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City in a Box Opportunity

Elliot Silver
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30

I wanted to share an email I received from my friend Fred Mercaldo, one of the most respected geodomain developers whose company owns Scottsdale.com. Fred’s company introduced a new offering for other domain investors who own city/regional .com domain names. If I hadn’t developed Burbank.com and Lowell.com on my own already, I would not hesitate to turn to Fred and his expert team. If you have an undeveloped geodomain name – or if you have an underdeveloped geodomain name, you might consider reaching out to Fred about this opportunity.

Scottsdale.com has grown to include 4 additional geodomains in the Arizona market.   In building these sites, we have developed a platform and system that Becky and I realized could be used for other geodomains, and have now formally begun to market the software as “City In A Box”.

We are big believers that geodomains be developed and not parked, and there are still many cities and state names that could benefit from our services.   To see the actual site, visit www.mesa.com and www.sausalito.com.   The package includes a complete, ready to monetize website, with a comprehensive Content Management System, customizable Channel and Directory categories, fully functioning Event Calendar, Stories, Articles, Press releases; easy admin area for all banner ads; ability to have visitors create user accounts, stat tracking ability for all advertisers or anything listed on the site, so reports for advertisers are easy; blogs, and full Optimization Elements.

This is not a typical template system or mini site; this is the result of many years of trial and error in the building and marketing of Scottsdale.com, and if I had the ability to purchase this package years ago, I would have saved literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.   We are presently developing 4 other cities, and have the ability to build out 8-10 more this year.   The total price for everything is $12,500, and for a yearly fee of $2,500 we will provide all upgrades and updates in the future.

Additional information, including a spec sheet can be obtained from Fred@scottsdale.com or Becky@scottsdale.com.

Treat Your Advertisers Well

Elliot Silver
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11

BurbankWhen I first launched Burbank.com and Lowell.com, I had 4 banner spots available to advertisers rotating on the bottom right hand side of nearly every page. There were between 8-12 banners in total, so each banner didn’t get a ton of impressions. I was able to sign on one great advertiser on Burbank.com a few months after launch, and I was psyched.

A few months in to their commitment, the advertiser told me they weren’t going to continue to advertise on the site. The first person I called was David Castello to ask him how I should respond. I expected a great rebuttal which would secure the advertiser for another six months, but I was wrong. David’s reply was something like, “wait, you’re offering rotating banners on the bottom right of your site and you’re surprised the advertiser isn’t going to renew? Treat them well and they’ll never leave. You need to give them better placement on the site.”

Well, I made a big change a few months ago, adding a row of six advertisements to the top of the home page, just below the banner, and the response has been terrific. The advertiser informed me that her company will continue to advertise, and I just signed another advertiser on Lowell.com for advertisements in several sections on the site. In addition, I’ve had many more advertising inquiries of late and I am close to signing a nice advertising deal on Lowell.com within the next couple of weeks.

Traffic continues to rise for both of my primary geographic domain names, and advertisers are getting even more value. I am treating them well and allowing them to advertise locally in a cost-effective way. It’s a win/win for all parties. Just like I do on my blog and now on my geodomain names, if you give your advertisers the best placement, they will continue to advertise and support your efforts.

As an aside, the chart below is something I am very proud of because it’s been a lot of work. The publicly reported traffic numbers for Burbank.com are several thousand visitors less than my statistics are showing (perhaps because they don’t record type-in visitors), but you get the idea. Every month I work hard to beat the prior month, and it’s beginning to pay off!

Stats

Free BuyDomains Webinar on Thursday

Elliot Silver
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0

BuyDomains LogoBuyDomains is hosting another installment of their free webinar series on Thursday, July 16th.

The topic of this webinar is “How You can Earn Money as a BuyDomains Referral Program Member”.

The BuyDomains Referral Program has gotten off to a terrific start.   Just recently, one of its members earned $1,700 for a referral that resulted in the sale of A6.com for $34,000. You can easily integrate the referral program on your website, blog, forum signature, Twitter account…etc. I am sure they will cover this and more at the webinar.

Those wishing to attend can easily register online. I’ll be there – will you?

Can You Scale Your Business Model?

