Launch of SlipperyElm.com

I promised myself I wouldn’t build any more “mini” sites. I really did, and I’ve basically stuck to that this entire year.

However, a very good opportunity came about the other day, and I had to jump on it. I bought SlipperyElm.com in private via Sedo, and wanted to put a website up ASAP because slippery elm is suppose to be great for colds, and it’s almost cold season.

The term “slippery elm” has 4,400 exact match local searches, which isn’t huge, but when you look at the broad searches, that is people looking for slippery elm products like tea, bark, powder…etc, it’s a much larger number. Even Thayers, the company that produces the most popular slippery elm lozenges, owns SlipperyElm.net.

As I discussed the other day, I used TextBroker.com to write the articles, which I edited a bit where necessary, although there weren’t many edits. I also found a few photos on Flickr (made sure they were free to use). I found a template on FreeCSSTemplates.org, which I modified, and I spent about 3 hours building the new site.

So… now comes a little bit of link building, some SEO work, and hopefully it will rank well. As you can see, it’s monetized with Google Adsense.

When you build your own sites, don’t forget to add a sitemap (freebies at XML-Sitemaps.com or a free plugin for WordPress), add your Google Analytics code, and add the website to your Google Webmaster Tools account.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

76 COMMENTS

  1. I recently purchased the domain MagnesiumOil.com on godaddy and it has many medical related uses and I am going to build out a site on it.

    Is your end plan to sell the site to an end user or profit off the curent site or both?

    I like the site design nice and clean

    • @ TD

      I am probably going to hang on to it. When it’s making money, I may seek out an end user, but for the time being, I am happy to build traffic and earn revenues.

  2. Elliot,

    I’m sorry to rain on our parade, but these type of website developments are nothing more than a mini-site at best. It is too elementary for someone with your knowledge and clout. There’s no way to make serious money with such websites and ad-sense. A developed site will be things such as CNN.com, Huffingtonpost.com, Pogo.com etc

    I am only being honest. So, don’t hate me for it. I own Sweetflag.com, and will not consider pulling a picture from flickr, and adding a few adsense ads on it and call it development. I’m sorry, I fail to see how you are making any money with even your Dogwalker, Catnapper, squirreldancer type of sites. To develop a website means serious development. Everything else is minisite/parking in my eyes.

  3. I’m sure you are right, but still, it doesn’t vitiate my point. It only means you are in the business of selling ads, not website development. Which is fine. Besides, you are talking small potatoes, relatively speaking, magnitude-wise.

    However, I must admonish you not to take my criticism personally. I am on your side. Those type of sites and those type of ads can only benefit you. The advertiser gets nothing for that $40. This is simply my opinion.

  4. Uzoma

    DogWalker.com gets over 7,000 visits a month, so advertisers get value in that since most visits are from people looking to hire a dog walker. Additionally, some of the visits are from dog walkers who sign up without any effort on my part. I spend maybe a couple hours a week on the site now, so I’m not actively selling ads, and of course the ads that renew automatically take no effort on my part.

    With SlipperyElm.com, it’s a domain investment that will earn revenue while increasing in value as traffic grows. IMO it’s better than cash in the bank at this point.

  5. Those are impressive numbers for the Dogwalker site, but you must realize that you have quite a bit of clout with your popular blog site; and you are constantly referring people from here to there, to look at one thing or the other; and it affects that visitor number you refer to. I think that we are forever precluded from knowing the actual visitors to the Dogwalker site based on the domain name, seo work, organic searchers etc.

    My reason for taking you up on some of your posts is that you stand to do serious good for or industry, or irreparable damage, depending on how you come down on things. Somehow, you are very popular, and liked/respected by many bloggers.

  6. Haven’t linked to it in a while and I know that very few referrals are from here. I spend a good % of my time on the site analyzing traffic.

    Say what you want, but $10k+ a year in passive revenue (not including new advertisers) is good. I could also sell the business very profitably.

    Your position holds very little water and you don’t sound educated on the topic if you are critical about it.

    If I was making over $2,000,000 a year in overall income, it would probably not be worth my time or effort for 10k+, but for now it’s been a great investment for my company.

