I bought ActingCoach.com several months ago hoping for a quick flip. I posted it for sale on forums, and I also received a few inquiries from end users (from the parking page), including one nice (profitable) offer. I passed on that offer hoping to receive more from another end user company, and when a better offer didn’t materialize, I decided to get back in touch with that acting coach to see if he was still interested.
As it sometimes goes, the acting coach who made the offer had opted to buy another name in the interim, and he wasn’t able to buy ActingCoach.com when I came back to offer it to him. Se la vie. In light of this, I decided I would develop it, although I wasn’t willing to spend the same amount of time (or money) it took to build my other directories.
In lieu of a full development project, I opted to work with WhyPark and the company’s new DomainApps offerings. I used the directory option along with videos, Twitter feed, and article feed, and I incorporated it all with a customized template in similar fashion to DogWalker.com. You can either pay $200 for them to build a custom theme, or you can probably pay a bit less at a place like eLance and select a designer to build one for you (give the designer one of their templates to use the code for the WhyPark modules).
Because I had WhyPark customize the design for this project, the site was put together by Craig Rowe and his WhyPark development team, using the interface and tools they have for everyone to use. If you (or your designer) has any trouble setting it up, I would think Craig and his support team can help… it’s one of the nice things I’ve found about working with the company.
I also worked with Acroplex, LLC (better known by many as Acro) to create the site’s logo, which gives it more character. For a relatively small investment, a logo like this can make a world of difference. I also worked with a copywriter found on eLance to add custom articles, and the plan is to continue adding articles. It’s an inexpensive way to drive traffic to the website.
To market the new site, I intend to reach out to the same acting coaches and companies that opted to not buy the domain name. I will see if they’d like to be listed on the site for a small monthly fee. I know the market is smaller than DogWalker.com, but I paid less for the domain name than DogWalker.com. I also know the market is competitive, and acting classes are expensive.
One of the best things about this and working with WhyPark is that I can use this template on future directory development projects, which was what I first said when I learned about the new Apps. Having a good website is important, but being able to scale my business is more important. Additionally, unlike my WordPress-based websites, I am not responsible for data management, security updates, or plugin updates with my WhyPark site, which relieves me of a big burden.
WhyPark takes $1.00/month for every paying directory client. I charge $5/month so that’s an 80/20 revenue share, but I have the ability to charge whatever I want. Depending on sign ups, cancelation rate, and the competition, I will probably play around with the listing cost as the site gets more traffic.
For those who are interested and want to track the success of this site, here are its current SEO rankings (I’ve had a coming soon page up for a little over a month):
Acting Coach: #24 Google #10 Bing
Acting Coaches: #93 Google #113 Bing
I would not endeavor on a project like this if I owned a name like GreatActingCoach.com, ActingCoaching.com, or some other non-exact match domain name that would be difficult to rank in search engines. I chose ActingCoach.com because this is a profession that advertises online (competitively) and people are searching for acting coaches every day.
Disclaimer:
WhyPark is an advertiser on the RSS feed of my blog. The company did NOT ask me or pay me to post this article. I am NOT making any additional revenue if you or anyone signs up as a result of this program or builds websites using WhyPark. I am posting this disclaimer because it seems there are always going to be people who think there is nefarious intent with positive blog posts.
As always, thanks for sharing your experiences. I’m certain that one of those contacts that passed up purchasing the domain will make an offer once they see the directory populating.
Very useful information Elliot.
I hadn’t used WhyPark for a year or so until Wednesday when they announced their movie domain app. I set up 10 movie / Hollywood generics, then added a couple of hotel directories for NYC yesterday, but I didn’t realize you could customize so much more now.
Also I’m keen to investigate the flash games app.
hi Elliot, the finished product looks very effective, especially for this type of target audience. I would keep the logo a *little* bigger though 😀
I also forgot to mention the “Get Acting Tips” is a banner I created (yes, ugly) with an affiliate link using ClickBank. That wasn’t a problem to do.
Looks great Elliot. You should use proper anchor text for a large boost in rankings. Also, I just noticed plural of your dog walking site just expired 2 days ago, may want to backorder that.
Not to bring ths down but for $200 you could have saved an done better on a nice free WP theme template and put up the same type of info. i just dont see $200 worth of work. 🙁
@ Ricky
I like the design, but you can either do as you suggest or manage it better 🙂
Elliot,
You know I’ve followed your projects. Everyone of them, large or small, you done it professionally and with a sense of seriousness. (Like running a real business). As a newbie, I appreciate your blog very much. This one I can actually learn and implement one myself easily since I have a Whypark account.
I feel like I want to give back. But I am still a newbie, so don’t have any knowledge to transfer. Though, I came across this site recently with a donate badge on the right panel, http://winscp.net/eng/donate.php.
