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Gators.com: Florida Gators Dating Website on The Market

No matter what the sport is, but especially with respect to college football, it seems that Florida Gators are some of the most passionate NCAA fans around. Gators fans tailgate before games, spend tons of money on gear and event tickets, and they congregate in bars around the world to watch their teams play.

Gators.com was developed by its owner into a dating website for University of Florida students, graduates, professors, employees, prospective students, and people who love UF for other reasons. The footer says the website is powered by a company called Dating Factory USA.

According to Toby Clements’  daily domain sales newsletter, the  owner has put the domain name and website up for sale exclusively with Clements.  I inquired about the website, and according to Toby (per the owner), the website is currently seeing “5,500 Uniques a month and growing.” The asking price is $100,000.

Before making any type of acquisition, I would be curious to know how many members the website has, how active the membership is, and how long members spend on the site on average. I would imagine that information could be provided to interested parties by Clements.

My primary concern is regarding trademarks and monetization. I am not an attorney, so I can’t give guidance with respect to that. I don’t know the owner and wasn’t asked or compensated to post this.

If you are interested in discussing the domain name, Toby can be reached at Toby@Toby.com.

BlackFriday.com App #1 Free Lifestyle App

BlackFriday.com is arguably the most successful website created and managed by domain investor Kevin Ham’s Reinvent, Inc. The website offers information about “Black Friday” deals as well as coupons and special offers for over 1,000 retail stores.

As the weather gets colder and the holiday season approaches, the folks at BlackFriday.com ramp things up in anticipation of “Black Friday,” the famous shopping day that occurs on the Friday after Thanksgiving. From what I understand, it’s highly  competitive  to get top search engine rankings for Black Friday and shopping related keywords, and driving traffic is critical, especially for a seasonal website.

It looks like things have been going well for Reinvent, and the BlackFriday.com iPhone app is currently rated #1 in the chart for Top Free iPhone Lifestyle Apps, and in the top 20 in free apps throughout the entire apps store on iTunes. Although they aren’t making money from downloads, I assume they are earning revenue when people make purchases based off of suggestions from the app.

In addition to its success in the iTunes store, it appears that BlackFriday.com is also doing well in Google. The website currently ranks #1 for the exact match “Black Friday” search term.

I reached out to Kevin Ham for comment on his team’s successes, and as usual, he was modest about his company’s accomplishments so far. “We are humbled and pleased with how things are going,” Kevin told me.

Congrats to the team at Reinvent on this success. It’s another example of an exact match domain name becoming a brand with solid search rankings.

Domain Investor Makes List of Top 100 Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter

According to EvanCarmichael.com, domain investor Sharon Hayes is one of the top 100 entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. If you don’t know Sharon (I believe I met her briefly at DomainFest), she is a Co-Founder and CEO at Domainate, a privately held domain investment company. Her Twitter handle is @sharonhayes.

For November, Sharon is currently ranked #86 on the list,  which is updated  monthly by Evan Carmichael. Martha Stewart is the #1 entrepreneur to follow on the list. Other well known entrepreneurs on the list include Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg, and business mogul Ivanka Trump.

Sharon has been involved in the domain industry since the late 1990’s, and according to her corporate profile, she “has personally sold over 12,000 domain names excluding bulk sales.” She co-founded Domainate with Steve Jones, and the duo also founded a two day intensive introduction to domain investing called Domain Bootcamp.

Congratulations to Sharon!

Thanks to Donna Mahony for sharing the link with me.

Brian Gilbert is the New “Domain Queen”

The other day when I posted a few names for sale, Donna Mahony offered her DomainQueen.com up for sale, with all proceeds being donated by the winning bidder to Ronald McDonald House.

The winning bidder of the 10 year old domain name is Brian Gilbert, who I recently wrote about because of the adventure he and his wife Charlotte are undertaking.

Although Charlie is also a domain investor (and developer), I am not sure if Brian plans to keep the domain name for himself or if Charlie will be the new Domain Queen. Whatever the case is, it was very generous of Donna Mahony and Brian Gilbert to help the Ronald McDonald House.

Now I need to know which trailer park to send Brian’s crown.

Domain Name Groups on LinkedIn

As social networking goes, I am not all that active on LinkedIn, although I check in every once in a while. It appears that there are many popular domain name related groups on LinkedIn, and some of them boast hundreds of members.

Discussions in domain name groups range from issues related to domain names, domain name sales, gTLD expansion, domain name management, auctions, and pretty much everything else in between. Some of the groups are private and need special approval to become a member, and others are fairly open.

When you sign up for a LinkedIn group, you will most likely receive emails linking to recent discussions and threads from each group. You’ll most likely want to edit your privacy functionality to limit the number of emails you receive on a daily basis. I would personally probably block those emails, but that’s me because I get so many emails in the morning (To block Group Emails, go to Email Preferences —->  Set the frequency of group digest emails)

Anyway, here are ten of the most active domain name related LinkedIn groups (Keep in mind some of these are specifically targeted groups, ie European domain investors only):

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