The Most Hands-Off Side Hustle Anyone Can Copy

It makes a little over 50 grand a year. I spent about an hour a month on it. Maybe she's zero concept or understanding of coding. I got exposed to expiring domain auctions. I was like, oh my gosh, Hang on. Callers dot com. Look at that domain.

You can build some call tracking application. Golf tour.com.

Yes, these domains are interesting. Like, this is like the key to the entire website. I didn't like my livelihood dictated by someone else. I'd work 9 to 5 and then I'd come home and work on these projects in the evening. What are the tools in your tool.

Belt that you can't live without? 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 every year. It took some time on the front end to build these up, but today he 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 Buc EE's and Texas snacks. He just does things, permissionless things. He partners with people he's 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 his secrets with us today. So please enjoy this conversation with my friend Peter. I would love to hear this 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'd been laid off several, several times. And that began to grate on my nerves. 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 million dollars for the team. And. 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. Oh, man, that one really stuck with me. And that's when I was like, I gotta figure out this stuff. I don't have a computer science background. I have a history degree from Ole Miss. So I was like, I gotta figure this stuff out. I have a background in SEO, a little bit in SEO, zero concept or understanding 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 could monetize the sites a little bit from AdSense and that started 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 piecemeal projects and the more I kept building, at some point I always have to think back on how I got exposed to expired domains. I was building sites and I realized it might be faster just to 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 me from 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. Aruba. Who shut 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 10 years, but they were ranked number two or three or maybe number one in Google for the term Cancun or some 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 $2 dollars, $3 a click. So if I built out a tourism based website and somebody clicks on a dollar ad unit, I'll get 70 cents per click. That's, that's pretty darn good. And heck, I can go down to Aruba or 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 it 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. 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 thousand bucks a month, 2,000 bucks a month. And their ask price is three grand. Yeah, I'll buy it and I. And bring it in house. So I'd buy the entire content and bring the domain over. And so that's when I started getting exposed to domains. So I'd get a deal on a site and my brain immediately went to the domain and say, and my brain was telling me I gotta get control of this domain. Cause if I control the domain, I control the whole site. Cause they could waffle and change their mind. But if I control the domain and they go back on their word, I can still screenscrape the information, pull it over and rebuild the site. But I have to own the domain. I was like, these domains are interesting. I was like, these are, this is like the key to the entire website. And some of the sites I was buying early on were just regular. They weren't terribly descriptive, but they ranked, they were old, they 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, what are some examples of some old ones that you bought that were interesting but didn't quite work out?

Yeah, so one was, I've since sold this domain. It was called Travel Envoy and it was a directory of wineries and vineyards that you could visit. I bought this around 04 and.

Okay.

And then he transferred all the pages to me. I bought it for 10 grand. And then I simply just added Adsense to it. And I did a poor job. I didn't know how to code very well. So I added it to the site. And then it started. Yeah, throw me whatever, a grand, two grand a month.

And he didn't have any ads on it.

Zero 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 ads on 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 they're sourced from. And this guy had signed up for an affiliate deal. And so if you go back in Internet Archive, you'll see this ad up on the top right hand side.

Oh yeah, you can pull up way back 2004. Is this it?

This is before I bought it. Isn't that beautiful? Look at that.

Oh man.

This is what you're looking for these types of sites still exist today.

For those that are listening, it basically looks like Craigslist. Blue hyperlinks, very ugly.

And there are still mom and pop operators out here that have websites like this that are. Are very 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 a lot of tedious work.

I was kind of spitballing 10,000. It was a lot. It may have been five 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 think I did an FTP because there were so many pages. There was no easy way that I, that I was aware of. So this may have been me. So here, top right, that's 2006. 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 AdSense ad unit. So back then there were no. AdSense wasn't including any kind of images within this. They were straight hyperlinks that they pull. So I'd always try to add some kind of imagery. So that was, that was some free clip art I found somewhere. Add the ad on the right and then included 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. And I just let him keep all the affiliate stuff from the wine book he made.

Oh, here we are.

Yeah, I don't, I don't remember ever put creating my. Because the affiliates were so small the revenue share. 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 in the right converted quite well. You'd be surprised.

Right here.

Yeah, I don't know if they're still in existence.

It looks very intriguing. It looks like a periodic table.

Yeah, it was really cool. Yeah, DeLonge'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 down 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. 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 was comfortable 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, okay, how long would it take me? I was still working a 9 to 5 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 that they need to quit their day job.

Yes.

And then go all in on their project.

Preach, preach.

I do not subscribe to that at all. I ran my day job. I'd work nine to five, then I'd come home and work on these projects in the evening.

Also, guys, real quick. Sorry. This is really good, Right? Like, Peter's an awesome guest. If you want to say thanks to me, to Peter, just hit subscribe and the notification bell. It would mean a ton of thank you every day.

And I treated it. I don't know. You watch that old robot show, the Battlebot show, and I mentioned this on Twitter. Sometimes I compared it. These two little robots in this death den, and they're fighting each other. Which 1 my 9 to 5 or these projects that I'm building, which one can generate more money? And whenever my little side projects, maybe it never happens, but whenever my side projects can generate more money than my nine to five, that's when I'll consider it. Or maybe when they're getting close, that's when I'll consider dropping off and going full time. So I was still working 9 to 5 in these projects.

I call it the wing walker's code for those listening. I'm showing images of wing walkers on these airplanes. You never let go of one 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 see some folks that do this. They'll quit. I'm giving myself nine months and, oh, my gosh, the pressure and, you know, these weirdo ideas, in my opinion, don't come up in that type of pressure tank. It's when you're. When you're allowed to sit and Daydream and Shoe Heck 95, you're probably sitting at your cube five or six hours a day just daydreaming. On different ways to work on your project at night and doing two or three hours of actual work at 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.

You were having a ton of fun. This was a hobby, correct? Just fun. And you could even monetize this fun. So.

