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Some Development Suggestions for Domain Investors

Elliot Silver
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6

With the recent launch of DogWalker.com, I’ve been given more perspective about web development from the point of view of a domain investor. The site I launched is different than my other websites in a few ways, and I’ve expanded my breadth of knowledge as a result. This isn’t the most polished blog post, but I wanted to share some jumbled thoughts while they are fresh.

In some ways, domain investors frequently go about things ass backwards when it comes to web development. Instead of coming up with a great business plan and execution strategy – and then finding a brand and domain name to use, many of us (myself included) build the strategy around the domain name. Not that this is a horrible idea because a domain name is key, but many of us don’t have the background (or time) required to execute a new Internet business.

Before you do anything, think about what domain name you want to develop and how you’d want to develop it. It doesn’t have to be your best name, but it should be a name that has a good chance for success (either a great domain name or a great idea you plan to implement). If you don’t think you have one – or if you aren’t sure about that, then you probably shouldn’t develop it.

You don’t need a great domain name to have a great website. However, you do need a great product, service, or unique information that will propel you above your competition. If you have neither, please don’t develop just to develop. If you are passionate about a topic and aren’t developing to make money (like I did with my blog), then by all means go forward and have fun with it!

You will then need to think about why you want to develop and what your long term goal for each website is:

  • Create a full time business opportunity
  • Earn a passive revenue with limited involvement
  • Set it up and forget about it Adsense/affiliate
  • Topic of interest where money doesn’t matter
  • A plain website to protect from UDRP “non-use” or other TM issues

Once you’ve determined what your goal is for a potential site, ask yourself if your idea will get you to your goal. No – really, don’t BS yourself right now – think about this realistically.   TheMesotheliomaPros.net is not going to become a money making website, despite the fact that mesothelioma has high paying keywords. No matter what, you won’t be able to compete with the big guys and you are wasting your money on development. If you have Mesothelioma.com or .org, then you might have a shot.

The next step is to figure out how you will get there. You need to know what type of website you want to build on your domain name. You don’t need an expert’s knowledge, but you should know these things to communicate with a developer. Think about how you are going to make money and about how people will find the site. Some questions to consider:

  • Are you going to solicit advertisers?
  • How will advertisers sign up?
  • Why would advertisers want to be on your site?
  • How are people going to find your site?
  • What are you going to do to get ranked highly in Google?
  • How much will you pay for advertising and PPC campaigns?
  • Who would come to your site, and what are they going to do once they’re there, and why will they come back?

Use Google to do your research and seek out the advice of experts – both personal advice and blog posts. Look at other websites that have similar offerings and take note of the designs and functionality that you like and don’t like. Make note of those because a designer and developer are going to ask you to show them sites you like, so it’s helpful to have that information on hand. See how other websites are advertising and research inbound links to those websites.

Find a good designer and a good programmer (if you have a more complicated site or need extensive modifications on a template). There are thousands of great designers and programmers, but not nearly as many people who are masters at both. I blogged about where to find designers, programmers, SEOs, writers…etc. I see a lot of people posting RFPs on domain forums, but why post to a small group of these experts when you can reach hundreds?

Learn the basics of development, and/or learn how to use WordPress. You don’t need to know coding to use WordPress, and I am not talking about any design elements or coding. Learn where to find things in the control panel and how to create pages, posts, and other nuances of WordPress. If you don’t know anything about development (like me when I first started), you are going to waste a lot of money on simple fixes.

David Castello advised me to learn about Dreamweaver, and believe it or not, I used the basic knowledge I learned creating listings on Ebay to get a leg up on Dreamweaver. I also learned a lot about WordPress at the advice of Kevin Leto (who manages my blog), and that has been helpful. It’s not the most intuitive thing for someone who isn’t familiar with development, but I liken it to the domain business. It takes time to get a gut feel for domain names but it’s not rocket science.

Sorry if I sound like a downer with all of this, but I want to be realistic with you. When I see my friends successfully launching sites, I get amped to go out and do it myself. However, I don’t want people to see the sites I launch and try to go about it on their own without the knowledge.

Soon enough you will be able to map your route to success.

Again, the best piece of advice I can offer is this: Do not develop just to develop (unless you are doing it to practice or to gain knowledge about development). Only develop great domain names OR only develop great ideas. If you have an average idea and and average domain name, you will probably waste your money.

Moving Forward with DogWalker.com

Elliot Silver
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25

I appreciate all the comments I received on the post I wrote about the launch of DogWalker.com. I want to discuss a couple of things brought up in the post and in threads from a couple of domain forums. Whether I am going about it right or wrong will impact my business, but hopefully you can get ideas for your next project to save you some time on testing.

I think Mike McAlister did a fantastic job with the design of the site. I made some suggestions at the beginning of the project and showed him a few directory sites that I liked, and I think he hit a home run with it. I agree to some extent that the design comes second to the content and ease of use, but I don’t agree that people can compare small niche sites to huge sites like Craigslist and Google which have less design elements.

