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.

A few days ago I acquired a great product-related domain name using Sedo. I saw the name at a good price, and I bought it after doing some due diligence, including a Whois History search and a quick search of the USPTO database. All of this came back without any problems, so I bought the name. As I’ve mentioned, I have been selling some domain names lately to pay off the cost of the Burbank.com acquisition, so I emailed a few clients and acquaintances offering this name for a good price.
Several hours after I sent the email, one of my acquaintances emailed me back with a listing from the USPTO. Unfortunately when I was searching for “this product” in the USPTO database, there were no listings; however, a search of “thisproduct” as a single word would have yielded the result. The product is similar to “Band Aids” in that other products in this category are often called “this product,” although it is less common than Band Aids, and the product has only been around for 5-6 years – about the same time as the industry. I emailed the original owner of the domain name (since 2003) and he told me