Right. And I was teaching myself to code. I was like, wow, this code 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 basically just taught myself how all these 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@a domain name auction. Had no experience in bobbleheads. Very similar to you and me, you 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 times and it's just the coolest warehouse to go visit because he has life size bobbleheads, 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 what he's building. And so he bought that at auctions.

I mean $160. You know what his revenue is or what kind of volume he does nowadays from a $30,000.

You should get him on the. He is wonderful. He doesn't go on many podcasts. He's so heads down on this business, he rarely. He'll show up on a few Domainer podcasts from time to time, but he's always heads down on.

Oh, there you go. Use his math. We, we produce over 250,000 bobbleheads each year. I'm looking at his prices. Nothing's under a hundred dollars. Yeah. So 25 million. Wow. That would be over 25 million 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 million of bobbleheads a year. And it's like, bobbleheads. Yeah. No.

Oh, I can, I can do. Get the domain bobbleheads. All the kind of, the cynical attitude. So, but go ahead. I'm interrupting you. Yes.

No, like people just, there's just so many e commerce businesses out there not named Amazon.com that do millions, tens, 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 get leads all the time. Like, I have this makeup brand. I have this, this food ice cream brand. We do 36 million, we do 22. And I'm like, where are you coming from? How are there so many e commerce brands? And in the context of this conversation, a lot of times, not every time, it starts with a really good, trustworthy domain name. Right? Yeah.

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.

Okay. I went to bobblehead.com and it redirects.

It should redirect to bobbleheads. He treasure everything over.

So when you bought Travel Envoy, that $10,000 was just kind of goodwill. There was no really revenue, but you 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 affiliate deals. And I thought I could pay it off within six to nine months. And I wound up paying it off within six months easily.

Oh my gosh. A lot of people are watching this and I know what they're thinking. A lot of them are thinking, well, this isn't relevant anymore. You just can't reach out to site owners. And 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 for my front yard and I wanted to buy them here, you 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 nursery.com and I saw it 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. Awesome. 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 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. But arbitrage opportunities will always exist. And when you and I are 80 years old, people are going to be buying sites from us.

Correct? Yeah.

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. So when I started recognizing these domains were quite interesting, I was like, well that's fascinating. How do I get a domain like Warren has like bobbleheads dot com. You know, I wasn't able to register them in 95. It's 04 at this point. Point I was like, oh, I missed my opportunity. I didn't have any opportunity by these domains. The windows closed now and I rarely ever think from that perspective. 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 puts it 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 send, sift through. Because at first I tried to buy. So this is more of a marketplace try. Okay, what's a good Godaddy Auctions is one of the biggest. So they built their own auction platform to sell domains within there. So if you just do. I think it's auctions.godaddy.com Yep. Shows some of within the. The expiring side. 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. 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 to click it again. Now go to choosing their own. Check out JTM.com is expired. Oh, three letter, three letter callers dot com. I mean look at that domain tracking application.

Golftor dot 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 got exposed to expiring domain auctions, I was like, oh my gosh, hang on. 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 a hundred grand, five hundred 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, dude.

You could buy all the interesting crown molding that the world has to offer.

You could sell crown, it could be.

Drop shipped directly from the manufacturer. You don't have to have a big warehouse.

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, not really with the intention of building. I was looking at them from. Maybe I 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 start inspiring me to build something. I was like, crown molding. Oh my gosh.

Rent my house dot com.

Yeah. And so this, I started doing this every single day. And I'd buy some. I'd buy one, build a small site, figure out how to monetize it. Maybe it had existing traffic, maybe had direct traffic, maybe it had had a previous identity to it and figure out ways to build on that. So I'd build a few there. But it was more piecemeal efforts. And I was like, man, I'm getting tired 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. I'll just sit maybe and hang out and just monitor this thing every single day and wait for an interesting domain that expires. And that's when Duderanche.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 three times and then the last owner ran it into the ground and shut it down, 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 own the domain they used to advertise on Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

No Way vacation.

Yeah, I'll have to forward you the tweak. I found one of the ads that they had, so I, I reposted it on my Twitter feed somewhere. Here's another one. Looks Roseland Ranch Resort. And you'll. If you scroll down, you'll see usually they'll have. Oh, you may have seen us on Wheel of Fortune.

This is 2003 with that. Oh, here it is.

Yeah, it's before. So they. This expired and went up for auction in 09.

Okay.

So I start. I waited when I made that decision that I was going to sit and wait almost like 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, this looks awesome though.

I mean I built WordPress. So at that point I'd gotten exposed to WordPress and I had some rough idea. I had an SEO and paid search background. Love analytics. And I was like, okay, I'll. 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, advertising.

How do they start buying ads from you? Like how do they find.

Oftentimes. So it started the easiest way for me. I think I could have done this via email or phone. But they unfortunate. They have a yearly conference every year. They hold it at a dude ranch typically. So I was like, sweet. Now this is kind of killing two birds with one stone. I can start visiting dude ranches because I need to visit a few to get the feel of these. Just because I'm basically representing the industry by owning this domain. It's. It's crazy. Owning one of these names and folks will assume you are an expert in that field. The trust and immediate authority. Yeah, with an exact match. Descriptive.com. generic exact match is wildly powerful. So they started advertising with me 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 ranges and keep me. And I was talking to David and I was like, David, hey, what, what if we. What if we partner up and we corner the market? Or pseudo corner the market? Because if they cancel both of us, they're going to lose about 50% of their 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 or so, maybe longer.

Wow.

He's based in Littleton, Colorado, so I could always find a Colorado hang out of his place. And then we take road 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 the pending delete and it cost 17, 18,000 bucks. Basically just under 18,000 bucks.

And what signals did you look for before spending a dime on this to tell you that this was worthwhile?

