Couple of guys make a mint off of generic domains.

Converting visitors to buyers with generic named URLs is hard!

Placing well known "brand name" affiliate marketing image code is simply a bad idea.

I dropped out of the Linkshare network when I realized I was displaying their affiliate images hundreds of thousands of times to visitors to my sites.

I took them all out and use Google ad-sense code sparingly. I think we should be about the content we all want on our pages, not the other stuff, because when more queries and feedback forms come in with stuff people care about there is a ton of good will generated and lots of future potential customers.

I think building a site to expect revenue from affiliate code Ad turns is like playing the lottery: the house always wins.

Another one for the I-wish-I-had-business-foresight. Who knew generic domains would be immensely valuable properties back in 1993/1994ish? They did. Back then, I wanted to register command.com - clueless still I am (DIS research owned command.com since 1990ish).

All of the other people who own generic or semi-generic doorway pages should pay attention to what these guys are doing. There's probably a business in creating the ad and content relationships that can then be matched up with the appropriate domains ...

This will likely continue to be a solid strategy. As new technologies and innovations come to light new generic groups are created. Maybe one technique would be to keep track of emerging internet meme's and jump on related domains ASAP?

Building a brand online doesn't have that much to do with the URL anymore. There are really too many company examples to name.

The fact is that everyone knows how to use google. Even serious tech laggards understand that you search in google and then click a link. The days of people searching in the address bar are very over.

It sounds like these guys have done a great job building an Internet property, but the value is in their content partnerships, SEO, distribution etc.

Maybe the URL gave them motivation to start the company, but they would be doing just as well with choco-latefan.com

Interesting in the light of the Auctomatic story last week.

Seems like they built a useful and profitable retail and info site, could have done this without paying 300k for chocolate.com probably