Perhaps, you can implement one to supplement your advertising income.
Just a thought from a newbie. 🙂
@ Poor Uncle
Thanks for following – and hopefully this is helpful to you 🙂
I do well enough with advertising and my various projects that a donate button isn’t necessary, but I appreciate your idea.
Someone emailed me yesterday thanking me because some help I gave led to a large sale and he wanted to send me something. I told him to take his wife for a nice dinner in lieu of doing that. There are also a number of great non-profits that are struggling these days and they would appreciate any contribution.
Have a nice (and safe) holiday weekend.
@ Mark
I will look into the anchor text.. any specific advice for one of the pages?
Also, I am pretty sure the guy is going to renew his name. I was told he turned down close to $30k for it and wanted more.
Good work! I wish I had the skill to build better pages at Why Park. I have 680 domains there now. I use the free plan. Will need to upgrade to the better plan to activate the RSS feeds.
Once I find access to more funds, I will build better pages. Hope the Acting Coach sites works out.
How’s bumperprotectors.com coming along? Is the website performing good?
I plan to donate a few domains to various companies. One is the exact name of the company, whereas they have to use a hyphen and a state after their name.
I acquired domainnamedonations.com to discuss various domain name donations in the industry, as well as domainnamelegality.com to share videos and other resources on various legal issues.
@Poor Uncle
Funny that you mentioned donations. I helped students on one of my blogs for years. With that effort put forth, I received one donation for $2. I give out reliable information, but that never attracts anything. I spent hundreds of hours writing and answering questions.
I don’t really care for donations, however, it takes a miracle to receive a donation. I find that If I’m going to share any information, I’ll write it on my sites instead of making anyone else successful of lieu of my time and effort.
Nice suggestion for the people that make a fortune in the industry.
Elliot,
Do they provide the payment gateway or how does that work?
Thanks!
@ Adi
I am pretty sure it’s a Paypal subscription.
While I like seeing what you’ve done with your sites, I don’t feel it’s an accurate representation of the WhyPark service, as you have custom pages, modifications and additions that us regular whypark users who aren’t chummy with Craig can’t do.
@ Oliver
Craig said that everything that was done can be done by all users. As I mentioned, if you need any help, Craig and his team will be able to assist (after the Labor Day holiday weekend in the US). The custom articles were provided by me and they’re easy to add.
As I mentioned, WhyPark can create a layout for you for around $200 – or you can work with a designer to do it for less (I would assume). You can also use their free layouts. I wanted to work with Craig’s team since they know the modules better than anyone.
It took a couple of months to design it for me, but I can now do this with other sites.
@Elliot
Good man! America still have hopes because of young guys like you. Don’t give away all your secrets. People may not be as generous when you come knocking. 🙂
@Jason
Sorry Man, that’s not very nice. Don’t be jealous of those who are successful. Learn from them, become them, and thank them. Americans are generous people. We do give more than anybody in this world – money, resource and blood.
@Oliver
I mentioned in comment #3 that I set up some movie sites the other day. I took the simple route and only added the domains, added the movie domain app, and changed the categories – the WhyPark system struggled with Variety speak 🙂
http://whammos.com
is an example – scroll down to see all of the movie stuff.
Looks GREAT.
fyi- There was a success story just published about The InstantEncore website which provides tools to help classical music
lovers, artists, composers, educators and concert presenters
connect, and enhance and extend the concert experience. Similar idea. http://springwise.com/weekly/2010-09-01.htm#instantencore
@Poor Uncle,
I appreciate the help that Elliot offered me at the beginning. However, I managed to learn my own strategies to do well. I was told not to give advice and I should read more.
You can read my site, which shares my person experiences. I provide good tips and warn domainers what not to do. I made mistakes that cost me deals, but managed to learn from them.
As times I was told my domain names were bad, but I went out and sold those exact names to end-users. I learned how to purchase better domains. I sold many domains that I purchased before I improved my skills, suggesting that I knew what domains to buy during the beginning – jobs, medical, tourist places, etc…
Too many people spend time trying to always praise the elite, that they don’t do enough to better their skills. I can commend people on their success, but I have to put work into building my success.
I have worked way too hard for little results. I built my collection into 680 domains. I have made some good sales. Everyday, I read all the blogs featured on domaining, including this blog.
I also read articles that are outside of domain blogs. Check out the Oasis.co.uk legal dispute. I also provide some good resources for new domainers. I don’t have the same success as Elliot. I know that it takes time to establish that success.
Elliot receives 80,000 unique visitors a month. I receive 150. There’s no comparison. He probably makes great money, and I make very little. That’s why I mentioned that donations would be better spent on people that lack the financial means than those that make good money.
