Comments on: The Psychology of a Multi-Million Dollar Sale (Bored.com)

By: admin

admin — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:25:03 +0000

About 95% of the income was from Adsense and Casalemedia. About 5% was from affiliate programs, where I would link to a site from the main page of Bored.com and make money from that. Many times these affiliate links were links to sites I would have linked to anyhow, so they looked like all the other links on the site.

By: Michael Salem

Michael Salem — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:32:02 +0000

Thank you for responding. We’re trying to be very different from all those other game sites. We create everything from scratch and code custom features that will attract users(hopefully).

Being only 19, and my partner being 20, we have much to learn and we’ve found that SEO is the best route so far, as you mentioned. We’ve only been live for 3 months but we appear on the home page for 3 keywords ex(fun games online) and other ones just like that.

You really nailed it on the domain name!

I have a question though, did all of your income from Bored.com come from Adsense and Casalemedia? If so, that was a ton of traffic you were getting!

By: admin

admin — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:29:24 +0000

Your site looks great. I like the design a lot, very clean and friendly. There are so many game sites out there, I am not sure what you can do to get noticed. Bored.com did well mainly because it got a huge amount of type-in traffic and search engine traffic from having a great domain name. But, in general, I know many game sites do very well, so hopefully yours will take off.

By: Michael Salem

Michael Salem — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:30:40 +0000

So, I’m very curious about what you think of my website http://befungames.com

My partner and I recently started this website and we’ve always seen bored.com as a type of inspiration. We’re really aiming just to provide high quality flash games and tournaments so the users can compete with each-other. Our goal is to one day be as large as your company was and I’m just looking for some advice/opinions.

Truly an inspirational story!

By: admin

admin — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:41:35 +0000

I had over 200 other sites and 9000 other domains, so although Bored.com was my main focus I never got sick of working on it. Also, it was a fun site, so that helped. I think running more than one site, or at least trying to think up new ideas for sites, keeps things interesting.

By: Afif

Afif — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 05:59:16 +0000

Wooh, nice story.
I always wondered on how people unlike you could have stayed with the same site for more than a decade. I had recently finished investing in a near 5 figures to a site of mine, domain purchase, design, code + site development and suddenly when I was left with only marketing to do I collapsed mentally.

If you have some tips to avoid mental stress exhaustion do share it. ^^
I am still in my early 20s but I have been involved in site development since 7 years ago.

Cheerio

By: counseling domains

counseling domains — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:25:57 +0000

Thanks for your help……….I will check out Sedo etc.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:07:53 +0000

You should try using domain brokers also, like sedo.com, afternic.com, and moniker.com.

By: Medical domains

Medical domains — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:18:49 +0000

Thank you for your feedback.

I think I will go direct to consumer by email……as a mental health professional to a fellow colleague.

Throwing it our there………..how would you proceed if you were me?

By: admin

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:56:58 +0000

I think it would be worth it for you to try sending out some emails. The chances are small that psychologists will find your site on their own. I have never sent out emails to sell my domains thoough, so I don’t have any suggestions.

By: Medical domains

Medical domains — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:03:45 +0000

A very inspiring story and I hope to follow in your footsteps. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and started therapeuticsite.com about a month ago.

I am already very high in the search rankings for (counselor domains for sale, psychiatrist or psychologist domains for sale etc). As a domain guy, should I just sit back and wait for the Psychologists of the world to figure out that their customer base has moved online, or should I start an email campaign to enlighten them?

Got any good sales letter techniques or ideas?

Just curious.

Kevin

By: admin

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:10:58 +0000

I don’t recall ever buying meetpeople.com. I have only bought a handful of domains ever, so I think I would remember. Plus, I am not the current owner of the domain and have nothing to do with the content on it.

By: anunt

anunt — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:05:51 +0000

You guys bought meetpeople.com from me…if i had known that you guys got paid $4M, i would have asked for more $$$…LOL

By: lee m

lee m — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:19:14 +0000

Yeah I guess when your mind is ready to sell and it’s all falling into place it would be more of a relief than added stress

Thanks again.. hopefully I can offload my main sites this year or next, as I too would like some cash in the bank.. (40 soon!)

