Over the last decades I have been in the heart of Internet domains and websites. Many have come to me asking to buy advertising space on some of my web entities. Rightly so as some of the websites have received as many as 600,000 visitors in a single day. Something that I have never dabbled in is leasing a domain. When working with a Los Angeles personal injury lawyer, the #1 search result on Google was a leased domain that was manipulated with shady optimization. I had not heard of this type of business since around 2012 until I listened to the Rover-DogVACAY Acquired Podcast.
In the Podcast, David and Ben, who have personal experience with Rover, discussed with the CEO how they did not purchase Rover.com early on, but they simply leased the domain and used it to build the business. They later bought the domain for a very affordable price.
For those unfamiliar, Rover.com is the AirBNB for dogs. In 2010 when AirBNB was first taking off, there were no options for dog owners that traveled often. An interesting fact that was mentioned in the podcast was American’s spend 26 days away from home in a year. If you have a dog, you cannot simply leave it at home and hope to come back to some form of normalcy.
Like the CEO mentioned, there are two demographics of people. There are those that take their dog to a Doggie Daycare or Kennel and those that go down their list of friends and family and attempt to pawn their pet off for a few days while they are on vacation or a business trip.
From personal experience, one of the main reasons I do not get a dog is because I travel three or four times a month and I do not want to have a dog that doesn’t have it’s owner around. I am also not the type to ever travel with a pet.
It is a fantastic business model and the model is even better because they were able to lease a domain for dirt cheap. As someone that works in the Internet Marketing world, one of the biggest problems business owners come to me with is the registering of a domain. In 2020, most domains have been taken. It is not as if you can simply buy GolfCoach.com. All the valuable domains have been taken and you have to get very creative even when it comes to business names. While ranking for something like Cary Family Dentist is doable, you will never be able to buy the domain CaryDentist.com.
If you have a great business idea such as AirBNB for dogs you will want to brainstorm as short of a domain as possible and get it now.
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