  7. Elliot,

    300 * 50 = 15,000

    I figure you have at least a dozen sites like this after costs you must be raking in north of 100k.

    Nice … especially since most of it is automated you work schedule must be like 20-30 hours a week. Leaving you time to pursue other things.

    Congrats …

  8. @ John

    Not that many yet…but my primary source of income is flipping domain names. Advertising on that site, this blog, and other sites is gravy.

  9. Hi Elliot,

    Thanks for the suggestion of TextBroker. I have already had a few articles written since you first mentioned it. One of the articles was complete crap, but the revision was OK, and the others have been very good.

    I also signed up to be an author. After writing a few articles, I think anyone with fair/good writing skills and SEO or development knowledge should be able to make around $10/hr writing for them. While that’s not awesome pay, it’s nice to use my spare time to offset some of my reg fees.

  10. @ Uzoma

    My reason for taking you up on some of your posts is that you stand to do serious good for or industry,

    —- or irreparable damage, ….

    depending on how you come down on things.

    Somehow …

    you are very popular, and liked/respected by many bloggers.

    —————————————————
    —————————————————

    Maybe its because he knows what he is doing and
    does it! unlike you …

    Maybe its because he unselfishly shares with others
    and is not all full of himself like your dumb comments
    show you to be …

    Somehow … YOU don’t know what your talking about.

  11. @L

    Very well, if you are right, then we should make sure Elliot stays that way.

    Trust and righteousness is not inherent, nor stagnant; if Elliot earned your trust, or mine in the past, he gets to maintain it with every post and every point he makes. If he is wrong, I’m sorry, I’ll say so.

    I was one of the first to give him kudos on the domainquestions one.

    Elliot, I hope I’m not being unreasonable in criticism?

    Let me know..

  12. @ Uzoma

    You can say/think what you want. Bottom line is that I am in the black with DogWalker.com right now and every ad that is purchased is gravy. It took less than a year to get there. If you think something is wrong with this, then that’s your opinion and probably one of the few to think that.

    I’m the first to admit my geodomain projects have produced less revenue than I’ve hoped.

    I am very fortunate to be a full time domain investor, and lucky enough to have great sponsors of this blog who essentially pay me to write and share what I am doing. If you are able to learn something from my blog, either based on something I am doing right or wrong, more power to you.

    My blog is free to read and interpret in your own ways. However, it doesn’t seem to make an ounce of sense to criticize a website making over $10k/year in revenue that takes a couple hours a week now to maintain and continues to have advertisers automatically renew. I fail to see why this isn’t a great thing – especially when I can now replicate it on DogGroomers.com.

  13. @Elliot

    I believe we have a communication problem.

    I stated that the new website you launched today, slipperyelm.com, should be classified as a minisite, compared to orthodoxy, by that I mean developed domains such as CNN.com, Pogo.com, etc

    I don’t think that should enrage you, it is merely a fact. I extended this observation to include your other sites that I have visited. I do not consider those sites to be developed. I included myself as one who owns such domains. For instance, I get hundreds of daily visit to my vitamin.am, even though I have an amazon store type on it, I do not consider it developed. All visitors to it are organic. I have never advertised it, or mentioned it anywhere. It is sitting there until sold. That is the light in which I take dogwalker and Catsitter.com

    So, I wanted someone with your clout not to consider those type of sites as developed. That is all.

  14. is @L and @Uzoma the same person? I don’t understand them both. Both change subjects every sentence rather than the norm = paragraph

    Ross

  15. @ Uzoma

    Your quote that was bothersome was:

    “I fail to see how you are making any money with even your Dogwalker, Catnapper, squirreldancer type of sites”

    When I was building out DogWalker.com, I laid out the plans for it and provided a couple of updates. You can also look at the site, it’s Alexa rankings and Google/Bing rankings to gauge how well it’s doing. Your failure to see how I am making money is your own fault 🙂

    SlipperyElm.com is not a name I will ever retire on, but if it makes at least $2/day, which is very plausible, the time it takes to earn a ROI will be fairly short. Once I earn my investment back, the rest is profit and I still have the higher value asset.