Lee

By: admin

admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:11:59 +0000

It was not too stressful, but that is probably because I was also fine with keeping my sites if the sale fell through. Also, I had 2 buyers bidding against each other, so I was pretty sure one sale would close. And, once I could see that I probably was going to sell the site, I was a lot less stressed running it, because I stopped doing new projects, which was what caused most of my stress.

By: lee m

lee m — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:06:49 +0000

Thanks for the quick reply.. I knew of sedo.com but never looked at others.. Will look today.

Was your eventual sale a stressful process?..

By: admin

admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:01:38 +0000

I think the best way to sell a big domain or site is through the well known brokers, like moniker.com or latonas.com or sedo.com. They all frequently do million dollar+ sales.

By: lee m

lee m — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 13:58:22 +0000

Hi .. great story.. (I found your post and link over at new found names today and followed you here! )

I am in a very similar position. I have built and developed my two main sites for 6 years now, and for last 3 to 4 years they have been delivering between $15 and $20k per month (mainly profit!).. I am at the point where I am thinking of selling… as I feel I have taken them as far as I can, and to maximise revenue from all the imps that are being wasted I think you need to look at ad sales staff etc.. and being developer it’s not how I feel I want to go about things.. managing staff etc..

Any pointers on where I could look to sell a site with strong established revenue and good potential for growth? (it’s in stocks and financial sector)..

Been searching and only seem to find what seem like dodgy brokers or flipping auction sites.. (flippa etc).. I think what I have needs a more profesional sales push.

Thanks .. would really appreciate any links or ideas you could chuck my way

Lee

By: Sandy Utah Chiropractor

Sandy Utah Chiropractor — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:26:14 +0000

You have such an inspiring story. Hopefully people who do business in the internet would come across your article. And yes you’re right, “there is nothing like having lots of money in the bank”.

By: dns

dns — Mon, 31 May 2010 11:04:43 +0000

That was awesome!

By: Hitnamer

Hitnamer — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:53:46 +0000

If you think that was a lot of money, check out http://www.3dconsole.com and read the press release below:

Game Vendors scramble to purchase 3DConsole.com
………………………………………..

A record-breaking domain sale is expected to lift suppressed dot com prices as major game vendors scramble to purchase 3DConsole.com prior to the launch of the worlds first 3D console by Nintendo in June of this year.

See press release:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article7072534.ece

The auction is currently running at Sedo.com and industry experts are suggesting a 5 to 6 figure sale, which would be a very welcomed boost to this one time booming industry.

By: Internetual Domain Forum

Internetual Domain Forum — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:00:21 +0000

great to hear your story
i remember when your sale was posted on dnf and you posted once i think and then was never seen again. i remeber thinking did you just take cash and run off into sunset
thanks for a great post, fascinating stuff. hope i will be where you were in 2007 in a couple of years!
cheers
Pred

By: admin

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:07:33 +0000

I was paying around 40% in taxes (Federal, State, Social Security, etc.) so my after tax profit was more like $20,000/month. That is still a lot of course, but for a few years I used that profit (after living expenses) to payback past debts, and before that my company as a whole was not making that much money. I had a lot of other expenses which were not all directly related to Bored.com, but were because owning Bored.com made me a big company and I was constantly expanding. For example I had a lot of employees and contractors and servers which I did not need just to run Bored.com, but I needed to keep building new sites and growing. When I sold Bored.com and those 170 other sites I decreased my company expenses by around $15,000 month and only 1/2 of that were expenses the new owner ended up assuming.

What it comes down to is that before the sale, I was constantly building new sites, buying sites, adding programmers, and all the typical things a growing company does. Since the sale, I have pretty much stopped all that and I just focus on the sites I already have, and that requires little cash.

