Today I am listing Crooning.com for just a bargain basement price of $975. With some recent American Idol crooners doing well, this could be a great domain name for a website about the art of crooning – which is defined as singing popular songs in a soft, sentimental manner. I am not personally a fan of this type of singing, but based on the last two American Idol series, there are many people who dig it.
The first person to respond, will get this great domain name.
Deal of the Day – Crooning.com
Castello Brothers' Interview
I was away for much of the weekend, so I didn’t have a chance to listen to Ed’s interview with David and Michael Castello until today. The Castellos are two of the smartest guys in the industry, and this is a great interview. As I’ve mentioned many times, David and Michael gave me tons of great advice along the way to developing Lowell.com, and I am grateful to them for their contributions.
I recommend that you take some time to listen to the interview when you have a chance.
Domain Auction Marketing
Name Intelligence’s DomainTools has something like half a million registered users, and the company blog has an Alexa ranking much greater than any other industry blog, so I applaud Jay Westerdal for the marketing effort he is putting forth for the upcoming Domain Roundtable conference auction. While many industry auctions seem to rely on emails and press releases announcing the domain names that will be auctioned, Jay has been writing up mini-reviews for some of the better names that are due to be auctioned in a little over a week. As we get closer to the auction, I anticipate seeing more auction names released.
While the ideal marketing effort would be to distribute informational kits about each domain name to potential end-users, I think Jay’s effort goes above and beyond what other auction houses do (he may already be marketing to end users behind the scenes for all I know). With auction commissions reaching up to 20% per sold name, you would think auction houses would really be marketing the domain names in auction to get the best prices for each name. I think this is a great step.
Since end-user businesses should be able to justify spending the most for a domain name, they would be the most likely target. I look forward to the day that domain auction houses market certain generic domain names to the potential end user audience. Educating end users on why they should purchase a generic domain name to support their marketing and branding efforts will be the key to fully unlocking the true value of generic category killer domain names.
If you still haven’t signed up to attend the Domain Roundtable conference, you still have a few days to do so. If you vote in the Name Intelligence User Choice Awards, you will be given a coupon to save $50 off the registration fee. Although it says the voting ends 4/11, it doesn’t look like it has been disabled yet, so you might want to check it out ASAP.
The Evolution of My Business
I want to clear up a couple of misconceptions that I’ve seen pointed to me and my blog recently. The purpose of my blog is to give an inside view of what I am doing with my domain names and how I am generating revenue or trying to generate revenue. Some of what I am doing will make me money while some of what I am doing will end with me spinning my wheels. This is my first experience with starting a business, and it has been an evolving process. I enjoy chatting about the domain industry, and I am happy to share an inside view of my business model and plans.
I have been buying and selling domain names for a few years, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work on my business full time. As my life and business progresses, I have to make certain business decisions to put me in a strong financial position for years to come. I see buying and selling domain names as a great opportunity (and one I have been successful at for a little while), but I also see it becoming more difficult. As a result, I have started to develop a few of my better domain names using various strategies I have been happy to share (mini-sites, affiliate websites, full businesses…etc).
While I don’t think development is for everyone nor is it for every domain name, I do see it as a way to grow constant revenue streams. While domain parking can be a source of passive income if your domain names get type-in traffic, I haven’t been fortunate enough to own many great domain names that generate a ton of PPC revenue – enough that I wouldn’t sell. Since I have dedicated 100% of my energy to growing my business, I am focusing more on development. I have the time, I have the resources and I have the energy to create businesses around logical domain names – starting with Lowell.com.
As I said, I do not think development is for everyone nor is it for every domain name. It takes an extraordinary amount of time to develop a domain name, it’s expensive, and it may be unproven. While I have slowly begun to reap the rewards of development – 12 hotel reservations on Salinas.com last month and some revenue from the job board, I have a long way to go to be profitable. Fortunately, I am able to leverage some of my domain name assets to buy other names for development down the road, including Burbank.com.
I read somewhere that I am selling all my domain assets to focus on development. This is entirely inaccurate. I have always bought and sold domain names, but with the expense of Burbank.com (I bought it from a person who had a functioning newspaper and didn’t have it for sale), I had been selling more rapidly lately – although that is slowing down. I have also been buying domain names even as I am selling. Some of the names are for development (Oenophiles.com) and some are for sale (Metabolizers.com and UnemploymentLine.com).
I still believe the domain market is soft due to worldwide economic conditions, but I am bullish on the domain industry for the long term. In order to sustain my business, I have decided to build businesses around some of my domain names, which I highlighted in my post about the perfect portfolio for me. As the industry evolves, I am evolving as well, and I am happy to share my plans as they evolve.
Two Important UDRP Decisions
Domain Name Wire is reporting on two important UDRP decisions that were announced in the past two days. Shoppers.com and Ace.com were both retained by the current owners after large companies filed a complaint for each of these (clearly) generic domain names. It’s great to see good UDRP decisions go in favor of a generic domain owner.
Shame on the legal eagles who thought they could take possession of these two domain names simply because they had a mark for each of these terms. Hopefully other law firms will read up on these decisions before filing a UDRP for a generic domain name.
Deal of the Day – Saxophonists.com
Another day, another good deal. Today I am selling Saxophonists.com has sold. There are 271,000 Google listings for the term “saxophonists.” One cool idea would be to build a website/blog with profiles of famous saxophonists like Bird, Coltrane, and Michael Brecker (who I saw live). To monetize the website, you can add mini Amazon.com shops/widgets with cds from these artists in addition to Adsense banners.
Come to think of it, if the name isn’t sold by the end of business today, that’s what I will do with it! The name is registered at Moniker, and my blog is the only place I will list it for sale.