“I’d rather have just one massively successful business than a bunch of businesses sucking away resources and not delivering value.”

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BeenEvaluated is an online website evaluation tool. Taking into account over 25 different factors, BeenEvaluated is one of the most advanced tools for determining website and domain name worth. BeenEvaluated is lightning fast and provides premium appraisals that are incredibly accurate.

Foresold is a digital marketing agency and website brokerage ran by Joshua Elizetxe. Responsible for helping deliver over $1 million in online results for its clients since 2007, Foresold is one of the leaders in digital marketing and website brokering services (buying and selling websites for clients, search engine marketing, media buying, affiliate marketing, and more). Increase your success online by meeting with one of Foresold’s certified experts today.

MO: What’s the biggest mistake you see people making when choosing and purchasing a domain name?

Joshua: It’s important to clearly define what your strategy is before you go out and purchase domain names. I would say that this is the biggest mistake made when purchasing domain names. You can use a free tool like the Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that are popular for your business. Ideally, you should be looking to get a domain name that has one of those keywords in it. With that being said, you might want to gravitate towards vanity domain names that are easier to remember. For example, even though “cheap faux alligator ipad 3 skin cases” might get a ton of searches online, you should choose to go with a domain name like SkiniPadCases.com, rather than myfauxalligatoripad3skincases.com. I’d rather not get too specific with the value of a domain name for search engine optimization (SEO), because it really it is a WHOLE ‘nother conversation. If your strategy is to get your company’s name out there, then you may stick to getting a domain name with your company’s name in it. Clearly understanding your strategy before going out to search for domain names will help you realize what you’re looking for and how much you’re willing to spend.

MO: Where does your strong entrepreneurial spirit come from? What was the first business you ever started and what was the biggest lesson you came away with?

Joshua: I grew up very modest. I became the first of many things in my family: the first to graduate high school, the first to go to college, and eventually the first to become a billionaire. We didn’t have a computer at home until I was 12 years old, but that didn’t stop me from getting comfortable with a keyboard. My mom brought home a keyboard from a yard sale when I was probably in second grade. With it, I would type every word that people on TV said. I was typing above 40 words per minute in 3rd grade. As the youngest in my family, I have always been “mature” for my age. I always wanted to act older to fit in with my older siblings. I used to sell colored construction paper as a young boy. I guess you could say that this was one of my first “businesses” and I learned that door-to-door sales are a lot easier when you are a cute little boy than when you become an adult (more people are willing to open their door and listen). I have always enjoyed business and computers. However, I wanted to get into the medical field up until my freshman year in high school, so it wasn’t like it was obvious I’d become a businessman.

MO: BeenEvaluated is an online website evaluation tool that takes into account over 25 different factors when determining website and domain name worth. Can you share some of the factors you consider to be at the top of the list?

Joshua: Some of the factors we use to determine the value of your website include: domain age, website traffic, and the amount of pages of your website indexed with Google. Aged domains get a lot of love from Google and are usually more credible than a new site. This is where choosing a domain name for your business comes into play. I prefer to start a new website on a domain that is at least 2 years old. You can increase the amount of traffic your website receives several ways. The more traffic your website receives means that it is generally worth more than one that doesn’t get much traffic. It’s important to have an effective search engine marketing strategy, so our algorithm weighs SEO pretty importantly. For our manual, premium appraisals we take into account several additional factors like the website’s verified annual revenue and its verified website analytics. You can use this verified appraisal to market the sale of your website or for any other purposes.

MO: What kind of constructive feedback and ideas have you been getting from your users so far? Have they made any suggestions that you’re considering taking on board?

Joshua: We have had an awesome response from our users so far. We welcome and encourage feedback, recommendations, and any ideas that our users have to make BeenEvaluated a better product. We have received ideas to add additional services to our platform, changes to our algorithm for to accommodate sub-domains on Tumblr.com, building an API, releasing mobile apps, designing a toolbar or chrome app, and more. Some of these recommendations are already in the works. We’d like our users to be able to use our tool on any device.

MO: What are some strategies you use to fulfill your “1st page on Google” claim for your Foresold clients?

Joshua: We use a series of techniques to help our clients achieve amazing results online. Thanks to programs like Google AdWords, you can pay to become the #1 result for a search term on Google. I’m definitely a huge fan of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and other forms of paid advertising. As a company, we have had great success in both SEO and PPC across the major search engines by building healthy link profiles and focusing on websites that offer up tons of value for visitors. We incorporate social media pretty heavily with every project we work on, which helps SEO and getting the word out about a company. Finding a good domain name that has age or acquiring a website that has a few years of age can really help you get on the right foot with SEO. Getting press releases out about your business online can be a great way to start building some healthy inbound links. Follow that with a few info graphics regarding your industry that link back to your site. Then, you continue building relevant links at a pretty consistent rate perpetually. For PPC, it’s important to have a good account structure from the beginning. I see a lot of clients’ accounts that are targeting mobile phones, but their website isn’t mobile friendly. Also, AdWords gives you the ability to place a phone number in your ad, which can really help with local business. Once you gather your keywords, write your ad copy (write at least 3 ads for each ad group to test them out), optimize your landing page, and start your campaign, then you have to continue testing, optimizing your campaigns and getting rid of ads and keywords that aren’t performing, work on increasing your quality score, and of course lowering your cost-per-action (CPA). You can help lower the amount you spend for each action by lowering your cost-per-click (CPC) and increasing your ad-to-website relevance (which will boost your quality score). Another thing we do for clients is raise the engagement time on a landing page. We will often add calculators (like a weight loss estimator for a diet landing page), info-graphics, or anything else that will help keep the visitor on the page. Google appreciates when a visitor clicks your ad and doesn’t “bounce” right off.

MO: What’s the most exciting thing on the horizon for you personally or professionally?

Joshua: I’ll be graduating from Arizona State next year, so that is exciting. I came into ASU with only 9 credits, but I will be graduating with my B.S. in Computer Information Systems in just 2.5 years. I take 22 credits each semester and I am taking 13 credits this summer. As a student of the Barrett Honors College, I have to complete a thesis in order to graduate with honors, so I’m working on that this upcoming semester. Once I graduate, I am going to take a few months vacation to visit my family in Spain and enjoy Europe. Professionally, business has been growing really fast and I’m excited to be along for the amazing journey my business life has given me so far. I get the opportunity to meet and work with some of the best business minds in the world. By the end of next year, I hope to have our mobile apps and browser plugins released for BeenEvaluated and I expect Foresold to broker over $10 million in website sales and to continue to work with amazing clients.

MO: Why do you believe in quality over quantity and how is this philosophy demonstrated in your approach to business?

Joshua: I actually prefer a high quantity of quality. I learned early on that focus is very important in order to become successful in life. I experienced great success when I would focus on one project at a time. Now, it’s okay to work on a couple projects at one time, but I don’t leave a project until it’s fully up and running and I feel that it’s the right time to start something else. I’d rather have just one massively successful business than a bunch of businesses sucking away resources and not delivering value.