September 26, 2025 • 46 mins
Check out my newsletter at https://TKOPOD.com and join my new community at https://TKOwners.com
━
Beehiiv is the newsletter platform I’ve used for over a year and a half because their data shows you exactly what’s working. Get 30% off three months at beehiiv.com/chris
━
I sat down with Peter Askew to dig into his unique path of building profitable online businesses from expired domains. Peter shared how he went from being laid off multiple times to teaching himself code, learning SEO, and eventually acquiring domains like DudeRanch.com and VidaliaOnions.com. We talked through the exact playbook he used to find these opportunities, how he evaluates traffic and monetization potential, and the surprising power of exact-match domains for building authority in any niche.
Peter broke down how DudeRanch.com now makes around $50,000 a year from just one hour of work per month, why he sees boutique e-commerce as one of the best opportunities right now, and how his job board RanchWork.com became a steady year-round business helping thousands of people find ranch jobs.
If you want to learn more from Peter, check him out here:
- Twitter / X: @searchbound
- Blog: DeepSouthVentures.com
- Personal site: Askew.org
Here are some of the tools, resources, and sites Peter mentioned in our conversation:
Expired Domains tool: http://www.expireddomains.net
GoDaddy Auctions: http://auctions.godaddy.com
NameJet: http://www.namejet.com
SnapNames: http://www.snapnames.com
DropCatch: http://www.dropcatch.com
Namecheap Auctions: http://www.namecheap.com/domains/marketplace/buy-domains/auctions
Clicky Analytics: http://clicky.com
Shopify: http://www.shopify.com
ShipStation: http://www.shipstation.com
Enjoy!
---
Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-yt
Ask me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-ask
Learn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjk
Learn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cof
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
That makes a little over 50 grand a year.
I spent about an hour a month onit maybe.
Jeez. 0 concept or understandingof coding.
These domains are interesting. It's like this is like the key
to the entire website. I didn't like my livelihood
dictated by someone else. Some of these folks online are
under the impression then they need to quit their day job.
Yes. I do not subscribe to that at
(00:21):
all. I'd work 9:00 to 5:00 and then
I'd come home and work on these projects in the evening.
It's just an hour a day. What are the tools in your tool
belt that you can't live without?
Do you think directory businesses are still viable
today in the age of AI? My friend Peter lives the life.
He lives the dream. He's got a portfolio of niche
websites that just pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars
(00:44):
every year. It took some time on the front
end to build these up, but todayhe only spends a few hours a
week managing these projects. So I had to know Peter, as
someone who's been reading your blog for 15 years, following
your progress, how do you do it?What tools do you use?
How can people copy you? He did with onions what I did
with Bucky's and Texas snacks. He just does things,
permissionless things. He partners with people he's
(01:05):
never met. He's cheap like me.
He doesn't spend a ton of money,but he's patient and he's
tactical and he shares the secrets with us today.
So please enjoy this conversation with my friend
Peter. I would love to hear the story.
How did this domain name come across your desk, and what made
you find it interesting and end up buying it?
At this point in my career, I I've been laid off several,
several times and that began to grate on my nerves.
(01:28):
I didn't like my livelihood dictated by someone else.
And if somebody made some, and I've lived through this through
several startups, you know, executives make a horrible
decision and it kneecaps the company and I'm held
responsible. And I had a few instances where
I was at a startup and I drove like I was in the marketing and
I built a product for the team and it drove an extra couple,
(01:49):
$1,000,000 for the team. And they promoted me and they
hired, I got an assistant. I trained the assistant up and
then six months later they lay me off and keep my assistant for
a lower salary. That one really stuck with me.
And that's when I was like, I got to figure out this stuff.
I don't have a computer science background.
I have a history degree from allthis, so I was like, I got to
(02:10):
figure this stuff out. I have a background in SEO, a
little bit of an SEO0 concept orunderstanding of coding, but I
knew I needed to concentrate on it.
So I started trying to teach myself to code.
Coding led me to start building sites.
Building sites exposed me to like Adsense and I can monetize
the sites a little bit from Adsense and that's sort of
(02:31):
giving me a little bit of money.I mean not a ton of me 50 bucks
a month and then it got to 300 bucks a month and I was like wow
this is crazy. A more on me can generate
revenue online. But there were small like piece
meal projects and the more I kept building at some point I
always have to think back on howI got exposed to expired
domains. I was building sites and I
(02:53):
realized it might be faster justto acquire a site.
What's stopping me from going into Google, typing in some high
traffic search term, reaching out to the owner to see if they
want to sell the site to me in my head?
Like there's nothing stopping mefrom doing that.
So I started attempting to do that.
I'd reach out and for some strange reason tourism seemed
fun. So I'd search tourism terms.
(03:15):
Aruba pooched up for the term Aruba.
Buying sites? Do you mean buying domain names
that are just sitting dormant? No, no full operating websites
that look like kind of mom and pop design.
Maybe they were built in Dreamweaver and they hadn't been
updated in five or ten years andbut they were ranked number two
or three or maybe #1 in Google for the term Cancun or some
(03:39):
travel based website. And I could see within, you
know, on Adsense, Google typically gives you around 70%
of that click value. So I was like, well, tourism
terms are quite expensive. They're a dollar, two dollars,
$3 a click. So if I built out a tourism
based website and so many clickson a dollar ad unit, I'll get
(03:59):
$0.70 per click. That's, that's pretty darn good.
And heck, I can go down to Arubaor go to Cancun or, or go out
West on a vacation. So I started building these
small kind of travel based websites.
It felt like, didn't feel like work.
It was just like vacation. I'm building vacation websites.
And there's some arbitrage in here because the owners of these
websites don't know that the cost per click is higher.
(04:20):
You have that information that they don't have, right?
Correct. They'd always show, always ask
for analytics and I could look at their analytics and say, Oh
my gosh, if I got a 3% click through rate, 1% click through
rate on these ads, I can make 500 a 1000 bucks a month, 2000
bucks a month and their ask price is 3 grand.
Yeah, I'll I'll buy it and bringit in house.
(04:40):
So I'd buy the entire content and bring the domain over.
And so that's when I started getting exposed to domain.
So I'd get a deal on a site and my brain immediately went to the
domain and say, and my brain wastelling me I got to get control
of this domain because if I control the domain, I control
the whole site because they could waffle and change their
mind. But if I control the domain and
(05:01):
they go back on their word, I can still screen straight the
information, pull it over and rebuild the site, but I have to
own the domain. I was like, these domains are
interesting, like these are thisis like the key to the entire
website. And some of the sites I was
buying early on were just regular, you know, just they
weren't terribly descriptive, but they ranked their old, they
(05:22):
were trusted. But I kept coming across these
really interesting new descriptive domain names, like
one of the early. Go ahead.
Sorry, before you go there, whatwhat are some examples of some
old ones that that you bought that were interesting but didn't
quite work out? Yeah.
So one was, I've since sold thisdomain.
It was called Travel Envoy and it was a directory of wineries
(05:42):
and vineyards that you could visit.
I bought this around O four and OK.
And then he he transferred all the pages to me.
I bought it for 10 grand and then I simply just added Adsense
to it at it and I did a poor job.
It didn't know it code very well.
So so I added it to the site andthen it started.
Yeah, throw me whatever, a grand, 2 grand a month.
(06:04):
And he didn't have any ads on it0.
Ads nothing on it. So you bought it like as a
business slash website and that wasn't even on his radar.
All you did was plug ads on it and wait.
I plugged ads, yeah, Adsense adson it and then and I had one
affiliate thing and that actually worked pretty well.
There was this cool map of all the like wine varieties where
(06:26):
they're sourced from and this guide sign up for an affiliate
deal. And so if you go back an
Internet archive, you'll see this ad up on the top right hand
side. Oh yeah, you're gonna pull it
way back. Yeah, 2004.
Is this it? This is before I bought it.
Isn't that beautiful? Look at that.
Oh man, this is this is what you're looking for.
These types of sites still existtoday.
(06:49):
For those that are listening, itbasically looks like Craigslist
blue hyperlinks. Very ugly.
And there are still mom and pop operators out of here that that
have websites like this that arevery receptive to straight up
offers to buy the website. This is before I acquired.
It and 10,000 pages on a website.
That's a Moat. That's that's a lot of tedious
(07:11):
work. I was kind of spitballing
10,000. It was a lot.
It may have been 5 to 10,000. It was a tremendous amount of
pages because it took me hours. When I did the FTP transfer, he
forwarded all the sites. I can't.
I think I did an FTP because there were so many pages.
There was no easy way but that Ithat I was aware of.
So this may have been me. So here, top right, that's 2006
(07:34):
QPR wines paid me. They paid me a few.
This was like wine ratings. Yeah, they wound up paying me a
month is. This like a trip down memory
lane for you. Yes, it is.
I haven't been it. So if you notice this grape to
the right of that was my Adsensead unit.
So back then there were no Adsense wasn't including any
kind of images within this. They were straight hyperlinks
(07:55):
that they'd pull. So I'd always try to add some
kind of image. So that was that was some free
clip art I found somewhere. Don't.
Add the ad on the right and thenincluded all the normal
navigation to the site. And then wine books, did that
just take you to Amazon through an affiliate link?
I may have left that for him andI just let him keep all the
affiliate stuff from the wine book he made.
(08:15):
Oh, here we are. I can't.
Yeah, because I don't, I don't remember ever put creating mives
because the affiliates were so small, the revenue shares.
So I never bothered. I was making more from the
Adsense. I just focused on Adsense and
some intriguing affiliate deals.That little map up on the right
converted quite well. You'd be, you'd be surprised
right here. Yeah.
I don't know if there's still inexistence.
(08:36):
It looks very intriguing. It looks like a periodic table.
Yeah, it was really cool. I'd get Delong's wine info.
It was really cool and they'd ship it.
They sent me one for free. Comes in that little this is a
what done memory lane. So this one was one of the first
big acquisitions I did. I bought it for 10,000 bucks.
So let's talk about the unit economics of that $10,000.
(08:58):
Like what were you buying? Was there any revenue from
anything? How did you come up with that
price? I don't even know how we came.
I may have asked him what he wascomfortable selling it with and
I believe he may have come around.
From what I remember, it was maybe 12 to 14 and I got him
down to 10,000 bucks so I could use that number and then look at
the analytics and say, OK, how long would it take me?
(09:20):
I'll still work in the 9:00 to 5:00 at this and I'm a big
believer this some of these folks online talk about this.
You know, some online builders are under the impression then
they need to quit their day job.Yes.
And they go all in on their project.
Preach, preach. I do not subscribe to that at
all. I ran my day job, I'd work 9:00
to 5:00 and then I'd come home and work on these projects in
(09:42):
the evening every day and I treated it.
I don't know, you watch that oldrobot show, the battle bot show.
And I mentioned this on Twitter sometimes I compared it, these
two little robots in the in thisdeath den and they're fighting
each other. Which one, my 9:00 to 5:00 or
these projects that I'm building, which one can generate
more money? And whenever my little side
(10:03):
projects, maybe it never happens, but whenever my side
projects can generate more moneythan my 9:00 to 5:00, that's
when I'll consider it. Or maybe when they're getting
close, that's when I'll considerdropping off and going full
time. So I was still working 9:00 to
5:00 in these projects. I call it the wing walkers code.
