Josh Metnick: How Should Illinois.com Be Used?

Josh Metnick is an Internet entrepreneur who sold Chicago.com to the Chicago Sun-Times for an undisclosed figure. Yesterday, Josh posted a tweet with a link to a Quora page he created soliciting opinions on what to put on Illinois.com, a domain name his company owns.

At the moment, Illinois.com hosts a simple landing page announcing that “Something incredible is coming soon,” although it seems like what is coming has yet to be determined.

I think the three primary uses that make the most sense would be for news, travel, or a local directory. Having said that, creating a relevant news publication is costly and time consuming. Creating a travel portal may be difficult because of the competition from the large national websites like Orbitz and Hotels.com. Finally, I have found that getting traction with a local directory is difficult. I suppose this is a big reason for why Josh is soliciting outside feedback.

I took a look at all 50 state .com domain names to see what they have on them, and here’s what I found:

  • Alabama.com – Directory
  • Alaska.com – Coming soon
  • Arizona.com – Directory
  • Arkansas.com – Travel website used by Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism
  • California.com – Directory
  • Colorado.com – Travel website used by Colorado Tourism Office
  • Connecticut.com – Directory
  • Delaware.com – Parked
  • Florida.com – Travel website
  • Georgia.com – Real estate website coming soon
  • Hawaii.com – Travel website
  • Idaho.com – Not resolving
  • Illinois.com – Coming soon
  • Indiana.com – Logo on home page
  • Iowa.com – Forwards to local news website
  • Kansas.com – Used by local news website
  • Kentucky.com – Used by local news website
  • Louisiana.com – Forwards to directory
  • Maine.com – Local website
  • Maryland.com – Travel website
  • Massachusetts.com – Parked and for sale
  • Michigan.com – Media and marketing company
  • Minnesota.com – Directory
  • Mississippi.com – Tourism website / directory
  • Missouri.com – Real estate website
  • Montana.com – Tourism website / directory
  • Nebraska.com – Directory
  • Nevada.com – Forwards to auction website
  • NewHampshire.com – Tourism website owned by local newspaper
  • NewJersey.com – Forwards to Aftermarket.com
  • NewMexico.com – Forwards to Internet company
  • NewYork.com – Tourism website
  • NorthCarolina.com – Directory
  • NorthDakota.com – Directory
  • Ohio.com – News website owned by local newspaper
  • Oklahoma.com – Parked
  • Oregon.com – Tourism website
  • Pennsylvania.com – Directory
  • RhodeIsland.com – Forwards to local newspaper website
  • SouthCarolina.com – Tourism website
  • SouthDakota.com – Tourism website
  • Tennessee.com – Directory
  • Texas.com – Directory
  • Utah.com – Tourism website
  • Vermont.com – Tourism website
  • Virginia.cm – Directory
  • Washington.com – Parked and for sale
  • WestVirginia.com – Owned by broadband company; has separate tourism website
  • Wisconsin.com – Directory
  • Wyoming.com – Email login page
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
  1. Elliot, (or anyone) do you know if there has been any disclosed prices on any sales of state domain names in the past few years?

  2. Awesome Update man thats cool that you did every state. That is what I did for Massachusetts back in the late 90’s. I would go to the Lowell, MA Library near city hall. I have the original photo copies from the ATLAS that I used to take pictures and the atlas listed the populations and another book gave the median home values for residential another one for land business and government church values etc but mostly went through every municipality in Massachusetts looking at the most median home value first then saw if those were available and near by Nashua, NH. Nashua Paper company had the nashua dot com so i had to grab nashua dot net and | org they sucked compared to .com’s i forget but do have old date to get the answer though. I forget which was better the .net or .org. I would be registering these during any break between classes at Middlesex Community College (i am the first person to ever get kicked out of MCC for being accused of hacking into the computers and changing my grades and changed EVERY COMPUTER THROUGHOUT MCC LOWELL AND MAYBE EVEN BURLINGTON TO DRACUT.COM AND A BUNCH OF OTHER DOMAINS I HAD I denied it some girl said she did it she did it to take heat off me and knew they wouldn’t go after her so ask about the rest if you want it was front page in the Lowell Sun July 1997 I think it was also simultaneously in that Dracut, MA publication the Dracut Dispatch now called the Dispatch News. The Merrimack Journal didn’t do a story on that because the late Tony Ziagos Tony Z said his paper was a monthly whatever that meant but he and I did a deal where he gave me space in the paper $200 credit per month in exchange for an ad and link from Dracut.com (CIS) and Tyngsboro.com (CIS). We also split the money from businesses being listed in our new INTERNET DIRECTORY that got exposure on both sites and his paper. Insertion Orders they are called. He died and there was no hand off to a party to let us go forward everything sucks right now. I need money to purchase his newspaper. I allowed him to be online by letting my registration of DracutDispatch and MerrimackJournal.com to become available and he went from JournalMagazine.com to MerrimackJournal.com we signed papers and made bank. I didn’t expect him to die but he did. We operated mostly all cash or a barter on paper so there was minimal paperwork we didn’t even have a contract we just made cash money and did a great service for the communities getting his print based people online and some onliners to try out his Monthly Newspaper that were pretty much just advertising in the Lowell Sun.

