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Why I Keep Buying

Someone asked me why I was continuing to buy domain names when I couldn’t find the time to develop all of my names right away. One suggestion was to allocate my resources to developing what I have instead of buying more domain names. The question is reasonable and I spent some time thinking about it. Truth is, at heart, I am a domain investor. My business is built around acquiring domain names for good prices and then determining how to make a profit from each domain name I acquire. While I have been developing some of my names and continue to do so, I am not a developer. I believe to unlock the real value of many domain names, development must be done, but I have to determine where to allocate my personal resources, and sometimes development isn’t the best strategy.
When I am in the process of buying a domain name, one of the things I consider is how the domain name could be developed to make a profit. Once the name is acquired, I determine whether it would be possible for me to do this and/or whether I would have the desire to do this. If the answer to either is “no,” I will typically put the name up for sale. Sure, I could keep every great name I buy, but that would make it difficult to generate revenue here and now. In the long run, knowing what to develop and what to sell is crucial, as development can cost thousands of dollars, and recouping the investment might not be possible on some domain names, depending on how it was spent.
A real world example is one my fiancee and I are discussing at the moment. Our kitchen was re-done a couple years before we bought the apartment. I don’t love the kitchen, but I don’t hate it. We asked our building’s realtor to take a look at our place and see what improvements we can do that will be beneficial when we sell in a couple of years. Long story short, she said the kitchen looks good, so there aren’t many things we can do to add any more value to the apartment. If we make changes, it will only marginally improve the value of the apartment, although it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to revamp the kitchen. The kitchen is in great condition, but a buyer might make changes to his liking, so it’s not necessary or recommended for us to do it with the purpose of adding value. Just like some domain names, a website might look nice, but a buyer will probably have his own business plan, so sometimes its better to just leave it alone and sell it as is, as any changes won’t impact the value.
With my developed names, I am planning ahead to create a steady revenue stream for 3, 5, and 10 years down the line. I will always have to adapt to changes in the Internet landscape, but because I am bullish on the .com domain market, I believe no matter what I do, my domain names will increase in value. This is why I spend time and money developing good domain names rather than spending time and money building good websites on sub-par domain names. It is critical to build websites that can adapt to changes, but it is also important to know which domain names to develop and which should just be re-sold. I am always a buyer of great domain names, but determining which I should develop is difficult.

Development Dilemma

So here I am bogged down in development. I am working on 3 development projects at the moment (all my own), not including Lowell.com, TropicalBirds.com, or my blog. I just acquired SushiRestaurants.com and Coffeehouses.com, and I think these names are best suited to be developed. My problem is that I don’t know when I am going to have the time to develop them.
For both of these names, I think a directory site should be built utilizing a database, but I don’t have the skills to manage a database at the moment. I have worked with databases before, but not related to a website. I also don’t have the time to really fully commit to developing both of these sites in addition to the sites I am currently building.
This has been the problem (albeit much, much greater) for some of the large portfolio holders. How do you develop your high value (but maybe low traffic) domain names when you are working alone? What do you do with the names you intend to develop while you are waiting to develop them?   Do you park them to earn a bit of revenue, but risk losing Google positioning?   I personally wouldn’t do the later, but what do you guys think?   What’s my best bet with these two domain names?

Mini Site Template Development Strategy

One fairly simple development strategy that I am beginning to use involves building a website template and using that for all minisites. Instead of building a brand new web template for every site, save some time and money and use a very similar template. It doesn’t have to be fancy or flashy, but as long as there is room for content that can be viewed on a variety of browsers and screen sizes, room for Google Adsense banners, and room for other advertising banners from direct-to-advertiser sales (or affiliate relationships), you should be okay.
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this for sites with a considerable amount of content or for high value domain names, as you probably want those to be more customized, but for your mini-sites that will have 5-10 pages each, I think one template should be sufficient. For those debating whether to use HTML, WordPress, or another type of tool, I am not the best person to make a recommendation. I think WordPress is easy, and I use Dreamweaver for HTML, which I learned on my own. Both are fairly straightforward and self explanatory – especially with a bit of background in HTML coding.
When it comes to the technical aspect of web development, my skill level started off at somewhere near a 1 on a scale of 10.   I am now probably around a 2.5, but I am still able to add pages to my WordPress and HTML sites easily. I’ve been told that I should use php to create my header, navigation and footer – which I probably should, but I’ve been too busy to learn. In the long run, I probably would save a ton of time by committing to a few hours now, but it’s hard to do that with so many things going on at the moment.
From experience, I can tell you that building a mini-site using strong SEO techniques will help increase traffic to a domain name/website. The more traffic that visits the site, usually the more revenue the site earns. I think if you put some time into development – but keep the time/financial commitment in line with your expectations for the site, you probably can’t go wrong. As I’ve always said, feel free to drop me a note with questions, and if I can’t answer them, I will try to put you in touch with someone who is more knowledgeable.

