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Calvin Ayre: ‘Slots.com purchase is one of the best deals I’ve ever made’

calvin ayre

Billionaires have been known to blog, but it’s quite rare that billionaires blog as often as Calvin Ayre who averages about 3 to 4 stories per month on his online gambling news site at CalvinAyre.com. 

What’s even more rare, is for billionaires to blog about domain names.  But that’s just what Calvin Ayre did this week in a story entitled: Slots.com purchase is one of the best deals I’ve ever made.

Have you been wondering whether Calvin Ayre regrets paying $5.5 million earlier this year for the Slots.com domain name?

Not a chance, Calvin writes: “I’m sure a lot of people thought I was off my rocker when they first heard that Bodog Brand had purchased the Slots.com domain at auction for $5.5m in May of this year. After they learned the deal had gone down while I was enjoying a drink at London’s L’Atelier restaurant, they probably thought I was wasted, too. And while I might have been enjoying a bevvie or two (or three, etc.) at the moment I pulled the trigger, I have yet to experience a single shred of ‘morning after’ regret.”

Read more about Calvin Ayre’s thoughts on the Slots.com purchase.

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The Perks of Writing a Blog about Domain Names

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You can read blogs about the domain industry, however, if you spend the time to write a blog about the domain industry, there are quite a few perks that often get overlooked.  Of course, getting long term sponsors like National A-1 and Domain Tools is a big plus, but the list of perks goes much further than just sponsorships.

Running a blog gives you a chance to promote your own products and services to a relevant, targeted audience.  With your own website, you have the power to market all you want.  While the idea is not to make every post a product pitch, readers who are on your site might find your writing interesting enough to browse around. 

When you can’t find an advertiser to fill a spot, you can create your own ads for your own products and services.  Beyond this, you can fill up spots with third-party ads like Google adsense or search out relevant affiliate offers that are tailored to your audience – such as discounts on domain registrations.

You can connect with readers, domainers, developers, and other people within the domain and marketing industry quickly who are willing to share advice and opinions.  I’ve had a chance to chat with Stephen Douglas, Bill Kara, Andrew Rosener, Shane Cultra, and a number of people in the domain industry.  Despite being anonymous, lots of people find the content acceptable.  Sure, it’s hard to build up trust when you’re anonymous, but people build up trust through their writing also, not just throug their name.

I started this blog in September 2009 and thanks to Francois Carillo (Cybertonic), I was able to quickly reach an audience by getting listed on his widely read Domaining.com website.  As a result of the listing, traffic to Fusible soared from 0 visitors in September to over 20,000 unique visitors per month.  The site has been mentioned in The Guardian, Calvin Ayre, and on a number of well-respected domain industry blogs.

To blog or not to blog?
 
If you’ve got a domain blog and you’re looking to reach an audience, I’d highly recommend getting set up on Domaining.com.  The set up fee is well worth it.

If you enjoy writing about domain names, you owe it to yourself to get a blog up and running.  It’s basically on the job training that gives you a chance to learn about the industry by writing about it.

Some might argue that blogging is a waste of time, but if you really enjoy it, you can reap a lot of benefits, even if it’s not all money.

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

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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.