I love reading about Deep South Ventures websites-- the projects are simple but inspiring. They're kind of like the other side of the coin to YC-- they make business seem possible but in a completely different way.
Heads up-- something on duderanch.com is putting a max-width on rows making the site unreadble in desktop:
Stuff like this, or some of patio11's early work seems a lot more within the grasp of ordinary people. That's why it's interesting to read about for me, at least.
I agree, but with some minor quibbles specific to the HN audience:
1. The ability to write software is an asset and the DSV type projects are more software adjacent. Software has such great margins that it's much easier to create a profitable business than anything that involves shipping or physical goods (MicroSAAS, Dev Books/Courses, Themes, etc.)
2. It's sort of left unsaid that much of the purpose of buying these "domains you can make a business around" is to optimize SEO. And my honest feeling is: well done, that's a huge leg up in ranking.
But there have been some changes to SEO (Google weighting factors and more navigational searches) that have reduced the value of them.
Also, I think there's a strong argument to be made that if you're just starting out today and have $20,000 you'd be better off today with:
duderanchjourney.com ($14 to register) + $19,986 in content, advertising, etc.
>> But there have been some changes to SEO (Google weighting factors and more navigational searches) that have reduced the value of them.
Well, I've actually studied this a lot... and it's not that Google reduced the value of them (Exact Match Domains EMDs). It's just that Google stopped giving them more weight. So now all domains are given the same potential ranking weight--even the new gTLD domains.
Bing, on the other hand, still gives more value to EMDs.
Hmm, main underlying point still has validity, but it's interesting how some things / gut reactions may have changed or be changing.
The example that "[one would] always go to biketours.com" is literally invalid for all my friends today - we'd immediately think of it as a link farm with content of limited or no value - and maybe even dangerous. In fact, it's their very proposed business model, that has conditioned us to mentally de-rank such generic domains.
As a consumer, I'll mentally avoid "weddingphotographer.com" and maybe even "TorontoPhotography.com" in rankings (no clue if those are working domains, assume so, no ill will to the operators:) but would scroll to e.g. "BobDoesPictures.ca" or "MichaelDavidsonPhotography.ca" or something more specific and similar like that. One sounds a generic link farm, one sounds a specific potentially useful site. So I'd definitelly use GoSojourn.com over BikeTours.com.
Mind you, from perspective of a pragmatic business, my friends and I may well represent an insignificant minority :(
For me, this becomes more true the longer and more oddly specific the domain becomes. I'd feel perfectly fine with biketours.com or duderanch.com, but no way would I visit best-bike-tour-discounts.com or discount-dude-ranch-vacations.com.
A large portion of the web uses this plugin. If the site doesn't work with it I would consider that broken. Additionally UBO should not cause basic site layout to break unless something is wrong on the sites side (like including formatting markup from an advertising domain).
Thanks for stating the obvious though. Nevermind the other comments saying the exact same thing about the site being broken for them too. Just trying to help not have the site be broken for a portion of visitors.
That is Firefox by the way. I suppose it looks differently in whatever browser it was tested at the time? Or maybe it is my adblock blacklisting wpengine.com by default?
He could have hired a web designer/coder for a fraction of that price.
Edit:
Turns out it is uBlock.
Don't use styles/JS from domains used for serving ads I suppose. That's analogous to sending legitimate mail from servers that also tend to send out a lot of spam.
You'll have spam filters/adblockers ruining your day.
What a wonderful and refreshing approach to entrepreneurship. I loved his previous post about selling onions, and I like his strategy of picking a domain first and then running with it -- the details will be filled in later. Domain names have so much potential! They are so motivating initially -- and he clearly follows through!
thank you zapstar! Sorta like Bill Walsh (49ers coach) said (essentially).. start on the right foundation and "the score will take care of itself".. Domain names are such a great way to start a project off on the right foot..
Any idea what the yearly gross income from duderanch.com might be? Or the selling price at the exit?
I love the narrative. I'd love it even more if we had a glimpse of whether this ultimately settled in as predicted ($25k/year) or turned out to be a whole lot more rewarding.
author here.. the revenue for both sites (since I partnered) was much more than I anticipated, but my take home for DudeRanch.com actually fell around my estimation.. (if that helps)
Thanks. Connecting the dots, I'm guessing that travel to various ranch operators ate into your gross revenue. But, hey, it's the right way to build the business. And it sounds as if those trips made it an unusually enjoyable project.
I really love the whole story, especially the idea of the domain name being like the "starter sentence" in a creative writing course. Much has been written about constraints enhancing creativity.
In addition to the constraint of the domain name itself, the author also spent $17,949 (taking 6-9 months to repay) which would help constrain them to focus on just this one idea over that time.
Heads up-- something on duderanch.com is putting a max-width on rows making the site unreadble in desktop:
<section class="row row-3" style="width: 100%; max-width: 328px;">...</section>