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by on February 11, 2012 Leave a Comment

99 Domain Names Website Case Study – Number 1

You may have seen that I already built a beta website on a domain for this case study on how to make money with Domain Names and Websites. That was a beta that you can read more about if you are interested.

This is the kick-off/real/first Domain Name using the 99 Domains process where I choose a Domain Name and build a website in 99 minutes every day for 99 days – at least that is the goal…

Since I did the beta site and tried to keep timings I knew this first site would probably take more than 99 minutes as I clean up the process and documentation.

What surprised me most was how long the articles are taking to write – about 45 minutes each at this point! This may have to be something I outsource and I am ok with that practice in general, but not for this effort so I’m going to keep writing my own articles for now and if I change my mind I’ll let you know.

The Domain Name…

RefundAnticipationLoan.net is the domain and site I chose for this first 99.

Refund Anticipation Loan

RefundAnticipationLoan.net


The tax year has ended and people are looking to file their income taxes. Many of them will want their tax refund as quick as possible so this one has to be online and indexed very quick. More of a seasonal domain so it may make a few bucks this year and hopefully quite a bit more next year.

The website and traffic analysis

This domain fits my case study requirements exactly in that there are at least 500 and preferably at least 1,000 exact match searches for the keywords in the domain with a Cost Per Click of at least $1.00.

To be fair, there are 18,500 exact searches which is way more than my minimum. Actually, it may be getting to the range of too many as competition from competing sites gets tougher the more searches there are.

Also, the CPC is around $3.75 which is over 3x my minimum. Again, it is borderline too competitive because if I want to drive traffic with an ad campaing it could get really expensive.

Building the website in 99 minutes

Since I followed the process I established in the beta, this site only took about 23 minutes to have up with analytics, a new theme and the basic pages like privacy and Contact form.

Where it fell apart and what is making me rethink my 99 domains idea is just how freaking long it took to write the articles. Granted, I don’t know anything about refund anticipation loans, but wow! 45 minutes went by like nothing – about 60 or 70 minutes to research, write, SEO and format each article… I have a whole new appreciation for copywriters! 70 minutes each is totally unacceptable.

I say unacceptable because for this to make business sense, I need to build the site and have reasonable expectations that I will get enough ROI based on the value of my time and the domain cost to make it worth it. So in this case I’ve spent less than $25 on the domain and renewals, but I’ve spent about 5 hours on the site. I also need to spend more time on backlinking and some more articles so if you count about $50 an hour I will need about $400 just to break even… I am not in business to break even. I guess I could take that money, pay for articles on a few other sites and pay for backlinking…

Guess I need to talk to some people who have helped me out before and have done this successfully over a long period of time…

Back soon I hope with an update.

Filed Under: 99 Domains, Domain Names, Make Money Online Tagged With: , ,
by on February 10, 2012 Leave a Comment

Domain Name Trend”ing”

Domain Names are like most any other business area – trends occur and many downright explode. Most blow over quickly, but a few will make it for the long haul.

Domain Name Trending

Tebowing is a good example of this from the NFL quarterback, Tim Tebow. From a simple gesture to a craze where people are posting pictures of themselves from around the world “Tebowing” on a domain started by a Denver fan. I don’t know how much money he makes off the site, but in a second you’ll see why some small portion of trends succeed and some don’t. A great example of this from recent domains is 3D domains – it would be interesting to see how many 3D domains were registered over the last year or two…

So basically for this word trend”ing” they just took a name, added “ing”, associated it to an action by the person and turned the word into a verb. Simple enough, but it has developed into a highly visible mainstream trend of sorts.

After the superbowl, I heard someone on ESPN or the radio say something about Brady choking and then just sitting on the field just “Bradying”. They mentioned you could see a picture at Bradying.com.

Bradying.com

Bradying.com

Someone had already bought Bradying.com and put a site up… I assumed it would be a Pats hater site and maybe that would be how they made money… But it is just a simple site with some ads and not much else. Personally I think they could make more money on the domain if they’d put up some slam articles on Brady or anti-fan site or whatever with ads for stuff like those fathead wall posters of Eli, Brady, Tebow, Brees or Cam Newton. Anyway, at least they did something.

