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A Typical Day for Me

Elliot Silver
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12

Elliot, just out of curiosity, what is a typical day for you?

This question was posed to me by Ron in the comment section one of my recent articles, and I figured it might make an interesting post. Because I work full time for myself (from the comfort of my apartment), I think my schedule is fairly unique.

Monday through Thursday, I am almost always up before 8:00am either because of my dog or my Wife and I immediately begin my day. I scan through my emails, seeing if Google Alerts brought any interesting headlines – either for my blog or Lowell.com. If there’s nothing of immediate interest, I follow up with emails that were sent overnight.

If there is an interesting domain news article, I will analyze it, do some research, and think about the impact on my business or the industry, and write an article, usually set to publish in the early afternoon. If I find an article of interest related to Lowell, I will either post the full press release (using good SEO so it stands out), or I will post a synopsis of the news.

The difference between my blog and Lowell.com is that I believe I am a domain expert, and I am comfortable discussing the impact of a particular bit of news in the domain space. I am not a Lowell-expert, and I don’t want to write an editorial on Lowell.com that would be inaccurate and show my lack of awareness.

After this, it can be anywhere from 9:30-11:30 depending on the amount of news and emails I have. After this is done, I will spend some time reading a few domain blogs, a couple of domain forums, Yahoo Finance, NY Post, Techcrunch, CNN, ESPN, and a few other select websites. This is both for my enrichment and to see if there’s anything of particular interest for my blog. I don’t like simply writing about domain news here… I like writing articles that I would be interested in reading elsewhere related to domain names or the Internet, and I find that most of the more interesting articles are found simply by reading the news.

I usually have a quick (working) lunch and spend the afternoon making domain inquiries to buy names, contacting potential buyers for my domain names, speaking on the phone or emailing business colleagues and friends, or writing articles for Lowell.com or my blog. I spend quite a bit of time researching domain names, although the irony is that some of my better deals this year have been on names I bought within 2 hours of inquiring and flipped after a couple of emails within a couple days. It seems that I spend much more time writing articles, and in the whole scheme of my business, that is far less profitable – go figure.

Last year, I spent quite a bit of time building websites and managing the websites I already built. Although some of those sites are making money now, I decided that I would stick to my core business in 2010. As a result of that decision, I enjoy having the extra time to research acquisitions and find domain buyers. I am lucky that my domain sales have gone back to 2007-2008 levels, as there is far less pressure on me to generate revenue on my domain investments that did not quickly sell as I had hoped.

Last year I worked much more, and I found myself “spinning my wheels” quite a bit.   This year, I am usually able to wind down in the late afternoon and try to hit the gym for a run after 4pm, depending on the day. Unfortunately, I have high cholesterol due to genetics, so it’s urgent that I keep myself in decent shape and stay fit. When I had a full time job and was managing my business at night, I didn’t work out very much, and it was detrimental to my health. I worked a lot of 16-18 hour days, and I promised I wouldn’t do that this year unless absolutely necessary.

In the evenings after dinner, I usually watch tv with my computer on the coffee table, and I answer emails that come through. I am generally in bed and sleeping between 11-midnight from Monday to Thursday.

Throughout the day, I am always connected via Blackberry. Whether I am at the gym, running errands, or doing just about anything, I am almost always connected to my work. I love what I do, but despite being able to set my own hours, most of my focus is on my business.

Additional Hong Kong Domains for Sale

Elliot Silver
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13

Over the last month or so, I’ve sold two Hong Kong geographic domain names, WanChai.com and KwunTong.com, and I still have a few other domain names remaining. Instead of creating individual posts for each, I am going to save time by listing them for sale here.

Judging by the 2 emails and DNForum private message I received in the week after selling WanChai.com in which the writers told me they wish they bought it first, you should probably be quick if you would like to purchase one or more of the names below. If all three are of interest, I would consider an offer for the three domain names. Post “sold” in the comment section of the blog if you’re interested.

