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06 May 15
22:08
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Date Joined:
14 Sep 04
Good evening, gentlemen.
I own quite a nice domain name, it's the .com version of the coastal Devon village where I was born. The resort has a permanent population of about 1,500 but hundreds of thousands descend upon our beautiful beaches in the summer and there is a large surfing community all year round. I've had this name for years but only ever used it as a catchy email address, like john@torquay.com for example. Recently, however, a couple of things have led me to consider that I might be missing a trick. Firstly, a local holiday park offered to buy the domain for £3,000 (which I refused) and, secondly, I've started to receive unsolicited emails from folk asking about hotels, guest houses etc (they're mistakenly putting .com instead of .co.uk).
I'm thinking an attractive website could be designed to detail the finer points of the area and also feature advertisements or links (sold on a subscription basis) to all the local businesses such as pubs, nightclubs, fast food outlets etc. It also struck me that many of my fellow residents might like to have a personalised email address instead of the usual hotmail or yahoo option.
Here's the rub, though. I don't have the talent to build a website or the inclination to market the idea of selling advertising space. Essentially, what I want is somebody to do one-hundred percent of the work in return for half of the resulting income. Do you think this might be a viable proposal?
I own quite a nice domain name, it's the .com version of the coastal Devon village where I was born. The resort has a permanent population of about 1,500 but hundreds of thousands descend upon our beautiful beaches in the summer and there is a large surfing community all year round. I've had this name for years but only ever used it as a catchy email address, like john@torquay.com for example. Recently, however, a couple of things have led me to consider that I might be missing a trick. Firstly, a local holiday park offered to buy the domain for £3,000 (which I refused) and, secondly, I've started to receive unsolicited emails from folk asking about hotels, guest houses etc (they're mistakenly putting .com instead of .co.uk).
I'm thinking an attractive website could be designed to detail the finer points of the area and also feature advertisements or links (sold on a subscription basis) to all the local businesses such as pubs, nightclubs, fast food outlets etc. It also struck me that many of my fellow residents might like to have a personalised email address instead of the usual hotmail or yahoo option.
Here's the rub, though. I don't have the talent to build a website or the inclination to market the idea of selling advertising space. Essentially, what I want is somebody to do one-hundred percent of the work in return for half of the resulting income. Do you think this might be a viable proposal?
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Replies: 42
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the .com bubble burst a long time ago imho
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I think most still consider it the most prestigious suffix for domain names, though, sir.
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depends on the topic. For example if you type in "torquay" into google you probably won't get a .com domain at the top. It will be up the top somewhere but the .com element of it is fairly irrelevant.
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its a no go
Just type torquay (or another town) into tripadvisor and it will have hundreds/thousands of hotels, restaurants and things to do. If someone didnt fancy giving you half of the profits they could just buy visittownname.com etc and keep it all themselves |
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Do you think so? Fair enough, I was hoping it was still quite valuable. I was offered a decent sum for it, perhaps I should have accepted!
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if a business idea is a good one it will succeed whatever the domain name. As Zazu mentioned I expect there are already plenty of sites that would be advertising or promoting local businesses in the area of your domain name. It does have a value of course, and that is probably to someone that already has an interest in that field.
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the email address you mentioned is a quirky thing and prob a nice idea to some, but in order to do that you would have to offer secure email, spam filters and all that sort of good stuff that people get free from BT, or other free email providers, so I don't see any revenue there.
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oh, and they'd have to trust you in the first place with their emails
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I have spoken to my provider about the email idea and am under the impression that it is possible for everyone to have their own secure (and private) address. Don't ask me to explain exactly how, though, as it is beyond me.
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yes, but presumably that costs you?
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Indeed, the cost would have to be passed on to the customer.
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But I understand it would be a nominal amount.
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so John, who has a free john@btopenworld.com email address has to pay for a john@torquay.com one...hmmm
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I was thinking of charging something in the region of £10 per year for the service.
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well the service is the same as BT's, just with a different email address
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That is true, indeed, but one would be lucky to get john@btopenworld.com today, it's more likely to be john23_12_15@btopenworld.com or something similar. I was just thinking torquay residents might like john@torquay.com (or more likely perhaps johnsmith@torquay.com) as their address.
I'd pay a tenner, but accept that I might be in the minority, hence asking your opinions on here.  |
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http://www.portsmouth.com/
Portsmouth is quite a big place and nothing happening on that .com http://www.southampton.com/ is for sale |
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www.london.com is a hotels in London search engine, but essentially that's pulling in details from the big online hotel sites like Trivago
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How much is southampton.com, sir?
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it's owned by godaddy, who would probably rent it out on a yearly basis - normally about £13 a year
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A neighbouring village to me sold for £4,000 a few years ago to a holiday park (I was the underbidder).
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don't think london.com is comparable to a little town in devon!!
Dont think people would pay £10 a year for an email address. If you look at twitter bio's its incredible how many mega starts use gmail, hotmail etc |
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£12.80 a year for southampton.com
https://www.easyspace.com/domain-names/results |
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no, that's why I used it Zazu. If london.com isn't "working", which I would say it isn't from a quick glance, then a smaller area doing the same thing wouldn't either imho
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£13 a year for southampton.com? I find that hard to believe. Mind you, if it's only for rent perhaps nobody would want to invest too much time and money into the project. I'd like to know how much it would sell for outright.
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Are you telling me for £12.80 per year I could 'own' the domain name southampton.com, putting my own exclusive website up on www.southampton.com for anyone to view who cared to type in that address?
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And sell advertising space etc on said website?
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yes. They would charge you for additional stuff like hosting, email, security etc
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And could I, say, purchase 50 years worth of www.southampton.com for around £650?
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10 years max I believe
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if you buy a big town name you wont get your site on the first page of google
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if you rented it for 10 years, that would mean they would have 10 years hosting and other services revenues from you so its not just renting of the domain they get revenue from
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london.com is owned by World Media Group, who describe themselves as :
World Media Group London.com's parent company is World Media Group. World provides innovative websites in the travel, professions, dating, interests, search, local, and e-commerce verticals. World focuses development on just a few sites at a time to ensure that each site that we develop offers premium value to our visitors. Examples of World Sites include London.com, for finding the lowest rates on hotels for your trip to London; Berlin.com, a portal offering best rate hotels and tour services for Berlin; PopStar.com, a leading entertainment and news portal on celebrities, movies, and television; Doctor.com, a site helping users find doctors in their area; and Lawyer.com, a site with 400,000 plus lawyers listed. With your support, our companies and sites are committed to delivering high value content and services that leverage the power of the Internet. |
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There are ways and means around that, Zazu, surely? I used to own a snooker company and the chap I paid to run my website was very adept at keeping our site high up the page on Google.
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there are = more cost
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if you google london, london.com is on page 7
They will spends thousands (probably 10s of thousands) on search engine optimisation every year. There is a world of difference between getting 'pokermonsters snooker hall torquay' to page of 1 google and getting 'southampton hotels' searches to page 1. |
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All very interesting and informative. Many thanks, gentlemen.
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gl pokermonster, whatever you do
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It sounds a good idea but I too no nothing about it so im prepared to make an offer to do none of the work but I only want 25% of the resulting income.
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