StartupSmart.com.au featured an article by Shaun McGowan and his story about how a $2,000 purchase at a domain conference changed his business overnight. McGowan purchased the domain carloans.com.au for $2,000 in an effort to help his car loan business.
From the article:
One night at a domain name conference I bought a domain name for $2000. It changed the direction my business was heading – in a good way.
I was a serial domain name investor, flipping domains and websites for profit. With this new domain I had just purchased, I knew that I’d be able to develop a car loan lead generation machine. Unfortunately, however, the domain name wasn’t a brand that we could wrap an entire business around.
Here I was, fronting as someone who invests in domain names for future resale value and development. This was a real philosophical change: now I needed a name for my fledging car loans business. I already knew the name I had to have: CarLoans.com.au. And – of course – that name was not available.
This is the same for so many Australians every day. The best domain names are often unavailable. CarLoans.com.au was already registered by someone else. So I reached out to the registered owner of CarLoans.com.au and got no response. I emailed a few more times and continued to get no response. I took one positive out of that: I reasoned that if I emailed him and didn’t get a response, neither would any of my competitors.
Read the full article here