clayton marshall
  

Tiny Project #1: side.domains

February 5, 2021

Project stats:

Cost: $28 for domain name
Page visits: 61
Subscribers: 13
Product Hunt Upvotes: 8
Earnings: $0

Side.domains is my first tiny project of 2021. Side.domains is a monthly newsletter of short, cheap domain names that I'm branding as a home for future side projects. My inspiration for this came from my interest in the domain name space and my frugal spending habits on side projects.

This project had a pretty simple execution path. First, I needed short, cheap domains people would be excited about, and second, I needed a newsletter subscription site + email service to get those domains to subscribers. Step one is pretty simple to get started on, but difficult to maintain long-term. I've been writing down domains that I think of throughout the day, and although I think I've come up with some decent ones, it isn't scalable. I needed to automate the process. There are a lot of strategies to take when writing a bot to look for domain names. The problem isn't finding the best strategy, the problem is that you can't just pick a single one. If you do, all the domain names you find will be extremely similar. Instead you have to take the shotgun approach and try all the strategies. This part of the project will probably continue to be actively developed for the foreseeable future...or until the newsletter hits 0 active subscribers. Whichever comes first.

The second part requires a little work, but once it's done it's done. No continuous development here. I wrote a super simple html page with a sign up form, hooked the form up to a Mailchimp audience, and put together a basic email template. Wallah, newsletter complete!

One last part of this project was to try and monetize it in some way. The newsletter is obviously free, but I'm signed up as a Namecheap affiliate, so if someone does purchase a domain I send out, I receive some kickback from the purchase. If by some miracle the newsletter gets popular though, I may create a premium version with extra domains each month for a dollar a month or something. I'll update this post with earnings info as I go.