Posted on 12 February 2010
Six months ago I announced plans of developing TampaBay.tv and Indianapolis.in into amazing community portals with an emphasis on Tampa Bay, because it is made up of 8 counties, a population of nearly 4 million residents, dozens of beautiful beaches, high tourism traffic, NFL, NHL and MLB teams. My plans were to develop a main portal and eight sub sites for each of the counties. With this model I’d be able to basically run nine websites in one project which gave me the maximum revenue potentials.
On paper I was set to easily bring in six figures per year from the start and once traffic picked up I could bring in as much as seven figures.
So if this was such a great project then why terminate?
I became an online businessman because I did not want to be in the streets pushing my product. The beauty of an online business is that I can sit at home in my pajamas and earn a good living. Taking on this project means going into the streets, meeting the community and businesses pushing the website. In addition, the drive to Tampa Bay ranges from 45-120 minutes from current residence depending on the area. Not only do I have to sell them on my site but the extension. Yes, I said the extension because it’s not a dot com. From the word go I am at a disadvantage. I will get nearly zero type in traffic, spend at least three times the amount of time and money on marketing the site and have to educate everyone on the use of dot TV or dot IN.
Am I against alternate extensions? Not at all and please don’t take this that way. Because I’m building a community site instead of a tourism site, my audience is in the streets. I don’t want to be in the streets. Being out there pushing the sites will take an enormous amount of time – time that will take away from my other projects that need just as much attention.
Although I’m extremely embarrassed about dropping these projects, I am also very relieved. I felt too much pressure to make something work that had too many up hill battles. It’s not the amount of work that worried me, it was the type of work I would have to endure. After a lot of contemplation and many many talks with my wife, I came to the realization that my business lies with domain names and our industry – that is where I want to make my money. Being an entrepreneur means you have to make hard decisions like that sometimes.
Posted on 15 January 2010
No weekly video today and probably not again until February. As I have shared previously, I am attending three conferences (Affiliate Summit, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and DOMAINfest) within the next 14 days. I am currently on a flight to Los Angeles catching up on emails. That’s right, I’m on an airplane right now. Delta flights have WiFi service available for $12.95, which is worth it for me to catch up on some work. Because of this, I strongly suggest flying Delta.
I’m excited to be attending these functions. The itineraries for all of them look great. I’m also excited to see everyone that I already know and meet new people I haven’t met yet. Of course I’ll be reporting everything and sharing pics, so make sure to check back to keep up to speed with what’s going on at the events.
Posted on 02 January 2010
2009 is over and honestly, not soon enough. I’ll be the first to admit that 2009 was not my best financial year ever. 2009 is the year that I completely let go of physical real estate to focus on virtual real estate. This was not an easy decision, because I loved real estate. During the prime days of physical real estate it was not unheard of for me to bring in six figures in a single month. Such has not happened on the virtual side, yet. I know that with anything new it takes time and patience.
Domaining for me started mid 2008. I purchased a couple thousand domain names with no clue of what I was doing. I made some money and lost some money. 2009 was the year of a lot of low-end domain sales and more importantly, study. This blog became a business, earning several thousand dollars every month from advertising. Between the blog’s income and domain sales it allowed me to kind of sit back, study, learn from the ground up and make some incredible connections.
I want to thank everyone in the domaining community, because without your support I wouldn’t be here. I want you all to know that 2010 is going to be a BIG year for Chef Patrick. I will be launching a domain brokerage service, several development projects and I will also be announcing a very special domain conference that I have planned for the end of 2010. Most of these plans will be carried out within the first quarter of 2010, so make sure you stay tuned to see what I’m up to!
Posted on 01 January 2010
My Favorite Blog Posts:
With the end of another year brings reflection. Looking back at over 300 blog posts from 2009, I wanted to highlight some of my favorites. It was hard, but I narrowed it down to a baker’s dozen.
Interviews:
Looking back, I noticed only 2 interview blog posts during 2009, this will change for 2010. When I first started in 2008 this was one of the featured sections of the blog with interviews from Rick Schwartz and Rick Latona. I have two interviews sitting in my email now, which I will publish within the next two weeks. Also, while at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in Las Vegas this month I’ll have an area setup for video interviews.
Personal:
In 2009 I was able to conquer my fear of public speaking and roller coasters.
Posted on 31 December 2009
Between working on a couple projects for 2010 and the kids being off of school for the holidays I haven’t been blogging much. That will change tomorrow! I’ll be back with my weekly news video and then a couple 2009 blog posts over the weekend. In the mean time, Happy New Year!!!