Average tool. 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 wanted 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. And then I was like, okay, 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 vacations. So I could look at dude ranch vacations. And that was still strong search volume. Then I'd look, I'd pulled dude ranch, Colorado, dude ranch, Texas, Idaho, all the states, all still strong search volume. I was like, okay, this is good. I have one side of the equation. Somebody 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, okay, let's just assume 30% margin. So the rancher's making three grand on one booking. I still have these rates. 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. It 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. So. And it has very, very low overhead. It has hosting and domain renewal. And I pay a friend that has more experience at PHP 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 plugin update and you know, the payment page is broken. Can you please help? So I lean on her, but she's. I mean, it's only a couple hundred bucks a year to lean on her, but it makes me sleep better. So very good margins. It's not a million dollar 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 have kind of consumed a majority of my time. And I'm trying to figure out how I can devote more time or maybe hire someone to help me. I spent about 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 strict on if I consider selling it. It's going to have to be somebody good buyer. A good buyer. I can't let this thing go into somebody who's going to put a 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.

It represents the industry. You feel like a sense of stewardship over the industry and you want the next owner to do the same.

Yeah. And in short terms, yes.

I've been using Beehive for about two years, almost as long as they've been around. And I got to tell, 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 feature that's brilliant. 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 5,000 subscribers, you can say, I have 3,750 homeowners making $75,000 a year who spend $200 plus per month on home improvement. And that's proof that their ideal customers are reading your newsletter. Go extract your email list from whatever platform you're stuck on, because it's probably costing you thousands in lost deals. Beehive makes migration easy. You can move all your emails in minutes so you can get paid what you're actually worth. Head to beehive.com Chris for 30% off your first three months. That's B E-E-H-I-I V.com Chris. You'll thank.

But that one just taught me. Oh my gosh. Okay, this is quite interesting, but I always had Warren, 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 to 5 when I was running Dude Ranch. I was like, I still have open time in my schedule. What else can I build? Vidaliaonions.com expires goes up for auction. I don't intend to buy it. I write this book, big long story on my little blog, but not blog, my little. I write an essay on the background of. Of how I acquired Vidalia. And I also write about how I acquired Dude Ranch on. I think it's deepsouth ventures.com is where.

I have deepsouth ventures.com. okay. 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. Well, 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 dump it out on the page and then kind of structure it. I have very short attention span, so if it appeals to me, I hope it would appeal to somebody else because it's very difficult for me to read or focus. So if it allows me to focus on it, it. Yeah, very therapeutic.

So. So if I were to wrap up the story of Dude Ranch in a sentence. This is oversimplifying it, but you paid 17,000 for the domain it was expiring.

Yeah.

You had to be 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 was not much supply meeting that search demand. You built it on WordPress. You 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. I mean, Colorado, Wyoming.

That's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in and of itself.

Yeah, I mean it's just, it's wonderful to 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. I sometimes describe it, but you get to go chill. 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 exposed to. And we can even dovetail into ranch work. So I got ranch work out 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, cattle ranch, an outfitter, an equestrian ranch or a farm, and even dude ranchers. So I can still, I can double serve my dude ranchers fill jobs and fill heads and beds for their 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 on WordPress and there were some off the shelf themes for job boards on WordPress for like 60 bucks. So I bought an off the shelf job board 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 listings started coming through and then the seasonality aspect came back up again for dude ranchers and then they'd 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, this one goes back to memories and happy. Not a Lot of memories, but it's happy. I'm helping someone find gainful employment on a. On a ranch. And a lot of times it's somebody that maybe grew up on a ranch and maybe and they're in the big city 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. What are. What's the difference between these plans and how did.

Mainly duration. So silver will run for 10 days, gold will run for 30 days. And there's a quick turnaround. I'll take 24 hours. I hand curate every single listing. So 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 them and say we're not quite the right fit for you because we're not going to be able to drive you good leads, then we have free.

Okay.

If it's a ranch that you know is in financial trouble and they need some help, like, I never want to turn them away. So I try to have a free option that allows them because I know I can drive a significant amount of traffic and I'll. On this page, I also allow job seekers. They 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. And I was like, helped her find a job. I was, heck, yes. August 4th, I found her a job.

What did she pay for the month?

Huh? What did she pay? 99 bucks.

Wow. 99 bucks to get a job. And did you email 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 to this site, so get a tremendous amount of traffic. I have 12,000 people on our email list. 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 cash cow? One of your.

Yeah, probably right now. Yeah.

Good for you.

If you want a fun one to go into archive.org, go into archive.org and do ranch work. You'll see some of the early versions. I think he just took us off the ball and it was dormant. 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 like he. Look, he was listing their first and last names over there, looking for jobs, 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? My friend did a nursing 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. Let me try this. 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'll give you 25% and I'll keep 75% for. 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 like, Richard Branson. He's like, screw it, let's do it. Who cares? Yeah, let's do it. Just like Aries was to me when I came into Vidalia. I was like, screw it.

Let's do it.

That sounds fun. Let's try it. So he was like, yeah, let's try it. 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 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 Rand. I don't like anybody to jump through hoops. Yeah, I like projects being like a. Like a gumball machine. I sometimes compare them to. So that was what the page was right there, right before I acquired it. It was like, okay, go to our Facebook page if you want to go. If you want to look at some jobs, you guys just talk them up. Talk amongst yourself over there is basically what he's saying.

Yeah, you cut this 75, 25 deal, how long did that stay in place? Did you ever end up Buying the domain entirely and having it 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 want to hear the entire backstory. But yes, probably with David we had 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 and there. That's the one. That's the whole story behind it. So I think it was. I'd have to read this article again to figure out how long we had it together. I think it was five or six years and I could see it was working every single day. Chris I wake up, I look at expired domains and I try my best to post a job. I like consistency on my job board to alert folks that this 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. 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 ten grand. I have it in that order. Miracle I'm able to continue working on these projects. This is a great year round project where Vidalia is seasonal, Dude 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 Vidalia when it needs it in its season and then move a little bit over to Dude Ranch in its season. But every, all, every day throughout the year I'm kind of focused 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 five or 10 years ago? What types of niches or is it directories or AI tools?

