Morning Folks!!
Are you a domainer or are you just pretending to be one? If you have not read Eric Borgos last blog post then you are not really a domainer. If you don't heed his words, you are not a domainer. Here is a guy who put in loads of time and sweat and got nothing in return. In fact, it likely cost him well into the 6 figures when you consider lost ppc income and time.
Minisites? DEAD! Dead! Dead!
Even full blown sites without a cash register or way to make revenue is dead.
Developing? DEAD! Develop what??
You create a business with a cash register or just keep your domain parked and stop wasting time and energy chasing a shadow that does not exist. Then try new things with a handful of domains. If it does not work for you....partner up!!
OPM baby!! Learn from OPM....OTHER PEOPLES MISTAKES!
And if you are too busy....then you are likely too busy pissing your profits away.
Eric may think 2012 was a failure for him. In fact he learned a lot and now his domains are parked, out of harms way and making money again.
I would like to invite Eric to be my guest at TRAFFIC in Las Vegas and share his entire journey with us.
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
Uzoma
I’m very happy to see your gesture towards Eric, Rick.
That is one honest fella. I have often wondered why he doesn’t flock with other birds, if they had the same feather.
Let me say it now, what Eric writes or speaks is almost gospel, so the question or the results of his experience is not unique to him, it is the”reality”. If Eric found out that there is no money to be made in domaining, then that is the universal”truth”, not just as it pertains to him. Eric owns every type of domain. He does every bit of what anybody else does. He develops some. He parks some. he sells some. Some of domains, or should I say most of his domains, were registered at least a decade ago or more, 1991, 1994, 1995, and so on, many are category killers, many are descriptive, short, keywords, popular, nasty, fun, and so on…
he is a good business man, he is successful, but above all, he is very very honest!
If TRAFFIC can get him to come to Vegas, no domainer should miss this one. This guy is a walking-talking domain laboratory, and it is no euphemism. His writings are empirical. And an open source at that.
Good luck!
UFO
There’s also the question of quality over quantity.
There has been a massive increase in quality on the net over the last 5 years. You can’t just present clip art and scraped articles anymore to draw people. You’ll never rank anywhere on the SE’s worthwhile and hardly anyone would be doing type in’s because they are just third rate domains (These do 5 or less uniques a day on my scale).
Sure, you need a cash register or some decent way of monetizing relative to the effort and cost being invested. I see a basic misunderstanding of a proper business model and a lack of execution of that business model if it did exist.
Irrespective 6 figures would have been better spent on 1 domain and 1 real business roll out. Domainers are not necessarily website developers or business people. They have all the hallmarks (especially those first on the scene) but there is always that additional ‘X’ factor required.
Dominers should keep out of business unless they are true entrepreneurs and actually have a passion for and ideally knowledge of what they are getting into. I personally don’t think there’s much to be made selling information content on the web because the distribution costs are too low and the barriers to entry likewise.
KA
What do you take from the story though? I think that’s the real question here. Many may see this and say”mini sites are dead” or this or that and will make the mistake of a lifetime. There’s money in small sites, and small sites may lead to big wins. Doesn’t happen every day nor every site but the only way to find out what works and what’s not is to do what Eric does, try day in and day out.
UFO
As a little kid I remembered the saying GIGO. It applies to web content as well. I’ve written 1 page articles that still get 20+ uniques a day every day for the cost of a domain and the article (which were ‘free’ as I wrote them).
I even did some calcs to work out if I did 1000 articles and spent say 20k would I get enough traffic and clicks to was its face over a 5 year time frame. The answer though was not really for the time cost involved in setting it all up. It would have been though if it was on topic for a product I was selling as it would have been an ideal funnel to direct at the register.
Mini sites and article ‘directories’ in my experience will only work if the traffic generated can be further worked beyond CPC into physical sales.
RD
I don’t believe that developing sites is dead. Even Eric mentioned that he is terrible at marketing his sites. So most of the failure can be blamed on that. However, if you are making a decent amount of money from parking alone then why not just leave them parked. I don’t think any of us have the time to successfully manage hundreds or thousands of websites.
If Eric has a large portfolio of category killers then he should speak to Rick. If he could lease them instead of developing\parking them then he might enjoy that model much more. With that many domain names the reward needs to justify the effort.
KA
Each is a business. Managing many domains is not managing many businesses, its one business. You can manage one business on one domain or you can manage many domains as one business, or mix it all up. Simple stuff.
