

Ask HN: Is it possible to turn my side project into a viable business? - antichaos

Hi fellow hackers,<p>Last week I released a weekend web project at http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dnufg.com&#x2F; to show that plenty of interesting domain names are still up for grabs at retail price. I&#x27;ve attracted quite a few visitors (mostly from Reddit), but the AdSense revenue has been minuscule so far. I wonder what other monetization channels I should explore. Any thoughts?
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webstartupper
I don't think adsense is the best option. For this industry, affiliate sales
makes a better revenue model. For each interesting domain, give the user a
chance to back-order/purchase the domains via a registrar of their choice. In
each link embed your affiliate code. You can email me if you want any help in
deep linking.

For my webapp [http://www.domcop.com/](http://www.domcop.com/) I use a two
revenue stream business model. Users have to pay a recurring amount every
month to avail the services and all the links to various domain auction sites
bring in affiliate revenue as well.

Couple of comments to make the site better

1\. Add a search option - search on domain name as well as the text between
quotes for each domain

2\. Maybe add some more metrics for each domains - whether the site has been
banned by google, page rank and validity, data from wayback archive, metrics
from companies like seomoz, majestic seo etc

3\. When a user submits a domain, let them choose the category the domain
belongs to. As a user I would love to go through all domains for a specific
niche (eg. garderning, mobile phones etc)

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hardwaresofton
Maybe you can add a subscription options for certain domain names?

Then your site could act as a domain name watcher (though I'm sure those
exist). You could charge some small fee a year (or until the domain comes up
for renewal at least) -- and let people specify some emails to be contacted
at.

You could also add some general information gathering, and send a report after
they pay on when the domain is likely to come up for renewal/when they might
hear about it.

I really don't know how easy it would be to monetize it, but if the price was
sufficiently low, I think people would be into the whole set-it-and-forget-it-
ness of that... Assuming they were willing to wait for some hot domain name

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wikwocket
First of all, I love the annotations that explain each domain's "awesomeness."
Really makes it stand apart from other similar sites.

Now, if by "quite a few visitors" you mean in the thousands or tens of
thousands, you could start a newsletter perhaps. With 10k+ subscribers who
regularly read a newsletter, you can get decent ad or affiliate rates.

On the page, offer to email people a weekly digest of top names. Give them the
choice to choose to receive lists of names that are "funny," "awesome," or
both. Then send them automatic digests, with ads and referral codes. Just a
thought. Best of luck!

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wiseleo
Simple. Affiliate link to register the domain.

"Up for grabs" should be linked to a domain registrar of your choice.

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antichaos
Clickable link: [http://www.dnufg.com/](http://www.dnufg.com/) (domain names
up for grabs)

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sideproject
When all else fails - [http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com)