  16. @ Ross

    I don’t believe so, and I think L was taking Uzoma to task, although it was a bit unclear.

    Instead of just flipping this domain name, I am building value on it and earning revenue along the way.

  17. @Uzoma

    It clearly states in the first sentence of the post that this is a “mini” site.

    I’m not sure why you’re nitpicking on terminology when he clearly said it was a small-scale site that took 3 hours to put together. This is not on the level of something like DogWalker.com or Burbank.com or any of his larger projects that required customized designs and coding.

    I just think it’s strange that you’re arguing that it’s a minisite, when everyone who has commented, including the author, has already agreed that it’s a minisite.

  18. I don’t mind SlipperyElm.com, whatever it’s category. I would call it developed, because the articles are original. Developed or mini-site, what viewers take exception to is a landmine of ads, so you don’t know if you’re clicking on a link for more info, or is it a paid advertisement that will load a bunch of cookies/beams onto your desktop! Refrigeratorpro.com is an example of a developed site with great content on which I will never spend time, because the clutter of ads is an eyesore! Refrigeratorpro.com is an affiliate of Shopzilla, considered one of its success stories.

    SlipperyElm.com’s design – while the number of ads exceeds my preference – is fairly clean, and the ads aren’t DISGUISED AS CONTENT – kudos, @ Elliot! The logo and simple green/white color scheme are appealing and unfussy. There is good info in the articles – I didn’t know what Slippery Elm is; now I do. Great job! You go!

  19. @Nadia

    You are quite correct in your observations.

    I must refer you to the genesis of this debate with Elliot:

    https://www.domaininvesting.com/sending-traffic-to-a-parked-page-is-against-tos-4923

    Elliot argued that people should listen to people who are in the ‘black’ in our industry. In fact, he is doing it in this debate. So, I was saying that I fail to see how he is making any money with these tiny sites. Now, I will go take a look at his Burbank.com, so far the name sounds good. I also like a name he sold recently, to wit vegetablegardens.com. But, I get your point, Nadia. Only Elliot will understand what we are arguing about because it has been going on now for over 4 months.

  20. @ Uzoma

    BikeTour.com is a parked page with no content. I wouldn’t post an article with a link to it because that is against TOS. You are not permitted to send traffic (via link, email, spam, or anything) because the only objective is to get people to click, which is essentially click fraud. Intentionally sending traffic to a parked page is against TOS of parking companies because it’s against the TOS of Google/Yahoo. That was the article you just referenced. People make money from parked pages due to previous links and type in traffic, not from owners deliberately sending traffic.

    SlipperyElm.com is a mini site with 10 pages of unique, custom written content about the topic of slippery elm. It is monetized with Adsense, which is perfectly legitimate. In fact, many people make a lot of money with mini websites.

    Burbank.com, Lowell.com, and DogWalker.com are all basically businesses operating on domain names. There are hundreds of pages of unique articles, and there are advertisers on the site. Those are similar to this blog.

    The more you write, the less I think you actually know. Perhaps you should read more and write less.

  21. @Elliot,

    Do you think I should I turn Earthquake.WS into a mini site with articles? I hand-reg’d it today for $9 and have no idea what I should do with it. Loads of Google searches for “earthquake”, but I know it would be very difficult to get a decent Google rank since it’s .ws

    – TBC

  22. @ Cheese

    I wouldn’t. I don’t like .ws and think it will be hard to rank with a .ws and hard to monetize. It would take a lot of time and effort to build something that makes money, and at the end of the day, the domain name isn’t really worth much in my opinion.

    SlipperyElm.com is an aged name (1999 reg date) and all TLD are registered.

    I think I paid less than market value for it, so I can afford to sink some time and effort into it.

    Any name CAN be developed, but you have to consider the cost of development, including your time and actual development costs. Aside from a couple test sites I did to practice some basic coding, I would not develop domain names with very limited upside.

