Interview with David Carter – I have asked various parties within the domain industry to take part in some interviews to give us a little background about themselves, where they see the industry heading and how they feel the current market for domain names are our twenty first interview is by David Carter.
David Carter is the founder and owner of Hollywood Internet as well as many other websites within the Asbestos, Surveys and Recruitment industry. David has been involved in the domain business since 1996 you can read his blog David-Carter.com he has many years of experience from within the industry turning from Domainer to Enduser. David now focuses his time on developing his domain names into actual websites that create leads for his business – BuildingSurveys.com
Don’t Forget to check out all the other Interviews completed on RobbiesBlog.com – Cant Believe we hit 20 Interviews yesterday already big Thanks to all below.
Mike Mann, Darren Cleveland, Monte Cahn, Braden Pollock, Craig Rowe, Xavier Buck, Jodi Chamberlain, Fred Mercaldo, Tommy Butler, Michael Castello, Rob Grant, Tom Chapman, Ira Zoot, Victor Pitts, Shane Cultra, Nico Zeifang , Chris from AntiCareer.com, Eric Borgos, Jacob Fedosky, Brett Lewis as well as today’s interview by David Carter
Who would you like to see interviewed on RobbiesBlog.com – Email me with your suggestions and I shall see if I can set an interview up with them – robbie ‘at’ ferguson.in
1) What are your current thoughts on the Domain Aftermarket? i.e. Sales and Enquiries etc – General Mood of Domainers / End users?
I don’t really participate in the aftermarket in the way that most domainers do and haven’t for around 18 months, so I don’t really have any opinion on this and wouldn’t have a clue about the mood of others.
2) Where do you see GTLDS in 3 years time?
Not sure on that. There are so many now, but I still only tend to have .coms and .co.uk’s for my own business. That might change with the arrival of the new.uk TLD that’s being mooted by Nominet, though I’m not at all in favour of it at all and just don’t see the point of it.
3) What are you or your companies investing in? i.e. Dot Com only Domains – Typo – etc?
When I first started, I’d buy and register just about anything I liked the look of – but that was more than 10 years ago and a lot of things have changed.
These days I am more end user than domainer and therefore, everything is very tightly focused, so what little I do buy is for development in order to promote a very specific sub-niche service or product of what I am already involved in.
4) Do you believe in Parking or Developing? What are your tips for either i.e. Top Parking Platform (What Do You Use) – Developing your thoughts on what to develop and how best achieve it?
I don’t do parking, since I don’t have the types of names to make it work in any volume.
As one of the very first domainers ever to talk about development and to put into practice what I was preaching from way back in 1996, I am still amazed by most people’s definition of the word, especially in the domain market.
I have taken my domains and developed them in a way that each becomes a sales channel for me. It started with recruitment names because I had been in that industry for more than 15 years and so I understood it.
To be honest, that development wasn’t so great and in those days, I had to make everything using FrontPage and Dreamweaver which took a lot of time.
Now, I use WordPress, with a theme generation program called Artisteer exclusively and have a pretty large number of domains that are now fully fledged web sites that all target different customer or client profiles. None brings in masses of traffic and in fact, I only aim for 40 uniques per day, since I know that this will result in one telephone enquiry – and because I sell big ticket services (and deliver them), it’s all I need.
So, anyone looking at domains, should also be looking carefully at WordPress, since it only takes a few hours to design and build a site and make it live.
By using a few of the huge array of plugins, it’s now possible to build some very complicated and smooth running sites.
Everything is possible with WordPress, so why limit yourself to crappy affiliate sites and why bother spending several hundred dollars with so-called development companies – that’s not development, it’s laziness.
5) What is your favourite domain personally or company owned?
My absolute favourite domain is asbestosroofing.co.uk, it’s a venture I’ve been working on quietly this year with my eldest son, Michael. It says exactly what it’s about and though I’ve had it for a while, I hadn’t done much with it and until I saw the visitor numbers and examined what people were looking for, I hadn’t realised its potential.
For years I ignored this domain, but it really was a sleeping giant and this is my point about development. If I had this name parked or “developed” by one of the new development companies, it would earn nothing.
These days it generates enquiries on a daily basis – and they are very high value.
My next favourite is BuildingSurveys.com because that’s my business these days.
Building businesses from domains is what I do.
6) If you were starting out in the domain space today what are your 3 top tips?
- Stop listening to experts and follow your own path.
- There is no one magic formula, there are hundreds of them!
- Find one niche, own it and milk it.
7) What’s the next big thing that your companies are working on?
I never stop dividing my niche market into smaller, more targeted niches as the more specialized you become, the more credibility you have. For example, I am not a fully qualified surveyor but I advise professionals from some of the biggest surveying firms in the UK and even university lecturers have asked to use my unique content in their courses.
8)Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
Retired
9) What has been your biggest challenge in the domain business?
Becoming and Staying focused. It’s the hardest thing for a domainer and that’s why I kind of quit domaining. I now call myself a surveyor – it helps me to stay fixed on my real goal of building something valuable.
10) What do you feel has been your largest accomplishment in the Business / Personally?
I don’t feel I have accomplished anything professionally. I am happy doing what I do and that comes down to having freedom, which is the biggest luxury anyone can give themselves. I’ve worked for myself really since 1992. What could be better than that? On a personal level, my wife and kids come first and that’s all that matters to me. How boring is that?
I would like to say a big Thank You to David Carter for taking part in this interview for RobbiesBlog.com – Please check out David Carters blog David-Carter.com his web development business Hollywood-Internet.com and his BuildingSurveys.com business