Tim Shady
How is developing dead? I’m living proof that it’s not. I own several 5 figure domains that with some good copy and outsourced development have turned into cash machines. I guess you have to have the means and know SEO, so maybe I should throw out the disclaimer that I possess more tools than the average Internet junkie.
UFO
Would tend to disagree there when it comes to websites, you need to be as good as you can be when it comes to development. Most people knows that returns on websites are not linear, dividing your time on say 5 websites won’t make you as much as on 1 site with those 5 websites worth of content.
You only have to look at the exponential returns of traffic as you head on to page 1 of the serps.
You might start out with 5 bets but eventually you’ll focus on the 1 that brings home the bacon. The others you’ll keep on a lower ebb and have them as backups for future full development expansion etc.
Sure, some people have multiple successful sites, but either the domains are not absolute killers or they are hemming themselves in and/or they must just be producers of content. (Proper ecommerce is more than a full time job to develop properly).
Bako.com
I put a few Buy Now PayPal buttons on some of my sites and they do work! Cash register works good haha
Altaf
I did a few hundred mini sites and added content, link to FB, YouTube, Twitter, and many more, found nothing more than PPC income. What is the point of wasting so much time? If possible please initiate to build sites like FB where folks could play by using it as a level playing field, be it useful with physical buy/sell facilities like eBay. Tools for adding remarkable personal items as clouding content for archiving. That will increase automatic traffic for advertisers & money making machine. It is time consuming but rewarding.A lot of investments needed that only Rick or a few folks could afford.
IMO
KA
What you need is understanding of human nature. The developer focuses on building sites, the business man focuses on understanding why people buy. Who’s Eric? Who’s Rick?
:)
UFO
Building a multitude of sites is meaningless, its quality over quantity any day on the net… and this is typified via the whole approach that’s been undertaken and proven with mini sites and .whatever extensions.
Don’t forget that some of those sites are informational entertainment sites, so even if your rubbish as a business person you’d hope to be at least something as a content provider.
You want to score highly on these attributes below. In some instances absolutely nailing one of them will make up for the others, hit them all and you’ve made it..
1) Decent domains 2) Decent website 3) Decent content 4) Ability to convert actions.
Danny Welsh
This is why I love the stories like Jeff from AmericanFlags.com.
He was certainly no world-class expert on the subject when he grabbed the advantage of a category defining domain name on eBay for a few thousand dollars and decided to take a lazy industry and shake it up. But from what I can tell (and I’ve never met the man), he threw himself into the subject with passion and commitment, putting a number of other projects on the back burner to focus intensely on making this great domain into a GREATER business…
And when you’ve seen him on Fox News as the”American Flag” expert interviewed during news stories, it isn’t ONLY because AmericanFlags.com as a domain name creates the perception of expertise on the subject of”American Flags”.
But it sure helped!
Danny Welsh
JointVentures.com
Danny Welsh
In my opinion, the powerful magnet pull of potential publicity and industry recognition are two of the 7-8 most UNDEREXPLOITED benefits of category domain names that most domainers *never* see the benefit of themselves…because if anything gets developed on the domain name it’s usually not a real”highest and best use” business matching the domain name.
Exceptions like you see with an AmericanFlags.com, PalmSprings.com, Bobbleheads.com or CreditCards.com etc are the stuff legends are made of.
But why are they exceptions?
The most valuable domain names aren’t in the game at Yankee Stadium. They’re”parked” in the lot outside the stadium, selling hot dogs to passersby.
The internet of the future I believe will merge great companies that have great ideas with domains owned by about 500 people currently. These marriages will provide Harvard Case studies for a century or more in MBA classes.
Because the experience of Eric and other domain investors attempting to develop themselves often looks different when a Candy.com quality domain name ends up in the hands of a passionate end user business capable of exploiting more of that domain’s advantages than a domain investor ever could.
tommy butler
THought Erics comments were spot on as a full time developer of over 800 plus sites, the number one question that needs answered is dont build for the sake of it, build and understand your market and peoples habits, if you understand those then you will get traffic you will get sales. A good consept might be build sites get all those backlinks ect then park now I know that seems crazy and maybe thats why Eric is making more money with parking as all sites have good history. personally I prefer building out sites it takes lots hard work sleepless nights, frustration, and sometime I cant be arsed with it. personally when I look at the results what doing im still surviving still earning thats what counts. would suggest yes park some names, lease some namesyes its great to lease names been doing it for 10 years, and develop your top domains but do your market research.
