Christian Riley Archives – We're Fusible

Kids everywhere are online searching for Santa, and there’s one site in particular that hasn’t changed much since the nineties – SantaClaus.com which is owned by Christian Riley who has been buying and developing domain names since the early nineties.

Christian writes a blog about domain names, politics, the internet and more on ChristianRiley.com. Though the site is not regularly updated, it’s an interesting read. Christian shared a story about SantaClaus.com and Bruce Waldak, a friend of his who passed in 2007 on his blog back in 2008:

I met Bruce in 1993. We did business together in initially the software field – statistics and tracking software for CSG/digitalNation (dn.net) when it was running FirstClass. And then we became friends over time. Back in early 1994, we were talking one day and I said, “Hey Bruce, if you want to write to Santa Claus on the internet, you’ll be hitting santaclaus.com on our servers.” He said something along the lines of, “No way! You are kidding me! You can do that?” (It may have been more along the lines of “No shit! Your f-ing with me!”). So we spent the next hour talking about names and cool things to do with them and found a lot of great ideas on the topic. He was always looking for a great idea and there were always great conversations with wild ideas to be had.

The look and feel of the SantaClaus web site hasn’t changed much over the years, but regardless of how your site looks or whether it has the best content, thanks to a great domain like SantaClaus.com people still visit.

That’s pretty much been the way it is for premium .com names. Last December, SantaClaus.com had over 100,000 visitors.

Of course, Christian Riley could do a lot more with SantaClaus.com, but he is a one-man show as I wrote about in late September in a story titled: Halloween.com, Phonebook.com, SantaClaus.com is really just one person, no big companies here

There are a lot of similarities between his online properties. Visit pancreas.com, phonebook.com, hurricane.com or any of his sites and you’ll notice the distinct touch Christian gives to his network. And despite the lack of a Web 2.0 look, there is no sign that traffic to any of his sites is slowing down.

Halloween.com had over 500,000 visitors this past October.

Phonebook.com gets as many as 100,000 visitors per month.

What’s up next for Christian Riley, who has a number of fantastic seasonal domains?

Looks like EasterBunny.com. He owns that, too.

Have you ever checked out Halloween.com?

Behind every domain name, there’s a story – and if you’re anything like me, during the Holiday season it’s always interesting to see what companies and people are doing with their domain names.

In the case of Halloween.com, its owner Christian Riley has an amazing domain name story that spans almost 20 years.

Christian Riley, not only owns Halloween.com, he owns a slew of category-killing domain names that he has developed into web sites. His passion for domain names started years ago back in the early nineties – some of which he has sold, some of which he has kept, and some of which he has developed.

Christian shows off his domain names and markets them on several of his properties. Visit Halloween.com, and at the top of the site you’ll see links to SantaClaus.com, PhoneBook.com, Hurricane.com and ThanksGiving.info.

On PhoneBook.com, Christian receives on average 100,000 visitors per month according to Compete. Scroll the bottom of the web site, and the footer links to other sites in Christian’s network including: whitepages.biz, scholarships.net, christmas.biz, easter.biz, diving.com, and jacksonville.biz.

What’s Christian Riley’s story?

What better way to learn about Christian, than to read his blog – at none other than ChristianRiley.com. The guy has some experience in the domain industry. In a post dating back to 2002, Christian writes about domain names he registered in 1993 and 1994. The list is long.

law.com (didn’t register, it but was Director of Operations, 1993)
games.com (July 15, 1994) – Hasbro/Parker Brothers wanted this. AOL has it as of 2009.
casino.com (July 14, 1994)
court.com (August 4, 1994)
gamble.com (July 14 1994)
hotel.com (August 4, 1994) – HotelSupplies.com Inc bought this
Halloween.com (August 30, 1994)
SantaClaus.com (August 1994)
EasterBunny.com (December 1995)
phonebook.com (July 14, 1994) – We began with web directories here, Miami.com, and at coral.net for clients and business in Florida and the Caribbean. Lots of realtors and destinations.
palmbeach.com (May 24, 1994)
rights.com (August 30, 1994)
dive.com (July 30, 1994)
Havana.com (Sept 1, 1994)
Coral.net (Sept 8, 1994)
Sequitur.com (June 1994) – The opposite of non sequitur. Ended up letting it go. Silly me. 😉 (We considered Sequitur for the corporate name, but ended up with Coral Technologies after a few people in the State of Florida government didn’t get what it me and thought it might be obscene. Just ended up using it as the follow-up name for The Rising Sun BBS (Ft. Lauderdale 1982-1993) which was running TBBS and we switched to private software, then FirstClass.
diving.com (July 29, 1994)
talk.com (June 1994) – HotWired need
sale.com (June 1994) – J.Lee bought it.
racing.com (July 30, 1994) –
national.com (April 1994)
cruise.com (May 1994)
cruising.com (July 30, 1994)
movie.com (June 1994) – Well, you can see who owns it now.
miami.com (April 12, 1994) – Miami Herald needed it.
Boca.com (June 21, 1994)
Pompano.com (June 1994)
FtLauderdale.com (May 1994)
ebank.com (1994) – a Bank
reservations.com (June 1994)
reservation.com (June 1994)
dolphins.com (August 10, 1994)
shark.com (July 30, 1994)
holiday.com (June 1994)
keylargo.com (June 1994)
honeymoon.com (July 30, 1994)
boating.com (July 29, 1994)
flying.com (July 30, 1994)
keywest.com (July 29, 1994)
flores.com (Aug 29, 1994)
oceans.com (Aug 30, 1994)
marina.com (June 1994)
bahamas.com (Sept 9, 1994)
medical.com (July 14, 1994)
read.com (June 1994)
mart.com (June 1994)
realtor.com (June 1994) – At the time I didn’t know it was a trademark, just thought it was generic like “realestate.” Younger and more naive. They were friendly about it all though!
islands.com (July 30, 1994)
zodiac.com (July 1994)
SonsOfLiberty.com (April 30, 1998)
Daughters-Of-Liberty.com (July 18, 2001)
Liberty-Tree.com (July 7, 2001)

What’s most impressive about the domain names and web sites that Christian has kept and developed, is that he operates everything on his own. According to the About page on Halloween.com, he writes: “Halloween.com is really just one person, no big companies here!”