FS: fuzz-pedal.com

mawso · August 09, 2013, 12:39:32 AM

Ok, this is a bit of an oddball FS thread and apologies if it's too off-topic but I figure it might be of interest to a couple of people here.

Anyway, around about 2007 I got interested in building websites to get them ranked on google, and I had a play around with building a couple of wordpress sites, putting content on there and building a few links around the place and then.

One of the domains that I registered around this time was fuzz-pedal.com. I saw that there was some traffic for the term "fuzz pedal" and related searches, and that the sites currently ranked on page 1 would be easy to beat. My plan was to put a website on the domain, add some great text content and build a few links to it, then when the traffic started trickling I'd put some ads on their for musiciansfriend.com or whatever and take a little commission . Not the sort of thing you could retire on or whatever but it would have meant a few extra bucks here and there for drugs and nachos, and it's a fun and interesting topic to write about. I never got around to doing any of this and the domain has just sat there gathering dust.

Fast forward to 2013 and the domain is coming up for renewal once again and I'm having to face the fact that nothing is ever going to happen with this domain so long as I own it. I bought it when I was still at the phase of playing around with this sorta stuff, and I had no real strategy to what I was doing, I was just in a learning phase and I was haphazardly collecting domains for keywords that had good stats and related to topics I was interested in. Since then, dicking around with websites has gone from being a hobby to my sole source of income and I have much bigger/more stressful projects on my plate. So I'm going to sell this one, just to get back some of the cash I've spent on keeping the damn thing registered.

Obviously, there are sites that are far more suited to selling domain names out there than stoner rock lives. Reason why I'm posting here is because I think it'd be cool if someone who actually has something to do with fuzz pedals. If I sell it on flippa or sedo or wherever else, it'll definitely sell but it will probably get snapped up by some indian spammer who's never even touched a guitar, who will fill it with content rewritten from wikipedia and then stick CPA offers on it or whatever. I mean, if that's what has to happen to it, then so be it - I have a number of other domain names I'm gonna sell which probably aren't destined for a better fate. But fuzz-pedal.com is a good name for a rad topic so I thought it'd be worth a little effort to try to find a buyer who might potentially do something cool with it before I just throw it to the wolves.

It would be ideal for a small builder or retailer of boutique fuzz pedals, who has a good product and needs a way to tell an interested audience about what they're doing. If you just put a blog on there and added some 600 word updates of interesting content about your products or just about fuzz related topics in general then with patience and regular updates your site would get ranked for search traffic. You couldn't expect to get thousands of hits per day from doing this, but the traffic you did get would be very high quality - the hits would be from people who are explicitly interested in your product.

I'm looking for 100 us dollars plus whatever the transaction fees turn out to be. All you get for that is the domain name. If anyone out there is a little confused by what to do with a domain name, and wants me to sort out hosting and install and configure a wordpress install on top of it then I can do that too - I'll have to charge a bit for my time and for the costs but I'll keep it reasonable. I am not a web designer by any means, but you can get wordpress to look pretty good just by using open source themes and you can always get a custom designed theme built later if that's what you want.

Anyway cheers for reading, and sorry if this is too off topic - I know this is far from a domain&website buy/sell place - just posting in the hopes that this is of interest to one of you or to somebody you might know.

RAGER · August 09, 2013, 12:46:42 AM

tldr. Are you a spambot? if not. the short version plz and thks.

mawso · August 09, 2013, 01:02:13 AM

it's not a long post

if you can't get through that much text i doubt you were interested in the first place

for an abbreviated summary of what's on offer, the thread title can suffice

RAGER · August 09, 2013, 01:04:31 AM

lol...fart!....

Lumpy · August 09, 2013, 02:08:11 AM

Quote from: mawso on August 09, 2013, 12:39:32 AMSince then, dicking around with websites has gone from being a hobby to my sole source of income and I have much bigger/more stressful projects on my plate.

You don't even know how to build websites (you said you'd install Wordpress page) but you're making money with web hosting? Amazing... I want to know whatever it is you know. Are your sites porn-related?

Also, try posting on ilovefuzz.com, there's a bunch of pedal builders there (but they might hate you for hit & run spam)

mawso · August 09, 2013, 02:19:06 AM

Quote from: Lumpy on August 09, 2013, 02:08:11 AM
Quote from: mawso on August 09, 2013, 12:39:32 AMSince then, dicking around with websites has gone from being a hobby to my sole source of income and I have much bigger/more stressful projects on my plate.

You don't even know how to build websites (you said you'd install Wordpress page) but you're making money with web hosting? Amazing... I want to know whatever it is you know. Are your sites porn-related?

