Grasping Opportunities #2: How I Turned $2.3K Into $16.5K
September 2, 2010 Posted by Tyler CruzMany of you may remember how I brokered a domain name a few years ago by selling it for $200,000, receiving a $20,000 referral cut. I wrote about how I was able to do that only because I took advantage of an opportunity.
This morning I accepted an envelope from FedEx. In it was a cheque for $14,864.60 from Escrow.com, which is $15,000 minus their fees.
I earned this cheque the exact same way I earned the other one – by grasping an opportunity. In this post I will share with you exactly how I turned a $2,000 investment into over $15,000. But more importantly, I will teach you through example the importance of taking advantage of opportunities when they pass your way.
The Acquisitions
On May 19th, 2007, Blizzard announced that they were going to make a sequel to their popular game Starcraft. For years, people speculated that a Starcraft 2 might be in the works, but after 9 years of waiting with still no word or hint from Blizzard of actually doing so, people started to give up hope.
So when they announced that Starcraft 2 was officially in the works, Starcraft fans around the world (me being one of them) were hysterical. I published a blog post as soon as I learned about the announcement and how I immediately went to purchase some Starcraft and Starcraft 2 domain names.
Now, while I managed to get my hands on a dozen or so Starcraft domain names simply by paying the registration fees, since the game was so popular and people were already anticipating and waiting for Starcraft 2 before the official announcement, the domains Starcraft2.net and SC2.net were already taken.
I really wanted a good Starcraft 2 domain though, and I knew that I had to move fast because if I didn’t, there would be others like me who would be contacting the owners and making them offers.
For the Starcraft2.net domain, I acquired the domain after a few back and forth e-mail exchanges. At first, the owner, a teenager around 17 or 18 or so, didn’t want to sell it. He was too set on developing the site into a fan site. He did show some weakness interest in my offers, but finally said that he wasn’t interested in selling it.
The next day he e-mailed me back basically saying that he might be interested in selling it after all, but it would have to be $1,000. I guess he thought that number was high 
I agreed right away and sent him the money via PayPal immediately. He seemed overjoyed to have actually received $1,000 (I guess he thought it was too good to be true or that I wouldn’t really pay or something) and was very happy with the sale. So was I. Maybe he should have read my post on The Art of Negotiation
For SC2.net, I believe I e-mailed the owner but he wanted to talk to me through the phone.
Now, I’m actually a pretty shy guy and usually prefer to use E-mail or instant messengers rather then the phone, especially when it comes to business. This is partly because I’m too nice on the phone and in person and often tend to make poor deals, give too much information, and just generally become too soft. I’m hard as stone online but just way too nice on the phone and in person.
But I already acquired the Starcraft2.net domain and I knew that SC2.net would be the perfect domain pair for it, so I prepared myself and phoned him.
He actually turned out to be some government official who worked at the South African Honorary Consulate and was very nice. I ended up mailing him a cheque because he had some issue with his PayPal account, and a week later I also owned SC2.net.
It was good that I moved fast not only to block out other bids, but to prevent their knowledge of the value of the domain. My thinking appears to have been correct because when I spoke to the owner of SC2.net, I found out that he only bought it because it was a short domain name – not from any relation to Starcraft 2. If I had waited longer to contact him, it is likely that other interested buyers would have contacted him and tipped him off that it was actually a great domain for Starcraft 2.
It’s funny, because as I look over my old blog post about that acquisition, I wrote:
“It will take about a week before it’s in my hands though due to the escrow process. Ugh, I paid a lot for the domain. Exactly how much, I won’t say, at least not yet. Help calm me down by saying it’s a good domain please
I paid $653.37 (I believe the weird amount was due to the US/CDN exchange rate based on our original deal) for it, which right now seems like a steal, but I guess I can see my apprehension at the time.
The Development
I didn’t do much in terms of developing Starcraft2.net due to being so busy with other project, but I did know that I wanted to put up a forum to at least do something with it’s traffic.
I can’t remember the exact amount I spent on developing the site, but I believe I paid around $135 for the vBulletin license (I get good “bulk” discounts since I own so many licenses), a few hundred for the skin, and around $150 for a vBSEO license.
When you add up everything, including the other dozen or so Starcraft domains I bought, I invested roughly $2,300.
The Sales
First, I made roughly $900 by selling private ads and running AdSense on the site. That isn’t much over a span of 3 years, but that more than covered for paying for everything minus the Starcraft2.net and SC2.net domains.