In my opinion, when a new site is launched, it needs to catch attention, and one way to do that is design – especially when the content is lacking for the time being. Most of the successful minimalist websites have very unique offerings and are first to market with their offering, helping to build their brand. With DogWalker.com, I don’t have anything right now but the design. I have created a venue on an intuitive brand, but aside from that, I have little. However, the great design will hopefully enable me to get people interested.

Over the next few days, I plan to offer free annual dog walker listings to select dog walkers from across the country. I want dog owners to find walkers when they look, and I want to trim down the ramp up time. Since this is part time, I don’t want to have to chase people down in a year to pay, so I am not going to give everyone a free year. Additionally, I don’t want to have to monitor for spam posts any more than I need to, and if it’s free, I will have to be extra cautious. The plan is to call about 20-30 dog walkers from around the country and personally offer them free listings, since emails can be easily deleted or spammed.

I want to thank Andrew Hazen for his SEO consulting and advice. There are some things I already implemented and a few other things are in the works. I plan to reach out first to local pet stores in my area to discuss magnet handouts, banner ads, and links back. In addition to the rotating affiliate banners on the top of my site, I also think I could offer banners on some pages of the site for local pet stores. That will probably be phase 2, and it will probably require a change from WordPress to another directory.

That brings me to the question about why I chose WordPress over Joomla. The primary reason is that I am most comfortable with using WordPress. I know there are ways to migrate the site to Joomla or another content management system if necessary, and although it can be pricey, I will be able to justify the expense once I’ve outgrown WordPress.

The limitations I currently have are few, but they could prove to be key:

  • Can’t offer coupons or discount codes
  • Can’t do Paypal subscriptions
  • Listings won’t automatically renew after a year – I will have to manually re-boot
  • Search functionality is a work in progress

The search issue has been tougher than I had hoped. Mike did a ton of customizations, and that caused a couple of search issues we’re trying to work through. For example, you can search for “Manchester” and get 3 listings, you can search for “New Hampshire” and get 3 listings, but when you search for “Manchester, New Hampshire,” you get no listings. One friend suggested that the search was looking for the whole term in each search field. Any suggestions on fixing this problem would be appreciated!

I outlined my revenue generation and marketing strategy previously, but the plan is to make this basically self-sustaining. I don’t need thousands or even hundreds of sign-ups to break even, and even if I don’t get to break even, there is still burn down value for this name. In fact, the owner apparently almost let this drop a couple years ago, and bidding was pretty strong on Godaddy (according to one bidder). Alas, the owner renewed the domain name and I was able buy it from him two years later.

Again, thank you for the comments, compliments, and even the criticism. I hope it’s helpful to you in all of your endeavors.

Tomorrow, I will have some development tips and ideas for you to consider.

Dog Walker Directory Site Launch

Elliot Silver
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45

DogWalker.comMy wife and I live in New York City with our 2 year old dog, Lucy, and on occasion, we need to use the services of a dog walker. We are fortunate to live in a large apartment building because it’s easy to find a dog walker via word of mouth, since there are so many dog owners in the building.

However, there are many people who don’t necessarily have dog walker contacts, and they rely on sites like Craigslist to find dog walkers and companies who offer dog walking services in addition to other pet-related services. There are only a couple of websites that cater specifically to connecting dog owners and dog walkers.

With dog walkers earning up to $20 per dog for a 15 minute walk (sometimes even more), I believe there is a big reason why dog walkers should advertise, and with the launch of my latest targeted website, they have a place to advertise by city. With a whole lot of help of my from designer, Mike McAlister of Six One Five Design, I launched DogWalker.com, a domain name I recently acquired.

As with every website launch, there are still a few issues to fix. Some of the search functionality isn’t working as well as we’d like, and I need to get advertisers to fill the directory! This is the launch of my first automated directory, and I am eager to see if this will take off, since I have a few other names that would do well with this set up.

Here are a couple of pages you can visit to see how things will look:

I have a thousand DogWalker.com magnets, and I will be paying a graduate student to hand them out in a few parks in NYC on the next few weekends. I figure if dog owners are visiting the site, dog walkers will want to advertise. I also plan to email dog walkers to let them know about the new site and hopefully sign up some advertisers. Perhaps local pet stores will permit me to leave magnets at their register. The beauty is that the marketing of the site should remain fairly inexpensive.

When you have a moment, please have a look at the site and let me know if you find any glitches. Any suggestions/recommendations on improving search functionality and SEO would be appreciated. I am considering adding a autocomplete search feature to help direct visitors to the correct city listing pages.

Next up… DogTrainer.com 🙂

Garry Chernoff Launches eCommerce Sites

Elliot Silver
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11

I saw this press release today and wanted to pass the information along to my readers.   Garry Chernoff owns one of the best portfolios of generic domain names (as you will see below), and he is a pioneer in the domain investment industry. I hope he will share the results from these development efforts.

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Penticton, B.C., Canada (PRWEB) November 19, 2009 — Canadian based NetIncome Ventures, an established domain investment and web development company founded and headed by serial entrepreneur Garry Chernoff has publicly launched dozens of shopping websites earlier this week just in time for the holiday shopping season. The e-commerce websites include HockeyJerseys.com, BabyMonitors.com, FaxMachines.com and dozens more of niche specific e-commerce shops featuring hundreds of thousands of products.