UFO
Yes, the world is a very big oyster. If you’re number 1 in ‘anything’ then that ‘anything’ is a big market.
Seriously, nail something small, and I mean nail it and see all the SE ‘love’ that comes your way.
Winner takes all on the net. There’s nothing linear about it, just like winning a gold medal.
EMMA
had the founders of facebook, instagram, pinterest, tweeter, youtube read this artticle the world would not have known these fabulous ebsites
UFO
Sorry Emma, but you’d have made them a failure. What is being discussed here are businesses producing that the market already has but better.
What you are discussing is new products and services to market which as I mentioned earlier as so good on the ‘content’ side (applications etc) that they could have been put on any domain (that was half brandable) and they would have done well.
Big difference between being more efficient in the marketplace and bringing revolution to it.
EMMA
I can assure you UFO that rick has a lot of experience in domain name speculation, this is what he has been doing since 2 decades ago. He was there when this thing started. He has advantage because he owns many of the best domain names in the world. However, I can also assure you that Rick does not know much about making money on internet without being a domain speculator, because, having the advantage he has in domain speculation, Rick is automatically discouraged from thinking other ways to make money on the internet. Not only that, he even discourages others to think other ways, that is why all he writes about is domain speculation and he writes only about .com domains, because it is in .com domain extension where he has advantage. Rick will never write favorably about other domain extension or websites. That is why I said had the founders of facebook, instagram, pinterest, youtube, plentyoffish, tweet, alexa, just to name few successful websites, been reading Rick articles before they thought of trying their ideas the world would not have known these fabulous websites.
Grim
It looks like he’s taking the same approach to apps, as he has to websites. The results will very likely be the same. It’s better to focus on making a few great apps, than to make 700 mediocre ones. (If one can realistically even come close to making that many.) There is just way too much competition in the app market, and it’s going to get even more crowded as China and India ramp up their app development. People only bother with quality apps these days; a year or two from now, they will expect even higher quality, and will be tired of the ‘garbage’ apps, of which there will be way too many. Those will be totally ignored.
Everything said about apps above, can be said about websites. Anyone can make a lot of low-quality websites or apps. But customers and website visitors, (for some crazy reason!), tend to prefer high-quality when it comes to both. And that’s why only the best apps and websites make money. ‘Real money,’ anyway. Because they’re so damn rare in comparison to all the crap out there.
Eric Borgos
Yes, I totally agree. Once in a while I develop a great site on my domains, but the vast majority of time they are not”real” sites like somebody would create if that was their full-time business and they had a passion for it.
Eric Borgos
One of the few sites that has done well for me in Google in NurseryRhymes.com. I bought the domain a few years ago for around $13,000 and setup a site that although is nothing spectacular, is at least as good as any of the other top nursery rhyme sites, and somehow it gets traffic. Maybe it is just luck though.
Eric Borgos
I am working on what I hope are some great apps too, but as with websites, it is hard to predict which apps will take off.
UFO
But just maybe if they were that gullible and stupid they’d have never made it anyway.
Ok, and I’ll agree that there’s many dynamics to what constitutes a good investment. The decent .com’s are long gone.
I’d say to any newbie that they should download this rank list according to Alexa and understand why these companies rank the way they rank as it should give so pointers to what the market wants. Look at the domain names they sit on and wonder why they do as well as they do, note the number that rank highly on cctlds because it those nations it is acceptable and favourable in the SE’s etc.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/alexa-static/top-1m.csv.zip
UFO
Well, its the best in its class for that topic. The issue though is how are you converting into $.
13k is quite a bit. As a wild guess I’d say you’re doing 120k real uniques PA which just using adsense would come back at about 10% return.
Maybe you need to have a small contact details line amd see if anyone that sells baby & toddler gear wants to advertise. (Although you need to get the SEO on the links right as you’ll lose ranking otherwise – you prob already know this).
Danny Welsh
A public thanks Eric for the opportunity for JointVentures.com to represent your interests in 2013 and see if we can get a passionate and financially qualified end user business to see the value Rick and I see in one of the domain names you’re listing with us.
Danny Welsh
Eric Borgos
NurseryRhymes.com gets around 150,000 banner impressions per month. I am not sure how many uniques it gets. It has been making around $750/month, so the return is more like 70%. But, this only happens to maybe 1 out of 100 sites I launch, and also by the time later this year it makes back the $13,000 I paid for the domain, Google might change the rankings and the income could go way down.