Oddly to your point early right when we started this, I'll tell you Boutique E Commerce in regards to something you can spin up very 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.com and I suggest.com because folks default to it. But you don't need an amazing one. I tend to buy them. But Boutique E Commerce man is legit and there are so many small niches that you could run out of a small little. You could run out of your house to start and then do like my friend Warren Royla Bobble has run 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 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 stuff from Vidalia and man, it's powerful. Creating really good videos of. I created a 30 second ad for Vidalia and it was three clips. Me walking behind the tractor when we're harvesting. Me holding up a Vidalia with my hand and then me walking through our packing shed. And then I just filmed I wong it and I kind of wrote a quick script and it wound up being about 30 seconds which seems to be a good sweet spot. It was like this is a Vidalia onion. You know they're custom, they're boutique onions only 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 one. I don't even know the name of 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 a pool behind for kids to sit in that you can pull them behind.

Like a red wagon.

Little red wagon. I don't know why that name a little red wagon but it was like a. Like a Maserati version of a little red wagon. Like individual seats, cup holders, fancy and you could pull your kids around in it. And this guy was running that business. I was like are you.

And that sells so well with ads.

Oh my gosh. That Andy is multi million dollar business selling these custom high end little red wagons. And to your point earlier I was like are you kidding me? There is a. I 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 email it to you later. But I was like multimillion dollar business. I was like, wow. It's like, what else is out there that you could add an extra widget to that you could sell? D2C is not easy, but you can ramp it up very quickly if you do. If you just know cursory so you don't even have to lean on search. You could do social and create some really good video on your phone and edit it on cap cut and get some good audio and you're off to the races. 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 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 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.

Okay. All right, so let's talk onions.

So, yeah, so this one was an accident. I monitor expiring domains virtually every single day. It's just like my morning paper. I just pull it up, I started doing it and I just found I never stopped. Because they're so fun. Because it's just like you and I were doing. Just looking through the list, like, oh my gosh, Chris. Crown molding. You can do that is a legit business, by the way. So anyone wants to bid on that, that is a legit. You could go from New Orleans crown molding from a historical home. I may share that on Twitter here in the afternoon.

It only. You should. And it only has eight bids.

Eight bids. I mean, look at the. The traffic isn't exact. Scroll up to the top of the page. I can't remember which column. There's age. Look how Old it is. It's 27 years old, has been owned continually for 27 years. And these traffic stats, I think 20, the 20 row or column is reflective of the traffic that it's receiving. Godaddy is, isn't. It isn't exact, but it gives you a little bit of an idea if there is some natural type in traffic. People just typing in, looking for crown molding. Crown molding out of historical homes is a, is a legit business.

I think people can't comprehend that, that people still just directly type in domain names. Can you talk about that? But before we go into onions, I.

Got that from Warren Royal. He shares this on his Twitter feed. He was sharing listen, you don't. And no one quite understands how much type in traffic. It's one of his largest traffic sources and it's what allowed him to get the business off the ground. So when he started it, I think all, virtually all of his traffic was people typing in the term bobbleheads into the browser bar, not going through a search engine and adding.com at the end and coming direct to his site. When he started, he had three bobbleheads that he was selling by thirds, drop shipping them. And it was right before, it was before Obama, Hillary and someone else. I can't remember. He had three McCain. Okay, he sold three bobbleheads and he was selling them out of his basement and he started selling them out, just selling them out. He was like, holy cow, I got something here. This is quite interesting. He started sharing the fact and some of the old school domainers always share this. But it was neat to see it because he was sharing live and or just actual screenshots from his Google Analytics on direct traffic from a site that had never been developed. No backstory, no end links. And you can see it was just direct traffic. SEO really hadn't gained any traction yet. And so I was like, okay, this direct is real. When I got dude ranch right out of the gate, I was getting 30 to 50 visits a day from people typing in dude ranch and type someone.

Wanting a $5,000 vacation.

Correct. So I was like, wow.

Okay.

What I'm finding here with these great domains is if I get a good descriptive one, it gives me some tailwind right out of the gate. So I don't have to fully rely on paid search, Google Ads or Facebook ads. I can if I want, but if I want to keep my spend low, I can rely on just the type in traffic from this wonderful domain and figure out, maybe ask the customers, what are you looking for? Are they maybe I'm providing a product and they aren't purchasing it. And I can say, well, maybe they're looking for a service. Let me maybe offer a service out here. So I got that from Dude Ranch and I started seeing it. I was like, wow, this is a longer term. It's not even as good as Babble has when I'm still getting type in traffic from this domain. I was like, okay, type in traffic's real. No one really studies it that much, but it is real. And when Vidalia came up, it's a longer term. Vidalia is tougher to spell. I realize it might get a little bit of type in Traffic, but again, I didn't intend to buy it. So I was watching it just from. I was curious about it. It was up for auction. I was working on probably working on Dude Ranch, and I had like a different browser tab open. Looking at the auction, I thought the domain was going to sell for like five to six grand at auction. So the bid was around 2,000 bucks. So I was going in. I was like, I'll throw in 2100 bucks. It was like 19, 2000. So I just threw in. I think it was 2100. 2000. Somebody else came in 2100. I was like, I still think this is worth five grand if I. But I posted in 22 and expecting to be outbid and no one outbids me. And I was like, oh, no.

I was like, okay. I don't.

I really. I. I don't have 2000. I do, but, man, I'll be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next month. I was like, oh, no. And. And so there's a timer in these auctions where it's just counting down. I was like, oh, God, are you serious? Like, nobody else is going to bid on this. And then it counts down and expires and I win it. And. And I was like, crap. And I don't have. I don't want to spend 2,000 bucks. It may take five years for me to sell this.

