2011 New Years Resolutions & Goals

The new year is coming, and I want to share some of the goals I’ve set for myself and for my company. Perhaps seeing some of the goals I set for my business can help you with your own goal setting.

– Grow the traffic and advertiser base on DogGroomers.com. Establish new partnerships with dog grooming franchises, similar to DogWalker.com. Inform dog groomers about the site and let them know about local advertising opportunities.

– Ensure that DogWalker.com renewals remain steady, and continue to promote the site to small businesses in underserved markets. Having at least one dog walker listing in every market is good for advertisers and visitors.

– Seek out advertisers for Newburyport.com and Lowell.com. Should advertising revenue remain low (under $1,000/month), look to sell these geodomain names and reinvest in category defining profession domain names that can be turned into directory websites like DogWalker.com, which has produced significant revenue.

– Build a website on BikeTour.com, in similar fashion to TropicalBirds.com (considerable content). Focus on the top 20 annual bike tours (like the 5 Boro Bike Tour) and 10 most popular city bike tours (like Paris and Amsterdam bike tours). Monetize with affiliate revenue, lead generation, and Adsense.

– Continue to add information to Bahamas.CO and integrate a travel affiliate API on the site to enable vacation bookings.

– Promote DomainQuestions.com within the domain community and to domain owners who have questions about their domain names or buying/selling domain names.

– Maintain steady domain acquisitions and sales revenue stream.

– Have fun and take extra time to enjoy life. Work on work/life balance. Try not to work everywhere I go – even when I am on “vacati

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

22 COMMENTS

  1. Elliot,

    Here’s the best financial and/or business advice anyone has ever given you:

    Sell all of your domains except for Burbank.com. Then, relocate to Burbank and grow that site into a $10m business. Tremendous potential with that domain.

    – TBC

  2. @ TBC

    I won’t get into the business aspect of your suggestion, but I am an east coast guy and that’s not happening. I don’t need a $10m business… happy the way things are right now 🙂 I just need to optimize things.

  3. Elliot,

    I’ve been searching high and low for the perfect SoCal-oriented name for a clothing line we’re planning to launch in 2012 (imports from Asia). I was looking for a one-word domain that would immediately invoke an image of fun, sunny, Southern California.

    On a whim, after reading this post again, I checked something and couldn’t believe my eyes:

    Hand-reg’d Burbank.CC today: “Burbank Clothing Company”!

    Scroll to the bottom of my page to see the logo…whimsical, laid-back look and feel.

    Thanks for the inspiration brother.

    – TBC

  4. Thanks for sharing! It is always good to share goals and plans with like minded individuals/businesses!

    I plan on optimizing revenue stream on some of my generic gTLD and ccTLDs as well – first with Adsense and CJ but later into the year with pay per lead and ad sales as well.

    With parking revenue hitting an all time low, because of the changes Google has implemented, I am also planning on optimizing existing revenue streams as well as creating new ones – including going back into the workforce!

    Those of us with Entreprenuerial Mindsets always find a way to survive but the key, so it seems, is to concentrate on one big (big potential) project as a time. This, to me, has always seemed next to impossible since I have so many “big potential” projects on the table.

    I am starting to believe that the extremely successful Entrepreneurs, though, find a sort of compromise though. For example, maybe they put 75% of their effort one good project without completely abandoning all their other potential projects and of course combining this with taking time “to smell the roses”.

    I think I will finally give something similar to this a try in 2011 and suggest others, who havent already done so, try it as well!

    Here’s to a professionally successful and personally fullfilling New Year and beyond!

  5. What, that’s it??!

    I thought that list would be a little longer. You should see mine 😉

    All the best in 2011 to you Elliot and everybody who is focused on “development” one way or another and got their mind right.

    Cheers!

  6. Elliot,
    Maybe a topic for a future blog, but when i thought about goals for next year, I thought about 50 domain names that all need work, geo sites, subscription sites, possible blog sites and realized that I have so much work to do, i do very little of it. When you have many names with potential, its very difficult to focus. Which one might be successful?

  7. @ Ron

    I try to only focus on the names I think have the best chance to be successful websites. I don’t want to spend more money on developing a domain name than the actual name is worth. Time is valuable, and I am only going to develop names I think will either make the most money developed or will increase the most in value to a potential end user.

  8. Nice article Elliot. Thanks for sharing.

    Hey “The Big Cheese”

    Regarding a ‘Clothing Line’ related domain:

    I am willing to sell PartyClothing.com but only for serious money if interested.

    Thanks.

  9. Its nice to share goals. I always love to read them and share mine.
    I have either parked or developed my domains into mini sites. But now i am planning to work on ‘Brand Building’ strategy. So, 2011 is going to be a ‘Brand Building’ year for me. In 2011 i am also going to focus on geo domain market. A big Cheers for 2011!

  10. Nice list Elliot. I’ve made a list on my blog also and am looking forward to checking back regularly and ticking them off. Some are daily type ones while others are things that can be achieved and forgot about. I wish you all the best for 2011 and hope it’s super prosperous for you.

  11. @RKB,

    Not interested in partyclothing.com. Myself and two partners are going to start a clothing line for men & women, using Asian/Indian suppliers. The marketing approach will be highlighting a laid back, SoCal feel. Through industry contacts from one of my partners, we’ll have an initial foothold into one midsized, midwest retailers. Both partners loved the name “Burbank” when I told them.

