Last week, an hour-long, wide ranging interview I did was posted on DomainSherpa.com. This interview touched on quite a few topics, ranging from domain acquisitions and sales to my development projects. I think it’s a bit on the long side, but based on the feedback I received, some people have been able to learn from it.
As we concluded the interview, Mike Cyger asked me if I had time to discuss geodomain acquisitions, and I obliged. You can find my interview about geodomain names and development on Domain Sherpa this morning.
I’ve bought and sold quite a few geodomain names in the last few years (Burbank.com, Lowell.com, Newburyport.com, Salinas.com, Secaucus.com, Weymouth.com, Rustenberg.com, and many others). I’ve also developed a few, and Lowell.com currently makes a few hundred dollars a month and gets over 12,000 visitors.
The interview touches on valuation, acquisition, sales, as well as on development and monetization. I am the first to admit that I’ve done a better job building and driving traffic to my geodomain names than monetizing them, but I discussed why I don’t think I’ve done a great job on making money with them.
I don’t consider myself an expert geodomain developer, but I’ve done a fair job in the space. Hopefully this interview will give you some insight into geodomain investing.
Looking forward to a good reading….
Thanks for sharing. I listened to the first interview and read the summary of the second. I agree with the hesitancy to hire a salesperson earning commissions and worrying about what they might imply about traffic and leads to sell ad space. For one local site (155k population), as a test I sent out about 250 emails to companies advertising in various print publications and also visited some local shopping centers. My site still ranks on page two of Google for the primary phrase and traffic is only about 3k visitors monthly (under 2k when I went prospecting). So perhaps I should have waited a while. Anyway, I didn’t sell any ads. In time I believe a few advertisers will approach me directly but perhaps I should try a different approach.
I think the ability to sell ads depends as much on the “branding” of the site as it does on the traffic. I own a major city developed .org domain name and I get calls occasionally from people that want to advertise. They almost never ask what the traffic is, they just know that *********.org would be a good place to advertise for their city.
I think if you were trying to sell ads for a .TV domain it would be significantly more difficult than it is with a .com or .org.
Great interview. I wish I could buy the city I live in – Miami.com but that is owned by the Miami Herald. I guess they were one of the old print guys that actually saw the future in the Internet.
Troy excellent comment.
@ Troy
I agree… My last sale was a 6 month banner ad, and the client didn’t ask about traffic. Some clients do ask about traffic though, but some see it as a cost effective opportunity to reach a local audience.
Now if I was charging $x,xxx a month for advertising, it’s highly likely that the advertiser would want to know how much traffic the site receives.
One point that should be made regarding the sale of local online advertising is how it is more hyperlocally targeted than most print advertising. I did not realize this initially but I noticed with the local paper, freebie mags available at the grocery store and library and the circulars one receives in the mail that many of the advertisers weren’t really that close to where I live. Yes, they were in South Florida but often 10-25 miles away. I’m sure that is great from a selling vantage point to be able to say, “We distribute x thousands of copies daily/weekly/etc.” But most people want a dentist, mechanic, hair salon, day care, dry cleaning, restaurant, clothing outlet, etc reasonably close to home. Of course geo site visitors aren’t necessarily looking for those services on the home page, but as I reviewed most print advertising I really began to wonder how effective those ads were. If a circular is mostly ads and I normally toss it in the trash or ignore it, and the advertisers aren’t even near where I live, and the rates are far more expensive, are their ad dollars being used effectively?
it is a joyous time when you are ready to sell your website. While you will be fraught with questions and unknown variables when ultimately you decide to sell your website it can be like winning a jackpot and a big change to your life. You might have been building your web business for years, consistently working on it day after day and night after night.
One problem with geo domains is that to keep local people interested you have to have lots of new (and expensive) content – which has to be done well to succeed.
If you’re building for visitors, then you don’t need to change your content too often, but visitors don’t tend to bring too much repeat traffic.