PR: “”Heels.com com is a new online retail shopping site for high fashion, designer shoes and sexy high heels. Introduced in October 2007, the new Heels.com site has quickly become the premier source for top brand women’s shoes, including Nine West, Jessica Simpson, and Betsey Johnson. Interestingly, however, the Heels.com domain has been in existence more than a decade. In 1994, an MIT graduate and Patent Attorney named Erik J. Heels created the domain for the purpose of promoting his law practice using his last name. Due to the tremendous brand potential of the domain, Mr. Heels realized overtime that Heels.com could be so much more. In February 2007, Erik Heels and Eric McCoy partnered to become Eric & Erik Enterprises (E & E Enterprises), and proceeded to build the robust e-commerce shoe site that exists today.”"
http://www.dnforum.com/f17/heels-com-launches-interesting-story-behind-thread-257769.html
***FS*** My wife and I were shopping the frozen aisle of the grocery store this AM and listening to Nick Lachey sing through the store’s tinny speakers - we wondered what happened to Jessica Simpson.. You never read about her on Perez Hilton anymore and MTV just seems so empty without her and Nick’s show.. Well, turns out she’s selling shoes. The owner of the Heels.comdomain name is doing some of the selling for her… The best kept secret for domainers is that development isn’t that hard.. A little elbow grease and *poof* you’ve got a wonderful fully functioning eCommerce site. The tools, the software, the talent and the desire to develop inactive domain names are accelerating at an exponential pace.. 5-7 years from now every inactive name on the web could be developed like this.
In time I believe the most powerful words, phrases and search terms will supersede those earliest to develop. In the final analysis, HighHeels.com is a better search term than Heels.com …it’s more spoken and more of a collective conscience term.. With the same development applied, HighHeels.com could eventually become a bigger site than Heels.com and IMO this holds true for virtually all search terms and phrases. These folks at Heels.com are to be commended though for going first and showing as all what is possible. Their early mover advantage will give them an opportunity to acquire other great domain names like highheels.com and block would-be competition before it leaves the gate. Then again, they could turn out to be poor executors, and convince themselves that nobody could do a better job than them, pass on the names at bargain prices and allow a competitor to enter the field and “out shoe” them.. time will tell. Great looking site. Predicting it’s a regular stop for folks with a shoe fetish.. In fact they should update the site each week with a few sexy shoe-fetish pictures to encourage those big spending shoe fetish folks to return. You laugh… but you know it’s true 
Frank
How do you think highheel.com
***FS*** I think it’s a good name.
With the same development applied,
which best names is it
highheels.com>heels.com> highheel.com
this order, right ?
***FS*** I’d agree
I asked my wife what kind of shoes do women wear and she said:
“sneakers”
“heels”
“flats”
I asked her if she was to visit a website to buy womens’ shoes, what addresses would she type in:
“shoes.com” – then she said “heels.com”
I asked her if she would type in “highheels.com” and she said no.
Now, she is just one woman of millions. Only the traffic numbers will tell the true story!
“folks with a shoe fetish” – I think you’ve just described the whole of womankind
We have taken some of our domains and have developed them through outsourcing and this hasn’t been as expensive as we thought. An example is http://www.mypersonalspace.com which we outsourced the back-end and logo etc. The big question over the last few years has been development vs. parking. I believe that there needs to be a balance as some domains are NOT worth developing while others BEG to be developed. http://www.handbags.com is another example of a domain that is developed and would generate more revenue than being parked. Most of our great domains are parked now however they are ‘tagged’ for development it is only a matter of time!!
When I think Heels, I think of the world famous Tar Heels. Go Heels!!
The first to develop and do a good job at it has the upper hand in my opinion. It doesn’t stop there. The Bizdev part is critical. There are too many “me too” sites out there. The ones with the right partnerships will prevail.
Paul Rubillo
Two things:
1) WOW! What a great picture. I really miss her show too, but, a bit of an air head. Nonetheless, she’s hot! Is this your backward?
2) Heels.com is a great site. This is an area that people with less than spectacular domain names will be able to make some serious coin.
I completely agree that there are direct type in names that will ALWAYS command a X premium on revenue. But, other sites will/can be built out for some very impressive lead gen…
How much more would Zappos.com do is the owned a better type in name.
Zappos did over $600M in sales last year. YES, that number is correct!
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/12/01/8394993/index.htm
***FS*** I view it in terms of long term tactics.. There is no BIG number 2 seller of shoes.. So say I bought shoes.com .. then I started hiring zappos key staff or competitors staff and started buying keyword traffic in the same marketplace at zappos.. The only thing not duplicable about zappos.com is their name.. and if your name is shoes.com you get a huge lifetime advantage over them.
Best site for shoes is shoedepartment.com which is also moving to celebrity participation model in 2008, soon as my oscar-winning partner wraps on her current movie. All women have an “inside lexicon” about meeting in the shoedepartment at lunch. This was the first unofficial consumer shared review where girl friends needed to meet and validate the purchase then strategize how they could wheel and deal among several credit cards to shelter their husband from discovering what they truly cost.
…true, Owen…with the only place they meet more often than that to “talk things over” being the…Womans Room (.com)
Maybe we should talk…
Zappos and shoebuy buy most of their traffic from keyword domain sites like mine. if you were to chart my growth and theirs, you’d see a mirror image. There is no doubt that domains fuel online success though it is, and always will be, the Internet’ best-kept secret.
“Zappos and shoebuy buy most of their traffic from keyword domain sites like mine.”
What do you base this on? Sounds very hard to believe given domain parking is about 5% of the $20 billion ppc market.
***FS*** Domain parking is much bigger than the payouts give credit for. Had a chat with 2 analysts in the last month.. both corroborate. To be fair said shoe co’s still wouldn’t buy ‘most’ of their traffic from domains… But they do have to “buy” most of their traffic.
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