Moguling With Oprah

Echoes of Web 1.0 still haunt Web 2.0. Get rich quick with little or no effort by “Moguling”. 

Have you thought of being a Mogul yet? Robin Smith started a new blog about a month ago and it is already ranked high at Google. Smith used a new technique called “Moguling”, a trademarked term of DotVentures. The method revolves around using blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

The intent of Muguling is to spike the value of domain names for profit in the Internet real estate market. Scott points out that blogs tend to get noticed very quickly by Google and he predicts that the next “wave” of Web Millionaires will be spawned from this type of venture.

Smith's oprahsschool.com started as a blog, and for some rather obvious reasons rose quickly to the top rank given certain search criteria. The old methods for building a web site involved research, development, programming, SEO and maintenance. Moguling sort of ‘reverse engineers” the process by starting the blog first, getting the ranking and then adding content on the fly.

In a press release from 24-7, Smith applauded DotVentures techniques for helping him get to the top within some very competitive keyword searches. Smith claims that the process will work for any online entity. Essentially, the blog is built and then the company is constructed around the newly popular domain name.

Moguling sounds like domain name optimization to me, and what could you expect from anything with Oprah's name in it any way? I am visualizing sites with catchy names popping up by the hundreds all over the Web real estate now. Smith's site is actually pretty nice, and Oprah's efforts in Africa are to be applauded truly. According to Smith, his site was never intended to earn money in the first place, but the thought of using the same technique to value domain names came out of this success. Just as a note, a search on Google for “Oprah's school” does not reveal “oprahsschool” in the top 10.

I think the Internet drives people out of their minds sometimes. I often read things and am reminded of what the inside of a gambling casino looks like to a keen observer. You see hundreds of people throwing time and money around in an effort to strike it rich, while some little old lady who has been playing slots for 20 minutes wins a million bucks for one pull on a “one armed bandit”. No one ever stops to think about the other 1000 losers leaving for home empty handed. Our blog was not reverse engineered, but I bet just having Oprah's name in this post get 50 hits, we will see.