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Fandango Buys Movies.com from Disney

The Washington Post is reporting that Fandango recently purchased from Disney for an undisclosed sum. Fandango is a subsidiary of Comcast, a company that unsuccessfully tried to acquire Disney a few years ago. The article cites Disney’s desire to remain focused on its core brands (ABC, ESPN, and Disney) as the reason for selling Movies.com.
I understand that one needs to remain focused on its core competency, but doesn’t Disney make movies still? Doesn’t Disney have more than enough talent to be able to continue operating Movies.com without impacting its other businesses? I think this is a big buy for Comcast. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fandango become rebranded as Movies.com, giving it more of a presence in the full movie market, rather than being a movie preview and movie ticket facilitator.
While the price may be undisclosed at the moment, the purchase price may be revealed at a later date, as both Comcast and Disney are publicly traded companies, and the price for the domain name and accompanying business could have an impact on earnings, albeit minimal.

Delegates.com – High Value Domain For Sale

A friend of mine is looking to sell the domain name Delegates.com with a bargain Buy It Now price of just $18,000. This great domain name could have big election implications, and there are also many other uses for it. There are also over 28 MILLION references to “Delegates” on Google. Also, according to Aaron Wall’s Keyword Tool, there are 1,351 daily searches for the term “delegates.” If you count all the secondary terms such as “super delegates,” “delegate count,” “delegate tasks,” and more, there are thousands of daily searches.
This is a great domain name for any election season, but also has other uses.   The first person to post “sold” will get this great name at a great price.

Development Quick Tip – Revenue from Ad Sales

On the mini sites I’ve either created, am currently creating, or plan to create, Adsense is the most visible revenue generating tactic. People find my “mini” websites through various means (mostly search engines), and they click on the Google advertisements to find more information, generating revenue for me. While this is great, it will certainly take quite some time to make a decent amount of money this way.
As most developers would agree, the real revenue generation from a developed website comes from direct to advertiser ad sales. Selling advertising space takes a bit more time than just putting up your Adsense code, but that’s where the money is. When building a website, you might consider tailoring parts of it to meet the needs of potential advertisers and give more opportunity for advertising.
A quick example would be with TropicalBirds.com. I created a page to advertise bird breeders from around the country. Since the site was just launched and traffic is minimal, I decided to offer free listings by state in exchange for a reciprocal link to TropicalBirds.com on their sites. This should help boost the ranking of my site and also provide a service to visitors looking for bird breeders. I sent the following email that was individually to bird breeders I found online:

“I recently launched TropicalBirds.com, a website with information about many species of tropical birds, including parrots, macaws, conures, cuckoos, cockatiels, and many other types of birds – both domesticated and wild. In addition to discussing the proper care of pet birds featured on the site, I am also going to build a small directory of breeders. I would like to include you on the site in exchange for a link to TropicalBirds.com on your site.
If you would like a free listing and will link back to TropicalBirds.com, please send me the following information:
1) Business Name
2) Business Location (city, state)
3) Website Address
4) Types of Tropical Birds Bred
5) One sentence about your company
6) Location of link to TropicalBirds.com on your site

If you are interested, please send me the requested information as soon as you have a chance. We are still building TropicalBirds.com, and not all of our links are working yet. We anticipate a full launch by the end of this month. This is the main directory page: http://www.tropicalbirds.com/tropical-bird-breeders.html”

In addition to receiving several positive responses, I also received a request for a featured listing, which the breeder will pay $xx annually for each category. She breeds several types of birds, and she would like a breeder list by breed in addition to a list by state. I didn’t even have to solicit upgrades, yet I can make $xxx/year from this one person if I create a breed by breed listing. The cost of building this is very minimal, as it will probably take just an hour of my time to do. Once done, I can also seek out other advertisers who may wish for the same type of listing, potentially netting me $x,xxx/year, making break-even less than a few years away including acquisition and development expenses.
Point of this is to let you know that you shouldn’t have to be reliant on Adsense or affiliate advertising to make money. There are plenty of old-school businesses out there who would just as soon have a relationship with a small business than one with a big search company. If you give someone a reason to pay to upgrade, chances are good that someone will take it.

Name That Caption: Dedicated Domainer

Dedicated Domainer

Yesterday I created a contest based on the picture above, with the creator of the best caption receiving a $10 Starbucks gift card. Instead of selecting the winner on my own, I chose the top 5 for you guys to vote on today. Winner will be the caption with the most votes in the comment section. If I don’t blog next week, send out a search party (and start with Lonnie first).
Top 5 captions:
1) “Dell Laptop: $1800
Wifi Card: $149
Unlimited data plan: $49/month
Finding an outlet when your battery dies in the middle of an auction: Priceless”
2) “Can you paint a little faster? This laptop’s getting heavy.”
3) “Dear, I said leave the laptop at the hotel.”
“Look. This ride has an outlet. I can check my auction now.”
4) “Who says I have a problem–I can stop domaining anytime I want to!”
5) “There comes a time in every man’s life when he must stand up and tell his mother that he is an adult. This usually happens at around the age of 40 and in Lonnie’s case, by email.”

Contest: The Dedicated Domainer

Dedicated Domainer

The person who comes up with the best caption for this photograph (as chosen by me) wins a $10 Starbucks gift card. For those who don’t know, this dedicated domainer is none other than Lonnie Borck, who was featured here a few months ago.

Public Service Announcement

Most people I’ve met through my blog balance their domain investments with a full time job. I was in the same position when I worked at AIG for two and a half years. I would work from 9-6, come home for dinner, and get to work on the computer managing my domain business. While this may be the way to be most productive with essentially two jobs, it isn’t the best thing for your health.
A little over a year and a half ago, I was told my cholesterol was pretty high and I needed to lower it or else I would probably have to take statins in a few years. Not wanting to do that, I began to run a bit with the encouragement of my fiancee (who is a runner). I wasn’t really overweight, but losing a few pounds wasn’t going to hurt. A few weeks after this, my father had a heart attack (from which he has now thankfully recovered almost fully). This really got my ass in gear, and I began to run more consistently – even running in a few 5k and 4 mile races.
In the last year and a half, I lost about 15lbs, lowered my bad cholesterol, and raised my good cholesterol, without really altering my diet too much (although I do watch what I eat a bit more). I try to workout about 4 times per week using the elliptical machine, treadmill or running in Central Park. I was lucky because I heeded the warning signs and was hopefully able to change my habits before it became too late.
I urge those of you who are essentially working two jobs to take some time to exercise and take care of yourself. I live in Manhattan, so I walk practically everywhere, but if I was still living in New Hampshire, I probably wouldn’t. I get some great domain ideas when I am working out, and I think it’s important to be physically in shape as well as mentally.

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