For those listening, I'm showingimages of wing walkers on these
(10:26):
airplanes. You never let go of 1 railing
until you have control of the other railing, right?
And that's the same thing with testing side hustles, testing
business ideas like just don't let go of the thing until you
have a better thing in hand. Yes, because it creates so much
stress. I, I see some folks that do
this, they'll quit. I'm giving myself nine months
(10:46):
and Oh my gosh, the pressure. And you know, these weirdo
ideas, in my opinion, don't comeup in that type of pressure
tank. It's when you're when you're
allowed to sit and Daydream and do it.
Heck, 95, you're probably sitting at your cube 5 or 6
hours a day, just daydreaming ondifferent ways to work on your
project at night and doing two or three hours of actual work at
(11:07):
your job. Why not get paid for that?
Go home, work on your project and see where it can lead.
And some of these projects, I mean, they don't require, they
require somebody just to baby them constantly.
And sometimes it's just an hour a day to push it in the right
direction, make sure it's not going down and it's fast and
responsive and. You were having a ton of fun.
(11:28):
This was a hobby, correct? Just fun and correct.
You can even monetize this fun so.
Right. And I was teaching myself to
code. I was like, wow, this good
stuff's weird. I'm not very good at it.
I don't know if I have a ton of interest in it, but I'm
fascinated by it. I'm glad I understand.
So the way I kind of taught myself to code was I am not a
coder, but I'd basically just taught myself how all these
(11:51):
puzzle pieces work. But so back to Travel Envoy.
So I built it. I start recognizing this
importance of this domain name and I keep running across
projects with really intriguing,just descriptive.
Like my friend north of Atlanta,Warren Royal, bought the domain
bobbleheads.com at a domain nameauction, had no experience in
(12:13):
bobbleheads, very similar to youand me, you and and Texas snacks
and me and Vidalia. He has zero experience in the
bobblehead world. Bought it at auction.
I believe he spent 30 grand and he started a custom bobblehead
business from scratch and he currently now has 15 employees
north of Atlanta. I've been to his warehouse a few
(12:34):
times and it's just the coolest warehouse to go visit because he
has life-size bobble heads, you know, like George Washington
hanging around. And so I was watching what
Warren was doing. I was like, this is very
interesting and fascinating whathe's building.
And so he bought that at auctions.
I mean $160.00, do you know whathis revenue is or what kind of
volume he does nowadays from a 30,000?
(12:57):
You should get him on the He is wonderful.
Yeah, he doesn't go on many podcasts.
He he's so heads down on this business, he rarely he'll show
up on a few domain or podcasts from time to time, but he's
always head heads down on. They just use his math.
We we produce over 250,000 bobble heads each year.
I'm looking at his prices, nothings under $100.00.
(13:19):
So 25,000,000. Wow.
That would be over 25,000,000 a year if they were each $100,
which most of these are 100 to 200.
Yeah, yeah. See, and it's funny, Peter,
because like most people wouldn't believe that they're
going to hear that Like no, you don't sell 25,000,000 of
bobbleheads a year and it's like.
Bobbleheads. Yeah.
No. Oh, I can't.
I can do get the domain bobbleheads.
(13:39):
All the kind of the cynical attitudes.
So. But go ahead.
I'm interrupting you. Yes.
No, like people just trap. There's just so many e-commerce
businesses out there not named Amazon.com that do millions,
10s, hundreds of millions and billions of dollars a year, many
of which have never been heard of.
Yeah, I owned an e-commerce fulfillment company and we would
(14:00):
get leads all the time. Like I have this make up brand,
I have this, this food brand, this ice cream brand.
We do 36 million, we do 20. And I'm like, where are you
coming from? How are there so many e-commerce
brands? That's crazy in the context of
this conversation. A lot of times, not every time,
it starts with a really good, trustworthy domain name.
Right. Yeah.
(14:21):
So he got Bobbleheads and then bobblehead came up, I think a
year or two after. So he owns singular and plural.
He owns the entire, you know, beachhead for this entire
industry. OK, I went to bobblehead.com.
And it redirects. It should redirect to
bobbleheads. He tries to redirect everything
over. So when you bought Travel Envoy,
that $10,000 was just kind of goodwill.
(14:42):
There was no really revenue, butyou knew what you could do with
it and that's kind of how you valued it, right?
I. Valued it based on the traffic I
could see how much traffic I could roughly napkin math, a
rough click through rate for my Adsense units, and maybe some
extra revenue from the affiliatedeals and I thought I could pay
it off within 6 to 9 months and I wound up paying it off within
(15:03):
six months easily. Oh my gosh, a lot of people are
watching this and I, I know whatthey're thinking.
A lot of them are thinking, well, this isn't relevant
anymore. Like you just can't reach out to
site owners and, but like, are you kidding me?
It's 100% still relevant. Is Adsense brand new?
No, of course not. But there's, there's even more
arbitrage opportunities. I, I just bought a bunch of
trees from my front yard and I wanted to buy them here, you
(15:25):
know, close to me. So I went to the website to try
to shop around. Cool, this is their website.
I love it, I love it nursery. Dot com and I saw and I'm like I
want to buy this business and I go in the business and like the
gentleman helping me is like 83 and they have this prime real
estate. They've been there for 40 years.
Wow you can't shop online. You don't know what their
(15:46):
inventory is. They don't answer their phone.
And it's like, of course, this is a much more expensive version
of what we're talking about, butarbitrage opportunities will
always exist. And when you and I are 80 years
old, people are going to be buying sites from us, correct?
To do better things with them, right?
Similar when I did my Vidalia project, The farm, I partnered
with no website, no online presence whatsoever.
(16:10):
So when I started recognizing these domains were quite
interesting. I was like, what's fascinating?
How do I get a domain like Warren has like bobbleheads.com,
you know, I wasn't able to register them in 95.
It's O 4 at this point. I was like, oh, I missed my
opportunity. I didn't have any opportunity by
these domains. I see the windows closed now and
I rarely ever think from that perspective.
(16:32):
But I kept digging through and at some point I got exposed to
the expiring domain name market.And I think you're familiar with
it. You know, somebody doesn't renew
a domain for whatever reason. The domain goes back to the
registrar and the registrar putsit up for auction for open bid.
And roughly every day, 50 to 100,000 domain names expire.
So it's a tremendous amount of inventory that you can sift
(16:54):
through because at first I triedto buy.
So this is more of a marketplacetry OK, what's a good GoDaddy
auctions is one of the biggest. So they built their own auction
platform to sell domains within their.
So if you just do, I think it's auctions.godaddy.com.
Yep, shows some of within the the expiring side.
(17:14):
So go to advanced search right there and then go to type and
then do expiring auctions and then go estimated value and then
go down on to say they add, I'm sorry, on that top search
results go down, down a little bit more.
Oh, right here, yes, Sir. And then and then go down, do it
and click it again. Now go back to choosing their
(17:35):
own check out jtm.com is expired03 letter, three letter
callers.com. I mean, look at that domain.
You can build some call. Tracking applications Golf.
Tour.com. Yes.
That could be a travel website. Oh my.
Gosh, so this is this is a deep rabbit hole.
So when I got exposed, and this was around 04, I got exposed to
expiring domain auctions. I was like, Oh my gosh, hang on.
(17:58):
Because I was trying to buy domains direct from original
registrar, from original owners.And you know, they'd want, I
mean, and they're worth it. They'd want 100 grand, 500
grand. I was like, I can't, it's too
risky for me. And I found this.
This is simply a patience game if you simply sit and wait.
Crownmolding.com Look at that cool one.
(18:19):
Dude, you could buy all the interesting crown molding that
the world has to offer. You could sell it.
Could be drop shipped directly from the manufacturer.
You don't have to have a big warehouse.
Dude, you could do the recycled crown molding out of old
historic homes. Yes.
Oh man. I know.
So this is this is where I started looking at them.
Not will, not really with the intention of building I was
(18:39):
looking at them from. Maybe I'd buy them and flip
them. Maybe I'd try to buy them and
make some Adsense money off of them.
But then some of these other names, crown molding would pop
up and then they'd start inspiring me to build something.
I was like crown molding. Oh my gosh.
Rentmyhouse.com. Yeah.
And so this, I started doing this every single day and I'd
buy some, I'd buy 1, build a small site, figure out how to
(19:02):
monetize it. Maybe it had existing traffic,
maybe you had direct traffic, maybe you had had a a previous
identity to it and figure out ways to build on that.
So I'd build a few there, but itwas more piece meal efforts.
And I was like, man, I'm gettingtired of doing these small.
I'd rather wait and find a big one that expires and maybe just
wait. I'm not in a hurry.
(19:22):
I'll just sit maybe and hang outand just monitor this thing
every single day and wait for aninteresting domain that expires.
And that's when duderanch.com popped up.
It popped up oddly. A ranch up in New York State
owned it. They owned it.
Dude ranch got sold two or threetimes and then the last owner
ran it into the ground and shut it down.
(19:43):
Sold the sold the property. If you want to go into archive,
it's pretty fun to see. The old version of Dude.
Ranch.com so you can see it. I'll do that now.
And it used to be called Roseland Ranch.
And so they owned the domain they used to advertise on Wheel
of Fortune and Jeopardy. Vacation.
Yeah, I'll have to forward you the tweak.
I found one of the ads that theyhad, so I I reposted it on my
(20:06):
Twitter feed somewhere. Here's another one looks
Roseland Ranch Resort and you'llif you Scroll down, you'll see
usually they'll have oh, you mayhave seen us on Wheel of
Fortune. This is 2003 with that.
Oh, here it is. Yeah.
It's before so they this expiredand went up for auction in 09.
OK, so I start I waited when I made that decision that I was
(20:29):
going to sit and wait and almostlike catbird seat and almost
just empty mind and just wait for something to to pop up
that's expired. That inspires me to build.
I like the. That's my first version I.
Built 2009. And I built it, yeah.
Even this looks awesome though. I mean, I've been.
Really, WordPress. So at that point I'd gotten
exposed to WordPress and I had some rough idea.
(20:52):
I had an SEO and paid search background, love analytics, and
I was like, OK, I'll build it myself to make sure I can
advertise. And then dude, Rancher started
buying ads from me. I was like, sweet, I think I can
make this work. And only then go ahead.
Yeah, average. How do they start buying ads
from you? Like how do they?
Often times, so it started the easiest way for me.
(21:13):
I think I could have done this via e-mail or phone, but they
I'm fortunate they have a yearlyconference every year.
They hold it at a dude ranch. Typically it sounds like sweet.
Now this is kind of killing two birds with one stone.
I can start visiting dude rangesbecause I need to visit a few to
get the feel of these just because I'm I'm basically
representing the industry by owning this domain.
(21:33):
It's it's crazy owning one of these names and folks will
assume you are an expert in thatfield.
The trust and immediate. Authority.
Yeah. With a an exact match
descriptive.com generic exact match is wildly powerful.