    It feels good being back. All those domains that people are not doing anything with… hmmm. idea time… ok

    so the ones that are developed they will most likely stay developed. INSURANCE POLICY OPTION

    so the ones that are just a waste of (y)our time looking at them and realizing its nothing and your like Wtf. HERE IS A WTF EXAMPLE AS OF TODAY 10/5/15 go to www | wwf | com. Remember the battle between the now WWE and the WWF that everyone knows come on check this out wwe gets the wwf dot com from the company that should have it, … right. anyway so wwe gets the wwf site then some retard forgets to pay the bill or something else that makes when you type in wwf dotcom you see one of those bull shit pages that your like wtf. am i wrong? no. You literally just thought what the fcuk. blah ok back to idea. so take all the ones not developed and thats your market you need to get all these people together in a way that you just control them. But you want to charge them and then share in any upside but owners want to throw money at a dream for someone to take their baby and get it all grown up. We buy food drugs stocks tickets we have money for building our dreams.

    INSURANCE POLICY make a policy that insures that you never lose your domain name. Most people will just pay there yearly renewal fee one year maybe 3 but less then 10. All you do is charge them to guarantee them that your domain will remain registered with no worry of the registration lapsing. Also you could cover their files (if you hosted them hahahahha) so insure and guarantee everything. The people would instead of paying their $8-$35 yearly registration fee whatever it is now. My special VIP price at Internic / NetSol is $7.98 i believe its between $7-$9 something.

    HEY DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THE DAY INTERNIC SCREWED UP?????? VERY SERIOUSLY????? OK SO I HAD REGISTERED A CERTAIN NUMBER (ASK FOR THE NUMBER) OF DOMAINS WHICH BY ANY ACCOUNT WOULD QUALIFY AS A LOT SO ONE DAY AFTER REGISTERING A FEW HUNDRED I THINK I ONLY DID ABOUT 300 THAT DAY FROM WHEN I WOKE UP SMOKED AND JUST STARTED RUNNING CODE LISTENING TO THE STOCK MARKET I THINK WHEN I STARTED DOING THE OLD SCHOOL REGISTER TIE UP AND GET THEM PUT ON HOLD FOR A MONTH OR TWO AND GETTING POSSIBLE EXTENSIONS THAT WAS $50 PER YEAR WITH EACH ONE BEING $100 THEY WOULD MAIL YOU. YOU WOULD HAVE TO think of a Organization name like it was a requirement i think or optional whatever so thats where i created the (CIS) brand standing for Commonwealth Internet Services (CIS) and since i had Dracut.org (CIS) and Dracut.net (CIS) and Somerville.Com (CIS) Somerville.org (CIS) Somerville.net (CIS) RollerBlading.com (CIS) FoxWood.com (CIS) I needed to creat a parent company so CBNO is the main top Apex of all this. CBNO stands for Center For Business & Not For Profit organization’s this was created under Massachusettts State Law. … anyway yeah so does anyone remember when Internic screwed up? I mean this. One day by going to my PO BOX I got mad checks from Internic or Verisign or NetSol it was a long time ago. I had an insane amount of registered domains and had paid a lot of my own personal money and money of a lot of people around me that did not get the internet and were slow to adopt and see the future. They said I was ahead of my time. They were / are just behind (of) time. People think I know more than I do in fact know intimately.

    I have been securing Our Rights as domainers as exemplefied in the United Nations Case Geneva Switzerland WIPO Case D2000-0427 where I had the 428th ever in the history of the world their was only one case in 1999 and 427 in year 2000 so I had the 428th case as confirmed by the World Intellectual Property Organization within the last 6 hours via email. I was then forced to uphold these and other rights when Foxwoods Resort Casino Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation (MPTN) sued me in federal court Brideport, CT 3:02-cv-1828 (JCH) appealed to 2nd Circuit NYC then US Supreme Court. Janet C. Hall Lied in here Memorandum of Decision where the (Dis)Honorable Judge used Fraudulent evidence of my ownership of HAVERHILL.COM to guide her decision in me temporarily losing the CUTPA and ACPA charge (Connecticut Unfair Trade Practice Act Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act) which was bs. I mean there was a lot in that case that was wrong and still going on actually for example since were are not done and they were ordered to pay me money and they have paid some but not all the domain FoxWood.com (CIS) is not allowed to resolve. If you ever find it working call me 718x290x5689 because can’t get into everything due to NDA’s and crazy federal documents that prohibit certain disclosures but i can say that they the tribe offerd 8 million on a $20 million ask where and I have copies of all this and its official exhibits FoxWood.com (CIS) was to sell to the tribe for $8,000,000 of which i was getting 4 mill and the other money was to be divided among tribal counsel elders to vote for the purchase at an upcoming tribal meeting. They were skimming money off certain allocation funds to cover the $8 million but were backending $4 million to get the vote to pass. I have copies of all this its nuts.