So, at the time I sold Bored.com I had around $200,000 in the bank, and that would have grown over the coming years, but probably by more like only $100,000/year, since much of my “profits” I would have reinvested into my business to try to make more money. Maybe in 10 years I could have then sold this much bigger business for $45 million instead of $4.5 million, but there was also the risk things could change and I would lose it all, or die, or whatever. Plus, I don’t really need $45 million (although it would certainly be nice).

In answer to your other question, no I had no idea when I started Bored.com it would be my main site. That is why I built so many other sites over the years, because I was not sure what would become big. I knew Bored.com would be my most popular site, but that does not always translate into making a lot of money. Looking back though i should have focused much more on growing Bored.com so I could have sold it for much more money.

The main thing about having one big site (Bored.com) was that that pretty much any site I created or bought would do well as long as I associated it with Bored.com (like linking to it from Bored.com). Or, if I linked to Bored.com from the new site, at least it would send more traffic to my main site, even if the new site did not make money on its own.

By: Porter

Porter — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:52:48 +0000

That was an awesome read. It’s very inspiring to see an quick overview of how your built your company, and how you eventually sold it. Were you at any time banking a certain percent of your earnings? If you set aside $20k a month, that would have been nearly a quarter a million a year. I assume you were living a rather luxurious lifestyle with $30-$40k profits a month.

Question for you, when you first started your company, was bored.com the only site, and did you decide that it would be the main site? If so, did you then build other sites, and eventually evolve bored.com? I have a site right now, and I want it to be my main site. I do however think that owning other domains and pointing the traffic all to one main site is the way to go. Did you just keep purchasing sites, knowing that bored.com would always be the center of attention? If you have any posts about this, or any info, email me at contact@princeporter.com, I’m eager to read/hear about it.

Either way, you now get to sit back and do what you want with life, and have enough money to comfortably do so. Again, awesome read, thanks for sharing.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:29:52 +0000

Yes, I like SurgicalAutomation.com a lot. That could be a big industry soon.

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:20:21 +0000

Thanks for your advice.

I too did some checking into cloning domains around 7 years ago and I can recall coming upon some great generics which I for whatever reason didn’t get around to registering unfortunately, then later realized they had been grabbed (maybe by you! ha)

By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you think about this domain?:

SurgicalAutomation.com

I own it and feel it could be an emmerging premium tech TLD especially as searches for that term increase over time.

Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci surgical robot is a smash hit and a harbinger of what’s to come in a big way (or so I’d bet my bottom dollar).

Thanks for all your selfless sharing.
-Marc

By: admin

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:44:38 +0000

Yes, I think buying domains that you think will be big topics in years to come is a great way to invest. For example, I bought a bunch of HDTV domains when I first heard about it, and also a bunch of cloning domains when cloning sheep (Dolly) started getting publicity. But, it does cost a lot to renew all those domains each year, so it is important to try to put some content on them to get them listed in the search engines at least, so you get some income from them.

No, I have never used WhyPark.com, but I have read about them. It is certainly worth a try over Sedo. Some people have had good luck with minisites (like from at WhyPark.com), other people say they make just as much from traditional parking. No matter what, it is always worth trying new parking type services. If you do spend time using WhyPark’s customization tools to make your sites unique, then that might work out really well. Most of what I have read is from people who just use the standard minisites that services like WhyPark automatically create.

I don’t think you will get penalized for using whypark dns, but duplicate content could hurt you. See details at http://www.dnforum.com/f222/do-whypark-sites-get-banned-google-thread-365070.html . But, I hardly get any search engine traffic to my parked domains (at companies such as Sedo), so I don’t think you can really lose much traffic from this. You can always switch back to Sedo if there are problems, and Google will reindex your pages.

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:30:29 +0000

Thank you so much for sharing your interesting story. I was able to glean a lot of wisdom from it.

And your down-to-earth candor is very refreshing. I can tell you are a very pragmatic person. I have bookmarked your website and will be sure to return regularly.

I’m new to domaining and own a portfolio of 125 domains, plus two content sites I am developing with unique keyword-focused content in my spare time.

So far I’m only making a profit from my two content sites.