I've been using Beehive for about two years, almost as long
(21:54):
as they've been around. And I got to tell you, watching
other creators stay stuck on basic newsletter platforms is
painful. You're losing thousands of
dollars because you don't know what your subscribers are worth.
And when potential sponsors ask who reads your newsletter and
you say entrepreneurs or moms, you lost the deal.
But Beehive has a survey featurethat's brilliant.
(22:14):
You can set up a few questions about demographics and spending
habits that you send them through right after they
subscribe. So instead of telling sponsors,
oh, I have 5000 subscribers, youcan say I have 3750 homeowners
making over $75,000 a year who spend $200 plus per month on
home improvement. And that's proof that their
ideal customers are reading yournewsletter.
(22:37):
Go extract your e-mail list fromwhatever platform you're stuck
on because it's probably costingyou thousands in lost deals.
Beehive makes migration easy. You can move all your emails and
minutes so you can get paid whatyou're actually worth.
Head to beehive.com/chris for 30% off your first three months.
That's B EE HII v.com/chrisyou'll thank me.
(22:59):
Later, so they started advertising with me from, from
the conference and then they started signing up direct.
And then I met a friendly competitor.
He ran guestranches.com and he and I would notice sometimes a
rancher would cancel me, but they'd keep guestranches.com.
Sometimes they cancel guest ranches and keep me.
(23:20):
And I was talking to David and Iwas like, David, hey, what, what
if we, what if we partner up andwe corner the market or pseudo
corner of the market, because ifthey cancel both of us, they're
going to lose about 50% of the traffic.
It's going to be very difficult for them to consider canceling
us. Yeah.
And so we partnered up and we did that for, gosh, eight years
(23:44):
or so, maybe longer. Wow.
He's based in Littleton, Co, so I could always find a Colorado,
hang out at his place. And then we take Rd. trips and
go around to all the dude ranches nearby.
How much did this domain name cost?
Duderanch.com So it went up and it was yeah, pending delete and
it cost 1718 thousand bucks, basically just under 18,000
bucks. And what signals did you look
(24:06):
for before spending a dime on this to tell you that this was
worthwhile? Yeah, what I wanted.
Search. Volume.
I want to fish where the fish are.
So there was a lot of search volume for the term dude ranch,
but I want to make sure there's an album called Dude Ranch from
some band. So I want to make sure they're
looking for dude ranch vacation.Isn't that Blink 182?
I think so, yeah. So.
(24:26):
And then I was like, OK, I need to really, I can look, but maybe
a small percentage of that traffic is looking for the
album, but it's mainly folks looking for vacation.
So I could look at dude ranch vacations and that was still
strong search volume. Then I'd look, I'd pull dude
ranch Colorado, dude ranch Texas, Idaho, all the states,
all still strong search volume. I was like, OK, this is good, I
(24:47):
have one side of the equation. So you're looking for a
vacation. Then I went to the dude ranches.
Like what's the average ticket price of a dude ranch vacation
for a family of four? It roughly ranges 10,000 to
30,000. This is just me spitballing off
the top of my head. I was like, OK, let's just
assume 30% margin. So the ranchers making three
grand on one booking, I still have these rates.
(25:10):
I still have 575 as my flat yearly fee to be included on the
site. And it's just a one time fee.
I don't take any cut of the conversion.
I just drive leads constantly. I have about 60 advertisers that
makes a little over 50 grand a year.
And so I built that over over the years, wound up buying David
out of guest ranches. So I own it and rebuilt it.
(25:31):
So and it has very, very low overhead.
It it has hosting and domain renewal and I pay a friend that
has more experience at PHP and and the back end of WordPress.
Just in case the site goes offline, it goes sideways.
I can ping her and say, please help, something's wrong with the
site or there's some plug in update and you know, the payment
page is broken. Can you please help?
(25:52):
So I lean on her, but she's, I mean, it's, it's only a couple
100 bucks a year to lean on her,but it makes me sleep better.
So very good margins. It's not $1,000,000 business,
but man, very, very fulfilling. But that one taught me.
I do enjoy these small fulfilling projects.
How much time does it take? A week.
I'm working on this right now. I have two other projects,
Vidalia and Ranch Work that havekind of consumed a majority of
(26:14):
my time and I'm trying to figureout how I can devote more time
or or maybe hire someone to helpme.
I spent about a an hour a month on it maybe, but it deserves
more than that. So I'm trying to see if there
are avenues of possibly getting some help, possibly selling it
to see if there are avenues who could do.
But I'm kind of stingy or are instrict on if I consider selling
(26:37):
it, it's going to have to be somebody.
A good buyer? A good buyer.
I can't let this thing go into somebody who's going to put AI
content slop on it or or cover the site with Adsense.
Even though I used to use Adsense, it isn't built for
that. It's built for leads for dude
ranchers. And it represents the industry.
You feel like a sense of stewardship over the industry
and you want the next owner to do the same.
(26:57):
Yeah, yes. And in short terms, yes, but
that one just taught me. Oh, my gosh.
OK, this is quite interesting. But I always had warn my friend
to run bobbleheads.com. So I'd run this, I'd run Dude
ranch, but it's sort of seasonal, has its peaks and
valleys of traffic. It's like I still have time.
I was still working 9:00 to 5:00when I was running Dude Ranch.
That's like, I still have open time in my schedule.
(27:19):
What else can I build? Vidalia Onions dot com expires
goes up for auction. I don't intend to buy it.
I write this big long story on my little blog, my not blog my
little. I write an essay on the
background of of how I acquired of Videlia and also write about
how I acquired dude ranch on I think it's Deep South.
Ventures.com is where I have that.
(27:40):
Sventures.com. Yeah, Deep South Ventures or you
can go to askyou.org by. The way I have been a loyal blog
reader for over a decade. Oh, thank you.
It's mainly, I tell you, it's almost therapeutic just to dump
it out of your brain because it gets all clogged up in there and
it helps me to kind of just dumpit out on the page and then kind
of structure it. I have very short attention
(28:00):
span, so if it appeals to me, I hope that it would appeal
somebody else because it's very difficult for me to read or
focus. So if it allows me to focus on
it, it, yeah, but very therapeutic.
So, so if I were to wrap up the story of dude ranch in a
sentence to this is oversimplifying it, but you paid
17,000 for the domain. It was expiring.
(28:21):
Yeah, you had 18. You had to be patient, but you
were you bought it. At that point you started kind
of reaching out to the industry.You started getting natural
traffic because there was so much search demand.
You love it. You loved it because there was
search demand and it was high ticket, right?
And that's a great and there wasnot much supply meeting that
search demand. You built it on WordPress, you
(28:43):
kind of started reaching out to the industry.
You partnered with another partner website and today it
does about $50,000 a year from one hour per month of work.
Yeah, that's correct. And I get free travel and I get
to go visit all these. I've been to 50 dude ranches
over the past. Oh man. 14 years from gosh, from
Georgia to I mean there are a few dude ranches in Georgia.
(29:04):
I mean. Colorado wild.
That's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in and of
itself. Yeah.
I mean, it's just it's wonderfulto go meet these folks and and
it's some of the most hard working.
I mean, talk about a difficult business to run seasonal for
them. Some run cattle, not many, but
it's mainly hospitality. It is summer camp for adults.
So I sometimes describe it, but you get to go chill.
(29:26):
If you have a family, you can take your family and all the
kids unplug. They're out playing in the Creek
or going to the campfire and no one's staring at digital
devices. It's wonderful.
You can go trap ski to ride horses or fly fish, go on river
rafting trips. It's it's one of the coolest
vacations I've ever been exposedto.
And we can even dovetail into ranch work.
(29:47):
So I got ranch workout of which is my job board from dude ranch.
My partner had it and we don't have to talk long on ranch work,
but it's another blessing where I can help folks get a job on a
ranch, any type of ranch, cattleranch, an outfitter, an
equestrian ranch or a farm and even dude ranchers.
So I can still I can double serve my dude ranchers, fill
(30:08):
jobs and fill heads and beds fortheir ranches.
So he had it on the side and sort of abandoned it.
I saw it. I had a friend in Atlanta that
built a nursing job board and had a had a good exit on it.
Shane had a good exit on his nursing job board.
I searched around a WordPress and there were some off the
shelf themes for job boards on WordPress for like 60 bucks.
(30:32):
So I bought an off the shelf jobboard theme, hacked it up on the
back end to be just better. Like better architecture for
SEO. Got out on a super fast server
and then started sourcing jobs from dude ranchers first and
then sourcing them direct from ranchers maybe on their website.
And then slowly organic listingsstarted coming through.
(30:53):
And then the seasonality aspect came back up and again for dude
ranchers and then they need to hire their crew again for the
next summer. Then I get a wave of job
listings and then word of mouth started working and then people
sort of repeat buying and it started running.
And this one has just been one of the biggest blessings.
Yeah. And again, if this one goes back
to memories and happy, not a lotof memories, but it's I'm
(31:16):
helping someone find gainful employment on a a, on a ranch.
And a lot of times it's somebodythat maybe grew up on a ranch
and maybe and they're in the bigcity now.
I just raised prices yesterday. So I added a diamond level
yesterday. For those listening 100 bucks to
post a job for the cheapest plan.
(31:37):
What's the difference between these plans and how do?
You do the duration so silver will run for 10 days, gold will
run for 30 days and there's a quick turn around.
I'll take 24 hours. I hand curate every single
listing so I put live in 24 hours because it goes through my
eyeballs to make sure it's a legit if it seems sketch or
something off rarely happens, but if it does, I just refund
(32:00):
them to say we're not quite the right fit for you because we're
not going to be able to drive you good leads.
And then we have free. If it's a ranch that you know is
in financial trouble and they need some help.
I like I never want to turn themaway.
So I try to have a free option that allows them because I know
I can drive a significant amountof traffic and I'll on this
page. I also allow job seekers they
(32:21):
want. To pay me.
It looks pretty active. Yeah, they do.
So they pay you to put this. Yeah, they pay me to extend and
I filled one this Amy right there, Amy W she emailed me this
morning saying, Peter, can you pull my listing down?
I found. Something.
Wow. And I was like, help her.
Find a job. Yeah, I was.
Heck yes. August 4th I found her a job.
(32:41):
What did she pay for this? Huh?
She paid 99 bucks. Wow 99 bucks to get a job And
did you e-mail all of your job? Like how did you promote her?
Yeah. So I've listed on the site, we
get 1.3 million visits a year tothis site.
So we get a tremendous amount oftraffic.
I have 12,000 people on our e-mail list.
(33:03):
I have 25,000 plus on our private Facebook job board page.
Wow. So I cross posted on everything.
Of all your projects, is this kind of your your cash cow, one
of your probably? Yeah, probably right now, yeah.
Good for you. If you want a fun one to go into
archive.org, go into archive.organd do ranch work.
You'll see some of the early versions.
I think he just took us off the ball and it was dormant.
(33:25):
Go. Yeah, maybe a little bit after,
though. He may have a version of it on
those pages. Yeah, he probably has.
He built it in 98, so it's a good.
It looks like that first, like your gardening site, maybe some
comic Sans in there. Oh yeah.