Tebowing.com

Tebowing.com

If you take a look at the two sites you’ll see they were both based off Tumblr, but a lot more work went into Tebowing and since that is a trend that has taken on a persona of its own I think it will continue and at the very least they guy will make some money on it. Bradying not so much. I actually like the Bradying logo and slogan – clever and decent graphics, but unless they do something more with it that will be a low income site. I highlighted some of the better parts of the sites and you can see there was much more thought and time put into developing and maintaining Tebowing.com.

The most interesting part was a Whois lookup… they actually bought the Bradying domain only 3 days after the Tebowing.com domain was registered. I looked at several other domain names with NFL Quarterback + “ing” and they were all taken Flaccoing, Breesing, Newtoning, Manning(I didn’t look for this for obvious reasons or Manninging because one guy’s site had Eliing and Peytoning) – not interested in buying them, just got my curiosity up. All were registered, some by the same person and of course some of the common names or names that made sense with an ing were registered long ago. One person had registered several and had even gone as far as putting simple wordpress sites on there letting people know they were for sale. I doubt they’ll sell, but maybe some end user who loves an NFL team quarterback might want them. Who knows, but it is interesting that almost all of them were registered within a day of one another.

Domain Name Trending

Domain Name Trending

Another example of this is a recent article about Jeremy Lin – the NBA guard making a big splash in his first few games.

Jeremy Lin Linning

Jeremy Lin Linning

The article references Tebowing and that they are just waiting for Jeremy to come up with a signature move or pose to call Linning. Getting that domain may be harder for someone since BuyDomains.com owns it and it has been registered since 2004. The alternate spelling to that is Lining which has been registered and used forever – why? Because there are more than a couple Li Ning’s in the world…

As far as trends go, usually only the first one in who starts the trend and a few who work hard at establishing a brand will ever see any benefit. A few 3d domains will survive, Tebowing will survive, but that is all. If you can get in early and recognize trends before they go mainstream you have a chance to make money on the domains related to them especially for product domains directly related to the trend (3dtv, 3dglasses, 3dcamera…), but don’t waste your money if you are in even a day or two late… too bad I didn’t think about Domain”ing” before Francois… wonder if Domaining”ing” is available? (it is… don’t buy it…)

Filed Under: Domain Names Tagged With: , ,
by on December 21, 2011 Leave a Comment

Domain Name for sale letters on related domains

For everyone who has multiple domains registered and/or resells domains, have you noticed a huge spike in emails notifying you of “premium domain names” for sale related to your domain name?

Related Domain Names

I used to get several of these a week, but they were for directly related domains in that they were usually the same domain with a different extension.

For example, I would get a notice that someone had caught the .net or .org for one of my .com’s. Now it is often that they want to sell the .me, .mobi, .biz, etc.

Domain Name for sale trend concerns

Even more interesting is that the domains they want to sell now are often one keyword off with the same domain extension or even a different extension.

A slightly disturbing trend and another potential reason our industry gets a bad wrap is that I’ve gotten a lot of emails recently offering related domains for sale for only $199. Not a bad price in some circumstances, but the kicker is that they don’t even own the domain – it is available to be registered!

It usually is a domain that dropped very recently or that has great keywords with a less than desirable extension. Good model for the people trying to “sell” me the domain, but seriously? Come on, man!

Now this has to be an automated tool that someone has running that is just hammering away at valuable keywords. They probably register the best ones and then try to free flip (I just coined that phrase I think) related domains.

Anyway, if you get these emails take a look to see what might be of interest for a very cheap domain registration. I’ll give you one example in case you want to take a shot…

Domain Name available to register

Domain Name available to register

Obviously “RefinanceMortgageRate.com” is already taken, but there are 2 extensions available – both the .me and the .mobi… With over 8,000 exact searches and a CPC around $25 it is a great set of keywords. Ultra competitive, but for the difference in cost you could build a nice site and SEO the crap out of it for the same cost as trying to pick up one of the better extensions on a resale. The .net is for sale over at Sedo.com for $490 so for that amount you could have 25 articles written and several thousand links created and end up with a decent site. Just sayin’

Filed Under: Domain Names Tagged With: , , , , ,