I also sold a few of the domains I bought at the registration fee rate ($7 each per year or so). I sold StarcraftHelp.com for $400 and Starcraft-Forums.com for $300, but since I used Sedo to sell those two, I only made a total of $600 since Sedo takes enormous fees. But I only spent around $40 for those 2 domains (I usually register domains for multiple years) to make $600, so they were a good investment. 
I can’t remember for certain, but I also think I sold at least one other domain through NamePros and/or DNForum as well.
And then, we come to the rest of the package.
On July 25th, 2010, I created a public auction on Flippa for a package sale which included Starcraft2.net, SC2.net and the remaining domains, which were:
- StarcraftForums.info
- StarcraftForums.net
- StarcraftForum.net
- StarcraftForum.org
- StarcraftForum.info
- StarcraftTips.com
- StarcraftCheats.net
- StarcraftBoards.com
What makes that date interesting is that it was 2 days before the official release date of Starcraft 2.
I didn’t want to put the domains up for sale any sooner because I know that buyers (especially on Flippa) usually tend to live in the moment and don’t look at the long term or to the future. I’m pretty sure that if I had put the domains and site up for sale in 2009, for example, that there would be only a fraction of the interest that there would be around the release date.
The other thing about my timing of the auction listing was that I put the site up for sale at its absolute peak. This is actually a type of business strategy that Paul Piotrowski and I are starting to think about more, and is probably what I will end up doing with RobotWarz.
Traffic started to really skyrocket as the launch date neared. In fact, Starcraft2.net’s traffic used to average 100 unique visits a day, but on the launch date it had climbed to an enormous peak of 1,800 uniques a day! This was all purely from natural, unpaid SEO rankings (for “starcraft2” and “starcraft 2” mainly.
In fact, I forget who it was that told me, but at one point around that time there was a Starcraft 2 related query (something like “Starcraft 2 review") that was actually the 16th or so most searched keyword on Google (during the past hour).
After the release, the traffic predictably died down, but did still average at 400 uniques a day a month later which is still 4 times what it used to be.
It ended up selling for $15,000, which was also my reserve price, and I had the buyer pay the 5% buyer success fee, which would have been $750 but is capped at $500.
We did the transaction through Escrow.com which I love because they take a very realistic fee (0.89% for transactions $25K+), and the deal is now done. I don’t know why the new owners haven’t put the site up yet… I might give them a call to see if they’re having an issue importing the CPanel backup.
We both agreed to split the Escrow fees, and I also paid for a FedEx express delivery of my cheque. After the fees, my cheque came out to $14,864.60.
When you add everything up, I made a total of approximately $16,500 from all my Starcraft 2 investments. I spent approximately $2,300 which means that I ended up netting $14,200.
Sure, it took 3 years of waiting, but it’s not like I was working on the site or anything. I bought the domains after hearing that Starcraft 2 was officially announced, set up a basic forum, and basically let it run in the background by itself until the game was released to the public.
I knew it was going to be a wait when I bought the domains (although to be honest I thought the wait was going to be more along the lines of 1 year, not 3), but also understood that it was a good investment. I had several offers of around $7,000 for the Starcraft2.net and SC2.net pair in 2009, but turned them down because I was pretty confident I could get more if I waited until the release dates.
Grasping Opportunity
The point of this post is to give you another example of why taking advantage of an opportunity is so useful.
I know that not everyone is a gamer or Starcraft fan, but I know that some of you are and probably heard about the news on the same day I did. When I heard that SC2 was officially in the works, my first thought was “Awesome”. My second thought was “This is going to be huge – I’m going to see what Starcraft and Starcraft 2 domains I can grab ASAP”.
There’s nothing I did that somebody else couldn’t have done – I just saw the opportunity and acted on it. I also went what you might call a step further to actually phone the owner of one of the domains instead of just hoping he’d answer my e-mails. I didn’t want to lose the opportunity.
Of course, this mentality goes beyond simply grabbing gaming domains and even domains in general. The point is to take advantage of opportunities when you see them, because the early bird gets the worm and if you snooze, you lose.
Try to keep a third eye open for opportunities (you could call it your “opportunity eye”) in the future. You might be surprised at just how many opportunities there are out there. Be sure to act on the ones that you think are real gems, and not just think or talk about them.
A Review of Jounce.com
August 28, 2010 Posted by Tyler CruzThe following is a paid review and is completely of my own opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having me review your site or product, please view my advertising page.