So it's just like he look, he's listening their first and last
names over there. Jeez Louise, looking for jobs.
(33:45):
But then he pushed it just to a landing page saying, hey, I've
kind of shut ranch work down. Hey, thank goodness he didn't
pull it offline. So it was still live and active.
And he had a link to another Facebook page that was deleted
at some point. So I said, what is this ranch
work 'cause like my friend did anursing job board, maybe I do.
I was like, how about this David?
So here is my deal to him. I was like, hey, here's what,
(34:08):
let me try this. So there's I found a job board
theme on WordPress, point the name servers to me, I'll do all
the work. I'll build the whole site.
And if I get a job listing, I'llgive you 25% and I'll keep 75%
for my hard work and any money. If I put a little Adsense on the
side, I'll keep the Adsense revenue.
And he is a great partner. He's always I like Richard
(34:32):
Branson is like, screw it, let'sdo it, who cares?
Yeah, let's do it just like Aries was to me.
When I came to the end of my day, I was like, screw it, let's
do it, That sounds fun, let's try it.
So you're like, yeah, let's try it.
Let's that sounds good to me. So he jumped in, changed the
name servers to me and I got to work and built the first version
just off the shelf job board theme and it started working and
it had enough just a little bit of trust and authority at that
(34:53):
point and started driving traffic to the site.
And then I started filling jobs and folks were happy with me.
And then I the first version of the job board was trying to
force people to set up an account in order to place a job.
And I don't like my range. I don't like anybody to jump
through hoops. Yeah, I'll move the friction.
Projects being like a like a gumball machine I sometimes
(35:17):
compare them to. So that was what the page was
right there right before I acquired it.
He was like, yeah, OK, go to ourFacebook page.
Yeah, if you want to go, if you want to look at some job, you
guys just talk among, talk amongst yourself over there is
basically what he's saying. Yeah, you cut this 7525 deal.
Yeah. How long did that stay in place?
Did you ever end up buying the domain entirely and having it
(35:37):
all to yourself? Yes, yeah.
So if you go to that same deep self ventures, I write all about
this project as well if you wantto hear the entire back story.
But yes, probably with David, wehad it for if you go to essays
at the top and then if you Scroll down the very bottom, I
have like the top. I look at traffic and you can
see must ride mule to and from work location.
(35:58):
And there, that's the one that'sthe whole story behind it.
So I think it was I'd have to read this article to begin to
figure out how long we had it together.
I think it was 5 or 6 years and I could see it was working.
Every single day, Chris, I wake up, I look at expired domains
and I, I try my best to post a job.
I like consistency on my job board to alert folks that this
(36:20):
thing is alive and kicking and there is somebody babying this
site to death. And I like every single day
hopefully posting multiple jobs.If I can't, if I have enough
free and paid submissions. So after six years, David needed
some cash. So I was like, hey, how about I
buy it from you? I think it was 10 grand.
I have it in that article. I'm able to continue working on
(36:40):
these projects. This is a great year round
project where Vidalia is seasonal, do ranch is seasonal
ish and this one is is year round.
And I like being able to run this one year round then kind of
move a little bit of my attention over to Vidalia when
it needs it in its season and then move a little bit over to
do ranch in its season. But every all, every day
(37:01):
throughout the year, I'm kind offocused on ranch work.
In this whole your realm, the type of stuff that you're doing
with these domain names, what has you curious today that you
maybe you weren't curious about 5 or 10 years ago?
What types of niches? Or is it directories or AI
tools? Oddly, to your point earlier,
right when we started this, I'lltell you, I'll tell you boutique
e-commerce in regards to something you can spin up very
(37:23):
quickly and get customers. You don't have to wait on this
timing aspect of a directory marketplace.
The fact you can set something up.
Even I'm a I'm a snob on really good domain names.
You really don't need a great domain.
I lean on dot coms andisuggest.com because folks
default to it, but you don't need an amazing one.
I tend to buy them, but boutiquee-commerce man is legit and
(37:44):
there are so many small niches that you could run out of a
small little. You can run out of your house to
start and then do like my friendWarren Royal at bobbleheads ran
out of his basement and then when it started justifying
larger expenses, he got a warehouse and now he has his own
warehouse out in Asia that is his own custom bobblehead
(38:05):
creating out of his warehouse. But small boutique channels and
you can use search to justify. And it's funny, I've been
leaning on a lot of social stufffor Vidalia.
And man, it's powerful, creatingreally good videos of I created
a 32nd ad for Vidalia, and it was three clips, me walking
(38:26):
behind the tractor when we're harvesting, me holding up a
Vidalia with my hand, and then me walking through a packing
shed. And then I just filmed, I wung
it, and I kind of wrote a quick script and it wound up being
about 30 seconds, which seems tobe a good sweet spot.
It was like, this is a Vidalia onion.
You know, they're custom. They're boutique onions only
(38:47):
grown in Georgia, and we are a Vidalia farm.
We can ship it direct to your door.
Consider us. Click the link in bio if you
want to try one of these little special treats.
What are some other examples of boutique e-commerce outside of
the bobbleheads example that you've seen or heard of
recently? Oh gosh, man, I've seen like
individual this cool 1. I don't even know the name of
(39:08):
the business. It was like, what is that little
red, the little red pull truck for kids that kids get in, but
it was like a Ritz Carlton version of like a pull behind
for kids to sit in that you can pull them behind.
Like a like a red wagon. Little Red Wagon.
I don't know why that name. Yeah, my little red wagon.
But it was, yeah, like a like a Maserati version of a little red
(39:32):
wagon. Like individual seats, cup
holders, fancy and you could pull your kids around in it and
this guy was running that business.
I'm like, are you? And that sells so well with ads.
Oh my gosh, that Andy is is multi $1,000,000 business
selling these custom high end little red wagons.
And to your point earlier I was like, are you kidding me?
(39:53):
There is AI was like, yeah, it would do really well for in
social and you can pull kids behind it.
It sort of looked like that. It was more look like a little
red wagon, but like a fancy little red wagon with custom
seats. I can't remember the day, Maybe
I can find it and e-mail it to you later.
But I was like multi $1,000,000 business.
(40:14):
I was like, wow, it's like what else is out there that you could
add an extra widget to that you could sell D to C is not easy,
but you can ramp it out very quickly if you do, if you just
know cursory. So you don't even have to lean
on the search, you could do social and create some really
good video on your phone and edit it on cap cut and get some
(40:37):
good audio and you're off to theraces.
And it's very inexpensive and track transactions through
Facebook Pixel and you're ready to go at least test it and see
if it sells. That's been one that's
interesting. All kind of food ones are
fascinating. There's a pickle company.
I think they're, I'm fascinated.I haven't bought them yet, but
they've been showing up in my feed.
I think it's, I love my pickle, but I think it's olive my
(40:57):
pickle. And it's a free promotion for
them, but I haven't tried it, but it's like legit Pickles and
this. And so they're touting the
health benefits of these specialty Pickles that they
send. So I love kind of food based.
I mean look how well designed This site is.
That's beautiful site. It is.
It's beautiful. And so they're they're touting
the health benefits of theirs. What's different of their pickle
(41:18):
versus the Pickles you may get at the grocery store?
I think they go into that maybe down the page, like why ours are
different. Ours are better for gut health.
Yeah, Yeah. It has all this extra stuff
that's better for. Yeah.
Yeah. There is the Ultimate Gut Health
Bundle. What are the tools in your tool
belt that you can't live without?
Like websites? Like for doing research, finding
(41:39):
expiring domains? What's like a rapid fire list of
tools? All of.
Clicky analytics is what I used to clickyclicky.com.
OK, it's better than stupid GA 4.
Yeah, I've I've never I got rid of GA probably 5 or 6 years
maybe longer than that. I rely on clicky for everything.
SEO and paid search were very beneficial to me.
It aren't learn the basics of SEO.
(42:01):
It can still ignore what everybody's saying about, you
know, artificial intelligence SEO.
It all leans on the same principles in my opinion.
It's still gonna rank and pull up content that matches your
niche. I don't use a ton of me.
I have Shopify for the transaction for Vidalia ship
station to manage are 10s of thousands of orders every single
(42:22):
year because I got to make sure these things land and our
customers did it. And I'd like to find out that
the box has been lost before thecustomer realizes that the box
has been lost. So I can ask UPS or just ship
them a make good before it even lands and then even recognize
that the original box was lost. What about like for looking at
domain traffic and expiring domains?
(42:43):
Is GoDaddy auctions your go to for that?
If an old domain that was registered in 95 has failed to
renewed, it pops up. It does not pop up over at
GoDaddy. It only pops up at name Jetter
snap names. So look at GoDaddy name jet snap
names. Name sheep created their own
auction platform to auction their own names that they have
their own those three and drop catch.
(43:04):
They use domains as an inspiration to build.
I tried to build on ideas 1st and I never seemed to get
anywhere. When I shifted my perspective to
build and be inspired by domains, things started working.
I was like, I'll just use the trust and authority from this
name, see if I can build something and let it do some of
the heavy lifting and I can be the dude behind the keyboard.
(43:25):
I like to say the same thing. I like to start with like a
marketing channel and then work backwards from that.
And that's essentially what you're saying, right?
Your domain name is the the grandfather of your marketing
channel. You start there and then work
back. Other tools, let's see it so
it's those are the primary from the expiration process.
There's a site called expired domainsisit.net.
I'd use it sometimes, but it's apretty good it's a fire hose.
(43:48):
Let me pull it up and make sure I have the domain itsa.net
expireddomains.net and it is just a almost a wall of text on
the website. But you can set up a free
account. There's no cost and they do
searches across properties. So you can do searches across
Name, Jet, Snap names, GoDaddy, Namecheap, sometimes drop catch
(44:10):
and try to see if a name pops upthrough those.
I'm kind of old school. I just go direct.
I just go to drop catch, see what's up there.
Go to GoDaddy and see what's up there.
Do you think directory businesses are still viable
today in the age of AI? Yes, Dude Ranch is a good
example because my site's providing photographs, video,
background information. So the photographs have been
(44:32):
helpful and they want a kind of a trusted source to look at what
I'm seeing. I mean, the, my traffic's up
almost 40 percent, 39% year overyear on that project.
And my rebuild helped, but AI ishelping as well because AI is
making suggestions on here are some ranches.
But hey, here's duderanch.com. It's a pretty trusted authority.
(44:53):
You can also go search on or dude ranches with pickleball
that are an hour away from a major airport.
AI is kind of the Cliff Notes version.
They can kind of point you in the right direction.
I don't know if they'll ever be.I mean, yeah, if there is, if
there was a directory business for sale that was in my price
range, I would seriously consider acquiring it and
(45:15):
looking into the numbers to see if it might fit into My
Portfolio. But I'm pretty happy with my
little three projects. Dude Ranch has such interesting
social media potential and I'm not doing a very good job
promoting it from that aspect. So I'm trying to see if there
might be an interesting person to either buy the whole thing
out or I'm. It's so low touch for me.
