Filed under domain names, z
22 comments
Recently, I turned down a six figure offer on the domain CarInsurance.net. While the offer was good, the keyword was just to hard for me to let go. So with a little determination, I built Carinsurance.net and made it live today. While there are some fixes needed, I hope that you like the site and will give me feedback.
Looks good. I like it better than kosherhibachi.com which now ranks #1 for auto insurance 🙂
Nice.
I’m into lead gen as well.
Would be interesting to hear how you set it up
(through a 3rd party lead providor or did you contact the insurance companies directly).
Good job on the site.
Hopefully it will gain some steam now 🙂
Aron
Thanks Mike. Think we should register kosherhibachi.net (LOL). btw 1 see KH coming up number 5 in auto insurance.
@ Aron – In house for the site production but using Surehits for insurance leads.
Great to you see Bill Gates writing articles for you. LOL 🙂 How did you manage to get him on board?
@Valentin – I wish it was “that” Bill Gates but either way he writes good articles.
Looks great. I would love to hear your opinion on developing a .net.
Some say dont do it because of the traffic you are going to send to the .com.
I always thought that if you can make money out of it, why not?
The site looks good with great generic .net
Just wondering why you are using a German liscense plate?
are you planning on expanding to Europe?
Lead selling is domaining 2.0 and with the right product it’s a cash cow.
I don’t like using a third party and always sell leads direct. In the case of carinsurance.net it is probably way less hasle using a 3rd party, but you should definantly consider cutting out the middle man for more than one reason.
@ Aron…. you have done a good job on “copier” but you should consider shortening your lead form. Just a sugestion.
Seriously – what were you thinking turning down a $100k+ offer? Carinsurance.net as a developed site shows exactly why domainers should leave the task to professional web developers. Unless you plan to massively advertise on Google – and the keyword is expensive – how do you intend to monetize it?
@ Acro – I appreciate the feedback. I do have a strategy that includes buying ads to bring in additional traffic.
@ yaron. I agree that .com is king, however there are certain keywords in .net that I believe are strong enough to earn revenue. I believe carinsurance.net is one of them. I guess others do also as there have been 2 six figure offers for the domain recently (not from domainers.
Yaron,
“Some say dont do it because of the traffic you are going to send to the .com”
Those people are generally those who own the .com and want to sell it.
You can build a great site on a .net or .org without incurring $100 or $200k fees for the .com and if you end up bleeding 1 or 2 % to the .com who cares.
Anyone who subscribes to the theory of do not develop anything but a .com is most likely not very good at developing. Many of the top search results are .net and .org across many verticals – why, because the .com is parked and will probably always stay that away.
If you can find a great .net and the .com is undeveloped with some ridiculous asking price buy the .net and develop
Find a solid keyword domain that interests you and build it out – content will eventually trump any .com parking page
ps – don’t listen to domainers about development unless they actually have a track record of developing.
Most are just good at changing nameservers .. no offense boys and girls, you know its true.
The whole point I was making is, selling for $100k would seed quite a few projects. As for development, I don’t consider a sub-basic car image/header with static links to pages laden with copy per state to be “development”. No offense, my motto is skipping the BS you hear in domaining cycles.
@arco, no offense taken but before you knock the “a sub-basic car image/header with static links to pages laden with copy per state” I personally know someone with a similar site netting well over six figures a month.
Larry – that was a very diplomatic answer to the Acro web design guy. Wonder what 6 figure names he’s sold and what names he owns where he’s had the luxury of turning down 6 figure offers.
Obviously he didn’t take a few things into account before offering his criticism:
1) The tax implications would probably net you $60-65k, not exactly enough money to do much other than a couple nice vacations – or pay for 1 year of Jeff’s college education.
2) Larry probably paid low $xx,xxx for the domain, so he can afford to mess around, spend a bunch of money, and if his venture fails, sell it to the guy who offered over $100k for the name and still make money… not even considering the built up equity his site will have.
3) Larry has a titanium Amex Black Card and probably doesn’t need to shake the couch out for loose change, so selling a good name for $125,000 won’t make or break his month or year.
Your site looks awesome! I also used surehits before…most top insurance domains are using surehits also. It’s going to be pretty tough getting insurance targeted traffic to your site…unless you pay big bucks…and then its hard to make a profit…lots of competition in this area.
I would have definatetly sold it for six figures and then hand-registered a domain and put that same site up and go from there. I don’t see no difference from your domain and a hand-registered domain…of course yours is a little bit nicer…but nobody is going to see your domain..they are usually going to go straight to the enter zip code thing and go from there…so any domain would have worked. I have tried to make money with insurance sites thru surehits, but it didnt work out for me. I got cheap insurance traffic from 7search.com and other sites and it didnt work out for me…didnt make a profit so i quit…moved on! Good luck trying your techniques on this…hope it works out for ya!
That domain (although not the .com) is a LEGEND!
How did you get it?
Regards
Hey, site looks ok but the bottom logos point to IPs and of your domain only. Either make it link to real partner site or remove live links. Finally, the license plate on the car looks fuzzy – hire a good grahpics person otherwise it looks like a HS kid did it.
@No Name,
thank you for your comments. I really did not want to disrespect Acro. He has been a developer for many years and I have read many good comments on his blog. The site may be different from something he would have designed, however it works for my purposes.
As for not selling the domain, at this time I felt there was more long term value in keeping the name as opposed to what the sale would have net me. Time will whether it turns out to be the correct move.
rmg,
I purchased it many year ago from the person who won it on snapnames. Back then, the first person that paid $60 had the exclusive snap on a name. There was no auction in those days. I wanted the name and emailed the winner immediately after he won it with my offer which he accepted. I believe i closed on it within a day.
Nice site.. Though you better check into each state law. You need to be a licensed insurance agent to do any type of advertising in that state. I am not kidding.
Question is what could they do to you? Probably not a whole lot. If your a licensed agent and you don’t register the name then your in big trouble and they could pull your license away from you and fine you.
As far as them enforcing this I doubt they will ever enforce this but check out any states law in regards to this. Very stupid law. Colorado, Utah etc…