What were the defining moments in your online business career?
 

June 2002, quitting my job to go full time.

16th Nov 2003, Google's Florida update knocking out over 100 of my sites from top 10 positions in the serps, wondering WTF I'm going to do next with 2/3 of my income gone overnight.

You?

making 20k+ brokering 2 domains in about 3-4 hours

Nice. What did you blow the dough on?

hookers and blow of course :1orglaugh

I always reinvest at least 50% back in on any profits and spent the rest on vacation and buying a few things for myself and family, not an everyday occurrence but the big deals are nice when they present themselves.

January 2007 too, my business partner of 5 years - him and his wife had a kid, decided to knock porn totally on the head out after some supposed "moral enlightenment." A real shame, we turned over more than half a million $ together in that time. :Oh crap

I dunno the dates.

1. When people would actually PAY for a membership to something they would get for free.
2. When my first original content pay site started making money.
3. When I sold one of my sites for $XX,XXX a number of years back.

Those were a few things that come to mind as memorable moments.

August 2007: Made over $70k in domain sales in one auction.
Month after: Quit my day job to do domaining full time.

Good work PornMD. What was the standout domain in that batch?

Poker.in for $60k, but sold FinancialCounseling.com, DrPoker.com, Blackjack101.com and CasinoPokerOnline.com in the same auction. I had 5-figure sales before then but that was the biggest up til that point, and it still is the highest public .in domain sale. Was good times! :thumbsup

Nice domains. You seem to know a lot about poker and gambling names, is 72off.com worth anything? It's a poker phrase of course. The domain is more or less sitting idle, I've done nothing with it in years.

finding a link to intergal in 99 and earning 20c/unique thereafter lol

While you're here Ben, have you got or know how to get Australian traffic? I've bought off most of the networks and not much joy.

This small Aussie program I promote converts around 50c per click from search engine traffic:

Year Mon Clicks UIPs Reg M F O Subscriptions amount Commission 50% Signup commission Deductions Total aff. commission Payment
2010 Apr 1703 1224 44 27 4 6 $1,344.23 $672.12 $6.00 $0.00 $678.12 $509.00

Getting the damn traffic is the difficult part! lol

Driving from S.C. to Las Vegas alone with a rented cargo truck carrying our 20 x 20 display for the Vegas show in Jan. of 2000. Drove straight through with an eight ball to keep me going. Hit Vegas the night before the show and immediately hooked up with Pat and SuperChicken and we hopped in a limo and went to a mansion for a big party.

Walked in the door and there was a string quartet playing classical music and naked girls lying on tables covered in sushi and fruit everywhere.

I had been in the biz for 3 years at that point. But that was the moment that I decided once and for all that I was never going back to the music biz as my full time gig.

I was already a "rock star" lol

Great story Robbie. I'm jealous.

You should read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" if you haven't already, I'm sure you'd love it.

That's an example of a brandable name (as opposed to generic). Someone could want it for a blog or brand, but a generic name would have more liquid value ergo be easier to evaluate and sell. I could see a motivated buyer paying $xxx for that but chances of finding a motivated buyer or that motivated buyer not buying something else instead would be slim.

While I've sold some brandable gambling domains from time to time (DrPoker.com being an example of one, and that sold for a few thou), most of my gambling domain sales are generic domains and in general those are what I go after because it's less reliant on what human eyes see name quality wise and more on search #s for the term of the domains, type-in traffic, etc.

I do a lot of adult domain biz here obviously, but the other big area I've dealt with in the past and still do a bit now is gambling...while 80+% of my domains have generally been mainstream and not gambling/adult, the two have combined for probably close to half the biz I do. Besides the aforementioned names, I had and sold VegasCasinos.net, CasinosGratis.com ("free casinos" in Spanish and a couple other languages), FreeBlackjack.net, a few other Poker.ext domains, a couple Casino.ext domains, and a bunch more. I was very close to spending $xx,xxx on a Poker.ext too, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't because the extension isn't as strong these days.

Btw, another "defining moment" which solidified me wanting to get involved into domains more than a career was actually my 2nd sale, SixDegrees.org, in early 2005. Sold through Sedo and for a long time there was nothing on it but later on, came to find out Kevin Bacon bought it and set up a charity on it. The sale put me in the black for the first time since beginning domaining and the rest is history. :)

Sending you an email PornMD :)

bump for a great business thread

first time i went broke, or the second? lol

2000. Pushed by the dot com bust into affiliate marketing.