Elliot Silver
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17

ScaleWhen I was at AIG, one of the most frequent questions, aside from “what’s the projected ROI on that program?” was “can you scale the program?” If we could do a small test that was successful, it would only be great if we could scale up and have the same success on a greater level. It just wasn’t worth the time and effort doing a particular program if the potential revenue was limited.

I’ve asked the same question about my domain investments, and that is why I have chosen to focus on development. While domain sales is still fairly lucrative, I don’t think it is still considerably scalable to a degree where it will drive constant growing revenue at a multiple of what it is now. I still believe I can do what I do to generate revenue for the foreseeable future, but I don’t think it’s feasible to greatly scale this business model at this point in time.

With domain development, I believe I can scale. On Burbank.com, Lowell.com and Newburyport.com, I can either keep them as tourism-heavy websites with information about the city, or I can follow Shaun Pilfold’s model on Kelowna.com and become the source of information for my respective cities. Yes, it costs money to scale and I am not ready to make the financial and time commitment yet with my sites, but it is possible to scale in that manner.

Likewise, my mini site building strategy is also scalable. Perhaps it’s not easily scalable if I continue to build them on my own because of the time constraints, but there are great development companies that focus on mini site-type websites like AEIOU.com, WannaDevelop.com, and MiniSites.com that offer a variety of services. Building mini sites is scalable, and the more you build, the better the deals you can make with all of the mini site and development companies.

A couple of dollars a day per mini site doesn’t generate a lot of revenue if I were to look at each site individually, but if I have 100 mini sites that make $2.00 a day, that’s over $50k per year, with very little maintenance. Some websites will make less than $2.00 and some will make significantly more, but you get the picture. If you build websites on strong keyword domain names, you are generally going to drive revenue while adding value to your domain names.

The point of this is that you need to determine if what you are doing is scalable and sustainable. Experiment with different things like I am doing and make sure you can scale if it works.

Lots of Domain Buyers

Elliot Silver
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6

I know what Ron’s numbers are telling him (and us), and I know that many domain investors at all levels are publicly and privately saying that there aren’t many buyers (on the investment side) out there right now. However, I think there are still plenty of buyers out there, but it just takes extra effort to find them these days, and your pricing has to be reasonable.

Here are a two suggestions on how to find buyers right now:

Contact some of the new owners of domain names that recently sold (listed on DNJournal) if you have similar domain names. Distinguish between end users who bought a name because it matched their corporate branding from those who were buying to enhance their company’s online presence, and from those who are investing in domain names. Each type of buyer has different needs, and you need to be able to tell what their needs are before you contact them, otherwise they will simply delete your email.

Follow along with what is selling at the auction houses – even the inexpensive purchases – and contact those buyers as well. Send them similar names that you own and price your names reasonably. Remember, if you are contacting them with names that you’d like to sell, you should name your price upfront. You might make less profit per domain name this way, but if you sell a small portfolio of names, you will increase your profits, despite a tighter profit margin.

I have been finding that there are less buyers in the $10-100k range right now unless you are giving really great prices on your domain names. However, it seems that people are still buying less expensive domain names, which can still be highly profitable. Buy smart and sell smart.

On a side note, I plan to discuss my experience with Snapnames outlined in my post, “Make a 1,000% Profit.” I am leaning towards keeping it in the newsletter, so sign up if you’re interested. (If you think the weekly/bi-weekly newsletter sucks, it’s easy to unsubscribe since I use Constant Contact). The results I have have been very strong, but I won’t write my summary until the funds have been wired.

Vince Shlomi’s Slap Chop Remix by DJ Steve Porter

Elliot Silver
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6

As many people know, I went to grad school for direct marketing (NYU), and I enjoy a great infomercial more than most. Ron Popeil and Billy Mays were people I looked up to in graduate school, and I think Vince Shlomi is over the top but a good sales guy. I want to share a video I just saw, which is a re-mix of Shlomi’s Slap Chop infomercial.

This remix, dubbed “Rap Chop,” was created by DJ Steve Porter. I think you’re going to have a laugh. Rumor has it that the remix is going on the air tonight as a real television commercial… nice!

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