As cliche as it sounds it’s one of the most important keys to having a successful business. Read Rick’s blog. You can feel in his every word he still feels the passion, the excitement of what he does for a living. It’s that passion that enables one to work long hours, make personal sacrifice, and provides the drive to an end goal. Castello’s LagunaBeach.com, he has a home there. Rick Latona loves watches and it’s only natural that he has a site that buys and sells used watches. They are investing in what they know, what they love. It’s not a coincidence.
It’s not that you can’t make money out of your comfort zone, it just means it’s easier to do if you know and love the category. I see too many people in this industry go into things they have not a clue about and it causes them to go at it half assed. I’m not talking about the hours that are put in, but rather in their approach. The invest in domains because they think they can make some money. They read the blogs and dream of flipping a domain and making a couple hundred grand, only to be disappointed when their investments turn out to dust collecting trophies. A category killer is a an easy flip but what about the thousand of other names that are tough to move? We all pretend we’ll develop them but we know there is zero to no chance of that ever happening. There is one way to overcome this right off the bat. Start off only buying domains that you have a passion for.
They must be something you enjoy. A hobby. Maybe you like scarves. It really doesn’t matter. Concentrate on what you love and buy names in that category. You are more likely to be able to sell your name if you drive it up the charts of Google and the way to reach the first page is through development of some kind. If you like the niche then you already hang out with similar type people. You know who the big players are that might want to buy these type domains. You have an in. You know this category so well because it’s something you do without getting paid. You can write articles for days because you live it. I’ve watched many domain investors create sites informational sites full of articles. It becomes obvious which sites were built by people that know and care about that product versus the people that are just trying to bring in Google users. What I’ve found with 100% success is that if you are in a moderate to low competition category you will do fine in Google ranking if you just write your own articles and keep to basic SEO. Someone that loves what they are writing about will tend to use the right keywords without forcing the issue. They will talk about what they like about it. Will answer questions within an article regardless if someone is asking. Everyone loves going to a site that is written by someone that knows what the hell he’s talking about and actually truly enjoys what’s being discussed.
On the contrary, if you are going try and make a living by making a large site you care or know nothing about it will be a much tougher task. Again, it’s not to say the world’s greatest and profitable site can’t be made about something you have no interest. It’s merely saying that at some point it better become your passion. A passion because you like the category or simply the site/business itself. You can grow to love something, especially if it makes you money. Funny how that works. If you need an example, look at the 60 year old men with really nice looking 35 year old wives. There’s still love and passion there, it’s just focused a little differently. It can work but it would be much easier if they were closer in age.
So look around at what you do for fun. Don’t worry about the CPC or the number of searches. Just buy what you think would be a good name in that category and build. You know all about it so put up a site that YOU would want to go to. Write about things you’ve learned. Things that others would want to hear about. It will work and you will make money. And even if it didn’t, you’ll enjoy yourself anyway and there’s no loss in doing something you love.
Man, totally agree with you at %110
Passion is the way to go! Many web developers and domainers here seeks for keywords with high CPC and want to make money from it, nothing wrong to this and some makes money from it but when passion is given on a website it’s not how much money you can earn from your website but satisfaction of what you’ve launch. Then money can come because you have invest 10x more of your time, your skills to it compare to a guy with Adsense sites, they are now crying since Google panda arrived in their algorithm not the passionated developer, he is smiling.
Me too had in the past a geo domain. It’s my favorite small place located iin Hawaii. so I’ve developped and was so great that search engines ranked on top. Making money from it? Not really but one day I tried to auctionned because I wanted more money for other projects (still passioned about) and guess what, was sold for a nice price simply because I ve put all my love in it.
Starting with a new business more than a hobby that I always dreamed to have, I guess sucess is on the way (not financially but success in term of global)
Here is a secret I want to share you.
What Facebook founder, Bill Gates, Stev Jobs and other billionaires have in common? Passion of what they are doing. Money comes after!
Cliche is tiring though there is truth to most. Don’t think u need a passion to be successful. I would take luck over passion. If I have to choose one quality that is within our control I would say consistency.
I totally agree and have been preaching this for a long time.