Adapting to the Changing Internet Landscape

Back from a short trip to the beach. I’ve been reading quite a bit on the new vanity TLDs, and the best conclusion I can come to is that nobody really knows for certain how things will play out. Neither the people who are vociferously stating that .com will always be king (myself included), nor those who are saying that new extensions will cause major sweeping changes to the Internet, really know for sure whether their opinions will be accurate.
What is for sure is that some people will take a big financial risk with these new extensions and some people will remain on the sidelines. In five years, there will be some obvious winners and there will be some obvious losers, but the answers will not be seen over night. I am eagerly observing from the sidelines for now, observing what my friends are doing, getting ready to make changes to my business model if they are necessary. Change is essential to growth, and being able to adapt to industry changes is fundamental.
The domain industry has changed quite a bit, even in the five years that I’ve been involved in the industry. The one constant thing is that the people who are able to adapt to the changes and work within the new parameters are those who are successful. While my thinking about .com may be inaccurate, I (and others) will still manage to do well if we are able to notice changes quickly, and are able to adapt to these changes rapidly. Just because I didn’t buy my first domain names in 1995 doesn’t mean that I wasn’t able to be successful. I found the industry later than many, but I learned as much as I could, took some risks and the rest is history.
It is great to see all the dialog about the new extensions on domain forums, blogs, and other news outlets. We are at a time of major change in the domain industry and in the history of the Internet. If you are reading this blog and other domain resources, it is likely that you realize how important this time is for all of us. Pay attention to the things going on in the industry, watch the industry veterans and media companies to learn about their plans, and invest wisely. You don’t have to be a trendsetter to make money, but you have to be able to adapt to the changes to avoid becoming obsolete.

Vanity TLDs (vTLD) Approved

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Much talk has been had about the new ‘top level’ domains that were approved by ICANN today in Paris. This ruling will allow companies, groups, and individuals to petition ICANN to create new “Vanity TLDs,” (term coined by David Castello) which in my opinion will end up creating considerable confusion among consumers and huge costs to companies who need to protect their trademarks. This is good news for people who have been working to pass this in an effort to launch new extensions (renewal fees), and it is also good news for .com owners, as the more extensions are created, the more consumers will navigate back to the familiar .com.

Over the past few years, many new extensions have been created – some of which I hadn’t heard of until reading up on this. Included in the list of “newer” but obviously less-used include .pro, .biz, .travel, .mobi, .asia, .jobs, .museum…etc. The entire list of current TLD can be found on ICANN’s website. In terms of usage by consumers, I don’t think there are any websites with these extensions currently in the top 20,000 websites according to Alexa (correct me if I am wrong).

With all the .com branding that’s been done by companies telling consumers to visit their .com website, I highly doubt many will jump at the opportunity to spend upwards of $100,000 to apply for a corporate Vanity TLD (vTLD), and then spend millions of dollars convincing consumers to use it. Sure, some will try it, but if nothing else, it will probably end up watering down their brand and confuse consumers.

Although ICANN is supposedly prohibiting TM-related extensions except for companies that own the TM, companies like Amazon and Apple are almost forced to spend the $100,000 application fee since one could argue that their company name is generic and not protected. Since ICANN plans to auction Vanity TLDs that have multiple bidders, Apple could conceivable pay much more to get .apple so Apple Bank or an apple grower can’t take it.

Here is an example of why using Vanity TLD will pose a problem for companies and even non-trademark related uses. Let’s use Ebay for a second. Sure, it would be cool if they had Art.Ebay, Autographs.Ebay, SportsMemorabilia.Ebay…etc. Great, right? Well, what happens when consumers confusingly type in SportsMemorabiliaEbay.com by mistake? This is going to create hundreds of thousands of additional typos, which will most certainly be grabbed by cybersquatters. While this sucks for Ebay, they are going to have to spend millions of dollars going after these cybersquatters to avoid the traffic run-off. Same thing with any other Vanity TLD. People will assume its .com.

The .com has worked for many years, and it won’t be negatively impacted. These new Vanity TLD will give people the opportunity to buy strong keywords in various extensions, but it won’t likely change web browsing habits. Companies who want to be serious will still use .com, and the values will increase as more people come online.

Affiliate Relationships on GeoWebsites

I’ve been so busy developing some of my other sites, that I haven’t had time to focus on getting advertisers for Lowell.com. My plan is to launch three more sites before I get married and go on my honeymoon (early August), and focus on getting advertisers upon my return. That said, I certainly won’t turn advertisers down, and I have been receiving inquiries for advertising space on Lowell.com and already have a paying advertiser on TropicalBirds.com.
In the meantime, I’ve established a couple of affiliate relationships to help drive revenue, and I wanted to share this idea with you. I became a LegalZoom.com affiliate, and I am offering their services on the Lowell.com Legal Services section. Additionally, I have an entire page dedicated to them on the site to attract search traffic. While it has not been optimized yet, I plan to optimize it to capitalize on the long tail search traffic once it is optimized.
While income is not guaranteed with an affiliate, the sky is the limit for earning potential. Conceivably, I will need visitors to Lowell.com to complete 2-3 transactions a month to make it worthwhile. Additionally, since I don’t have paying advertisers yet, it isn’t bumping another advertiser. In fact, I think it might encourage an advertiser to sign up, lest he lose local business to this growing Internet company.
Only time will tell to see how this plays out, but the affiliate program at LZ seems top notch, and setting this up was a breeze. In between developing some of my sites, I am going to search for similar affiliate programs for Lowell.com and eventually Burbank.com. If you happen to know of any that are great, drop me a note.

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