The following advertisement that was placed in Manhattan found a buyer, which visited the domain on Sedo to purchase the domain. Since then, I made some adjustments on my sales approach to refer buyers to a third part domain sales platform. The sales pitch was prepared during the learning stage.

The original ad is below to show you an example of what the buyer used to make a decision.

Shared by JohnH
That's one day and only to the B's.

Inquiries for Nov 21, 2010 (Nov 22, 2010)

I know a little about developing websites. I’d like to think that aeiou had essentially started the mini-site boom and I’ve had outsourcing operations in either Panama or the Philippines for more than a decade. If I’ve learned anything from all of this experience it’s that you don’t develop domain names, you develop businesses.

When I shut down aeiou last year I threw up a now infamous blog post titled, there’s no money in web design. I believe that post was largely misunderstood and I never commented on that fact but I will now.

What I meant was there’s no money in selling project based design solutions. It’s hard. The customers are never happy because they expect the design company to deliver them a business. There’s a disconnect between the solution provider and the customer. I felt that we’d never be able to have happy customers and a profitable business at the same time so the best thing to do was just shut it down.

I’m getting back into the outsourcing business now but in a different way. This post isn’t about that though. You all will have to wait a couple of weeks for the launch to find out exactly what it is. I’ll get back to my point now.

I strongly believe that the mass-majority of domain owners have completely unrealistic expectations when it comes to web development. I believe that Epik and Wanna Develop have good intentions and ultimately, they probably add incremental value and revenue to the domains but I would never use the services personally. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not trash talking them because I believe their services have a place in the domain industry and they are right for a majority of domainers.

I just want to get one very important point across and that’s that you don’t develop domains at all, you develop businesses. Let’s take a look at my last two ventures, WatchBrokers.com and AmericanOil.com. In both of those instances, the business came before the domains. We didn’t acquire the rights to those names until after the business plans were complete.

I don’t look to my portfolio when I want to decide what project to work on next, I look to my idea spreadsheet (which is updated daily).

To me, it isn’t worth spending time and money on development unless its worth spending time and money on it. Meaning, I wouldn’t spend time and money to get a $1 a day domain to make $10 per day. The opportunity cost is too high in that example.

To get a site ranked well in Google on not one but hundreds of search terms it takes a team of one to three link builders working on it for months, depending on the competitiveness of the terms.

To build a site that looks fantastic and will convert it takes time and effort. Then you have to build multiple landing pages and split test and do so many other things to make the site work.

What I’m getting at is to have a site that can be a real business you must treat it like a real business. It can’t be done in mass. That’s what I realized last year.

I urge all domainers to head this advice. Don’t develop a site unless you think you can have significant revenue off of it. If you do feel you can produce significant revenue, put significant time and resources into it. Otherwise, it isn’t worth it.

Start with a business plan. Study your competitors. etc, etc, etc. Start a business! Don’t just “develop a domain”.

Ok, my writing got weak at the end there and it turned into a rant. I think I got my point across, though.

Quinstreet (QNST) just announced today during its conference call that total consideration it paid for acquiring the domain name Insurance.com was $36.5 Million dollars.

$36.5 MILLION Dollars.

It does not appear from the conference call that Quinstreet acquired or even wanted to acquire the business that was formerly under Insurance.com, making this sound like pretty much a straight domain sale.

However “total consideration” can have more than just cash attached to it, like stock and option and a mixture of cash, but we will have to wait to find out all the details.

Many consider Insurance.com the most valuable domain of all and if so it now raises the bar for all domains to a level most in the domain industry would only image.

The question now is will there be a higher domain sale in the next 10 years than this one and if so which domain?

The William J Clinton Foundation announced yesterday that two former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush have rolled out a site for its Haiti relief efforts.

The Official Site is ClintonBushHaitiFund.org.

Fortunately the foundation was smart enough not only to register the reverse domain name,  BushClintonHaitiFund.org but they also registered ClintonBushHaitiFund.com and BushClintonHaitiFund.com just to keep some idiot from registering it.

Speaking of idiots although the Foundation secured BushClintonHaitiFund.net, some idiot beat them to their own .net, ClintonBushHaitiFund.net which was registered by some 3 days before the foundation registered their domains and the .US verision which some other idiot grabbed today.

Needless to say that no one who reads this blog should even think about registering any domain related to this tragedy and certainly not a typo or other variation of a charity.

On the other hand the 90999 text message program we wrote about last week, has last I heard, generated $8 Million and that was before the weekend.

Out of the CES show this week the hottest tech items seems to be a tablet computer which is generally being referred to not only by the media but by the manufactures as “Slates”, in anticipation of Apple’s expected introduction of the iSlate latter this month.

cnet.com is reporting that “Slate Mania grips PC Makers” at the CES show.

So which high tech company owns the potential category killer domain slates.com?

Well it turns out if owned by a very low tech company, Levi Strauss the jeans maker.

It look like they are really not even using the domain, as it just advertises their “easy order” product at Levi.com.

You would think that one of those computer makers might buy this domain from Levi.

Stay Tuned

Again from ThisWeekInStartups.com, the Jason Calacanis ustream.tv show. It’s a great show, and the experience of watching it live has turned out to be a little bit addictive. Check out #TWIST on Twitter. Jason is simply Twitter.com/Jason.

In this audio clip from ‘Jason’s Shark Tank’, Jason tells caller/developer Kevin, of pikk.com what he likes about what Kevin’s created so far.

Signals of Quality

Jason Calacanis: Everyone should follow you on Twitter obviously, Pikk. You have that up and running, and you have a four letter domain name. These are, again, signals of quality for me. You have a decent domain name decent web design. I’m  not crazy about your web design, to be totally honest with you I think it’s a 7 or 8 out of 10 but, listen, Mahalo was a 6 out of 10 at one point, now it’s a 10 out of 10, so, it’s progress you know, and I can appreciate that. Smart enough to pick a four letter domain, great – how did you get the domain was that available or you bought it.
Kevin: I bought it.
Jason: Yeah, how much did that cost you?
Kevin: Ah, I’ve been told I got the bargain of the century, this cost me about twenty-five hundred dollars.
Jason: That’s a great deal.
Kamran Pourzanjani: Yeah.
Jason: For a four letter domain…