Interview with Mark Fulton of DotSauce.com
I am a personal reader of Mark Fulton’s work. Mark is a young busy entrepreneur, it took about a week to get this interview completed, but worth the wait. He has created a great domainer blog through DotSauce.com. In fact, congratulations to Mark for being one of six domain blogs featured in the July issue of Modern Domainer Magazine.
Lets get to the questions and answers.
Q: How old are you Mark?
A: I am going on 25 years November 6th, where I will be at the Texas Domainers & Developers Conference, come celebrate with me!
Q: What is your educational background?
A: I attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington for almost 3 years and decided to launch my own internet businesses which took up too much of my time. While some might call me a dropout, I consider myself on an “extended break” and hope to finish up my last year sooner than later! I hope to major in Professional Writing.
Q: How long have you been domaining?
A: I purchased my first domain, MarkFulton.com in 1998. I seriously got into domaining and building out my portfolio around 3 or 4 years ago.
Q: Why did you get into domaining?
A: I am an entrepreneur at heart and love marketing, social networking and web development, so domaining easily became an easy passion for me to follow.
Q: Being an entrepreneur have you tried any other businesses before domaining?
A: Before seriously getting into domain names I started up a web design and hosting company when I was a Freshman in High School. I mostly took on local clients such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Country Club, though I had hosting clients all over the world. This really allowed me to get my foot in the door for a life in web development.
Q: How many domains do you own?
A: Many would be surprised to find that I only own around 300 .COM names. I am pretty picky when registering and buying domains and make sure they have strong keywords, business development potential and natural value.
Q: What types of domains are you buying?
A: Quality brandable .COM names, generic phrases, and some GEO domains.
Q: Without divulging your financial information Mark, how much can an average domainer expect to make in this business annually?
A: Earnings can vary depending on how much capital a new domainer has to invest in buying domain names. However, even more important is the time you spend networking with other domainers and end users and the time you spend developing your own personal brand name. Your name, your blog or website becomes your best platform for selling your domains. I really would prefer not to provide unrealistic expectations, especially if you’re brand new to domaining and have a lot to learn. Stick to it and put in the time and the money will come.
Q: What strategies do you use in your domaining business?
A: I am not a big fan of domain parking. I feel that only premium generic names with natural type in traffic are good candidates for traditional PPC parking.
Like I mentioned before, the domains that I purchase have business development potential. I try to envision a complete website for each name that I purchase. I have some mini-sites using custom software which automatically displays latest news, articles, ebay auctions, videos, photos and more along with embedded adsense code.
Flipping is also a great way to earn some capital, but you must be modest in your pricing. I do this a lot and if you really think about it, purchasing a domain name for $8 and reselling it quickly for even $25 is a 300% profit… something unheard of in most industries.
Q: Lastly, if you could give just one piece of advice to the domainers out there what would it be?
A: Follow your passion by developing a niche of your own, register and buy names that you can nurture and develop into promising online businesses. Share your strategies and success with the rest of the domain industry, there is plenty to go around.
Last 5 posts by Chef Patrick
- Domainer Comic Strip #15 - November 19th, 2008
- NamePros Auction Results 11/13 - November 13th, 2008
- NamePros Auction Tonight 11/13 - November 13th, 2008
- Domainer Comic Strip #14 - November 12th, 2008
- Domain Selling and ROI - November 11th, 2008
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
Tim Ramsey
Nice interview. Was it an in-person interview, over the phone, or on IM? I’d be nervous to do it in-person myself. I hope to build up a site big enough as dotsauce.com myself sometime.
Patrick, Thank you for the opportunity to do this interview and for your kind comments about DotSauce. Much appreciated.
@Andrew: I did this interview via a few emails back and forth with Patrick. Best of luck with your development projects.
No, thank you Mark. I along with many others have learned a lot from your site.
Very nice Interview Mark. It gave us a chance to know more about some personal & professional sides of your life. I wish you the best of continuous success in the future and I am sure you will!
What are your opinions on the new .me domains? I’ve seen for instance where LasVegas.me sold for over $15,000 and Insure.me is up to $49,000? I keep coming across news on auctions that Godaddy will be auctioning off premium names in the next month or two. Are these names really that valuable or is it just hype? Just curious on your thoughts. Thanks.
That’s a great question. In my opinion I would say that all the valuable .me’s where taken in the pre-register period. Other than the obvious big name domains like sex.me I think they are a waste of time and money. Stick with .com
Great interview Patrick.
Rather impressive Mark, having the Chamber of Commerce as a client at such an early age!
Very interesting read and informative too.
“Share your strategies…”
It’s funny, when I already asked Mark more than three times who (free lance or company) design his nice blog post graphics and he never responded to this question.
I will email you directly later today with information on my design. Actually had three separate people work on this site.