Garry’s vision for the websites into 2010 and beyond is to become leaders in their respective niches by featuring a complete product catalog where each and every visitor can research and purchase exactly what they are looking for in one place and for the most affordable prices around. NetIncome Ventures has already teamed up with leading retailers and includes products from Buy.com, Boscov’s, OnlineSports.com, Fans Edge, ShoppersChoice.com, The Shopping Channel, Overstock.com, NBC Universal Store, Autogeek.com and hundreds of other strategic partners and popular internet based discount stores.

NetIncome Ventures Inc currently owns thousands of targeted and category leading keyword domain names such as BridalShop.com, Beads.com, CellShop.com, MensWear.com, Replica.com, Runners.com, SportsGear.com, Veils.com, etc. and plans to develop and launch at least a few hundred more e-commerce shops by March of 2010. Mike Cohen of WannaDevelop.com and NYC based Logiko group have been coordinating all web development and marketing efforts for NetIncome Ventures newly launched shopping e-businesses.

“We have put in a lot of time and effort into these websites the past few month’s and with Garry Chernoff’s guidance and vision from day one we have been able to accomplish a truly great thing here with this week’s launch and mass deployment of dozens of category specific websites on targeted keyword domains that can now serve visitors from across the globe as a one stop shop featuring product catalogs of up-to 100,000 or even more relevant and unique items on each and every website.”

PitchFest is Good and LaunchFest Needs Work

Elliot Silver
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8

domainfestThis morning, Domain Sponsor announced the details for PitchFest and LaunchFest, two new features of the DomainFest Global conference which will be held in January.

PITCHFest: Five hand-picked applicants will present a five minute summary of their business idea that will “enhance the value of parked or developed domain names by driving increased traffic and/or revenue.” Presenters will speak to a panel of judges, as well as the DomainFest audience. The winner will receive a trophy.

LAUNCHFest: Prior to the conference, applicants can choose one of ten domain names (owned by sister company Portfolio  Brains,  LLC), and five selected applicants will present a business plan to judges describing how they will build a business on that domain name. The judges will select a winner based on the following: creativity, viability, originality, and revenue potential.

The winner will have the opportunity to develop their business on the domain name “subject to a pre-determined lease arrangement.” Oversee.net will waive the first year of lease payments and the winner will have the right to lease the domain name for five years, after which the winner can buy it.

I like how PitchFest is structured. It’s a five minute pitch for five newly launched (I assume) companies, and hopefully there will be some innovative presenters. However, I think LaunchFest is a fantastic idea – for Oversee. Firstly, while Planners.com is a very good domain name that sold for $12,000 in 2004, I think the others are mostly average domain names and don’t see a home run in the list.   Below are the list of names they are allowing applicants to choose from, along with the purchase price:

  • Planners.com       $125,000
  • AdvertiseHere.com     $125,000
  • StartABusiness.com   $75,000
  • GoOut.com       $75,000
  • RealEstateNetwork.com       $50,000
  • BoostSales.com         $50,000
  • SiteFinder.com       $25,000
  • WebIncentives.com       $25,000
  • AnythingForSale.com       $10,000
  • DailyPicks.com       $10,000

Not only is Oversee.net going to get an annual lease deal (after the first year free), which will presumably generate more revenue than the parked name makes now, but they are going to have someone build these brands for them. If the brand fails and the site goes out of business, it will end up driving more revenue back to the parked page from the previous development (and Oversee wins). If the site is a success and the owner wants to buy it, Oversee will earn money on the lease and/or get their desired sales price in 5 years or less (and Oversee wins again).

If we were talking about out of the park home run names that wouldn’t be for sale under normal circumstances (like RealEstate.com or GiftBaskets.com), then it’s a great opportunity. However, I don’t think these names are that special. In the end, the winner is Oversee.net rather than the applicants, in my opinion. Perhaps a cash reward for development, scrapping the annual lease agreement, or adding better domain names from which to choose would make this a winning idea.

What do you think?

Monitoring Whois Searches

Elliot Silver
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5

Network Solutions Email Header

A domain investor friend of mine forwarded me an email he received from Network Solutions today, with the following message:

Subject: The Domain You Searched For Is Still Available: On Sale Now!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.net      Buy Now for ONLY $19 >>
Available as of 11/09/2009

Domain names are how people find you online, how you express yourself through email or your website, and it’s what customers think of when trying to find you. Register yours today while it’s still available!

nsWebAddressâ„¢ packages include your domain name registration plus:”
….etc

I always assumed that domain registrars and companies used Whois lookup data for internal purposes, but I didn’t think a company would use it for marketing purposes. My friend doesn’t believe he did the look up from within an account at Network Solutions, so he was even more surprised that his search was emailed to him.

I know that companies monitor searches and other research, and I’ve warned people to be cautious when doing research, but it just seems a bit over the top when a company sends an email like this. It’s almost like, “don’t mind us looking over your shoulder, but you can buy that name you looked up the other day just in case you didn’t realize.“

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think this is right. I would really like to know how they got the person’s email address, but I can only assume they tracked his IP address to an account there. Personally, I use DomainTools for Whois lookups.

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