Appraiso Integrated Into Protrada

One of the benefits of using Protrada is the ability to create websites. Although I have not created a website with Protrada, there are many people who have.

In a press release this morning, Protrada announced that  Morgan Linton’s Appraiso has been integrated into its platform. Appraiso is a website created by Linton and his fiancé Daina Burnes to help people appraise their revenue generating websites. With Protrada’s website building offering, it’s obviously a good fit, as it will allow people to track the progression of their websites’ worth.

This isn’t the first time that Morgan has worked with Protrada’s Troy Rushton. In April, when Troy spoke at the National Achievers Conference in San Jose, Morgan was instrumental in creating the presentation.

Press release is below:

In early 2012 an innovative startup in Los Angeles released Appraiso, the first tool to put serious mathematical modeling behind website appraisals. The founders saw a gap in the market and spent a year crunching numbers and building a tool to accurately estimate the price of a developed website. “We saw the opportunity to innovate in one of the fastest growing spaces on the Internet and we went for it,” says Morgan Linton, one of Appraiso’s three founders. Before marketplaces like Flippa, website sales happened underground, scattered across hundreds of forums across the net. With over 31 million dollars in website sales in 2011 alone, Flippa has shown that the market for developed websites is growing, and fast.

Last year another innovative company, Protrada, created an all-in-one platform for buying, selling, and developing domain name names. In early 2012 they refined their platform creating a website builder tool that took the platform to the next level making it easy for anyone to build content-rich interactive websites. The tool was an instant success with hundreds of thousands of domain names running through Protrada and thousands more coming onboard each day. “We created a platform that allows anyone to build one, two, or ten websites all with a few clicks. Partnering with content providers and allowing for the addition of interactive features without writing a single line of code has greatly contributed to the initial success we have seen,” says Troy Rushton, Protrada’s CEO.

Today Appraiso and Protrada have announced a new partnership making the Appraiso Website Appraisal system available directly from the Protrada platform. “It was an obvious fit for us, thousands of people are building websites with Protrada, now they can find out how much those sites are worth,” say Linton. “This gives Protrada users a way to better understand how the digital real estate they are developing can grow in value over time.”

Protrada users can immediately begin using Appraiso from within the platform to evaluate their current sites as well as track website value on a regular basis. Then, when they are ready to sell, Protrada can seamlessly allow users to list these sites on some of the top names and website marketplaces on the planet. “Having a valuation benchmark will reduce uncertainty and stimulate transactions, Appraiso is well positioned to become the standard. We are already seeing an increase in web development services as investors seek to unlock the value of their digital assets,” say Rushton about the early results of the integration.

In a world where digital real estate is growing faster than physical real estate both Appraiso and Protrada are positioning themselves to play a critical role in the development and sales of digital assets. “Let’s face it, physical real estate used to be one of the best investments you could make, but those days are over. With the incredible growth of smartphones and rapid adoption of Internet users across the globe, digital real estate is a large and growing market, and we’re looking forward to playing a valuable role in this next phase.” says Linton, “The best part is we are still seeing only the tip of the iceberg, and unlike physical real estate, with digital assets the sky really is the limit!”

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31 Things I’ve Learned In 31 Years

Well today is my 31st Birthday and I couldn’t be more excited about where my life is at this very moment. I am months away from marrying the love of my life in Malibu, our software company appraiso had a launch month that far exceeded our expectations, and my business is on track to triple year-over-year, crazy! It is times like these that I get pretty darn reflective, I feel so lucky, but at the same time, it’s taken a lot of hard work and failure to get where I am today.

So I thought for this Birthday, rather than writing one of my usual long reflective posts I’d change it up a bit. One thing that I realize each year is how much I learned that year, and how some of the things I thought I knew, I really didn’t know at all. I guess that’s just part of getting older, and I’m all about learning, taking everything in, and learning from every experience possible.

One thing I learned a long time ago that’s stuck with me is that you learn the most from your failures, not your successes. This couldn’t be more true, and that’s why I am excited to share with you 31 things I’ve learned in 31 years. Oh, and since a majority of my readers are Domainers, there will be a domain-specific tone to this, I’ll save the really mushy stuff for my friends and family!

  1. Content is king, always has been, always will be.
  2. Build for users, not for search engines.
  3. You can do anything you set your mind to, but you might not get it right on the first try.
  4. Never do business with people you don’t like doing business with.
  5. Don’t be the first person to throw out a number in a domains negotiation.
  6. Visit every single city in every single country you possibly can, the world is an amazing place.
  7. We are all more similar than we are different.
  8. The key to running a successful blog is writing at least one post every single day.
  9. The key to running a successful business is staying strategic and hiring people to do the tactical.
  10. Finding good people is hard, very very hard.
  11. Outsourcing can work, but not if you’re managing it yourself.
  12. .COM is king, always has been, always will be.
  13. That being said you can build a great business on any TLD.
  14. If you’re overloaded it probably means you need to hire another person, not get less sleep.
  15. Sleep is important.
  16. Never sign a contract you haven’t read.
  17. Listen to your customers.
  18. Listen to yourself.
  19. Don’t work too hard, life is all about balance.
  20. Running up and down a spiral staircase can hurt your knees.
  21. Once your business really takes off, taxes become less fun.
  22. The DMV is never fun.
  23. Get a sports car and enjoy it, it’s worth it.
  24. Try to get away from it all at least once a week, once a day is even better!
  25. Live by the Ocean.
  26. Jogging is one of the best ways to explore a new city.
  27. Know who your real friends are.
  28. Don’t be afraid to take big risks and make big mistakes.
  29. Spend more time with friend and family than anything else.
  30. There is never a reason to be proud that you’re working late, be proud that you got home early.
  31. Find love, it gives true meaning to life.