HK

YuenLong.com – Price: $6,500 US Dollars

References:

  • Go2YL.com – “Yuen Long has quite a lot to offer.” “The district is renowned for its rich cultural heritage and abundance of antiquities and monuments. Many traditional ceremonies and rituals are still observed by the people in Yuen Long, in spite of the coming of modernity of Yuen Long. Examples are Tin Hau Festival, Tai P’ing Ch’ing Ch’iao and basin meal.”
  • CNNgo.com – Why We Love Yuen Long “Dirt biking, strawberry picking and traditional basin meals are just some of the reasons why the rest of Hong Kong loses to Yuen Long“
  • Wikipedia – “It had a population of 449,070 in 2001“

Hong Kong

TaiPo.com – Price: $5,500 US Dollars

References:

  • Sam’s Exotic Photos of Tai Po – “Tai Po used to be a modest village town with historical relics and charming scenery. Now, it has been transformed into a thriving and prosperous new town. It is a marvel that the tranquility of its traditional villages have been preserved and coexist in harmony with the high-rise buildings of the bustling new town.“
  • Tai Po Football Club (Wikipedia) – “On 6 June 2009, Tai Po won 4:2 against TSW Pegasus, in front of 4,042 fans at the Hong Kong Stadium, to lift the Hong Kong FA Cup, marking the first time a district team has won the trophy.”
  • Wikipedia – “It had a population of 310,879 in 2001.“

Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong

TsuenWan.com – Price: $7,000 US Dollars

References:

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Photo credits:

Bobbleheads.com Products Featured on Today Show & Other Media Promotion

Elliot Silver
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5

I was catching up with Warren Royal last night, and he mentioned some of the good things happening with his company’s Bobbleheads.com website and business. Shortly after NBC’s set re-designs, Warren noticed that some of his company’s bobbleheads were showing up on the “Meet the Press” set, and a segment on the “Today Show” with David Gregory showed the John F. Kennedy bobblehead (2:48-50 in the video above).

In addition to this neat but somewhat passive promotion, lightning rod talk show host Glenn Beck is   auctioning off 3 of his company’s Founding Father bobbleheads, autographed by him, in a charity auction. The current bid is $1,100 and the auction doesn’t end until May 24th.

Finally, Fox 5 New York has also provided Bobbleheads.com with some free publicity. The New York Fox affiliate is actively promoting a bobblehead of its primary weather anchor, Mike Woods, in a television commercial. While the Bobbleheads.com company isn’t listed, the “bobbleheads” brand is being passively promoted.

In response to how NBC came across his company to purchase the bobbleheads for its television sets, Warren commented, “this is a good example of how having the key category domain is great – the NBC buyer just went to Bobbleheads.com to find what they were looking for, and found our products.”

Warren is right on the money with this. While some people argue that a strong brand is better than a generic domain name, in my opinion a generic domain name generally has a similar level of brand recognition by default without the ongoing marketing cost. Congrats to Warren again on the good news.

Tech Problem with Snapnames

Elliot Silver
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3

I use Snapnames quite a bit, and one of the most useful searches for me is a list of 500 .com domain names (no numbers or hyphens) that are in auction or available soon within the next three days. I perform this search using the Advanced Search button while using Firefox.

For the last couple of weeks, whenever I have entered this special advanced search, Snapnames results return to me with the default Advanced Search options. Instead of seeing what I want, I get a list of all names, in order of the most bids. This makes it more burdensome for me to search, and lately I haven’t been scanning the partial search list as usual since the functionality isn’t working for me and it takes too much time to look through the full list.

Instead, I have simply been using FreshDrop.net to analyze domain names I want to buy, based on my preselected criteria. Unfortunately, this isn’t adequate, as there have been plenty of times I’ve purchased names that don’t meet the criteria. I can’t say whether Snapnames is leaving money on the table since I am not one of their biggest buyers, but it’s annoying to me and I hope the fix it.

BTW, while we are talking about Snapnames technical issues… I wish they would permit me to bid in their live auctions from my Mac rather than only having a PC-based solution. (I am not downloading Bootcamp and adding more programs to my machine just to bid in a few Snapnames auctions).

