Category: News

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News

The Coolest Video you’ll ever see by a Company that develops Category-Killer Domain Names

Who has the coolest video you’ll ever see?   Those of you who remember the days of The Jetsons cartoon with robots and spaceships, will enjoy this video.

Diapers.com, the company that was founded in 2005 by Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara, was featured on TechCrunch earlier today – and the story talked up the company’s next big venture Soap.com – but with a twist, Robots. You see, the company uses a fully-automated warehouse where robots pick and pack products.

What a success Diapers.com has been, but not only because of the name, because of the great product and service the company provides.  Earlier this year, Diapers.com was recognized for outstanding customer service and named “Elite” Online Retailer by STELLAService.

Sully’s Blog has some Q&A

Once again, Mike Sullivan conducted a great online interview with Matt Lindenberg, Associate Director of Marketing at Diapers.com and Yuriy Krivenko SEO Analyst. The interview goes into detail into the domain name Diapers.com, and helps illustrate the power of type-in traffc. According to Diapers.com, roughly half of all traffic to their website comes from type in traffic.

H/T: Bill

Categories
News Video Games

Within Seven Days of Launching, CookingGames.com Moves to the No 7 Spot in Google Search

"Cooking Games"
It is one thing to own a domain and let it stumble around from parking site to parking site, in search of a better monetization strategy, but it is quite another thing to develop a domain into a full blown website.

Why is development so important? None of the domains that are parked, no matter how killer they are, will ever live up to their potential unless they are unlocked for development.

If you’re tracking the progress of CookingGames.com, the $350,000 domain with type in traffic already in the thousands per month, has quickly moved into the #7 spot in Google Search with the latest Google update – within 7 days of “officially” launching.

Bill Kara (who is now on Twitter) thought about purchasing the website that owns the #1 spot, but he’s confident with a few tweaks here and there his website can quickly move into the top spot.

Wanna start your own Gaming site?

If you’re looking to start you own game website and you don’t have the development skills, WordPress has you covered. There are a number of sites out there right now offering premium wordpress themes that can help you get started – sites like MyArcadeBlog Pro which was mentioned in the previous Hallpass Media story (and is used by RestaurantGames.com) and WPArcade.

Can’t say whether they are worth buying or not, since no Fusible properties use WPArcade – but it may be a good trial for VideoGameJunkies.com a name acquired off NameJet for $89 in November 2009.

Any readers out there who have installed and used any of these premium wordpress themes, feel free to drop a note with a link to the site.

Categories
News

Starting a Domain Blog Just Got a Little Easier, as DotWeekly Weighs Putting Site up For Sale

dotweekly

Jamie Zoch over at DotWeekly.com has announced he may be putting his website/blog up for sale.  The news comes about as Jamie says, “I would love to keep writing as I have been for the past 2.5+ years but my main business (selling domains) has slowed enough that it is getting hard to do both domaining and keep up with DotWeekly.”

Jamie has worked hard to build up the DotWeekly brand, so if the right buyer is found who is looking to launch a Domain Industry blog the website will continue. 

There is no official word on whether the site will go up for sale – as Jamie indicates the word “may” in his message – but Jamie plans to start entertaining offers as well as taking suggestions from readers who might have ideas on how he can keep his blog going.

All the details about the site – including contact information and statistics can be found here.

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News

And to think, you could have bought Slots.com for $500 in 1997

Slot Machines
Calvin Ayre, the new owner of Slots.com and the founder of BodogBrand - founded the online gaming giant Bodog with just $10,000 in 1994.

Owen Frager was the first to report in the online Domaining community that BodogBrand, a venture captial and licensing organization successfully bid on the Slots.com domain name. Owen included some interesting backstory on the sale and new owner. The final price tag was $5.85 million, much higher than many in the Domain Industry expected.

It’s insane to think about it.  However, in 1997 you could’ve offered the first owners of Slots.com $500 for the name. The same owners who owned Poker.org at one time – Convoke Communications.

In fact, the original home page in the 1990s displayed a slew of names up for sale by Convoke, with a minimum bid of $500 each. The list of names included:

aaaa.com
bigapple.com
canpage.com
climb.com
deliver.com
energy.com
fileupload.com
freepage.com
gamble.org
lindros.com
logo.org
newadventure.com
nomo.com
psychics.net
publishit.com
roulette.com
slots.com
wellness.org
webpress.com
yourbusiness.com

No use living in the past, however, it is truly amaizing how much the value of the name has increased in little over a decade. To get the latest on the sale of Slots.com to Bodog and future plans, a number of Casino sites are reporting news of the sale – and you can bet Calvin Ayre will be putting out more news via his network of sites.

Categories
News Video Games

Bill Kara of Hallpassmedia, shows how its done with Domains and Development, Wanna be like Bill?

"Juegos Gratis"
Bill acquired the domain JuegosGratis.com from South American domain investor/developer Chris Chena who was profiled in DNJournal's July 2005 Cover Story.

Bill Kara is a lot different than many domain investors who buy up domain names for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It’s development that’s key to his success, and that means developing his “casual games” internet properties and getting those names out of parked and into the top of the search engines.

Bill Kara is a fan favorite here on Fusible, and he recently updated his Hallpass media site again with news updates – such as the launch of CookingGames.com, the DNJournal Cover story, and more. In his latest news section, he also links to quantcast, sharing how in just five months after development, his Spanish gaming site JuegosGratis.com has topped the charts.

Quantcast Directly Measured Data has Juegos Gratis ranking as one of the most viewed websites in key Spanish markets, 140th in Mexico, 71st in Argentina, 179 in Chile and 135th in Columbia…

Casual Games is anything but Casual

The Casual Games industry is big money as Bill Kara can tell you. If you’re looking to get into the gaming industry, you can actually find WordPress themes that can help you get started especially if you’re on a budget.

RestaurantGames.com (a property not owned by Bill Kara) uses MyArcadeBlog Pro. Owning RestaurantGames.com may not be as important now anyway, now that Bill owns the macro level domain for restaurant type games with his recent acquisition and launch of CookingGames.com. For those looking for a script to start your own games portal, the MyArcadeBlogPro theme lets you transform a boring WordPress Blog into an amazing arcade games portal using Mochi Media, HeyZap, Custom and IBPArcade games.

The theme is cheap, but powerful – however it does require quite a bit of configuration and setting up and if you’re unfamiliar with WordPress, it may take you longer than the average user.