  23. Burbank.com is en exception to the sites Elliot is talking about. I looked at it:

    Search Overview:

    Avg Search Results (keyword): 16,777,215
    Avg Search Results (sld): 16,777,215
    Avg Ad Count (keyword): 1
    Avg Ad Count (sld): 1

    Traffic Rank:

    Alexa Traffic Rank: 414,876
    Google Page Rank: 5

    Type-in Score:

    Overture (domain): 167
    Overture (sld): 8,102
    Overture (keyword): 8,102

    Average Monthly Search Stats

    Average Monthly Searches: 2,800,000
    Average Monthly Exact Search: 18,500
    Average Cost Per Click: $3.69 USD
    Average Ad Competition: 0

    Web Site Status:

    Title: burbank.com

    Metadata Keywords:

    IP: 69.16.243.81
    Resolve Time: 2.54 ms
    Page Size: 0.11 KB
    Links: 214
    Images: 135

    Status Code: 200

    Host OS/Web Server: Apache/2.2.17 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635

    Has Adsense: No
    Has Cookies: No
    Has CSS: Yes
    Has JavaScript: Yes

    It’s a developed site.

  24. @ Uzoma

    No shit, sherlock.

    So is DogWalker.com, Lowell.com, Newburyport.com, TropicalBirds.com, and a bunch of others, including this blog that is filled with paying advertisers (not affiliates, adsense, ppc, or anything else).

  25. @Elliot,

    I call it as I see it. If you have a good domain, I will say so.
    the only thing I wanted to ask you is, are you really making only $11/day at Burbank.com?

    Estimated Data

    Domain burbank.com
    Title Burbank, CA Hotels, Restaurants, Jobs, Homes & Studios | Burbank.com
    Description Explore the city of Burbank, California, with hotel, restaurant, real estate, shopping, golf and airport information. Plan your Burbank vacation.
    Daily Pageview 2963
    Daily Ads Revenue $11.13
    Rating 1.5 out of 5.0 by WebsiteOutlook

    burbank.com Seo Report
    Last updated 38 Days ago

    Index Data

    Traffic Rank 371196
    PageRank 5
    Backlinks 10151
    Dmoz Categories Currently Not Listed in Dmoz
    Traffic Data

    burbank.com Traffic History
    Time Range Traffic Rank Reach Rank Reach PerMillion PageViews Rank PageViews PerMillion PageViews PerUser
    3 Months 371196 346142 4.5 523336 0.1 2.3
    1 Months 403355 352575 4.5 632798 0.08 1.8
    7 Days 304640 280866 6 467971 0.13 2.1
    1 Days 468274 537136 5 484928 0.13 3

    • @ Uzoma

      How much money I make is none of your business. That’s the one thing I don’t share, except when you insulted one of my sites, although it would be very simple to see how many advertisers there are on DogWalker.com and make a rough guesstimate of the revenue without my sharing it.

      The information you posted is inaccurate, and since all ad sales are in house, that website would not have correct data nor would it know how much money Burbank.com generates.

      BTW, of course it’s a good domain name. I turned down an all cash offer of more than $100,000.00 for it in 2008.

  26. Elliot,

    I don’t know you too well or at all to judge you as a person but I do appreciate your blog. I don’t care how much money anyone makes. My goal is to acquire as much knowledge as I can from people like you! The more you share, the more I can learn, test, apply and hopefully earn!

    And one more thing – money is money and I don’t care if I make it with a mini site, fully developed site or from a parked domain.

    I’m sure there are people who don’t like mini sites or parked domains but then I don’t like pickles either and I simply avoid them 😉

  27. Elliot-

    I really appreciate your blog. I’m developing many sites of my own and some of the vendors you’ve put me in touch with have been fantastic.

    I do agree with some that slipperyelm.com looks more like a parked page than a developed website. I realize that there are articles which are well written but the structure of the site with the generic photo and google ads just looks like a parked page. I wouldn’t compare this one to dogwalker.com – that’s more of a developed site.

    I would consider slipperyelm.NET a developed site. Have you ever considered actually making a slippery elm product and selling it on the site? My friends created a eyebrow cream, hand registered billiondollarbrows.com, created a buzz in the media and then hit it big with QVC – just a thought.

    Keep up the good work, look forward to reading your blog daily.