(45:36):
I'm you can tell I love the industry and enamored with it
And I I don't mind keeping it ifthere's a good partner who can
help by the right content, do great social media that has
experience with that and doesn'tmind going visiting some of the
ranches and, and kind of gettingfeet on the street.
You're at Searchbound on TwitterDeep South ventures.com for your
blog. Where else can people find you?
(45:58):
Askyou.org is kind of org askewaskew.org.
It's kind of just the just little home base.
Links to some of my essays that I've written.
Links to projects, Links to failed projects that I've built.
Most importantly, things I've tried, domains I've bought and
donated. I bought Ole Miss Calm and
donate it to Ole Miss. That's amazing.
(46:20):
Yeah. Real tired.
All right. Peter and I could not stop
talking, so I had to split this into two parts.
Please come back a week from today to hear about even more
niche websites that Peter started, how he did it, what
tools he uses, etc. Thanks for listening here on the
Kerner Office.
That makes a little over 50 grand a year.
I spent about an hour a month onit maybe.
Jeez. 0 concept or understandingof coding.
These domains are interesting. It's like this is like the key
to the entire website. I didn't like my livelihood
dictated by someone else. Some of these folks online are
under the impression then they need to quit their day job.
Yes. I do not subscribe to that at
(00:21):
all. I'd work 9:00 to 5:00 and then
I'd come home and work on these projects in the evening.
It's just an hour a day. What are the tools in your tool
belt that you can't live without?
Do you think directory businesses are still viable
today in the age of AI? My friend Peter lives the life.
He lives the dream. He's got a portfolio of niche
websites that just pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars
(00:44):
every year. It took some time on the front
end to build these up, but todayhe only spends a few hours a
week managing these projects. So I had to know Peter, as
someone who's been reading your blog for 15 years, following
your progress, how do you do it?What tools do you use?
How can people copy you? He did with onions what I did
with Bucky's and Texas snacks. He just does things,
permissionless things. He partners with people he's
(01:05):
never met. He's cheap like me.
He doesn't spend a ton of money,but he's patient and he's
tactical and he shares the secrets with us today.
So please enjoy this conversation with my friend
Peter. I would love to hear the story.
How did this domain name come across your desk, and what made
you find it interesting and end up buying it?
At this point in my career, I I've been laid off several,
several times and that began to grate on my nerves.
(01:28):
I didn't like my livelihood dictated by someone else.
And if somebody made some, and I've lived through this through
several startups, you know, executives make a horrible
decision and it kneecaps the company and I'm held
responsible. And I had a few instances where
I was at a startup and I drove like I was in the marketing and
I built a product for the team and it drove an extra couple,
(01:49):
$1,000,000 for the team. And they promoted me and they
hired, I got an assistant. I trained the assistant up and
then six months later they lay me off and keep my assistant for
a lower salary. That one really stuck with me.
And that's when I was like, I got to figure out this stuff.
I don't have a computer science background.
I have a history degree from allthis, so I was like, I got to
(02:10):
figure this stuff out. I have a background in SEO, a
little bit of an SEO0 concept orunderstanding of coding, but I
knew I needed to concentrate on it.
So I started trying to teach myself to code.
Coding led me to start building sites.
Building sites exposed me to like Adsense and I can monetize
the sites a little bit from Adsense and that's sort of
(02:31):
giving me a little bit of money.I mean not a ton of me 50 bucks
a month and then it got to 300 bucks a month and I was like wow
this is crazy. A more on me can generate
revenue online. But there were small like piece
meal projects and the more I kept building at some point I
always have to think back on howI got exposed to expired
domains. I was building sites and I
(02:53):
realized it might be faster justto acquire a site.
What's stopping me from going into Google, typing in some high
traffic search term, reaching out to the owner to see if they
want to sell the site to me in my head?
Like there's nothing stopping mefrom doing that.
So I started attempting to do that.
I'd reach out and for some strange reason tourism seemed
fun. So I'd search tourism terms.
(03:15):
Aruba pooched up for the term Aruba.
Buying sites? Do you mean buying domain names
that are just sitting dormant? No, no full operating websites
that look like kind of mom and pop design.
Maybe they were built in Dreamweaver and they hadn't been
updated in five or ten years andbut they were ranked number two
or three or maybe #1 in Google for the term Cancun or some
(03:39):
travel based website. And I could see within, you
know, on Adsense, Google typically gives you around 70%
of that click value. So I was like, well, tourism
terms are quite expensive. They're a dollar, two dollars,
$3 a click. So if I built out a tourism
based website and so many clickson a dollar ad unit, I'll get
(03:59):
$0.70 per click. That's, that's pretty darn good.
And heck, I can go down to Arubaor go to Cancun or, or go out
West on a vacation. So I started building these
small kind of travel based websites.
It felt like, didn't feel like work.
It was just like vacation. I'm building vacation websites.
And there's some arbitrage in here because the owners of these
websites don't know that the cost per click is higher.
(04:20):
You have that information that they don't have, right?
Correct. They'd always show, always ask
for analytics and I could look at their analytics and say, Oh
my gosh, if I got a 3% click through rate, 1% click through
rate on these ads, I can make 500 a 1000 bucks a month, 2000
bucks a month and their ask price is 3 grand.
Yeah, I'll I'll buy it and bringit in house.
(04:40):
So I'd buy the entire content and bring the domain over.
And so that's when I started getting exposed to domain.
So I'd get a deal on a site and my brain immediately went to the
domain and say, and my brain wastelling me I got to get control
of this domain because if I control the domain, I control
the whole site because they could waffle and change their
mind. But if I control the domain and
(05:01):
they go back on their word, I can still screen straight the
information, pull it over and rebuild the site, but I have to
own the domain. I was like, these domains are
interesting, like these are thisis like the key to the entire
website. And some of the sites I was
buying early on were just regular, you know, just they
weren't terribly descriptive, but they ranked their old, they
(05:22):
were trusted. But I kept coming across these
really interesting new descriptive domain names, like
one of the early. Go ahead.
Sorry, before you go there, whatwhat are some examples of some
old ones that that you bought that were interesting but didn't
quite work out? Yeah.
So one was, I've since sold thisdomain.
It was called Travel Envoy and it was a directory of wineries
(05:42):
and vineyards that you could visit.
I bought this around O four and OK.
And then he he transferred all the pages to me.
I bought it for 10 grand and then I simply just added Adsense
to it at it and I did a poor job.
It didn't know it code very well.
So so I added it to the site andthen it started.
Yeah, throw me whatever, a grand, 2 grand a month.
(06:04):
And he didn't have any ads on it0.
Ads nothing on it. So you bought it like as a
business slash website and that wasn't even on his radar.
All you did was plug ads on it and wait.
I plugged ads, yeah, Adsense adson it and then and I had one
affiliate thing and that actually worked pretty well.
There was this cool map of all the like wine varieties where
(06:26):
they're sourced from and this guide sign up for an affiliate
deal. And so if you go back an
Internet archive, you'll see this ad up on the top right hand
side. Oh yeah, you're gonna pull it
way back. Yeah, 2004.
Is this it? This is before I bought it.
Isn't that beautiful? Look at that.
Oh man, this is this is what you're looking for.
These types of sites still existtoday.
(06:49):
For those that are listening, itbasically looks like Craigslist
blue hyperlinks. Very ugly.
And there are still mom and pop operators out of here that that
have websites like this that arevery receptive to straight up
offers to buy the website. This is before I acquired.
It and 10,000 pages on a website.
That's a Moat. That's that's a lot of tedious
(07:11):
work. I was kind of spitballing
10,000. It was a lot.
It may have been 5 to 10,000. It was a tremendous amount of
pages because it took me hours. When I did the FTP transfer, he
forwarded all the sites. I can't.
I think I did an FTP because there were so many pages.
There was no easy way but that Ithat I was aware of.
So this may have been me. So here, top right, that's 2006
(07:34):
QPR wines paid me. They paid me a few.
This was like wine ratings. Yeah, they wound up paying me a
month is. This like a trip down memory
lane for you. Yes, it is.
I haven't been it. So if you notice this grape to
the right of that was my Adsensead unit.
So back then there were no Adsense wasn't including any
kind of images within this. They were straight hyperlinks
(07:55):
that they'd pull. So I'd always try to add some
kind of image. So that was that was some free
clip art I found somewhere. Don't.
Add the ad on the right and thenincluded all the normal
navigation to the site. And then wine books, did that
just take you to Amazon through an affiliate link?
I may have left that for him andI just let him keep all the
affiliate stuff from the wine book he made.
(08:15):
Oh, here we are. I can't.
Yeah, because I don't, I don't remember ever put creating mives
because the affiliates were so small, the revenue shares.
So I never bothered. I was making more from the
Adsense. I just focused on Adsense and
some intriguing affiliate deals.That little map up on the right
converted quite well. You'd be, you'd be surprised
right here. Yeah.
I don't know if there's still inexistence.
(08:36):
It looks very intriguing. It looks like a periodic table.
Yeah, it was really cool. I'd get Delong's wine info.
It was really cool and they'd ship it.
They sent me one for free. Comes in that little this is a
what done memory lane. So this one was one of the first
big acquisitions I did. I bought it for 10,000 bucks.
So let's talk about the unit economics of that $10,000.
(08:58):
Like what were you buying? Was there any revenue from
anything? How did you come up with that
price? I don't even know how we came.
I may have asked him what he wascomfortable selling it with and
I believe he may have come around.
From what I remember, it was maybe 12 to 14 and I got him
down to 10,000 bucks so I could use that number and then look at
the analytics and say, OK, how long would it take me?
(09:20):
I'll still work in the 9:00 to 5:00 at this and I'm a big
believer this some of these folks online talk about this.
You know, some online builders are under the impression then
they need to quit their day job.Yes.
And they go all in on their project.
Preach, preach. I do not subscribe to that at
all. I ran my day job, I'd work 9:00
to 5:00 and then I'd come home and work on these projects in
(09:42):
the evening every day and I treated it.
I don't know, you watch that oldrobot show, the battle bot show.
And I mentioned this on Twitter sometimes I compared it, these
two little robots in the in thisdeath den and they're fighting
each other. Which one, my 9:00 to 5:00 or
these projects that I'm building, which one can generate
more money? And whenever my little side
(10:03):
projects, maybe it never happens, but whenever my side
projects can generate more moneythan my 9:00 to 5:00, that's
when I'll consider it. Or maybe when they're getting
close, that's when I'll considerdropping off and going full
time. So I was still working 9:00 to
5:00 in these projects. I call it the wing walkers code.
For those listening, I'm showingimages of wing walkers on these
(10:26):
airplanes. You never let go of 1 railing
until you have control of the other railing, right?
And that's the same thing with testing side hustles, testing
business ideas like just don't let go of the thing until you
have a better thing in hand. Yes, because it creates so much
stress. I, I see some folks that do
this, they'll quit. I'm giving myself nine months
(10:46):
and Oh my gosh, the pressure. And you know, these weirdo
ideas, in my opinion, don't comeup in that type of pressure
tank. It's when you're when you're
allowed to sit and Daydream and do it.
