Associated Cities asks Chicago.com founder Josh Metnick about his flagship domain and the domain business in general.
Associated Cities is an owners group made up of people that own location-based domains. They recently interview the founder of Chicago.com. Read the complete interview here.
Metnick started and ISP in 1994 and that’s when he got involved with the internet. He incorporated Chicago.com, Inc in 2002 after offering a “rather significant” amount for the URL. The company also owns Illionois.com plus about 3,000 other domains. Most of the domains are geo-domains and he has invested heavily in IDN geo-domains.
One thing I like about the interview is that Metnick makes it clear they’ve worked hard to get Chicago.com to where it is today. It wasn’t as simple as just acquiring a good domain name:
Associated Cities: How do you acquire advertisers?
Metnick: It was a lot of cold calling at first. While the power of the URL helps, we ultimately need to perform. Over time and as we have built relationships with major destination and local search players, we try to figure out innovative ways to bring more revenue to them.
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