  28. “The surest sign that you haven’t any sense is to argue with one who hasn’t.”

    DogWalker.com is right up their with your crowning achievements. Figure out how many sign-ups it takes to break even on the cost of a TV campaign, get a VC to back you, and you have the makings of a $500 million business. Pitchfest?

  29. Is Ross and UZoma the same person? …

    They both have trouble understanding …

    THE POINT …

    I suppose one should not be harsh with

    people that have had a recent lobotomy, as they

    do have trouble following a simple train of thought.

  30. “You are not permitted to send traffic (via link, email, spam, or anything) because the only objective is to get people to click, which is essentially click fraud. Intentionally sending traffic to a parked page is against TOS of parking companies because it’s against the TOS of Google/Yahoo.” – Elliot

    @Elliot
    I asked you to name someone who is doing that. You dodged answering that question. Only a foolish person will point traffic to a parked page. Only a foolish fraud that is. First of all, Google and parking companies have ways to detect such foolishness. If they didn’t, many people will be doing it just to get even with the parking companies “non-transparency”. The debate between you and I centers on this key point: I argued that the PPC companies have no excuse for not spreading the wealth generated from ads on domains, to reach the domainer; you argued that PPC was down due to fraud by domainers; I ask you again, name the culprits. I don’t believe that is a valid excuse for low to negligible PPC payments. I believe that the Parkers, Google, and Yahoo etc have a way to detect such nuisance. That is so 2006-7!

    @Frager

    Once someone has a good business plan, a decent name, and can go on TV to advertise, it doesn’t matter what domain name they have. Nor would it matter if they are a newbie or Pro. For example: Godaddy.com and Yahoo, will succeed even if their domain names were regarF.com! the reason being that their business model is sound, and they have unique products and services that people want.

  31. Just one observation. Your Adsense ads on home page of Slippery Elm are just below an image. Something not conforming to Adsense T&C. You may want to move those Ads asap.

  32. Nice site, congrats on the launch. I got my first article back from textbroker today and was very happy with the quality, extremely impressive! You should be able to rank pretty well in time with the exact match .com domain and some good content. Hope it does well for you and you never know, you may even have a knock on the door from Even Thayers one day with a nice big offer 🙂

  33. Elliot, why waste your time and blog space ‘tit for tating’ with know-it-alls?

    Uzoma says –
    [Once someone has a good business plan, “”a decent name”, and can go on TV to advertise, “”it doesn’t matter what domain name”” they have.]

    err, a little ‘double speak’? And you’re pumping ‘your knowledge’ here?? ..ok..

  34. Hi Elliot,

    Long time reader, first time poster. First, thanks for taking the time to talk about your accomplishments/failures in the domain space. I appreciate your candidness in your posts, as I’m sure the majority of readers here do.

    If possible, could you talk about some of your link building strategies in an upcoming post? I too, have a number of sites that I have developed and which receive some substantial traffic. I consider myself really good at developing sites but still playing catch-up on the SEO side of things. Would be great to hear some of your thoughts on this.

    I too can recommend Text Broker. I have used them twice so far and had a great experience with both a 4 star and 3 star writer. Excellent way to cost effectively develop content if you find yourself short on time.

    Thanks again!

  35. @kevin

    1. I’m not a know-it all. I am actually challenging the know it all – that will be Elliot

    2. I am helping his blog by being here. When I don’t post on his blog, he barely cracks 10 responses. So, I’m doing him a favor posting here. I gain nothing from it. You can chalk me under altruistic.

    3. You are bright to pick out the double speak, but you missed the irony: both premises are correct. That was exactly what I wanted to point out to Frager. If you have the resources to advertise in a mass media such as Television, you foremost worry should be your product and services, along with your business plan; your domain name should be your least worry. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a category killer generic, but if you don’t have one, don’t worry.

  36. @ Uzoma

    Your response are more annoying than anything. Since my advertisers pay monthly, not CPM or anything like that, they don’t benefit from additional comments/responses.

    I am sure many people find your posts amusing though.

    I am the first to admit I don’t know it all. I know enough to do very well in this business though. What are your best domain names and websites?