Heck, 95, you're probably sitting at your cube 5 or 6
hours a day, just daydreaming ondifferent ways to work on your
project at night and doing two or three hours of actual work at
(11:07):
your job. Why not get paid for that?
Go home, work on your project and see where it can lead.
And some of these projects, I mean, they don't require, they
require somebody just to baby them constantly.
And sometimes it's just an hour a day to push it in the right
direction, make sure it's not going down and it's fast and
responsive and. You were having a ton of fun.
(11:28):
This was a hobby, correct? Just fun and correct.
You can even monetize this fun so.
Right. And I was teaching myself to
code. I was like, wow, this good
stuff's weird. I'm not very good at it.
I don't know if I have a ton of interest in it, but I'm
fascinated by it. I'm glad I understand.
So the way I kind of taught myself to code was I am not a
coder, but I'd basically just taught myself how all these
(11:51):
puzzle pieces work. But so back to Travel Envoy.
So I built it. I start recognizing this
importance of this domain name and I keep running across
projects with really intriguing,just descriptive.
Like my friend north of Atlanta,Warren Royal, bought the domain
bobbleheads.com at a domain nameauction, had no experience in
(12:13):
bobbleheads, very similar to youand me, you and and Texas snacks
and me and Vidalia. He has zero experience in the
bobblehead world. Bought it at auction.
I believe he spent 30 grand and he started a custom bobblehead
business from scratch and he currently now has 15 employees
north of Atlanta. I've been to his warehouse a few
(12:34):
times and it's just the coolest warehouse to go visit because he
has life-size bobble heads, you know, like George Washington
hanging around. And so I was watching what
Warren was doing. I was like, this is very
interesting and fascinating whathe's building.
And so he bought that at auctions.
I mean $160.00, do you know whathis revenue is or what kind of
volume he does nowadays from a 30,000?
(12:57):
You should get him on the He is wonderful.
Yeah, he doesn't go on many podcasts.
He he's so heads down on this business, he rarely he'll show
up on a few domain or podcasts from time to time, but he's
always head heads down on. They just use his math.
We we produce over 250,000 bobble heads each year.
I'm looking at his prices, nothings under $100.00.
(13:19):
So 25,000,000. Wow.
That would be over 25,000,000 a year if they were each $100,
which most of these are 100 to 200.
Yeah, yeah. See, and it's funny, Peter,
because like most people wouldn't believe that they're
going to hear that Like no, you don't sell 25,000,000 of
bobbleheads a year and it's like.
Bobbleheads. Yeah.
No. Oh, I can't.
I can do get the domain bobbleheads.
(13:39):
All the kind of the cynical attitudes.
So. But go ahead.
I'm interrupting you. Yes.
No, like people just trap. There's just so many e-commerce
businesses out there not named Amazon.com that do millions,
10s, hundreds of millions and billions of dollars a year, many
of which have never been heard of.
Yeah, I owned an e-commerce fulfillment company and we would
(14:00):
get leads all the time. Like I have this make up brand,
I have this, this food brand, this ice cream brand.
We do 36 million, we do 20. And I'm like, where are you
coming from? How are there so many e-commerce
brands? That's crazy in the context of
this conversation. A lot of times, not every time,
it starts with a really good, trustworthy domain name.
Right. Yeah.
(14:21):
So he got Bobbleheads and then bobblehead came up, I think a
year or two after. So he owns singular and plural.
He owns the entire, you know, beachhead for this entire
industry. OK, I went to bobblehead.com.
And it redirects. It should redirect to
bobbleheads. He tries to redirect everything
over. So when you bought Travel Envoy,
that $10,000 was just kind of goodwill.
(14:42):
There was no really revenue, butyou knew what you could do with
it and that's kind of how you valued it, right?
I. Valued it based on the traffic I
could see how much traffic I could roughly napkin math, a
rough click through rate for my Adsense units, and maybe some
extra revenue from the affiliatedeals and I thought I could pay
it off within 6 to 9 months and I wound up paying it off within
(15:03):
six months easily. Oh my gosh, a lot of people are
watching this and I, I know whatthey're thinking.
A lot of them are thinking, well, this isn't relevant
anymore. Like you just can't reach out to
site owners and, but like, are you kidding me?
It's 100% still relevant. Is Adsense brand new?
No, of course not. But there's, there's even more
arbitrage opportunities. I, I just bought a bunch of
trees from my front yard and I wanted to buy them here, you
(15:25):
know, close to me. So I went to the website to try
to shop around. Cool, this is their website.
I love it, I love it nursery. Dot com and I saw and I'm like I
want to buy this business and I go in the business and like the
gentleman helping me is like 83 and they have this prime real
estate. They've been there for 40 years.
Wow you can't shop online. You don't know what their
(15:46):
inventory is. They don't answer their phone.
And it's like, of course, this is a much more expensive version
of what we're talking about, butarbitrage opportunities will
always exist. And when you and I are 80 years
old, people are going to be buying sites from us, correct?
To do better things with them, right?
Similar when I did my Vidalia project, The farm, I partnered
with no website, no online presence whatsoever.
(16:10):
So when I started recognizing these domains were quite
interesting. I was like, what's fascinating?
How do I get a domain like Warren has like bobbleheads.com,
you know, I wasn't able to register them in 95.
It's O 4 at this point. I was like, oh, I missed my
opportunity. I didn't have any opportunity by
these domains. I see the windows closed now and
I rarely ever think from that perspective.
(16:32):
But I kept digging through and at some point I got exposed to
the expiring domain name market.And I think you're familiar with
it. You know, somebody doesn't renew
a domain for whatever reason. The domain goes back to the
registrar and the registrar putsit up for auction for open bid.
And roughly every day, 50 to 100,000 domain names expire.
So it's a tremendous amount of inventory that you can sift
(16:54):
through because at first I triedto buy.
So this is more of a marketplacetry OK, what's a good GoDaddy
auctions is one of the biggest. So they built their own auction
platform to sell domains within their.
So if you just do, I think it's auctions.godaddy.com.
Yep, shows some of within the the expiring side.
(17:14):
So go to advanced search right there and then go to type and
then do expiring auctions and then go estimated value and then
go down on to say they add, I'm sorry, on that top search
results go down, down a little bit more.
Oh, right here, yes, Sir. And then and then go down, do it
and click it again. Now go back to choosing their
(17:35):
own check out jtm.com is expired03 letter, three letter
callers.com. I mean, look at that domain.
You can build some call. Tracking applications Golf.
Tour.com. Yes.
That could be a travel website. Oh my.
Gosh, so this is this is a deep rabbit hole.
So when I got exposed, and this was around 04, I got exposed to
expiring domain auctions. I was like, Oh my gosh, hang on.
(17:58):
Because I was trying to buy domains direct from original
registrar, from original owners.And you know, they'd want, I
mean, and they're worth it. They'd want 100 grand, 500
grand. I was like, I can't, it's too
risky for me. And I found this.
This is simply a patience game if you simply sit and wait.
Crownmolding.com Look at that cool one.
(18:19):
Dude, you could buy all the interesting crown molding that
the world has to offer. You could sell it.
Could be drop shipped directly from the manufacturer.
You don't have to have a big warehouse.
Dude, you could do the recycled crown molding out of old
historic homes. Yes.
Oh man. I know.
So this is this is where I started looking at them.
Not will, not really with the intention of building I was
(18:39):
looking at them from. Maybe I'd buy them and flip
them. Maybe I'd try to buy them and
make some Adsense money off of them.
But then some of these other names, crown molding would pop
up and then they'd start inspiring me to build something.
I was like crown molding. Oh my gosh.
Rentmyhouse.com. Yeah.
And so this, I started doing this every single day and I'd
buy some, I'd buy 1, build a small site, figure out how to
(19:02):
monetize it. Maybe it had existing traffic,
maybe you had direct traffic, maybe you had had a a previous
identity to it and figure out ways to build on that.
So I'd build a few there, but itwas more piece meal efforts.
And I was like, man, I'm gettingtired of doing these small.
I'd rather wait and find a big one that expires and maybe just
wait. I'm not in a hurry.
(19:22):
I'll just sit maybe and hang outand just monitor this thing
every single day and wait for aninteresting domain that expires.
And that's when duderanch.com popped up.
It popped up oddly. A ranch up in New York State
owned it. They owned it.
Dude ranch got sold two or threetimes and then the last owner
ran it into the ground and shut it down.
(19:43):
Sold the sold the property. If you want to go into archive,
it's pretty fun to see. The old version of Dude.
Ranch.com so you can see it. I'll do that now.
And it used to be called Roseland Ranch.
And so they owned the domain they used to advertise on Wheel
of Fortune and Jeopardy. Vacation.
Yeah, I'll have to forward you the tweak.
I found one of the ads that theyhad, so I I reposted it on my
(20:06):
Twitter feed somewhere. Here's another one looks
Roseland Ranch Resort and you'llif you Scroll down, you'll see
usually they'll have oh, you mayhave seen us on Wheel of
Fortune. This is 2003 with that.
Oh, here it is. Yeah.
It's before so they this expiredand went up for auction in 09.
OK, so I start I waited when I made that decision that I was
(20:29):
going to sit and wait and almostlike catbird seat and almost
just empty mind and just wait for something to to pop up
that's expired. That inspires me to build.
I like the. That's my first version I.
Built 2009. And I built it, yeah.
Even this looks awesome though. I mean, I've been.
Really, WordPress. So at that point I'd gotten
exposed to WordPress and I had some rough idea.
(20:52):
I had an SEO and paid search background, love analytics, and
I was like, OK, I'll build it myself to make sure I can
advertise. And then dude, Rancher started
buying ads from me. I was like, sweet, I think I can
make this work. And only then go ahead.
Yeah, average. How do they start buying ads
from you? Like how do they?
Often times, so it started the easiest way for me.
(21:13):
I think I could have done this via e-mail or phone, but they
I'm fortunate they have a yearlyconference every year.
They hold it at a dude ranch. Typically it sounds like sweet.
Now this is kind of killing two birds with one stone.
I can start visiting dude rangesbecause I need to visit a few to
get the feel of these just because I'm I'm basically
representing the industry by owning this domain.
(21:33):
It's it's crazy owning one of these names and folks will
assume you are an expert in thatfield.
The trust and immediate. Authority.
Yeah. With a an exact match
descriptive.com generic exact match is wildly powerful.
I've been using Beehive for about two years, almost as long
(21:54):
as they've been around. And I got to tell you, watching
other creators stay stuck on basic newsletter platforms is
painful. You're losing thousands of
dollars because you don't know what your subscribers are worth.
And when potential sponsors ask who reads your newsletter and
you say entrepreneurs or moms, you lost the deal.
But Beehive has a survey featurethat's brilliant.
(22:14):
You can set up a few questions about demographics and spending
habits that you send them through right after they
subscribe. So instead of telling sponsors,
oh, I have 5000 subscribers, youcan say I have 3750 homeowners
making over $75,000 a year who spend $200 plus per month on
home improvement. And that's proof that their
ideal customers are reading yournewsletter.
(22:37):
Go extract your e-mail list fromwhatever platform you're stuck
on because it's probably costingyou thousands in lost deals.
