About one year ago, Sai Pola, 39, decided he would start WebSite Guru Inc. His focus shifted towards the domain industry, which led him to become one of the many success stories we hear about in our industry these days.
Soon, he became convinced of the value of direct navigation to generic keyword domains, where a person types what he is looking for directly into the browser.
Little did he know that he would become wildly successful after he bought duckeggs.com six months ago, just to prove his point. He now operates the site under his company, Corona-based, Web Site Guru Inc.
Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs and very popular for consumption. Duck eggs have a longer shelf life than chicken eggs because they have thicker shells. Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs and can be used for cooking and baking. People with chicken egg allergies eat duck eggs as a substitute. Duck eggs taste like chicken eggs but have larger yolks that stand up higher than a chicken egg.
According to Sai Pola, “The name is funny and proves that you can sell anything on the Internet, even duck eggs. I saw a good value in the name and I wanted to educate people about generic names and their potential. Ten percent of Internet users directly navigate to Web sites instead of using search engines. These are valuable and targeted visitors who know exactly what they want.”
Pola added that, “A good domain name pays for itself in advertising costs because of direct navigation. Google can cost a lot of money, but with a good domain name people will just directly navigate to the site instead of using a search engine. As long as you have a good domain name you can save a lot of money because you don’t need to pay for advertising. A good name gives you a jump start because you already have visitors and customers who directly navigate to your site.”
Even though Sai Pola does not advertise much for duckeggs.com but he sells thousands of eggs to restaurants and individuals. He depends on direct navigation and word-of-mouth for sales and currently more than 10,000 visitors navigate to duckeggs.com monthly.
Orders are forwarded to his distributors in San Jose, who then ship the eggs with the duckeggs.com label to his customers. Eggs are shipped the day they are laid and keep for two weeks in a cool environment or for about six weeks refrigerated.
18 consumable duck eggs or 9 hatchable duck eggs sell for $49. Ducklings are availble upon request and he even sells incubators to schools and colleges.
He pointed out that, “Owning an Internet-based business has advantages. I have little overhead and employ one person who processes orders. I don’t have to have a warehouse or keep inventory on hand, I just process the order. If my business gets too big all I have to do is automate the order process instead of doing it manually.”
“The thing about key word domains is that only one person can own it and by the time businesses realize how valuable these domains are, they will be gone. What is funny is that people now think that I am an duck expert. They will call me up and ask what do to with ducklings they may have found.”
Pola has become a busy man these days. He now brokers domain names for cityloans.com LLC and he is developing another Web site, while consulting as an Internet expert. Cityloans.com LLC owns about 860 domain names that are made up of a city name and the word “loan”, as key words. Cityloans.com is selling those names for about $3.5 million, Pola said.
His latest business venture focuses on the Web site business. www.websiteguru.com, which went live on Febuary 4th, 2008 allows users ask questions, get answers and post messages.
Source: Sai Pola for DomainNews.com -February 28th, 2008
