Supernatural Agency: Online business tales

I was recently speaking to a friend of a friend who has started buying domains. She has no Internet background and knows nothing about domaining as the ‘industry’ (make that cottage industry  ;-), knows it. Never heard of parking, type-in traffic, reselling, flipping, etc.

It’s what she did know that I thought was important. For every name she had registered she had a complete business scenario that made sense as a standalone business. She knew what they would sell, how big the market was, had profiles of who might visit the site and exactly how the business would earn money. She did not pick names that were odd combinations of words or were hard to remember. Most were three word dot coms (all were dot coms- she didn’t know that you could use non-dot coms for businesses). Her biggest challenge was figuring out which to develop first. One strategy she had shaped was to go to a local business that fit one of her names and offer to partner- she would own the site, they would fulfill and pay a commission- a kind of mom and pop affiliate deal.

It was refreshing to have a discussion of our business with someone smart who doesn’t have any pre-conceptions about what is the ‘best’ way to make money with domains. I suspect she will do very well. I know I learned something from her POV.