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My Very First Press Release – My Life At 16

When I was in High School my life was anything but ordinary! Along with all the normal things that High School students did, I was also escaping to San Francisco three times a week working for an innovative software company called Xaos Tools. I had been running a web design company since I was twelve and had the chance to help companies like Coldwell Banker get some of their first websites off the ground. I knew HTML like the back of my hand and had master Photoshop through hundreds of hours of experimentation and training. Yes – I was a huge geek, and I still am!

I had the chance to work directly with the Creative Director at Xaos Tools to help build a very cool new piece of photo editing software. Unfortunately it never took-off but I had quite an adventure working with a new hot startup in San Francisco and quickly became a centerpiece for them at conferences. Xaos Tools wrote a press release about me and my upcoming presentation at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco. I thought this press release had been lost forever until it resurfaced over the weekend. I believe there was a picture that went with it too but I can’t seem to find it. I thought this would be fun to share with all of you, a look back at where the adventure really began!

Whiz Kid to Wow Crowds at Macworld

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ — Xaos Tools today announced that 16-year-old Berkeley whiz kid Morgan Linton will be the featured presenter in its booth at the Macworld Exposition here next week. Linton, whose booth antics made him a star attraction at the Seybold San Francisco show last September, will demonstrate FlashBox(TM), Xaos Tools’ new digital imaging product for the consumer market, as well as Total Xaos, the company’s list of award-winning Photoshop(R) plug-ins, in Booth #4056 in Moscone Center’s North Hall.

“FlashBox is a phenomenal product that will shock and amaze the Macworld community,” said Linton. “I’m really stoked about being able to present it.”

Under the guidance of Xaos Tools senior creative director Bill Niffenegger, Linton has spent the past six months contributing his computer graphics and design talents to the look and feel FlashBox. “Morgan is a talented graphic designer who can push pixels around blindfolded,” says Bill Niffenegger. “But more importantly, he combines his expertise with a zest and enthusiasm that you just don’t find very often. We’re very happy to have him presenting FlashBox, because his attitude matches the fun and creative feel of the product itself.”

Linton has been working as a professional Web page designer and graphic artist since he was 12. An expert with such programs as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe After Effects, Morgan has contributed his talents to such organizations as the Berkeley Macintosh User’s Group (designing covers for the group’s famous newsletter at age 14), and Netrepreneur, a Web site that showcases high-end real estate.

Xaos Tools (pronounced “ka-os”) was founded in 1990 to bring industry-leading professional digital effects to Windows, Macintosh, and Silicon Graphics and Sun workstation users at affordable prices. Based on special effects technology developed for XAOS, Inc., one of the world’s most respected computer animation facilities, Xaos Tools’ products are used by most of the world’s leading broadcast and print designers, animators, and digital artists. The company’s mission is to deliver advanced digital imaging effects to the widest possible audience. Xaos Tools is headquartered in San Francisco, California and is privately held.

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Flippa Sold $558,582 Web Sites Last Week

With the economy coming apart at the seams, Flippa.com, the #1 online marketplace for web sites is firing on all cylinders and growing phenomenally . Last week the company made over $558,582 of sales bringing the overall sales to just under $64 million.

The $558,582 in sales came from a total of 6,734 bids and company still boasts a sales rate of 58% over the last three months which is pretty darn impressive if you ask me. Some of the top sales this month include:

TwitrBackgrounds.com – $110,000

Ultimate-Tattoo-Bible.com – $80,000

iAutoBlog.com – $55,000

MassCops.com – $30,000
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Taking A Look Under The Hood At Afternic (Video)

As some of you who have been reading my blog for a long time now know, I’ve been using Afternic since just about my first day in the Domaining world. My first interaction with the company took place through a blog post I wrote back in 2007. They were some of my first readers and
Read the entire article at Morgan Linton.com

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Paul Goldstone & Morgan Linton Partner to Provide Free Educational Videos at iGoldRush.com

Paul Goldstone and Morgan Linton have teamed up to make a monthly series of free educational videos available exclusively at Goldstones’s iGoldRush.com site. Morgan will produce the videos about turning domainnames names into brands to increase profitability, with the first video going up today.

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ClientLunchBox.com, Lean Startup Sells on Flippa for $3,050

So I’m not sure if I would classify this as a great sale or really anything the seller should celebrate about. However, for the right buyer this could be a pretty nice deal. This is also a great example of the wide range of sites that sell on the Flippa marketplace. What I find interesting Read more Morgan Linton.com

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Backlinks 101

Backlinks have always been one of the hottest topic in the SEO world. They are a critical tool that search engines use to determine the authority of a site, and they can also get you banned from search engines forever. I think that Backlinks are also one of the most confused topics out there and many people fail to grasp the basics which are actually the most important.

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