    Elliot i hope you get this up soon thanks man. And Bob told me you and I should speak. He is the registrant of LowellMA dot com and I actually sold that to him back pre 2001 he did a deal with CitiesUnlimited and now the site is with MassCities dotcom do you know that team?

    I’m opening a differend kind of site in about a month.

    RRRRJ

    I have and want to get into bed with a woman that is smart and knows how to ramp development and monetization of geo domains and other domains. Need to do something with Dracut.com (CIS) Tyngsboro.com (CIS) RollerBlading.com (CIS) CigarettesAndWeed.com to name a few. I once owned / registered close to 50 massachusetts city town domains and moved onto state capitals like Montpelier some were .com .org .net we even got .mil and .edu back in 97 crazy shit. i like Flow from progressive SPRINKLES ARE FOR WINNERS. Peace on readers. Hey if you read this please leave a comment so Mr. Silver sees some usage. Nothing is free thats worth it there is a cost in everything. People need to start checking out investing in India I sold out of Chinese Casinos Macau and the Philippines and Cambodia and sold out of the US Marijuana market also. Looking at Bitcoin mining rigs and putting together another great case to be filed before my next birthday within the next couple months so HERE WE GO IM BACK but have got shit done since ive been away i went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology Class of 2000 MIT 50K eSloan School of Ebusiness Management under Ken Morse. Sickest establishment of higher learning. I had to go to MIT because in between MCC i went to and got expelled from UMass Lowell for well ask and ill give an update but show interest if you want to know more. Google Ray Redican Lowell Sun you can see some of the lowellsun articles this is no bs.

    IF ANYONE READING this wants to do everything for me and we can share in the upside where I contribute just the asset let me know. Im dieing so need to get this ramped up so when im gone the cash generating money making machine is just turned on all the time with zero human intervention needed. Ok I have ideas but a bunch of idiots in my life. I took 10-15 years away from the internet. YOU KNOW WHAT it still LOOKS THE SAME as far as geodomains and rollerblading. I also want to make a refrigerator that stores food drink and grows marijuana like in weeds cigarettesandweed.com (cis)

  3. Cool. I log off the internet when composing and it didn’t say it posted but then seen the message that it was a duplicate there must be a delay between time posted and posted time.

  4. Josh Metnick: How Should Illinois.com Be Used?
    CBNO Commonwealth Internet Services (CIS): So you want to get your Real Estate Salesperson license and sell real estate. Allow license to lapse (check with local law) and just do referrals where all leads come through your Illinois site. Brokers will use those leads to get x many deals. You can make money being licensed.

    You want to do what I read about yourname@illinois.com illinois.yourname.com or also you should do the Illinois.com/realestate something simple like we did on Dracut.com/realestate

    You want to make a yellow pages listing charge customers and get a cut if they sell anything. You can create another separate company that handles transactions so that 3rd party company that you have control of charges a fee. Which is all your money anyway but through a separate payment processing company. Have contests cookouts children registration fingerprint clownpainting picture thing like we did over in Somerville years ago. THERE WAs this big guy in a hummer that came by to check it out from RCN wow memories. Anyway sell cars do a deal with dealerships… i once got a friend of mine chad white fired from a dealership because I made his shit too popular. I took the cars chad was selling and put them on somerville.com and they got mad leads and he actually got fired and it was my fault because they already had a website. Idiots. So many people have stopped or been barriers to my education. I hate slow technology it hinders productivity.

    Oh yeah check out what we did with BonusBucks on dracut.com use waybackmachine so for every dollar entities spend advertising with you say someone spends to use round numbers $1,000 now they would get 20% back in in your example Illinois.com BonusBucks / $200. Now extrapolate this over to use round numbers 100 entities some of which are stores and gas stations that people use every day. Now within your community people can use Illinois BonusBucks (IBB) when dealing with other people that accept IBB. Also use promo codes that people have to search the site for like easter eggs this creates a dedicated (undergroun) following

    I need someone that can download my mind and build out all my ideas. Try finding rollerblading.com/businessplan that was half assed but gets you into my mind a little.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

Some Thoughts on .AI Domain Names

3
There is no question that .AI domain names have become a hot topic of late. With considerable amounts of venture funding flowing into AI...

Handoff to Dan on Imported Leads Can be Confusing

0
I've been using the lead import option at Dan.com more regularly. Although the 5% commission is not ideal, transactions tend to move more quickly...

ArtificialIntelligence.com Goes Up for Sale

8
I tried to buy the ArtificialIntelligence.com domain name multiple times over the last 10 years. The emails I sent to the registrant went unanswered,...

EU Gives More IP Protection to Food & Drink Producers

0
Did you know that some well-known food and drink varieties are protected intellectual property regulations? Popular types of drinks and foods that are protected...

Price Testing

1
In 2022, my wife and I decided our kids were ready for some big mountain skiing and we planned a trip to the Rocky...