Also, try posting on ilovefuzz.com, there's a bunch of pedal builders there (but they might hate you for hit & run spam)

yeah, i would feel pretty douchey to sign up for an account somewhere just to run an ad like this

i know how to build websites - i am not a designer. design jobs are simple and inexpensive to outsource, and i've never had a great deal of interest in design. graphic design is only a very small part of having a succesful website. writing good content and driving traffic to it are much more important and those are the things i earn my living from.

i've never made money from web hosting. don't own anything porn related on the internet either, though i'm an avid watcher. this website is the one i spend the most time on: http://www.excellencesolar.com.au/

i figure it's a long shot i'll find a buyer for this domain on music gear forums - i just thought i'd make a token effort to find someone who could do something cool with it before i bite the bullet and auction it off to douchelords with no interest in fuzz driven guitar

Lumpy · August 09, 2013, 02:55:08 AM

It's a good name, but maybe not awesome... a pedal builder probably wants their company name in the URL. And for somebody who wants to sell pedals, or review them, it's kind of a limiting name (fuzz pedals being just one type of pedal to review, or sell). Somebody will want it, though.

Lumpy · August 09, 2013, 02:57:51 AM

Quote from: mawso on August 09, 2013, 02:19:06 AMthis website is the one i spend the most time on: http://www.excellencesolar.com.au/

So how do you make money with that? Just a general answer would be appreciated, I don't expect you to share your secrets...

mawso · August 09, 2013, 03:39:21 AM

Well I kinda don't have any secrets to protect. there's no black belt ninja shit, they're just websites.. everything I do I learnt from reading books and articles and so on which are all publicly available.

With Excellence Solar, I am a co-owner of the business. So I make money when we sell systems. The guy who started the company with me got me on board precisely because I had a background in running websites and driving relevant traffic to them - he had been involved in a solar business before, but those guys never got his head around how you get leads beyond just selling to friends and family, so he saw a lot of value in what I do.

The other way I make money is that some business owners pay me a small retainer to help get their site ranked higher on google. This is a really good gig when you get good clients who follow through on the advice you give them and are patient enough to wait for results - this stuff isn't instant. Unfortunately a lot of the people out there who wanna pay for SEO (search engine optimisation) are dicks who leave bills unpaid or just become pains in the arse so I'm not too interested in taking on clients these days.

I used to make some money from building websites and putting offers in the sidebar, and then making a comission when people bought the product. My main thing for a while was a guitar instruction site, aimed at raw beginners - people at a really basic level, like struggling with their first open A chord. I'd write short columns every week or so, and built some links to the site from elsewhere, then I had this product advertised on the sidebar for a beginner's guitar course called "Jamorama". Some of the people who browsed the site would click on the ad and then buy the course, and then the company who did that course would pay me a commission for referring the traffic. The sites kept getting hacked though and I eventually stopped maintaining them after I got busy with other things and I haven't got any real income from this sort of thing in a long while. But it was a good learning experience and for the period of time it actually made money it was heaps more fun than having a real job.

In theory, somebody could buy fuzz-pedal.com from me and then put content on there and run ads and make a few bucks here and there from clicks. You need to be driving a lot of traffic to do well out of that though. This domain will be of much greater value though to somebody who actually builds or sells fuzz pedals though. When you have a real business around the product then a website can be worthwhile even if it only gets 6-7 clicks per day, so long as the clicks you're getting are from people with a genuine interest in buying something. Whereas with programs like Adsense or whatever you need to get traffic up to 1000+ clicks per day for it to start making real money. It a lot more work for much less reward.

mawso · August 09, 2013, 03:56:38 AM

Quote from: Lumpy on August 09, 2013, 02:55:08 AM
It's a good name, but maybe not awesome... a pedal builder probably wants their company name in the URL. And for somebody who wants to sell pedals, or review them, it's kind of a limiting name (fuzz pedals being just one type of pedal to review, or sell). Somebody will want it, though.

My suggestion there would be to run a blog on this domain name and then have a shopfront style website under the company name. Then you'd grab all the "fuzz pedal" related searches with the blog but still be able to have a branded website. The main reason why I suggest a blog is cos it's a dead easy format to set up and to update - you can DIY it with no technical headaches or expensive shit involved. Google loves a well written blog post too.

Somebody who already has a website for their pedals could still use this. The pagerank and domain authority on the blog can then flow through to the shopfront site which will help that rank for other terms as well. The best use I can see for this domain is to grab a very specific set of search engine phrases, which is why I bought it in the first place. Whoever buys it can ultimately do whatever they want with it though.