One of the potential pitfalls domain investors tend to have when they shift to development is a lack of active involvement in the vertical where their website operates. With my own websites, I have tried to get involved in the spaces my sites operate. I recently wrote about Ganjapreneur.com, and I want to share an example about how they are becoming involved in the cannabis space, beyond the website.

Andrew Rosener, the CEO of Media Options and the Founder & CEO of Ganjapreneur.com,  recently attended the 2015 Denver Cannabis Cup, an event billed as "the world's leading marijuana trade show." The event plays host to vendors who sell a wide variety of cannabis related products and services. There are also trade organizations, cannabis users, and a variety of marijuana legalization advocates in attendance. The purpose of Andrew's attendance was to generate awareness for his Ganjapreneur.com brand.

While at the event, Andrew was (more…) → Read More

Howard Lefkowitz is something of an icon in Las Vegas. As the former CEO of Vegas.com, Lefkowitz has tremendous experience building and managing a great brand, and he has a massive rolodex of contacts in Las Vegas and in the travel industry.

While attending  NamesCon, I had the opportunity to have dinner with Lefkowitz, and we chatted about his new company, One Degree World. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of this travel technology company is that it  is in the process of launching quite a few websites on new gTLD domain names, such as Vegas.Ninja  and Paris.Buzz. During the conference, it was also announce that One Degree World agreed to buy Vegas.Club for $100,000.

Following NamesCon, I was in touch  with Lefkowitz and asked him several questions about his new company. Lefkowitz answered my questions, which I have shared below.

My opinion is that the new gTLD domain names need (more…) → Read More

It's difficult for me to believe, but I have been blogging for almost 8 years. I started this blog in the Summer of 2007 (under the Elliot's Blog moniker), and I have published nearly 5,000 articles in that time. Based on traffic, revenue, and even longevity, I would consider this to be a fairly successful blog.

There are many people who would like to turn a blog into a business, and I thought I would share 5 things that I think helped this blog become successful. Of course, you are welcome to share your thoughts about this, as well as more general thoughts about what makes a blog successful.

When you're finished reading this you should check out  Heidi Cohen's blog  for some great advice on publishing a blog. Heidi was a professor of mine at NYU, and I think you will benefit from reading her blog. There are quite a few articles about blogging with some valuable tips.

5 key factors that I believe have made this blog successful: (more…) → Read More

On occasion, I will think of a neat plugin that can be used for one of my websites that uses Wordpress, and when I search for the idea, I usually find an existing plugin to use. Last week, I thought of a plugin idea, and I could not find one available, so I thought I would blog about the idea.

On websites like Reddit, they have what are called "shadow bans." In short, a shadowban is a type of ban that the banned user isn't aware of. The user can continue posting comments and links that appear to be public, but they are only visible to the user.

I thought it would be (more…) → Read More

I frequently write about large domain name sales and smart domain name acquisitions. One thing that I would like to write more about is success stories involving descriptive keyword domain names. I am sure there are people who are doing well with business development on keyword domain names, and I would be happy to share your story.

I'll give you an example. Sol Orwell shared insight about his success with Examine.com, and I thought the discussion that followed on Hacker News were interesting.

Information that I think would be beneficial include some of the following:

• Revenue and traffic numbers


• Marketing / advertising spend and efforts


• Capital raising and growth funding


• Social aspect


• Personal stories about starting building the business


• Complications and how you overcame them

Since I started running my own Internet company in 1995, almost everything I do is virtual. I work from home, don't go to meetings, don't go trade shows, and hardly ever make phone calls. I have a paperless office, and my mailing address is a P.O. Box service that scans in my all letters so I can read them online. My voice mail box even tells people to email me instead of leaving a message (if they do leave a message, it is automatically converted to an mp3 file and emailed to me). So, it is kind of crazy that in 2002 I ended up buying a retail flower shop even though I had never owned or worked in any sort of store before and knew nothing about flowers. On top of that, I bought it online without ever seeing the store in person (it was 3000 miles from where I lived). Oh, and before I even closed on the buying the first flower store, I bought a 2nd one.

Here's what happened. For several years, I was using my GetFlowers.com domain name to sell flowers by getting a commission from another online florist for every customer I sent to → Read More