Was this the most expensive one that you had bought up to this point?

Dude Ranch was. I bought it direct.

So this was after Dude Ranch.

I bought Vidalia after Dude Ranch.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, gotcha.

Yeah. So Dude Ranch was one of the most expensive travel envoy I bought for ten grand, but it was a fully developed site with a lot of traffic. Dude Ranch was a blank slate, just the Domain. And then I built the business around it. But then I bought it and I was like, oh, I'm just going to Forget. I just throw it into my portfolio and keep working on.

Maybe I'll let it sit and resell it for a profit one day.

Possibly. Maybe I'll put it up for a for sale page. I never. Oddly, I never put it up for. I just put it in, just trying to forget about it that I bought it and. But it kept. It did. This is the only project I had that that just kept needling me. It was in my portfolio and I mentioned I go out for lunch with some friends in Atlanta at the time. I'm in Savannah now, but I was in Atlanta. I meet a friend for lunch. He's an old startup friend of mine in Atlanta. And I was like, oh, Alan, dude, I. The Fidelia onions.com@. Oh, I didn't mean to. And I'd get the response. So, like, dude, that's a big industry. That is legit. It is like the. Yeah, no, the caviar of sweet onions. And I'd see people's responses with the domain. And it was, you know, even before that, I was like, there may be something there, but I don't know, man. So I had it. And I was like, well, I was like, I don't know what this is, but let me just put up a landing page and I'll have a. Just like an email sign up and say, would you like, you know, more information on Vidalia? It was something rough like that, I think, and. And then people started signing up saying, hey, and I may have had something. Hey, if you are interested in having Vidalia onions delivered, you know, submit your email. I didn't have any promises. I was just like, hey, if you have any interest in having them delivered, submit your email below. And so people started submitting their email. I was like, well, okay, that's kind of weird. It's like. But I'm not a Vidalia farmer.

I don't.

I don't know how this works, but I was lucky that Vidalia is only about three hours away from Atlanta.

What year was this that you put the landing page up?

I think it was 2014 or 2015. I don't know if it ever got indexed. You may see the early version of the site because it was short. I put it up and I started getting a few nibbles and I was quick. And then I was like, well, Vidalia is just three hours down the road. I'd love to go hang out in Virginia.

Georgia.

Vidalia. Georgia, Correct. In usa. So I was like, let me just go down there for a day. So I just jumped in the car. They have a committee that represents all the Vidalia farmers. So I called them up and said, hey, number one, I just want to make sure, you know, you guys know I'm. I'm a good guy. I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to hijack the name of your industry. I'm a real person.

Don't mess around with Big Onion, Peter.

Yeah, and it's a trademark term by the state. I almost needed their blessing to use it. So I typically, I thought it was generic, but then I wound up finding out it's a trademark term. I was like, oh, crap, I sort of need their blessing, but, like, let me just go talk to them, and if they get all huffing a puff, I'll just give them a domain or, you know, just give it to somebody. But I went down to saying, hey, I happen to acquire this thing at auction. My background is building web projects and sometimes E commerce, sometimes directory marketplace, information based stuff. I'm trying to see if there's a business here for possibly shipping, but I don't know any farmers. Like, could you.

Can.

I could just come talk to you guys? The committee, they were super. Just welcoming. And so I went down and just met with the committee, met with them, and then they. When they realized I wasn't a huge weirdo, they said, okay, let's drive around. We'll just introduce you to a few Vidalia farmers. Yeah. This is an old WordPress thing. For some strange reason, the CSS isn't loading correctly within archive. But this was an early version of the site. I think our second or third year after 2016, I think we were shipping, I think two years at that point. I acquired in 14, and I believe the 15 crop is the first one that we started shipping. Yeah, because we just celebrated our 10th year of shipping. Our 10th or 11th. But this was the fancy ish logo. I was still designing the site at this point. I hadn't hired it, but I had hired a logo that was. That's the rough onion design that I created.

Yeah, it's like. That looks like they're planted.

Yeah, I did that kind of that. I like that design, but it's just rough. The rough design that I included. And that's the front. The old name of the site of the farm was M and T, and my partner bought the farm out. So he changed the initials to A, and his name's Aries, and Megan is his wife. So they changed the name of the farm to A and M Farms. So, yeah, so they started taking me around just introduced me to farmers. I met the first farmer and, you know, they had some reps up front then just saying, oh, they're like, oh, direct to consumer. No, there's like, it's. They told me, quote, it was like, it's the biggest thorn in their side. They did a little bit of it and they ate it.

To you, this is opportunity, right? Sweet. I can take that off your hands.

That means they aren't really a competition because I know they're going to treat their customer like garbage, but I can see where they're coming from. After running Vidalia for 10 years, it's challenging. I mean, D2C is challenging, but. So I go to a second farm. They were standoffish. And then I went to Aries third one, and we met a few others. But I went to the Aries. He got it immediately. He was like, yeah, I get it. And he was the general manager at that point. He was like, yeah, I get it. You want to ship? I was like, yeah, I got the site. I haven't even built a really full version of the site yet. I was like, here's what I can offer you. I have the name of the industry and I can promote your name. T at the time, I'll build you a website for free. You don't have to pay me a penny. And then let's just see if we can ship some onions. And I was like, do you have boxes? Do you have storage? I didn't even understand the concept of because we have climate control storage, which allows us to ship throughout the summer. I just had to ask me, do you have boxes already here? Do we have to order? So we already had boxes, a packing shed and storage. So he has a crew in the packing check that can pack for us. So I can just focus on front end and operations and marketing, sales and social media.

He had nothing to lose.

