North Dakota Trucking domain name pays for itself — Why my
Registering NorthDakotaTrucking.com probably didn’t make sense, but now I understand why it pays for itself each year.
I registered the domain name NorthDakotaTrucking.com in 2007.
I was on a bit of a geo domain kick at the time. But let’s face it, on the surface, this is a pretty crappy domain registration. We’re talking regarding a state with fewer than 1 million people. That is not where you want to focus your geo domain name money.
Yet every year, this domain more than covers its registration cost. It doesn’t get much traffic, but it gets some. Even better, the clicks usually regarding $5. So I keep renewing it since I make money just holding on to it.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading Gregory Zuckerman’s book The Frackers regarding the oil and gas boom taking place in American right now. The book explains why NorthDakotaTrucking.com has value.
North Dakota is at the center of the United States’ energy boom, and the United States is the biggest energy producer in the world. It’s kind of a big deal, and The Frackers explains how it all came to be.
The book explains the modern day goldrush going on in North Dakota, and how one down-on-their-luck family decided to move there to take advantage of the opportunity.
One day in 2010, while checking her Twitter feed, Liz clicked on a link to a Fresh York Times article detailing North Dakota’s economic boom. Oil was flowing from the Bakken rock formation, located near the city of Williston in the western part of the state, the article stated. The state’s unemployment rate was around 3%, and it was under 1% in Williston. Truck drivers were in such demand, since the average Bakken well required regarding two thousand truck trips to haul a million gallons of water for the fracking operation, that they were making over $100,000 a year.
Liz’s husband was a truck driver, so she decided to look for a job. It gets better:
Liz, who had been racking her brain for a fresh life plan, turned hopeful. She did a Google search with some obvious keywords, such as “North Dakota” and “trucking,” and got on the phone with a trucking firm in Williston.
Liz turned to Google and searched for the exact phrase of my .com domain name. Apparently, a handful of people each year go straight to the address bar and type in NorthDakotaTrucking.com instead. They land on my little piece of internet real estate.
Kind of cool.
As a side note, I think domainers will like The Frackers. It tells the story of wildcatters who were repeatedly told that they were crazy, but they kept placing bets and some became quite wealthy. Sound familiar?
