I've taken two writing courses at the Tarpon Springs campus of St. Petersburg College. My instructor for both classes was Ned Johnson (Edward B. Johnson). Last October, he published a novel titled "Dropping Out: The Trespasser Killer." I bought a copy in November, but it wasn't until January that I began reading it. (It's a great read, BTW, and maybe I'll do a review somewhere else.)
A Better Computer, Inc, has been selling domains (www.ABCInc-Domains.com) for almost a decade. I do this mostly as a courtesy, and because it's fun.
I also set up one email forwarder when I set up the domain. This article talks about how it easy it was to do both, and how it benefits him.
I needed less than 10 minutes to set up and configure the forwarders; then I had a 45 minute wait for the new domain name to replicate through the Internet.
Done, tested, and available for public consumption in less than an hour!
From my volunteer work at SCORE, I've learned that entrepreneurs should have a 30-second "elevator pitch." This new domain allows Mr. Johnson to focus on discussing his work without getting into the weeds of explaining how to find it. "Go to my website Ned Johnson dot PW to buy a copy."
He also has a professional email address that's associated with his new domain (Ned at NedJohnson dot PW). He can use it for publicly facing announcements; it separates his professional work from his personal life. It's an alias account, and email using that address will be forwarded to his personal email account. That means there is no additional work involved for him to use this new address.
So far I've spent 10 minutes in setting this up, and an hour or so verifying that it works. This blog took longer to write! My out-of-pocket cost was the first year's registration. This is my gift to him. I did it for several reasons:
[1] Mostly, because I could - I have the knowledge and resources, and it was fun
[2] I've enjoyed reading the book
[3] I appreciate his classes I've attended
[4] I enjoy helping people! From a selfish perspective, I believed the benefits to him would be greater than the effort I had to put in
He decides if (and how) this works for him. It's literally a free trial.
If he doesn't want it, he can stop using it and it will simply "go away" next January.
If he does want to continue, then his cost will be under $15/year beginning in 2017.
There is a lot of potential. He could build a website with this domain name to highlight his Mark Twain performances. He could have individual pages for each of the books he's already published and put a link to lulu where visitors could purchase copy. That would be a 1-3 day project and incur monthly hosting fees. What he has is immediately useful to him without him doing anything else!
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[update] 24 March 2016
We just did the same thing for www.nedtwain.com - We registered the domain and then pointed it to Mr. Johnson's "Author Spotlight" page at lulu.com ~ it lists all the titles he's published through lulu. Mr Johnson occasionally portrays Mark Twain, complete with Twain's wit and white suit.
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