizzle to get investors interested in the capital valuation game again.

It will be interesting to see how this strategy will impact the bottom line. There’s a lot happening in the Chinese market but I’m unsure of the long-term sustainability of some of the numbers being reported.

Some people have suggested that I'm somehow against Rightside. This couldn't be further from the truth. It's a really good solid business that over the long-term will perform well. In my opinion, the challenge Rightside is facing is how to move from putting all their hopes in the new gTLD basket, that's not paying off fast enough, to something else.

I would suggest that rather than hope China dramatically impacts the bottom line that innovation is what tech-companies really do. This suggests, the investment community is looking for Rightside to announce something "interesting" that has a lot of growth potential.....time will only tell whether my thinking is right or not.

As always, before making any investment decisions please seek your own professional advice.

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.