  37. “I am the first to admit I don’t know it all. I know enough to do very well in this business though. What are your best domain names and websites?” – Elliot

    @Elliot
    Here we go again! This is how it starts. When you claim that you are doing “very well”, you have to back it up by revealing your revenues and income. When I press you on it, folks don’t get to see what brought it about. Can you now provide proof that you are making money with those websites? I have to insist on it now. Please show me your revenue stream and proof. Incidentally, I believe you, I find you to have an honest face, I simply wanted to verify; like Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify.

    On the your question about my “good” domain names, I don’t judge domains by “good versus bad”.

    For example, I own a domain called Uziza.com; this domain name will mean nothing to the average domainer. So you have to read about it here on my blog:

    domainxing.blogspot.com/2010/08/antimicrobial-effects-of-piper.html

    or Google it.

    I own thousands of domains, and some of them are medical, futuristic, foreign, business, industrial, private, governmental, etc My domains are not for domainers.

    • @ Uzoma

      You can see my past public sales and current public domain investments if there’s any doubt that I’ve done okay for myself without any outside investment/funding/loans: https://www.domaininvesting.com/projects-sales

      Thankfully, I am happy, in good health, and live very comfortably. I travel as much as my wife can with her being in grad school and don’t owe a single person or company a cent (aside from the credit card bills I pay in full each month).

      I have nothing to prove to some random blog commenter.

  38. “That’s not my area of expertise, and I haven’t figured it out yet.” – Elliot

    So are you hiring someone to do your link building and SEO at this point? Or are you trying to link build yourself?

    At this point I try to do some basic link building myself… but always find that it takes a LOT of effort for what is most of the time, little benefit.

    Any insights would be great 🙂

  39. @ George

    I don’t trust any services because if they do something illigitimate, it can do more harm than good. For example some of those submission services can damage a site’s reputation to Google.

    I may email some related websites and offer a link exchange. I may do article exchanges on herb-related websites where I provide an article that contains links back.

  40. Uzoma, Elliot, Kevin …

    “Elliot, why waste your time and blog space ‘tit for tating’ with know-it-alls?”

    I saw 51 comments and knew something was up. While I don’t
    agree with everything that was said here it was worthwhile reading
    and a reason to stay on the page and read comments. Nobody wants to go to a restaurant with empty tables. Tables filled by customers that pay less are ok as long as they aren’t to disgusting. Uzoma’s comments aren’t to disgusting and he made points which Elliot rebutted.

    What’s wrong with that?

    Maybe people new to the business learned something.

    Here’s an example, Elliot said in response to Uzoma:

    “300 advertisers at an average cost of $40/year on DogWalker.com… Do the math.”

    Uzoma said:

    “The advertiser gets nothing for that $40. This is simply my opinion.”

    Not true. More chance of getting a client then by doing nothing who is to say there is no value?

    One of the things I found/decided/learned early on was that it’s not a businessman’s purpose to decide how a person spends their money. I think fur coats are a total waste of money. Who needs them? But people buy them like they buy all luxury goods and they derive some benefit psychologically from what they buy. There are so many examples of people pissing money away and not getting any value but psychological value. (Many donations might be an example..)

    Let me tell you about the psychology of the small business
    person.

    Small business person says, and this is important: “if I get one customer it pays for itself”.

    (And of course that is pitched on the site..but should be more prominent..)

    Elliot has set the bar low enough to take advantage of this principle with room to spare.

    The only addition I would make (maybe) is a “cancel at any time and receive a pro-rata refund for unused months..”

    • @ Larry

      My issue is that Uzoma seems to be throwing stones without making a lot of sensible comments, and the comments aren’t on topic as these two projects are completely different and unrelated.

      I think if I wrote a blog article about the color of broccoli being green, Uzoma would take issue and have some sort of response.

      My record speaks for itself, and I don’t appreciate someone coming on my blog to knock me and my business, when his thousands of names include names like Californeur.com, 3dTVing.com, BpOffshoreOilStrike.info, Duesseldorf.us and others.

      “The only addition I would make (maybe) is a “cancel at any time and receive a pro-rata refund for unused months..”