Beehive makes migration easy. You can move all your emails and
minutes so you can get paid whatyou're actually worth.
Head to beehive.com/chris for 30% off your first three months.
That's B EE HII v.com/chrisyou'll thank me.
(22:59):
Later, so they started advertising with me from, from
the conference and then they started signing up direct.
And then I met a friendly competitor.
He ran guestranches.com and he and I would notice sometimes a
rancher would cancel me, but they'd keep guestranches.com.
Sometimes they cancel guest ranches and keep me.
(23:20):
And I was talking to David and Iwas like, David, hey, what, what
if we, what if we partner up andwe corner the market or pseudo
corner of the market, because ifthey cancel both of us, they're
going to lose about 50% of the traffic.
It's going to be very difficult for them to consider canceling
us. Yeah.
And so we partnered up and we did that for, gosh, eight years
(23:44):
or so, maybe longer. Wow.
He's based in Littleton, Co, so I could always find a Colorado,
hang out at his place. And then we take Rd. trips and
go around to all the dude ranches nearby.
How much did this domain name cost?
Duderanch.com So it went up and it was yeah, pending delete and
it cost 1718 thousand bucks, basically just under 18,000
bucks. And what signals did you look
(24:06):
for before spending a dime on this to tell you that this was
worthwhile? Yeah, what I wanted.
Search. Volume.
I want to fish where the fish are.
So there was a lot of search volume for the term dude ranch,
but I want to make sure there's an album called Dude Ranch from
some band. So I want to make sure they're
looking for dude ranch vacation.Isn't that Blink 182?
I think so, yeah. So.
(24:26):
And then I was like, OK, I need to really, I can look, but maybe
a small percentage of that traffic is looking for the
album, but it's mainly folks looking for vacation.
So I could look at dude ranch vacations and that was still
strong search volume. Then I'd look, I'd pull dude
ranch Colorado, dude ranch Texas, Idaho, all the states,
all still strong search volume. I was like, OK, this is good, I
(24:47):
have one side of the equation. So you're looking for a
vacation. Then I went to the dude ranches.
Like what's the average ticket price of a dude ranch vacation
for a family of four? It roughly ranges 10,000 to
30,000. This is just me spitballing off
the top of my head. I was like, OK, let's just
assume 30% margin. So the ranchers making three
grand on one booking, I still have these rates.
(25:10):
I still have 575 as my flat yearly fee to be included on the
site. And it's just a one time fee.
I don't take any cut of the conversion.
I just drive leads constantly. I have about 60 advertisers that
makes a little over 50 grand a year.
And so I built that over over the years, wound up buying David
out of guest ranches. So I own it and rebuilt it.
(25:31):
So and it has very, very low overhead.
It it has hosting and domain renewal and I pay a friend that
has more experience at PHP and and the back end of WordPress.
Just in case the site goes offline, it goes sideways.
I can ping her and say, please help, something's wrong with the
site or there's some plug in update and you know, the payment
page is broken. Can you please help?
(25:52):
So I lean on her, but she's, I mean, it's, it's only a couple
100 bucks a year to lean on her,but it makes me sleep better.
So very good margins. It's not $1,000,000 business,
but man, very, very fulfilling. But that one taught me.
I do enjoy these small fulfilling projects.
How much time does it take? A week.
I'm working on this right now. I have two other projects,
Vidalia and Ranch Work that havekind of consumed a majority of
(26:14):
my time and I'm trying to figureout how I can devote more time
or or maybe hire someone to helpme.
I spent about a an hour a month on it maybe, but it deserves
more than that. So I'm trying to see if there
are avenues of possibly getting some help, possibly selling it
to see if there are avenues who could do.
But I'm kind of stingy or are instrict on if I consider selling
(26:37):
it, it's going to have to be somebody.
A good buyer? A good buyer.
I can't let this thing go into somebody who's going to put AI
content slop on it or or cover the site with Adsense.
Even though I used to use Adsense, it isn't built for
that. It's built for leads for dude
ranchers. And it represents the industry.
You feel like a sense of stewardship over the industry
and you want the next owner to do the same.
(26:57):
Yeah, yes. And in short terms, yes, but
that one just taught me. Oh, my gosh.
OK, this is quite interesting. But I always had warn my friend
to run bobbleheads.com. So I'd run this, I'd run Dude
ranch, but it's sort of seasonal, has its peaks and
valleys of traffic. It's like I still have time.
I was still working 9:00 to 5:00when I was running Dude Ranch.
That's like, I still have open time in my schedule.
(27:19):
What else can I build? Vidalia Onions dot com expires
goes up for auction. I don't intend to buy it.
I write this big long story on my little blog, my not blog my
little. I write an essay on the
background of of how I acquired of Videlia and also write about
how I acquired dude ranch on I think it's Deep South.
Ventures.com is where I have that.
(27:40):
Sventures.com. Yeah, Deep South Ventures or you
can go to askyou.org by. The way I have been a loyal blog
reader for over a decade. Oh, thank you.
It's mainly, I tell you, it's almost therapeutic just to dump
it out of your brain because it gets all clogged up in there and
it helps me to kind of just dumpit out on the page and then kind
of structure it. I have very short attention
(28:00):
span, so if it appeals to me, I hope that it would appeal
somebody else because it's very difficult for me to read or
focus. So if it allows me to focus on
it, it, yeah, but very therapeutic.
So, so if I were to wrap up the story of dude ranch in a
sentence to this is oversimplifying it, but you paid
17,000 for the domain. It was expiring.
(28:21):
Yeah, you had 18. You had to be patient, but you
were you bought it. At that point you started kind
of reaching out to the industry.You started getting natural
traffic because there was so much search demand.
You love it. You loved it because there was
search demand and it was high ticket, right?
And that's a great and there wasnot much supply meeting that
search demand. You built it on WordPress, you
(28:43):
kind of started reaching out to the industry.
You partnered with another partner website and today it
does about $50,000 a year from one hour per month of work.
Yeah, that's correct. And I get free travel and I get
to go visit all these. I've been to 50 dude ranches
over the past. Oh man. 14 years from gosh, from
Georgia to I mean there are a few dude ranches in Georgia.
(29:04):
I mean. Colorado wild.
That's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in and of
itself. Yeah.
I mean, it's just it's wonderfulto go meet these folks and and
it's some of the most hard working.
I mean, talk about a difficult business to run seasonal for
them. Some run cattle, not many, but
it's mainly hospitality. It is summer camp for adults.
So I sometimes describe it, but you get to go chill.
(29:26):
If you have a family, you can take your family and all the
kids unplug. They're out playing in the Creek
or going to the campfire and no one's staring at digital
devices. It's wonderful.
You can go trap ski to ride horses or fly fish, go on river
rafting trips. It's it's one of the coolest
vacations I've ever been exposedto.
And we can even dovetail into ranch work.
(29:47):
So I got ranch workout of which is my job board from dude ranch.
My partner had it and we don't have to talk long on ranch work,
but it's another blessing where I can help folks get a job on a
ranch, any type of ranch, cattleranch, an outfitter, an
equestrian ranch or a farm and even dude ranchers.
So I can still I can double serve my dude ranchers, fill
(30:08):
jobs and fill heads and beds fortheir ranches.
So he had it on the side and sort of abandoned it.
I saw it. I had a friend in Atlanta that
built a nursing job board and had a had a good exit on it.
Shane had a good exit on his nursing job board.
I searched around a WordPress and there were some off the
shelf themes for job boards on WordPress for like 60 bucks.
(30:32):
So I bought an off the shelf jobboard theme, hacked it up on the
back end to be just better. Like better architecture for
SEO. Got out on a super fast server
and then started sourcing jobs from dude ranchers first and
then sourcing them direct from ranchers maybe on their website.
And then slowly organic listingsstarted coming through.
(30:53):
And then the seasonality aspect came back up and again for dude
ranchers and then they need to hire their crew again for the
next summer. Then I get a wave of job
listings and then word of mouth started working and then people
sort of repeat buying and it started running.
And this one has just been one of the biggest blessings.
Yeah. And again, if this one goes back
to memories and happy, not a lotof memories, but it's I'm
(31:16):
helping someone find gainful employment on a a, on a ranch.
And a lot of times it's somebodythat maybe grew up on a ranch
and maybe and they're in the bigcity now.
I just raised prices yesterday. So I added a diamond level
yesterday. For those listening 100 bucks to
post a job for the cheapest plan.
(31:37):
What's the difference between these plans and how do?
You do the duration so silver will run for 10 days, gold will
run for 30 days and there's a quick turn around.
I'll take 24 hours. I hand curate every single
listing so I put live in 24 hours because it goes through my
eyeballs to make sure it's a legit if it seems sketch or
something off rarely happens, but if it does, I just refund
(32:00):
them to say we're not quite the right fit for you because we're
not going to be able to drive you good leads.
And then we have free. If it's a ranch that you know is
in financial trouble and they need some help.
I like I never want to turn themaway.
So I try to have a free option that allows them because I know
I can drive a significant amountof traffic and I'll on this
page. I also allow job seekers they
(32:21):
want. To pay me.
It looks pretty active. Yeah, they do.
So they pay you to put this. Yeah, they pay me to extend and
I filled one this Amy right there, Amy W she emailed me this
morning saying, Peter, can you pull my listing down?
I found. Something.
Wow. And I was like, help her.
Find a job. Yeah, I was.
Heck yes. August 4th I found her a job.
(32:41):
What did she pay for this? Huh?
She paid 99 bucks. Wow 99 bucks to get a job And
did you e-mail all of your job? Like how did you promote her?
Yeah. So I've listed on the site, we
get 1.3 million visits a year tothis site.
So we get a tremendous amount oftraffic.
I have 12,000 people on our e-mail list.
(33:03):
I have 25,000 plus on our private Facebook job board page.
Wow. So I cross posted on everything.
Of all your projects, is this kind of your your cash cow, one
of your probably? Yeah, probably right now, yeah.
Good for you. If you want a fun one to go into
archive.org, go into archive.organd do ranch work.
You'll see some of the early versions.
I think he just took us off the ball and it was dormant.
(33:25):
Go. Yeah, maybe a little bit after,
though. He may have a version of it on
those pages. Yeah, he probably has.
He built it in 98, so it's a good.
It looks like that first, like your gardening site, maybe some
comic Sans in there. Oh yeah.
So it's just like he look, he's listening their first and last
names over there. Jeez Louise, looking for jobs.
(33:45):
But then he pushed it just to a landing page saying, hey, I've
kind of shut ranch work down. Hey, thank goodness he didn't
pull it offline. So it was still live and active.
And he had a link to another Facebook page that was deleted
at some point. So I said, what is this ranch
work 'cause like my friend did anursing job board, maybe I do.
I was like, how about this David?
So here is my deal to him. I was like, hey, here's what,
(34:08):
let me try this. So there's I found a job board
theme on WordPress, point the name servers to me, I'll do all
the work. I'll build the whole site.
And if I get a job listing, I'llgive you 25% and I'll keep 75%
for my hard work and any money. If I put a little Adsense on the
side, I'll keep the Adsense revenue.
