So Business.com recently sold for $350 million to R.H. Donnelley, the company that makes the DEX Yellow Pages. The purchase of the domain in 1999 for $7.5M turned heads. Today Business.com produced $15 million in revenue per year. Let’s explore why this is a ripoff.

1. The domain name Business.com is great, but without great content it will not flourish. Look at the top earning sites like Google, Yahoo, Expedia, and Youtube. These domains alone wouldn’t sell for too much today. Your domain doesn’t have to be the best to be successful, your content does.
2. The site is garbage. I’m not sure why anybody would use Business.com. Let’s try a search for Denver lawyers. First we see Featured Listings, followed by Sponsored Links, then Listings, then Web listings, then more Sponsored Listings. Also, don’t forget the Sponsored Listings on the side. It’s basically impossible NOT to click an ad. It uses Google results so it’s basically a cluttered Google. This is equivalent to a Made for Adsense site.

It seems that the traditional Yellow Page companies are starting to panic now that the Internet is starting to replace their big yellow book. DEX saw this as their chance to gain market share in the online world. They would have been better off spending the money improving their listings (verifying information, store hours, pictures, reviews, descriptions, etc.) rather than buying a mediocre site with a great domain.

P.S. DEX, give me a call if you’d like to buy my sites. I can churn out some MFA sites that I’d be happy to sell for 23 times revenue.

ShoeMoney shows people how to make money online. He’s not really an SEO and seems to write the blog because he likes helping people as well as being treated like an SEO rockstar. His site gets about 750,000 visitors/month and earns about $12,000/month, yet this is just a small portion of his total earnings. I regularly read ShoeMoney’s blog. Here’s why;

1. He dishes the dirt. He says what’s on his mind and it’s interesting. Whether he’s talking about how he lost several hundred pounds or his travels, he caters to what people want to read. He even showed a video of some jerkass getting Shoemoney tattooed on his arm.
2. He makes a lot of money online and tells people how to do it. He basically gave a step by step guide to how he made money with ringtones. He helped to clog the PPC ringtone world with more competitors. He’s not an SEO who is trying to find clients, but rather a person who made a lot online and is sharing his secrets.

3. He’s willing to brag. Many people started reading his blog after seeing his Adsense check for over $100,000. That gives him cred. He regularly talks about how much he earns and that makes people want to read.

Overall, great site, lots of type-ins and a must read for people who want to make money online.

Ok, so the name Revenute.com is not great, but it could be catchy. Why did I pick it?

1. I didn’t want to oblige “Domainers” and pay for a parked domain.
2. It could be brandable. I also registered SiteEarnings.com but because Revenute sounds a bit funky, it might be more memorable.
3. I don’t really plan on making much money from this site or selling it.