I’ve been writing this blog for over seven years, and nearly 5,000 articles have been published in that time. Many of the articles would be considered “news” rather than opinion, but there is a large percentage of articles that would be considered personal opinion or advice. These articles are generally based on learnings from my own business and observations that I’ve noted.
During this time period, my business has evolved quite a bit. Some of the areas that I would note an evolution include the following:
- Development of small business on domain names (DogWalker.com, Lowell.com, DogPark.com)
- “Mini site” testing
- Sales emails and sales pitches
- Types of domain names I am buying
- Acquisition and sales strategy
My business is constantly changing and evolving, and I expect this to continue. Every day I learn something new, and I do my best to apply my learnings to my business strategy. Most of the changes happen gradually, but my business continues to grow and evolve.
It would not make sense for me to go through each of my articles to share updates, especially when new articles are written discussing what I am doing. Some of the things I am doing, such as buying and selling domain names, will continue to remain private. Other aspects of my business are more open and I am happy to share.
Ultimately, the purpose of this article is to remind you that some of the older articles may not longer be accurate and may no longer reflect my current strategy. I do my best to be as open as I can without harming my business, and hopefully you understand that things change. Today I only own 4 new gTLD domain names.
It’s possible I will visit Uniregistry one day and spend $x,xxx on hand registered new gTLD domain names. I have no idea if that will happen, but I could roll the dice and decide to take a gamble. Does that invalidate everything I said previously about investing in the new domain names? No. Like everyone else’s business, mine evolves. I will continue to do my best to share what I am doing and to share my learnings with you!
Does your blog make enough money to make it worthwhile financially?
I know you probably have other reasons for writing your blog, like to increase your visibility in the domain industry, promote your domains and other businesses, and just to generally express your opinions. I was just curious if doing as many postings as you do gets enough traffic to compensate you for the time involved. I only make around 1 blog posting a month to my blog (impulsecorp.com), and it only gets 500-1000 visitors a month. I am not sure if the low traffic is because I make so few postings, or because it is just the way Google has ranked me.
Eric, I appreciate the question was posed to Elliot but I’m sure I speak for most people in the domaining community when I say that your profile, history and experience are such that if you were to post more often you would see no shortage of traffic to your blog which would, even with the most basic of SEO assumptions and a few other factors thrown in, bring better rankings and ultimately revenue. If, of course, that is indeed what you want. Perhaps you don’t?
That said, I’d much rather wait anxiously for your intermittent insights than see some of the absolutely worthless garbage that the Domaining.com feed is overpopulated with sometimes, churned out by bloggers who must feel the need to maintain a certain level of exposure.
And the last part was in no way directed at Elliot…just to clarify.
I’d rather not comment on revenue, but all advertisements are paid in advance and aren’t based on any traffic metrics or goals – at least on my side. For instance whether I post 5 articles a week or 30, my income from the blog so consistent. I also am generally sold out in terms of advertising space.
When I started m blog, I think exposure was more valuable than advertising revenu, but that has evolved.
If it wasn’t for the advertising revenue, I wouldn’t spend my time blogging though.
As far I know, some domain bloggers who have been established for a long time, known to make low xx,xxx to high xx,xxx or more some time. I cant comment on elliot’s revenue, but thats the norm for well established bloggers.
I wish everyone just post how much they get from the advertisers. There is nothing to hide, as a mater of fact, it should help us get more $$$$$ from the advertisers.
As for me, the minimum is from each advertisers is $1500 per week.
Elliot,
Just curious over the last year approximately what percentage of your domain sales have been via outbound marketing vs. inbound inquiries vs. auction platform sales such as Namejet, Snapnames, DNX, Godaddy. Today Domain Holdings reported $10 million in sales for Q2 as a result of a very intensive outbound marketing campaign. No doubt they are dealing with very high end domains and it appears even with those that their conversion rate per contact is under 1%. Certainly there are domain investors who are successful with outbound marketing but oftentimes it seems outbound marketing is a waste of time.
No idea… not something I regularly track.
the reality of domain investing is that other than a few financially stable big boys everyone is grasping tight and hoping.
we all want to make money and you can make as much money from something as stupid as google (thinking of like 10 years ago)as you can from sex dot com.
here’s the thing, see what you want and go for it, forgive the masses who know it all and perhaps just perhaps prosper
I was sure that you would write this one day in favour of Gtlds. You were first trying to resist the change and now after some months you have changed that stance, now you see an opportunity. I appreciate you for that as every business minded person should be like that.
I haven’t written in favor of them (as investments) and still only own four without plans to buy any more. That was just an example.
To me, buying more would be a gamble, as I discussed here: https://www.domaininvesting.com/gambling-gtlds/