Yeah. So we did a handshake deal. Do we? And we operated off of a handshake deal for 10 years. And then I had some silent friends in that deal. We had just some fun money where I used to buy and sell domains. So they were in on Fidelia with me in the early days. So Aries and I just bought them out. I owned like 40% at that time. They owned 60. So Aries and I came out and bought 100% of it out about a year ago. So Aries and I are now 100% on the deal, but we operate a handshake deal. Whether that's the best idea, I don't know. But, yeah, it worked great for us, and we just trusted it was. I mean, my job was, you know, with sales generation, if I don't generate any sales, I don't get paid. And I wanted to be no risk to Aries, and I wanted to be. And I still kind of treat it this day. I want to be just some quiet church mouse just doing my job in the background where he can focus on growing this very special onion. And I'm doing my job, and he doesn't have to worry about me. And I don't want to give him any drama, but I give sometimes feedback if the customers. And he wants to know if they. If the. If an onion was damaged. Sometimes it's tough for us to see if the inner layer of the Vidalia is rotten. It's tough to see on the grading line. So feedback from, like that, from customers is always helpful if we notice a certain variety of Vidalia. So I always pass that information along. Go ahead.

How does the split between you guys look as far as the revenue is concerned?

We're still working that out right now. It's just we run the business. I pay all the expenses, and at the end of the year, we figure out what. How much cash he needs and how much cash I need because I'm kind of the employee of the business. And so we'll just figure out some spread. I mean, we're. We hit. We've already hit £100,000, which is a new record for us this year. £100,000 shipped. And it's weird on the revenue side, because I know you're always good on jumping into revenue numbers and stuff, but it's weird for farmers. We. I rarely share, like, revenue numbers because it's interesting hanging around farmers. It's similar to the dude ranch industry. It's. I don't want to call it tacky, but it's like farmers, they don't think in that frame of mind, this is their way of life.

That's what makes it pure.

And it's such a humble and rewarding, you know, industry. And yes, revenue is very, very important. So what I decided from an early point in that industry, I was like, I'll just share how much we ship every year. And that's. You can share it, do your own math. You can figure it out. We ship £100,000 and we. And we. We've done that just by. Hopefully we are not the cheapest option around, but we try our best to take care of our customers and we ship. UPS has done a great job with Us.

So the farm manages all the fulfillment and logistics and stuff and you're just on the website stuff. Quick question. What if there were a private community out there of people that were building businesses based on this podcast? Well, I just made it and it's only for business starters. And business builders, it's called TK owners and it's basically like having me and 100 other business geniuses as your business partner. Also, there's going to be exclusive new trends, growth hacks, business ideas, and a database of everything I've ever talked about. You'll find thousands of startup case studies. You'll have weekly ask me anythings with me while I'll answer your questions directly. You can join now@tkowners.com link in the show notes.

Okay, I'm website. I have the ups. Yeah. So I have yes websites on WordPress and then I have Shopify for the transaction shipstation to manage the bottom boxes going in and out. I have a bad tendency of putting too much on my plate. So next year we have a lot to do in our off season. I've. We have a crew now in our packing ship. I'm gonna try to ducks. I'm still doing customer support, Chris, and it about broke my brain this year, so I'm gonna have to delegate. But I can step away from the screen and go hang out with these farmers that have such a wonder. They're so friendly. Just have a wonderful perspective on. On the world and what. What's important and not slowing down, but understanding no farming. You have to slow yourself down. And it slows my somewhat frantic brain. It forces me to slow down.

Like most people don't realize that you can have both. Like business doesn't have to just be business and money and profits and numbers and spreadsheets. Like you can feel good about what you do as well. And once you. I'm hearing like two big unlocks in your brain. Number one was two decades ago when you're like, oh, I can make money for myself. Interesting. And then it was kind of like, oh, I can actually take pride in what I do and not just move pixels around on a screen all day. Oh, very interesting. And it just makes for a fulfilling life, right?

Yeah. And building kind of these humble projects where I rarely set goals. I'll just build a project that seems to have opportunity and let it. Very similar to that Bill Walsh book. You know, the score is going to take care of itself. I don't have any goals. I don't have. I don't have some stretch goal For Vidalia on, we need to hit £120,000 next year. We just rinse and repeat and start again next season to make sure the crop is taken care of and see where it takes us. If we take care of our customers and we have a fast site, an easy way to order, and if we ship quickly and we certainly give them a great onion, then they should come back. I don't need to set some stupid goal because some guru told me I need to set goals. Always compare it to almost like nature. Like, you know, some big redwood isn't setting up some goal to be 200ft tall by this. It's. It just grows every single year. And. And when it's done and it's top, it stops. Maybe then the branches start going out. And so we may hit a top for Vidalia. And then maybe the branches are maybe some interesting partnerships that we become more.

Loyal with your customers.

More loyal. Maybe there's an interesting social aspect to it. We could get some customers through the social channel or. Yeah. Just growing slow and treating my projects almost like kind of a farming aspect of just slow growth. Let them go as fast as they want to go. I'm just the dork behind the screen that is trying my best to oversee everything and lightly push it in the right direction. And that seemed to work well with me over the years. So I was like, I'm just gonna stick with it. I don't. There's no reason to change. It works great for me.

I think people set goals because it makes them feel like they've already accomplished something. Right. So if I set a goal, then I've done something. Well, no, doing something is the goal. Like, that's what you have to complete at the end of it. But just writing something down, it's good. But sometimes it gives us a false sense of accomplishment, and we're like, all right, now I can move on. And then we don't actually do the goal, which is the whole point.

Yeah, Correct. Or you put some unnecessary stress or pressure on yourself, and then, you know, let's just say your goal was 120. You only delivered 115. I failed. Failed to hit my 120. It's like, I don't care about these stupid goals. Or.