And he is a great partner. He's always I like Richard
(34:32):
Branson is like, screw it, let'sdo it, who cares?
Yeah, let's do it just like Aries was to me.
When I came to the end of my day, I was like, screw it, let's
do it, That sounds fun, let's try it.
So you're like, yeah, let's try it.
Let's that sounds good to me. So he jumped in, changed the
name servers to me and I got to work and built the first version
just off the shelf job board theme and it started working and
it had enough just a little bit of trust and authority at that
(34:53):
point and started driving traffic to the site.
And then I started filling jobs and folks were happy with me.
And then I the first version of the job board was trying to
force people to set up an account in order to place a job.
And I don't like my range. I don't like anybody to jump
through hoops. Yeah, I'll move the friction.
Projects being like a like a gumball machine I sometimes
(35:17):
compare them to. So that was what the page was
right there right before I acquired it.
He was like, yeah, OK, go to ourFacebook page.
Yeah, if you want to go, if you want to look at some job, you
guys just talk among, talk amongst yourself over there is
basically what he's saying. Yeah, you cut this 7525 deal.
Yeah. How long did that stay in place?
Did you ever end up buying the domain entirely and having it
(35:37):
all to yourself? Yes, yeah.
So if you go to that same deep self ventures, I write all about
this project as well if you wantto hear the entire back story.
But yes, probably with David, wehad it for if you go to essays
at the top and then if you Scroll down the very bottom, I
have like the top. I look at traffic and you can
see must ride mule to and from work location.
(35:58):
And there, that's the one that'sthe whole story behind it.
So I think it was I'd have to read this article to begin to
figure out how long we had it together.
I think it was 5 or 6 years and I could see it was working.
Every single day, Chris, I wake up, I look at expired domains
and I, I try my best to post a job.
I like consistency on my job board to alert folks that this
(36:20):
thing is alive and kicking and there is somebody babying this
site to death. And I like every single day
hopefully posting multiple jobs.If I can't, if I have enough
free and paid submissions. So after six years, David needed
some cash. So I was like, hey, how about I
buy it from you? I think it was 10 grand.
I have it in that article. I'm able to continue working on
(36:40):
these projects. This is a great year round
project where Vidalia is seasonal, do ranch is seasonal
ish and this one is is year round.
And I like being able to run this one year round then kind of
move a little bit of my attention over to Vidalia when
it needs it in its season and then move a little bit over to
do ranch in its season. But every all, every day
(37:01):
throughout the year, I'm kind offocused on ranch work.
In this whole your realm, the type of stuff that you're doing
with these domain names, what has you curious today that you
maybe you weren't curious about 5 or 10 years ago?
What types of niches? Or is it directories or AI
tools? Oddly, to your point earlier,
right when we started this, I'lltell you, I'll tell you boutique
e-commerce in regards to something you can spin up very
(37:23):
quickly and get customers. You don't have to wait on this
timing aspect of a directory marketplace.
The fact you can set something up.
Even I'm a I'm a snob on really good domain names.
You really don't need a great domain.
I lean on dot coms andisuggest.com because folks
default to it, but you don't need an amazing one.
I tend to buy them, but boutiquee-commerce man is legit and
(37:44):
there are so many small niches that you could run out of a
small little. You can run out of your house to
start and then do like my friendWarren Royal at bobbleheads ran
out of his basement and then when it started justifying
larger expenses, he got a warehouse and now he has his own
warehouse out in Asia that is his own custom bobblehead
(38:05):
creating out of his warehouse. But small boutique channels and
you can use search to justify. And it's funny, I've been
leaning on a lot of social stufffor Vidalia.
And man, it's powerful, creatingreally good videos of I created
a 32nd ad for Vidalia, and it was three clips, me walking
(38:26):
behind the tractor when we're harvesting, me holding up a
Vidalia with my hand, and then me walking through a packing
shed. And then I just filmed, I wung
it, and I kind of wrote a quick script and it wound up being
about 30 seconds, which seems tobe a good sweet spot.
It was like, this is a Vidalia onion.
You know, they're custom. They're boutique onions only
(38:47):
grown in Georgia, and we are a Vidalia farm.
We can ship it direct to your door.
Consider us. Click the link in bio if you
want to try one of these little special treats.
What are some other examples of boutique e-commerce outside of
the bobbleheads example that you've seen or heard of
recently? Oh gosh, man, I've seen like
individual this cool 1. I don't even know the name of
(39:08):
the business. It was like, what is that little
red, the little red pull truck for kids that kids get in, but
it was like a Ritz Carlton version of like a pull behind
for kids to sit in that you can pull them behind.
Like a like a red wagon. Little Red Wagon.
I don't know why that name. Yeah, my little red wagon.
But it was, yeah, like a like a Maserati version of a little red
(39:32):
wagon. Like individual seats, cup
holders, fancy and you could pull your kids around in it and
this guy was running that business.
I'm like, are you? And that sells so well with ads.
Oh my gosh, that Andy is is multi $1,000,000 business
selling these custom high end little red wagons.
And to your point earlier I was like, are you kidding me?
(39:53):
There is AI was like, yeah, it would do really well for in
social and you can pull kids behind it.
It sort of looked like that. It was more look like a little
red wagon, but like a fancy little red wagon with custom
seats. I can't remember the day, Maybe
I can find it and e-mail it to you later.
But I was like multi $1,000,000 business.
(40:14):
I was like, wow, it's like what else is out there that you could
add an extra widget to that you could sell D to C is not easy,
but you can ramp it out very quickly if you do, if you just
know cursory. So you don't even have to lean
on the search, you could do social and create some really
good video on your phone and edit it on cap cut and get some
(40:37):
good audio and you're off to theraces.
And it's very inexpensive and track transactions through
Facebook Pixel and you're ready to go at least test it and see
if it sells. That's been one that's
interesting. All kind of food ones are
fascinating. There's a pickle company.
I think they're, I'm fascinated.I haven't bought them yet, but
they've been showing up in my feed.
I think it's, I love my pickle, but I think it's olive my
(40:57):
pickle. And it's a free promotion for
them, but I haven't tried it, but it's like legit Pickles and
this. And so they're touting the
health benefits of these specialty Pickles that they
send. So I love kind of food based.
I mean look how well designed This site is.
That's beautiful site. It is.
It's beautiful. And so they're they're touting
the health benefits of theirs. What's different of their pickle
(41:18):
versus the Pickles you may get at the grocery store?
I think they go into that maybe down the page, like why ours are
different. Ours are better for gut health.
Yeah, Yeah. It has all this extra stuff
that's better for. Yeah.
Yeah. There is the Ultimate Gut Health
Bundle. What are the tools in your tool
belt that you can't live without?
Like websites? Like for doing research, finding
(41:39):
expiring domains? What's like a rapid fire list of
tools? All of.
Clicky analytics is what I used to clickyclicky.com.
OK, it's better than stupid GA 4.
Yeah, I've I've never I got rid of GA probably 5 or 6 years
maybe longer than that. I rely on clicky for everything.
SEO and paid search were very beneficial to me.
It aren't learn the basics of SEO.
(42:01):
It can still ignore what everybody's saying about, you
know, artificial intelligence SEO.
It all leans on the same principles in my opinion.
It's still gonna rank and pull up content that matches your
niche. I don't use a ton of me.
I have Shopify for the transaction for Vidalia ship
station to manage are 10s of thousands of orders every single
(42:22):
year because I got to make sure these things land and our
customers did it. And I'd like to find out that
the box has been lost before thecustomer realizes that the box
has been lost. So I can ask UPS or just ship
them a make good before it even lands and then even recognize
that the original box was lost. What about like for looking at
domain traffic and expiring domains?
(42:43):
Is GoDaddy auctions your go to for that?
If an old domain that was registered in 95 has failed to
renewed, it pops up. It does not pop up over at
GoDaddy. It only pops up at name Jetter
snap names. So look at GoDaddy name jet snap
names. Name sheep created their own
auction platform to auction their own names that they have
their own those three and drop catch.
(43:04):
They use domains as an inspiration to build.
I tried to build on ideas 1st and I never seemed to get
anywhere. When I shifted my perspective to
build and be inspired by domains, things started working.
I was like, I'll just use the trust and authority from this
name, see if I can build something and let it do some of
the heavy lifting and I can be the dude behind the keyboard.
(43:25):
I like to say the same thing. I like to start with like a
marketing channel and then work backwards from that.
And that's essentially what you're saying, right?
Your domain name is the the grandfather of your marketing
channel. You start there and then work
back. Other tools, let's see it so
it's those are the primary from the expiration process.
There's a site called expired domainsisit.net.
I'd use it sometimes, but it's apretty good it's a fire hose.
(43:48):
Let me pull it up and make sure I have the domain itsa.net
expireddomains.net and it is just a almost a wall of text on
the website. But you can set up a free
account. There's no cost and they do
searches across properties. So you can do searches across
Name, Jet, Snap names, GoDaddy, Namecheap, sometimes drop catch
(44:10):
and try to see if a name pops upthrough those.
I'm kind of old school. I just go direct.
I just go to drop catch, see what's up there.
Go to GoDaddy and see what's up there.
Do you think directory businesses are still viable
today in the age of AI? Yes, Dude Ranch is a good
example because my site's providing photographs, video,
background information. So the photographs have been
(44:32):
helpful and they want a kind of a trusted source to look at what
I'm seeing. I mean, the, my traffic's up
almost 40 percent, 39% year overyear on that project.
And my rebuild helped, but AI ishelping as well because AI is
making suggestions on here are some ranches.
But hey, here's duderanch.com. It's a pretty trusted authority.
(44:53):
You can also go search on or dude ranches with pickleball
that are an hour away from a major airport.
AI is kind of the Cliff Notes version.
They can kind of point you in the right direction.
I don't know if they'll ever be.I mean, yeah, if there is, if
there was a directory business for sale that was in my price
range, I would seriously consider acquiring it and
(45:15):
looking into the numbers to see if it might fit into My
Portfolio. But I'm pretty happy with my
little three projects. Dude Ranch has such interesting
social media potential and I'm not doing a very good job
promoting it from that aspect. So I'm trying to see if there
might be an interesting person to either buy the whole thing
out or I'm. It's so low touch for me.
(45:36):
I'm you can tell I love the industry and enamored with it
And I I don't mind keeping it ifthere's a good partner who can
help by the right content, do great social media that has
experience with that and doesn'tmind going visiting some of the
ranches and, and kind of gettingfeet on the street.
You're at Searchbound on TwitterDeep South ventures.com for your
blog. Where else can people find you?
(45:58):
Askyou.org is kind of org askewaskew.org.
It's kind of just the just little home base.
Links to some of my essays that I've written.
Links to projects, Links to failed projects that I've built.
Most importantly, things I've tried, domains I've bought and
donated. I bought Ole Miss Calm and
donate it to Ole Miss. That's amazing.
(46:20):
Yeah. Real tired.
All right. Peter and I could not stop
talking, so I had to split this into two parts.
Please come back a week from today to hear about even more
niche websites that Peter started, how he did it, what
tools he uses, etc. Thanks for listening here on the
Kerner Office.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.