My experiences can help people, but I rarely reach an audience. In addition, my most popular article discussed taking down privacy, which was a mistake because another entity attacked my e-mail account and sent out viruses to everyone in my contact list. That’s not the type of traffic I’m looking to generate.
I communicate with many elite domain investors, have made sales, and have vastly improved my domain portfolio. I did make a major mistake on a sale last night that cost me a nice sum. I quickly learned from that mistake. That deal is gone. It could have really helped me out.
Learning is the hardest part of domain investing. When I first visited this blog, I received a lot of help. As time pressed on, I was shunned out and many times had to endure criticism for going off topic when most visitors do it often. I have offered good comments, and half of time I disagreed with Elliot and other domain visitors.
I respect successful people. However, there’s a time when you have to break away from the beginner web and find success yourself. I took the initiative to do that, and it has helped me. While my blogs are nonexistent, I’m sure that some new domainers will find them helpful. Maybe not now, but in the near future.
I only challenge advice and information because I have a cognitive perception. It may seem like I’m trying to steal the attention from others, but that’s not the case. I figured out the buying and selling side, but lacking the skills to build websites and generate traffic.
Americans are good people. However, there are foreigners that are also generous too. The tsunami proved that the world banded together to help out in a time of need. Originally, the US only offered $15 million, when another race car driver pledged that exact amount. The amount of money shouldn’t matter, but the media tends to entertain the public with controversy.
I have learned from the best. I pick and choose the advice. If you can buy a domain at $3.99 and sell it for over $400 six months later, I don’t consider that a failure. I can buy .com domains and sell them at 25 times purchase price. I think that’s the smart way to work your way into 5-6 figure deals.
I tried to convey this to newcomers. Don’t always focus on trying to make $1000 when you can make many sales at $200. One day you will emerge as an elite domain investor.
While I can respect the best, there comes a time when you have to move away from always praising the best to become successful yourself. Elliot is doing really well, but I’m sure that he contemplated whether it was worth having a blog because it took up to much time, and may have resulted in little financial gain.
There’s a life away from the domain industry. I think that domains can help people reach success. One things is for certain; I believe Elliot that great names sell without effort. I have to put in a lot of effort to sell some names, while some manage to sell with ease.
@Elliot,
Your site looks cool. I don’t feel that I can build a website like that at Why Park unless I upgrade my account to the $25 plan, and then pay Why park to develop the site.
I have to wait. All my domains are uploaded into the Why Park system. I use the apps. I write articles on them. You seem to have more creative control with adding a logo, extra links and etc..
Are you spending any money to advertise the site? Or do you depend on the search engines and your blog to push traffic to your site? What others domains have you developed at Why Park? Tropical Birds? Did you manage to generate heavy traffic to the domains with RSS? Thanks.
Do you know what’s the most successful domain at Why Park Are there any that are ranked under 5,000 on Alexa, or ones that produce as many unique visitors as this blog? I feel that accounts that are without the RSS feed don’t have a real chance at doing well.
I have a few domains that generate 200-250 visitors per month, but that is nothing compared to some parked pages at Sedo, which can easily produce over 10,000 unique visitors with no real content.
Why Park is a really cool platform. I think that the RSS feed is very important. You have to upgrade your account to add that feature.
Can you add metadata keywords to acting coach? I noticed that your acting site doesn’t have them, but your blog does. All my sites hosted under Why Park don’t have metadata keywords.
However, they have a meta description, which happens to show up in the search engines.
I meant the anchor text from this blog post, link one of the mentions of “acting coach” instead of just the domain.
Nice work Elliot. It’s always a good idea to try different solutions for different names and when time is at a premium, a package like this makes a lot of sense.
Somebody mentioned using WordPress instead and that’s the route I take personally, but when you have multiple sites, that can add up to a lot of work at update time, unless you’re using the new functions that allows you to administer all sites from one interface, which I don’t!
Good luck.
Change the Favico … http://HappyMatters.com is a WhyPark site 🙂
I use Favico.cc to create my ico’s
oops – make that Favicon.cc 🙂
@ Evie
Nice suggestion.
I was trying to signup for WhyParked.com account, but was unable. The support did not provide any information why my account submission was rejected. I own about 1800 domains and many were sold for more than $1000 USD. Anybody knows what is going on with this service? Thsi si the email I got from support:
Hello,
The account review department looks at many different factors during the reviewal process. Unfortunately, they did not deem your account to be a good fit for us at this time.
Best,
@Elliot,
How is ActingCoach.com working for you? I decided to use the directory on a few domains in the cover letter arena, a film domain, and a taxi schools domain.
Since I’m using the free membership option, I don’t have access to the custom template you’re using on your page. I find the map “get listed” on the middle section would make my sites appear more professional.
Is the $200 a one-time fee? Are you earning enough in ad revenue to make it worthwhile? How much do you spend on the logo? Thanks.