One thing I love about this story is you bought the domain name, you spent more than you thought you should have, and you just start talking to people. And guy number one doesn't get it. Guy number two doesn't get it. Guy number three doesn't get it. With this story, even more than my Texas snack story. It reminds me of my Heartland bread story, where I had a friend that had a bread company that only sold bread to 200 stores within DFW. People wanted to buy it online. And I said, keith, let me just put an ad in your bread because 10,000 Texans buy it every day. Wow. Let's give them an ad so that they can tell their friend in Indiana who was there for Thanksgiving and fell in love with your bread, that they can buy it online. Now let's just do it as an experiment. Don't pay me anything. If it fails, it's all on me. If it succeeds, we'll split it some way that's fair. And it succeeded. And that led into Send Eats, which led into Texas snacks. And it all started with a question. And it was all possible because I found a guy that just got it right. And so sometimes you just have to keep talking to people until you don't have to try to convince anyone. Because sometimes we think of sales as convincing someone, but we just need to find the person that just gets it and that just gets us. And they just basically say, shut up, I got it. Let's try to do something here. Right?

Yeah.

It's a magical thing. And then this. Another similarity is his online sales from me were like 3% of their overall sales, but it was like 30% of their margins because it was direct to consumer. I have to think, in your sense, you're probably a small percent of their total volume, but they're not selling through a distributor and then a grocery store. They're selling direct to consumers. So they love you.

And we have a direct relationship with our buyers. So they lose the customer when they sell through the chains. And they sell. They sell millions of pounds.

Yeah.

And. Yeah. Much higher margin. And we have a direct relationship with them. And that's been tons of fun. But it is just.

Yeah.

Trying small things and not beating yourself up if something doesn't work. Because what you learn early when you start doing this iterative process and building projects, I sometimes call it, you know, some failure callus, it doesn't hurt anymore. You keep doing it enough, you keep failing enough. A callus is going to form. And then the future failures. It doesn't matter. It just flows off and you're right onto the next project because it doesn't hurt anymore. And that's what I kept doing. I kept building. And things would break or get burnt down or get de indexed or just wouldn't work. It wouldn't make any money. And I wouldn't necessarily beat myself up. I was like, oh, let me just try another project, see where this one goes. But then slowly a path started to emerge. But it took years. I mean, it was 04 is when I started. I got dude ranch in 09. So that was five years of just tinkering and figuring out what models might work well for me. And then I didn't buy Vidalia until 2014.

What was the story of finally buying onions.com? how much did that cost? And did it move the needle much on your traffic?

It was more of a vanity. So my friend Warren at Bobbleheads, he at first it went up for auction. So I saw it. I'll try to give the short version of this. So this was Vidalia had already gotten some traction. And I was tweeting about it saying, just sharing what these weird projects and sharing it on Twitter just to share it. And the domain went up for auction. Somebody had it. And I think they put it on Flippa. And I saw it and I was like, eh, I don't sell onions, I sell Vidalia. It's a boutique product. You can only grow it and ship it and sell it from here in Georgia. I don't sell onions, I sell Vidalias. It's. I don't sell a commodity. I sell this, you know, boutique product. And I was like, ah, it went up for auction. So I just didn't buy it. Somebody else bought it with the idea that I wasn't watching the auction and they could get it and flip it to me. So they buy it for, I can't remember, it was 17 or 18,000. Maybe 18,000 bucks. It's in name, bio on. But they bought it for 18. Like a day or two later they email me, hey, Mr. Askew, we just happen to own this, this high end domain name. I was like, yeah, I was watching that auction. I'm not interested. And then I'm.

Dang it. That was my whole business plan.

They were like, I'm sure. They were like, dang. I thought I was gonna be able to flip it to them for 50 or something.

Yeah.

So it sits on there. And so about six months later it goes back up for sale. On Flippa. The highest bid it gets is like five grand. Doesn't even hit the reserve. I see it, I'm like, okay, that's interesting. They put it up for sale, I think on Biz Buy Sell, almost no takers. They put it back up again on Flippa. Flippa with a high reserve. And that's when my Friend. I was at a Domainer conference and I passed my Warren Royal. And he was like, hey, you see that? Onions.com. and I was like, yeah, Warren, but I don't sell onions. I sell Vidalias. He was like, I get it. He was like, I get it. But. But understand, there's one time in our lifetime that domain is going to be for sale one time that in this reasonable range of price right now, the next time it's for sale, it's going to be a hundred, two hundred, five hundred thousand dollars.

Yeah.

If you have an interest in that domain, this is your opportunity to get it. And I was like, yeah, I guess I didn't think about that. I was like, you're right. I was like, I have a purpose for it right now. And that's what was holding me back. And I was like, I don't have a purpose for it. What do I do with it? And then my answer was, I don't care. I was like, who cares? Just see if I can buy it. Maybe I get it for a little bit less than 18. He bought it, so he'd reached out to me. So I just emailed him direct. I was like, hey, I saw your thing on Flippa. I'm interested, but I can't make the numbers work. Can you do whatever, like 10 or 12 on this? He was like, I can. Do you know what? He did the negotiation thing and he came down to 15. I was like, hey, if you could do like 15, 14 or 15,000. I think we came to 15. And he paid escrow fees, which are 200 bucks. So it was 14,800. And so I bought it for 14. And I didn't really have an idea what. I was like, let me just buy it, see what happens. I'm pretty sure it's going to have solid type in traffic. And it does. It's 50 a day, maybe more people typing, but it's a little bit of everything. It gets some from the satire website. They own the onion. They own onion.com. i own onions with a plural. So I get a little bit of from them. But honestly, the biggest purpose of that site, it may have a further purpose two or three years from now because we may branch out into organic Peruvian onions. But honestly, the biggest thing it's served right now is Aries. So Aries has his email is ariesnions.com. and I per. That was the first thing I did. I was like, Aries. His first domain, the domain they had used for their farm before they had a website, was M&A N DT farms.net and I was like, aries, I hate your email address. Let's get you a place. Let's get you a better email. I'll get you aries.com and so we set them up a kind of account at Fast Mail and hooked it up to onions.com and then, you know, I go over probably at least once a month in season, probably two or three times a month. And he was like, peter, Peter. I went to a conference and somebody, a farming conference. Somebody asked my email and I said, Aries onions.com and the other person, they didn't have an answer. Then they said, how did you get that domain? And he was like, I got a web guy, he's got me the domain. He said 100% of the time it floors people that he, as a small, medium sized farmer, we have this gorilla.com domain that allows him. We're not the biggest Vidalia farmers, but that domain allows us to look like the biggest, strongest Vidalia farm out there. And we primarily use it for email. Right now everybody at the packing shed has their own custom email john@onions peterunions.com and we have our own custom. But right now it's like a landing page. It just gives an overview of the farm. I have a big thing for our YouTube channel. Like if they want to go subscribe to our YouTube channel, it gives background. But we may eventually build it out to sell other potentially other farming project. We may go down the citrus path. We may plant some citrus trees and we may just kind of take. Even though it's onions.com we may just say, you know, we, we farm everything under the sun, onions included. Just like monster.com used to be. Didn't have anything to do with jobs. It was just monster.com and Onions is like as we. So we do everything farming, but it's primarily for email right now. And we'll figure out another place where down the road.