      That gets complicated, although if someone asked for a refund, I would give it without hesitation. One upset customer can cause more problems than the lost $49 in revenue.

  41. So Uzoma, you ‘demand’ Elliot publicly ‘show you’ proof of his personal finances for him to validate his doings in your ‘mind’, yet he asks you simply what domains and websites you have, and you give a generality of fields of interest. ..ok. I’m sure his worst name, would be miles ahead of your best.

    Yeh, you’re ‘chalked under’ alright.

  42. @Larry

    You are a reasonable commentator. It takes wisdom to trace a dyadic dialog such as the one I’m having with Elliot. Even tho you give much deference to Elliot, he does deserve some it.

    @Kevin
    I gave my reason for asking for his income, and that was just to back up his boast of doing very well. I’m sure if he reveals his income, it will help the new domainers as he purports to care about. After all, he is the one who won the blogger of the year. Am I jealous? I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I’m not into awards.
    On the issue of “goodness” or “greatness” of domain names? Once domains are judged by “good” or “trendy”, anyone will have a ‘better’ domain name me. My domains are not for PPC or ad sense revenue. My domains are for people who have a business plan, and a product to sell; with the budget pull it off. Well, at least I hope so.

  43. “BpOffshoreOilStrike.info”

    Elliot:

    BpOffshoreOilStrike is a product; it is a noun. It is a board game. I also happen to own the .COM, and also own OffshoreOilStrike.com which is a product. There’s no trademark issue. Google it

    Domain names in a portfolio may not make sense when taken individually. Some may be defensive in nature.

  44. @ Uzoma

    If I told you I make $5,000,000 a year, you probably wouldn’t believe it. What good does it do for me to reveal how much money I make? It doesn’t do any good.

    I have nothing to prove to anyone.

  45. Uzoma says-
    [On the issue of “goodness” or “greatness” of domain names? Once domains are judged by “good” or “trendy”, anyone will have a ‘better’ domain name me.] So can’t this same be said/related to income, as we all have different judgment of what is ‘successful income’? To some $5K may be great for $400 of effort. And to some $100K is just chump change. So basically, like your domains, it’s really a mute point to anyone but the owners of such.

  46. Californeur.com is a brand-able domain name for a California Entrepreneur. I intend to use that domain myself.

    3DTVING.COM goes to the activities of 3DTV industry, not the TV sets themselve. In that case 3DTV.COM will be premium. Besides, it is taken.

  47. @ Uzoma

    I don’t really care what it is. I would rather have a small portfolio of names like DogWalker.com, DogGroomers.com, Torah.com, Burbank.com, Newburyport.com, Lowell.com, BikeTour.com, BambooPlants.com…etc… (names that mean something and need no explanation) than a portfolio of thousands of garbage names.

    If your names are making you a lot of money, that’s great for you and has no impact on me, just like my income has no impact on you.

    This debate has become circular and completely pointless, so this is my last reply to you.

  48. “the reason being that their business model is sound, and they have unique products and services that people want.”

    Like dogwalker.com
    Proof of concept and metrics to take to bigger level
    Since the domain name is already an ad it makes a direct response tv spot a no brainer

    Now you can buy 15 seconds and communIcate what few others can do in 10x more costly minute

  49. Nice project Elliot. Why did you pick this domain? Did you buy it because you have an interest in Slippery Elm therefore it was easier to develop it or did you buy it to flip in and are just developing it in the meantime?

  50. @ AB

    I have no interest in the product, but I liked the fact that it was a product that was frequently searched, all TLD were registered, and it had some age (10+ years). I thought it would be perfect for a site like this.

    Eventually, I imagine selling it to a company that sells the product in various forms, and a stronger sales pitch would include nice traffic numbers from the site I built.

  51. Elliot

    this has been my inspiration to build more sites. I recently upgraded my hosting and have just hosted some domains – now the hard part is finding a wordpress theme or a css template that suits the sites. I love what you did with slippery elm – its so clean and it works. This is exactly what Im looking for (not YOUR theme – but I mean the cleanliness in general)
    So this is a very easy to read and clean site – hopefully I can get some of mine to look this neat

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