Since I have a Science background many of my domains deal with emerging technology, such as: nanotechnology, photovoltaics, robotics, and sustainability.

Question 1: Do you think emerging tech domains might be a good way to invest in what will in 5 or 10 years be the newly born premium generics as those new terms become semi-household names in the world’s lexicon? And do you know of any domainers who specialize or have portfolios of emmerging tech domains?

I own a few which I think may bring top dollar from industry buyers in that timeframe, but they are definately more speculative and require patience to hold with little to no fundamentals supporting name value currently (I know I probably broke a cardinal rule of domaining by registering the below emmerging domains without a developed market – but they were bought as speculative ground floor investments in anticipation of future developments…risky I know…like I said I’m a domain newbie;^)

Here’s a few examples of my nano domains. Am I a fool for registering these even if I can afford to eat the losses for years to come?

nanotoxicologyjobs.com
nanosphericals.com
nanohepa.com
nanoporosity.com
nanopvs.com
greenhousesustainablehome.com
nanocosms.com
nanoparticlescience.com
nanofiltrations.com
nanosilicates.com
nanotubular.com
nanolithics.com
nanovocation.com
nanosynaptics.com
nanotoxics.com
nanodeposition.com
nanolurgical.com
nanopoisoning.com
nanotitanate.com
nanosyndrome.com
nanologicals.com
nanoparticletoxicity.com
nanotoxictorts.com
nanodegrees.com
nanohms.com
nanotoxictort.com
nanovocation.com
nanopoisoning.com
nanosyndrome.com
nanotitanate.com
nanocarbonbased.com
nanologicals.com
nanodegrees.com
nanozap.com
nanohaz.com
nanoill.com

Several are related to the inevitable health problems that will increasingly make news as nanoparticles in numerous products become inhalation hazards for workers and the public.

Question 2: Do you have any experience with WhyPark.com?

I just transferred my entire domain portfolio to them because it seems a big step above Sedo.com’s plain old parking (which earned mere pennies for me).

I like WhyPark because they allow you to automate content and monetization via their article feeds and PPC ad network. Plus I can add my own unique keyword-focused content pages too (which I definately want to do since I fear search engines will penalize for having duplicate content in the form of their widely distributed articles).

Any thoughts on how successful a rich content site COULD be with WhyPark? Or will my domains be automatically hobbled because the search engines will see whypark in my DNS settings and rank them lower despite rich content?

I would love to hear any advice you have.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:09:59 +0000

Back before parking companies existed, I used to manually put affiliate links and search engine results on each of the domains. Once parking companies came long, I just parked them. The sites I create usually have nothing to do with me owning a particular domain. I create new sites based on new ideas I have.

The problem with parking though is that unless you have a huge number of domains, you will never make a lot of money from it. Parked domains get hardly any search engine traffic and traffic does not grow over time. Developing the domains at least gives you a shot at hitting it big in the SEO lottery and getting a lot of traffic.

By: Pritish

Pritish — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:57:30 +0000

Hi,

I read the whole story and am wondering how you managed so many domains. I have only 10 and I can never focus on all at the same time. I have also sent an email to you. If possible please provide me an idea which one I should focus on. I work from home and have time for my domains. But I always wonder, which one I should be focusing on.

BTW it was a great story. I guess all the readers and specially domain guys will have a lot of encouragement by reading this.

Cheers
Pritish

(from India)

By: admin

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:38:38 +0000

Yes, looking back I should have focused on only big sites. But, at the time it was hard to know which sites would take off, so I wanted to play it safe and have lots of sites that were making money. Since I sold Bored.com, I have launched very few new sites and instead am just focusing on building up my existing sites, and trying to make a few of them really big (mainly Dumb.com, Adoptme.com, OfficeHumor.com,. and CheapFlowers.com).

By: GenericDomainMarket

GenericDomainMarket — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:39:15 +0000

Thank you for sharing and congrats on such a great deal!

BTW, since you who are running your company (yourself) after the sale of Bored.com & even before that. Why you didn’t focus on a couple of big websites instead of running hundreds?