Sunday’s Quick Thoughts

Red Bellied PiranhaHere are some quick thoughts on this nice Sunday. I hope you enjoy the last day of your weekend! Rest up for a successful week.

When you’re buying domain names, you should check to see if there’s a website developed on the domain name. I get annoyed when people email me asking if I would sell “the domain name Lowell.com” or another one of my developed websites. Clearly it’s not just a domain name and if I get annoyed as a domain investor, it’s probably going to annoy people who have businesses on their domain names.

I want to welcome LuxuryNames.com as a new header banner advertiser. Take a minute to sign up for their newsletter. The company owns great domain names such as PrivateAirplanes.com, HomeInsuranceRates.com, MicroLenders.com, and many other great names and you want to be subscribed when they offer names for sale.

I think it’s great that guys like Mike Berkens and Rick Schwartz write blog posts many times per week. These guys have sold incredible domain names for large sums of money, have deep portfolios with top domain names, and they could be sitting on the beach or playing golf all day. I don’t always agree with everything they say, but their posts make me think about this industry and my business, and I really appreciate their willingness to share with us.

When you develop a website, it can take a long time to start seeing results. As mentioned before, I’ve been blogging for over two years, and I am just starting to generate a decent amount of revenue. Likewise, Burbank.com has been launched for about a year, and traffic, revenue, and advertising inquiries are up quite a bit in the past few months. Developing a business on a domain name isn’t easy, but it’s a great way to increase the value and generate revenue over the long haul.

I just bought RedBelliedPiranha.com and RedBelliedPiranhas.com, and I am psyched to create a mini site for one with a forward of the other. As you can probably tell, I like building mini sites that have vivid pictures. I haven’t done much CTR testing with Adsense, so I don’t know if the theory about having an ugly site leading to more clicks is accurate with mini sites, but I enjoy searching for cool photos.

Speaking of mini site testing…. has anyone tested design layouts for increased revenue/click throughs? I’ve wondered if someone has tested layouts, images, content length…etc to find the “perfect” mini site. This is something that would be very interesting to me. The website would have to have enough traffic to make the results statistically significant – and it would probably have to be done using several mini sites over several months with a straight up A|B split. I would be happy to post results here for others to see if the test is legit and not just a sales pitch.

Red Bellied Piranha Photo Source:

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

11 COMMENTS

  1. Elliot:
    Just like you said, write what you love esp hobbies and I loving growing jade plants. That why I created http://www.GrowingJadePlant.com .

    I have the largest jade plant in the world and yes, pictures design do help alot and now I received so many questions about jade plants from all over the world. I called myself the jade master.

    I even broker a couple of deals from others selling their 10-15yrs old jade plants.

    I am trying to get jadeplant.com but s/he is not selling.

  2. On my homepage i have registerationed YellowBelliedSeaSnake.com. We will become internet Mellionares Mr Silvers. HI Ho! Very Good

    • @ Patrick

      I am guessing you bought it. Since I am only building the mini site for search engine traffic, I opted not to spend the money on it. The search volume was much lower for that, and even if developed, it will be hard to compete, IMO.

      Search results:
      “Red Belly Piranha” 17,500 results
      “Red Bellied Piranha” 1,460,000 results

      @ Troy

      Haven’t thought about monetizing it. Will worry about that later… probably food and fish for sale ads as the focus.

  3. Elliot,

    How do you plan on monetizing RedBelliedPiranha.com? There is not a single person bidding on the term on Google, and I can’t find a single associated affiliate program.

    It is neat to have key word domains but in the end there has to be something that you can sell, or someone that it willing to buy clicks to make money.

    I guess I learned that lesson with VenusButterflyTechnique.com. It gets pretty good daily hits, is on the front page of google for its search terms, and still has not made any money because there is nothing to sell and no one is buying clicks because no product applies.

    I have finally decided to join Amazons affiliate program and link to books on the VBT. I guess that you could do that with Piranhas too, it just does not seem all that profitable. Maybe not worth a mini site.

    By the way, I have some more personal questions regarding geo domain development, do you mind if I email you about it?

    Troy

  4. “I am guessing you bought it.”

    Yikes no.

    Why does thou think me such a terrible person? 🙂

    I had never heard of a Red Bellied Piranha and wondered why it’s not called Red Belly Piranha.

    I looked up RedBellyPiranha.com just out of curiosity.

    If RedBellyPiranha.com was available I would have quietly and privately brought it to your attention in case you also wanted it.

    I would consider my behavior slimy if it was available and I regged it.

    Okay, maybe not slimy but quite selfish.

    Actually, Frank Schilling (Name Administration) owns RedBellyPiranha.com.

  5. Great post Elliot! I also get frustrated when people ask me if I would sell a domain that clearly is much more than the domain name itself.

    As for mini-site design and its relationship to revenue I have done a number of experiments. Site like JuryLaw.com and CricketGames.co.in are some that I’ve found to be very effective.

    I’ve written a number of my strategies in my book but would be happy to discuss them with you as well!

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

Squadhelp Adds Escrow.com as a Payment Option

1
Squadhelp has added Escrow.com as a payment option for buyers. The addition of the Escrow.com option was shared by ARIYAS on X this morning: 👍...

Some Thoughts on .AI Domain Names

15
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

11
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...