It's hard to put a dollar value on that, but it's valuable. Yeah, yeah.

It's fun to showcase and put around. It's easier to put in my Twitter. Twitter profile. Just put Enya's.com versus Videlia. Even like if I'm talking to a customer on the phone who is trying to visit our website, if it's an elderly customer, sometimes it's tough to type Vidalia.

Yeah.

And sometimes they spell with an A, V a D and V I D A L, I, A. And I just don't go to onions.com. i got a big button there. Just click the button to go to Vidalia and they'll take you right to. Then you can click the big green button on our homepage. You can go place an order, and we'll get a. We'll pack and ship tomorrow, the day after.

Well, one pattern I've seen with all your stuff is you always work with partners, critical partners that you couldn't, you know, you couldn't make this project work without.

And I didn't always give them that. I don't want to interrupt you, but you're right, I didn't. I always thought I was a solo builder. I'm a solo builder. I'll do everything myself. I'll put all this on my plate. And then, lo and behold, I did dude ranch, and then I wound up partnering with somebody. I found Vidalia. I partnered with somebody. I only found ranch work because of my partner, and I have found. I do look for that now if I. It's more challenging. I. Sorry to interrupt you, but you're exactly right. I was fooled into thinking I was a solar builder, and I'm not. I work really well with a partner. It's tough to find a really good partner, though.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Yeah. But what I was saying is you're like, you're much better at sales than you might give yourself credit for because you're selling your partners on this opportunity and you're doing it in like a no brainer offer way. Right. Good salesmen offer no brainer offers. With Dude Ranch, it was. I know they didn't go for the pay per lead aspect, but that was one of your first offers is don't take any risks. I'll find you a lead and then you buy it from me. Right. And then that evolved over time, but that at least got your foot in the door. And then with Vidalia, it was, listen, like, let's just split this and I'll do all the online stuff. I'll be the distribution, you be the fulfillment. Yeah. And then with ranch work, it was 75, 25. You take no risk. Keep your domain name. I don't need it. Point it here, but keep it. And let's just see if this works. And you had to find the right people, but you also had to give them the right offer. And you were able to do that. So it worked. Yeah. Yeah.

This is accurate. Yeah.

What are the tools in your tool belt that you can't live without? Like websites, like, for doing research, finding, expiring, Domains. What's like a rapid fire list of tools?

I love Clicky analytics is what I use to monitor clicky clicky.com okay it's.

Better than stupid GA4 yeah 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. Learn the basics of SEO. It can still ignore what everybody's saying about, you know, artificial intelligence, SEO, it all leans on the same principle principles in my opinion. It's still going to rank and pull up content that matches your niche. I don't use Autonomy. I have Shopify for the transaction for Vidalia Ship Station to manage our tens of thousands of orders every single year. Because I got to make sure these things land and our customers get it. And I'd like to find out that the box has been lost before the customer 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? 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 NameJet or Snap Names. So look at GoDaddy NameJet Snap Names. Namecheap created their own auction platform to auction their own names. So they have their own those three and drop catch. I use domains as an inspiration to build. I tried to build on ideas first 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 okay, 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.

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 grandfather of your marketing channel and you start there and then work backwards.

Correct other tools. Let's see it. So it's those are the primary from the expiration process. There's a site called expired domains. Is it.net? i'd use it sometimes but it's a pretty good. It's a firehose. Let me pull it up, make sure I have the domain. It's a.netired domains.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 jets, snap names, GoDaddy, Namecheap, sometimes drop catch and try to see if a name pops up through 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 helpful and they want a kind of a trusted source to look at what I'm seeing. I mean my Traffic's up almost 40%. It was 39% year over year on that project. My rebuild helped. But AI is helping as well because AI is making suggestions on. Here are some ranches, but hey, here's duderanch.com It's a pretty trusted authority. You can also go search on 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, if there was a directory business for sale that was in my price range, I would seriously consider acquiring it and 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 am. It's so low touch for me. I'm. You can tell I can buy. I love the industry and enamored with it and I. I don't mind keeping it if there's a good partner who can help either write content, do great social media that has experience with that and doesn't mind going visiting some of the ranches and. And kind of of getting feet on the street.

You're at Searchbound on Twitter deepsouthventures.com for your blog. Where else can people find you?

AskYou.org is kind of O R G.

A S K e w. Yeah, A.

S k e w dot O R G. It's kind of just the. Just a little homepage 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 olemiss.com and donated it to Ole Miss.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Roll Tide. All right, Peter. Well, thank you. This was awesome.

No, I appreciate the invite.

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