discuss Vacation.Rentals and Home.Loans...where are they now

[ThatNameGuy]

Being an investor in gTLD's I've been monitoring the status of these two companies since they started around the first of the year. Each of these domains sold for approximately 500K, and their respective owners defended their purchase admirably via interviews on both Domain Name Wire and DomainSherpa. Both business models success depends a lot on online leads that ultimately turn into sales. In the case of Vacation.Rentals....just like the name says "vacation rentals" and in the case of Home.Loans....just like the name says "home loans"

One of the keys to their success was/is their respective rankings via a Google Search. Today Vacation.Rentals shows up on the 1st page of Google ranked 4th, and Home.Loans shows up 2nd on the 2nd page. While I've gotten to know the owners from afar, and offered my help, it appears to me they're both working their respective ways to the top of Google. In that regard, they deserve Kudo's.

As an aside, I also own some pretty decent single key word gTLD's for .rentals and .loans that I hope will piggy back on their success. Of course I didn't pay as much for my domains, but in the big scheme of things, they have just as much potential

I know everyone here at NamePros is rooting you Blake and Mike, just like they're rooting for me. Keep up the great work guys

 

[garptrader]

I was thinking of bringing my mother down to South Florida in the next couple months so I thought let us try Vacation.Rentals and see what they have to offer. I try West Palm Beach and they have one listing in Jupiter about ten miles away. For kicks I try Fort Lauderdale and they have one listing in Lighthouse Point - yes in the same county but not exactly Ft Lauderdale Beach. How about Miami. Wow! They have three listings for Miami but one of those is that same Lighthouse Point listing in North Broward County. That is NOT Miami. Another listing is Key Largo which is also NOT Miami. This guy paid $500k for what?

If you try Expedia or Priceline or Orbitz etc how many listings do you think you would find for these cities? Expedia shows 1917 properties for Miami and at least the ones on the first page are actually in Miami. Expedia shows 1719 properties in Fort Lauderdale. You get the idea. Just because a registrar announces a big sale for a domain from their inventory does not mean you will ever see a big sale for any of your new extension holdings.

 

[Vacation.Rentals]

Sorry for the delay in replying to this thread.

Amazing how things have changed since this discussion was initiated.

While it is true we were pretty light in July (We were barely 2 months old at that time) things have since escalated nicely. We now sit on approximately 800 vacation homes for rent in Florida and continue to add new listings each and every single day.

2018 was more of a laying the groundwork kind of thing. We also scored the Vacation Rentals channel for YouTube and that has been enormously helpful. All of these things take time to grow but the website has been nothing but wonderful since day 1.

I will check this thread in 1 year to honestly give feedback. If we are at 5,000 listings by then, it is a major success. Time will tell.

All the best, Mike

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Sorry for the delay in replying to this thread.

Amazing how things have changed since this discussion was initiated.

While it is true we were pretty light in July (We were barely 2 months old at that time) things have since escalated nicely. We now sit on approximately 800 vacation homes in Florida, and continue to add new listings each and every single day.

2018 was more of a laying the groundwork kind of thing. We also scored the Vacation Rentals Channel for Youtube and that has been enormously helpful. All of these things take time to grow but the website has been nothing but wonderful since day 1.

I will check this thread in 1 year to honestly give feedback. If we are at 5,000 listings by then, it is a major success. Time will tell.

All the best, Mike

Thanks for the update Mike...I'll be in Vegas at Namescon next month and I'll carry this message with me since so many domainers from all over the world are interested. Happy New Year!