While I have been taking a break from affiliate marketing myself recently, back when I was actively running campaigns I would often log into each affiliate network separately to search for a suitable offer to promote.
This can get old fast and be a bit of a pain when you’re a member of a lot of different affiliate networks.
Jounce.com is a new site that is still in beta but now open to the public. It was officially launched at Affiliate Summit East a couple weeks ago, and they’re now spreading the word about their free service.
Basically, Jounce is a search engine where users can search for affiliate products and offers all in one place and even sync their affiliate network accounts to easily retrieve their affiliate URLs.
They currently have 60 affiliate networks in their system with plans of adding 400 more soon. Their search engine index currently spans 12 million offers and products.
Below is a 25-minute screencast review of Jounce:
(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see it.)
Below is a short animated overview of Jounce for those with a shorter attention span:
It would be great if Jounce.com implements some of my suggestions because I think they can certainly be a viable and useful free service that I can see myself using in the future.
LOL! This Made Me Laugh So Hard!
August 17, 2010 Posted by Tyler CruzI was doing a quick browse on the Movie Vault Forums when I saw that one of the oldest members posted the video below.
For some reason I found it hilarious and felt that I needed to post it here.
On a related note, RobotWarz is progressing and I plan to give an update including a video in my next blog post which I hope to be 2-3 days from now.
Anyhow, below is the video:
Male Robot: Hey Roberto, what’s going… on?
Female Robot: I am first in line.
Male Robot: Oh… first in line for what?
Female Robot: I am first in line… to play Tyler Cruz’s new game: RobotWarz. It’s like UFC for robots.
Male Robot: Sounds violent (eyebrows).
Female Robot: I hope… so. I like the violence.
Male Robot: Sheez… How did you hear about this game?
Female Robot: I read about it on TylerCruz.com. He’sMyHero. He makes a lot of money from his websites. He’s a real success story.
Male Robot: I’ve heard of him. He’s some type of web entrepreneur isn’t he?
Female Robot: That’s him. I can’t wait for his game RobotWarz. It should be exciting.
Male Robot: I can’t wait either. Yoo Hoo (throws arms up into the air and pumps them).
Movie Vault Attends The Expendables Premiere
August 10, 2010 Posted by Tyler CruzLast night, Movie-Vault.com’s resident video reporter Claire Bueno caught up with Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, and Jason Statham at The Expendables premiere.
This marks Movie Vault’s 4th video footage at a premiere. Next week, we will be interviewing Angelina Jolie (and possibly Brad Pitt) at the Salt premiere in the UK.
You can watch our video from The Expendables premiere below (you may need to visit TylerCruz.com via your web browser if you’re reading via e-mail or an RSS reader):
New Features and Improvements
I’ve been continuing to work on Movie-Vault.com ever since I launched the massive revamp of the site 9 months ago. I don’t want it to fall into disrepair or neglect like before and so am constantly adding new features, making improvements on existing areas of the site, and continuing to add great content to the site.
I recently had a number of changes made, improving some of the administrative and staff functions as well as adding and implementing a lot of social media into the site. I created a Facebook page and had Interberry add “Like” buttons on our news and reviews, added a “Get News by E-mail” feature, and even had Interberry convert our news to an RSS format so that I could set up a Feedburner account and offer RSS for our news.
Please feel free to join Movie-Vault.com’s various social media outlets, or at least “Like” our Facebook page:
My next plan for Movie-Vault.com is to start sending out regular newsletters to our members who did not opt-out of receiving them, which is 1,800 and growing. The newsletters will probably go out twice a month and will contain a summary of what’s new on the site as well as a small advertisement plugging a recently released movie or TV season on DVD/Blu-Ray from Amazon.
In addition, I plan to also start sending out mailings to the double opt-in “partners” newsletter, which is a small list at only 100, but is growing and the users specifically requested to receive movie-related offers, so the conversion rate should be fairly high.
I am also investing a lot into SEO for the site. So far the results have been relatively decent, but I saw a small setback during this past week, so we’ll have to wait and see how things progress over the next month.
The next major thing I would like to do for the site is to acquire the non-dashed domain name, but I’m having trouble finding any contact information for the current owners since it’s a private WHOIS registration and the company’s main website has been down for a few months as well…
So, what do you think about Movie-Vault.com? Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how I could improve the site or grow traffic to it?
