Whilst I have lots of domain names, the amount I have actually developed over the years is fairly minimal. Like many other domain investors, I tend to “park” my domains with a professional parking provider. Doing this gives me a lot of flexibility whilst I consider future options. In the interim, I get a small amount of monthly income, plus can indicate that the domain may be for sale.
Of late, this has changed with some of my premium domains. I believe there are better opportunities in developing a proper income producing site. Not only because of the increased income, but the “improved value” should go up.
So I now look to collaborate with experts that can actually do this.
One such site is Men.com.au. And my collaborator is Greg Rogers of NewsCoMedia.com – based in beautiful Byron Bay.
A real motivating factor in getting this domain developed is that I had no control over the “parking links”. Both ParkingCrew and Bodis (and their upstream providers) classified Men.com.au as an “adult site”. So you can guess what type of ads were displayed!
Some quotes from Greg
Men.com.au is a news, current affairs and general information website that offers space to experts in a wide range of fields.
Some professional journalists have offered to become contributors to the website to offer unique and original insights into topics such as news, current affairs, realestate, finance, health and sports. Similarly, PR industry professionals are now starting to contact us to offer interviews with industry leaders and entrepreneurs.
Being a three letter domain name it is easy to remember, and can easily be typed into a browser. It also controls a category in Australia. I know for sure that if the domain name was MyMen or iMen or eMen it would not have the immediate impact that the raw version of a name conveys. In some ways “Men” is similar to Australian brands like Seek, RealEstate, CarSales or News – industry dominating domain names that will never come back on the market as bare domain names.
Professional journalism underpins the site, but citizen journalists, public relations professionals and members of the public are a vital part of its online community now and will be even more so, as our plans for the website develop.
As always, interested in any constructive feedback. 🙂
License to print money if done right.
Don’t like the logo as it looks cheap.
What about social media?
I agree about the logo. Greg has made a revision which looks better, but maybe it needs some more love. 🙂
Can’t go wrong with a 3L domain like this. If pay.com.au sold for $168k, then this is worth a few bucks too.
Creating regular varied content should help build traffic and generate paid advertising. Then sell for a multiple of earnings.
You are right Andy. When you have a category killer name combined with good content, it should make it easier to attract paid advertisers / contributors.
Awesome domain Ned! 🙂 Good luck with the new website, I’ll be keen to hear how it goes.
Thanks Luke!
As you well know, “parking” is horrible in Australia (for lots of reasons), and there has to be a better way.
Men.com.au is an awesome name. Good luck with that one Ned!
As a general rule (not specifically directed at the use case of men.com.au) but more in response to the idea of building out a domain, I like the idea of developing a domain, so long as you can accurately predict the type of business a buyer will want to build on that name (so do your due diligence before just slapping up a WordPress theme and some content).
Like anything you develop, you need to consider the target market.
And if I can just add to what you’re saying Ned…
Because this is where you can make a HUGE multiple return (and this is where Ned will most certainly be heading). Rather than just building a pretty website to make a domain look more attractive, if you build out the site into a functioning ‘business’, you start to enter a ‘Mergers and Acquisitions’ space.
You’ll find there are people within larger companies specifically hired to find ‘business opportunities’ to acquire. And these people (staff who are not spending their own money) will generally not think outside the box – they will just follow their mandate – to find businesses. To them, a domain will be seen as an asset, which falls more into a different department (like marketing or finance). So they won’t be interested in a domain, but if you present a business (no matter how small) you’re suddenly something they have a budget for.
Looking forward to seeing how men.com.au goes Ned. I’m sure there are several larger media companies that would snap that up.
Thank you “Oh Wise One from the West”. 🙂
Hope to catch up with you later this year.
Ned congrats on winning this domain. I love what you’re doing with it and it has given me some great ideas for a handful of my domains. It’s a crazy idea to sell single-word category killers when the money is really in the development. Actually… I’ve just taken a few off the market 🙂
Thanks Tom. As with real estate, the old saying applies. You make your money when you buy!
Greg Rogers deserves all the credit for developing this domain, and it’s still early days. He is very incentivised to make it a success. 💰💰💰
Parking providers give you 4/5ths of bugger all. Development is really the only option if you want to maximise enduser value. Astute comments from Rudy.