    Who knows, maybe we’ll do well enough with this venture to eventually buy Burbank.com 🙂

    2011 is the year of planning for the clothing biz, hope to have product on shelves in 2012 – depends on a number of factors that I won’t go into here.

    I wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2012.

    – TBC

  12. To clarify; our approach will be an affordable version of Tommy Bahama, yet with good, stylish quality obvious in everything we sell. Success is guaranteed with the right product sourcing and marketing approach.

    Rock on,

    TBC

  13. Happy 2011, everyone. I like Elliot’s point about optimizing everything. My problem is essentially getting bogged down with the development phase, or rather, just not moving forward at all. The first thing I need to do this month is launch the redesign of my company site – graphics are completed, data entry is not.

    After that, the next projects will be a wedding-related site, which should be a no-brainer for me because of my contacts in that field. But it’s something I could see mushrooming out of control very quickly if it’s not organized well. I’m going to be looking into directory designs that allow you to accept payments, much like DogWalker.com.

  14. The more things you have on your to-do list for 2011, the fewer of them you will do very well or even get to over the year.

    I say winnow the list of things to do down even further to FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS on only one or two of them for the entire year. You’ll get better results because you’ll be less distracted by the noise of all the other things on the list and all the other things that others may be doing.

    Above all, STOP ‘DOMAINING’!!!

    Use a great domain to enter the industry it represents and then forget about ‘domaining’. Start thinking about owning that industry by growing the revenues in the business built on that domain.

    Think of it this way: a domain name is merely a means to an end, an entree into a bigger, more lucrative industry than the dying ‘domaining industry’.

    The days of park and click are over. Sure, you could remain a trader, merely flipping domain names for profits, but selling a great domain means you no longer own the golden goose that could have laid you golden eggs if only you’d have built a money-making, cash-flowing business on that great domain name.

    The plan is simple:

    1. Find an industry you are passionate about.
    2. Sell all of your domain names for cash to a bunch of other “domainers” and let them get stuck with the recurring annual fees.
    3. Use the cash to buy the one, single best domain name for the industry you are a passionate about, even if you have to do it with partners/investors.
    4. Build your dream business in your dream industry and make millions over the long-run from the free cash flows of the business (not by selling the business).
    5. Do it again, but only after you are cash flow positive on your first business.

    Make 2011 the year that you will follow this simple — but not easy — plan! It’ll be worth it.

  15. I am a partner in a successful dance fashions business, I assure anyone entering what is a highly risky area that you will need plenty of upfront cash to buy into online fashions. To get one product line ‘on the shelf’ you or your financial backers will need to purchase at least 2 of each size, and each color, thats just 2 modifiers and you are looking at dozens of items TO GET ONE THING ON THE SHELF. A $10 shirt in just 3 colors will cost you $600 to stock. Throw in collar measurement adjustments and your looking at some $3000 outlay, just to realistically stock ONE $10 SHIRT.
    You will also need to remember that people like to return their stuff, if you want happy customers you have to acquiesce to their whims, after all they can try stuff on at walmart for half the price without fuss.
    When people go shopping, they like to see hundreds of things they dont want – and choose from them something they do. Its a bit weird but human nature nonetheless – if just the thing they were looking for was for sale then they would have left the site straightaway because that would be *weird*. That is why you need to cover the whole bunch of lines, designs, sizes etc
    Furthermore, most lines you will find oh no, youve sold a few, and now its out of fashion. doh. *Occasionally* you get lucky and some of your lines takes off, but trust me on this – dozens of copy sites will spring up within days and dilute your trade. Also, quite often by the time you realise you need to buy more of that something, because it is popular, the suppliers have sold out. Buying more upfront only serves to massively increase your initial outlay while doing nothing to improve your capital risk. Of course you can bypass all the physicals and put affiliate links on there, but then you may as well use a search term keyword domain for that, noone who googles ‘burbank’ is looking to buy a new shirt. Good luck with it anyway 🙂

  16. TBC “On a whim, after reading this post again, I checked something and couldn’t believe my eyes:

    Hand-reg’d Burbank.CC today: “Burbank Clothing Company”!”

    > on a whim, I checked something and couldnt believe my eyes. burbankcc.com , burbankclothingco.com , burbankclothingcompany.com are all available for hand reg.
    *noone* is ever going to be able to run ‘burbank clothing company’ on burbank.cc without also owning those .com;s. How many people agree ??

    @RKB – If you had good stats on partyclothing.com I might be interested in advertising on there. I notice you have the epik zero PR/non index curse so presumably you have huge type in traffic to warrant the ‘serious money’ sales pitch?

  17. @LindaM,

    Our primary sales channel will be brick-and-mortar retail; the domain (Burbank.CC) will just be there for a company page with product availability for those who are seeking it out online. Sure, we’ll have an online push eventually, but only after initial and subsequent retail efforts are successful. The dot-com’s you mentioned are far too long-tailed for our interests.

    I spent more than $600 on domains in the last week.

    – TBC

  18. Elliot,

    Noticed that you’ve got a lot of pages with links and no content like this:

    http://www.dogwalker.com/minnesota/

    Google thinks pages like that are spammy because they’re full of links.

    If you added 200 words of relevant content, google would rank the pages and you’d get even more visitors!

    You should also nofollow all links to non-themed content like: about us, contact us, register, your footer, your links to flikr etc etc. You’re just bleeding PR and reducing relevancy of your content. ie. your site is not about flikr, about us, contact us, disclaimers, terms etc – it’s about dog walking. 😉

    – Richard.

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