Is anyone else facing the same issues?

TheDomains.com & ElliotsBlog.com Separated by 7 Websites in Alexa

Elliot Silver
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8

I generally don’t pay much attention to Alexa rankings. I write articles of interest based on what I am doing and what I see in the domain industry, and I figure people will visit if they want. I know Alexa tends to be skewed towards Internet and tech focused websites, so as much as some people use it as a means of gauging traffic, I don’t pay much attention to it.

Yesterday evening I checked out the Alexa ranking for my website and was pretty surprised to see it below 25,000. I’ve seen an uptick in traffic, but the last time I checked it was in the 30s. I wanted to check a few other domain blogs that I read to see if they’re also seeing a “better” Alexa ranking, and I was very surprised when I checked the Alexa ranking of Mike Berkens’ Blog.

Out of millions of websites tracked by Alexa, Mike’s blog (23,128) and my blog (23,121) were separated by a grand total of 7 websites. I cross checked the Compete score, and we are separated by around 200 websites. This seems pretty minuscule in the whole scheme of things, and it’s always fun to be in the good company of Mike (and Judi).

Saturday Afternoon Updates

Elliot Silver
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6

Here are a few updates on this nice Saturday afternoon.

  • I was a bit surprised to see Dating.com sell for $1,750,000 because I thought I saw that the reserve price was much higher. I was wrong, and it’s good to see this sale. I am looking forward to learning who the buyer was. I have a couple of guesses but will keep them to myself. Congrats to Moniker/Snapnames for the big sale, which comes on the heels of their $5.5 million sale of Slots.com.
  • If you get an offer from someone over email or via marketplace, do as much due diligence as you can. The most obvious things to search for are the person’s name, company name (from email or signature), and IP address. If those yield nothing significant, search for the domain name’s term in Google, the USPTO, and see who owns other extensions. Knowing the potential buyer is a critical step in any negotiation.
  • I was looking over my financials from 2007 and 2008 to compare them to how things are stacking up this year (2009 was a bad year so I am going to forget it ever happened 🙂 ).   Although I have fewer sales this year, my revenue is better than 2007 year to date and a little less than 2008 which was my best year. Over the past couple of years, I focused on selling less names but focusing on much better names. The result is less time selling and more time to focus on other things.
  • Just a quick update on DogWalker.com.   It’s now in month 5 of existence and the site is drawing over 4,000 unique visitors monthly. This comes on the heels of reducing my ad spend on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, so it’s great to see the traffic levels remaining the same despite the costs decreasing significantly (attributed to good SERP rankings).   Right now, the site is up to 193 dog walkers, with just about all paying $49 a year on a Paypal subscription. Not too shabby for a domain name that had been unused by the previous owner for almost 12 years and only saw about 5 visits a day before launch. That’s close to $10,000 in annual revenue (even though it hasn’t been live for a full year).
  • CatSitter.com has grown much more slowly, but that could be due to the fact that I didn’t advertise it as much. Interestingly, CatSitter.com was parked for a number of years before I bought it, and I am having trouble with SEO for the site. I wouldn’t formulate an opinion based on one instance, but since both sites were built in exactly the same way at around the same time, it’s interesting to note that the non-parked domain is performing much better in SERP results despite having significantly more competition.   Both sites were built on WordPress.
  • I am looking to sell HorseStable.com.   I haven’t reached out to end user buyers for it yet, but I think it would either be useful as a directory of horse stables or an online store to sell horse stable supplies.   Let me know if it’s of interest. Also, in light of my two sales of Hong Kong domain names in the last month, I have a few more to sell. Let me know if you’d like to see the names before I put them on the market next week (the second domain still has my company listed as owner, but it’s in escrow and being transferred to Godaddy).
  • One tip to get some free traffic to your websites: post listings on various Craigslist city websites and encourage people to visit your site for relevant information. I am doing this with DogWalker.com, and it probably receives 25 visits/day from these listings.   Compared to paying Google up to $2/click, this is saving significant costs.
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