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Hey Matt, so you launched the site 4 years ago and very top comment on that old HN thread was: .."There are no margins in the domain industry.".. So, years pass

• matt1 11y ago
  At the time of the acquisition the site made money in two ways: 1. Affiliate sales: when you click on a domain and register it through GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc, I get a % of the purchase price. 2. Premium accounts: Lean Domain Search only showed the top 150 results for free. You could pay $79 once for two months of access or $199/year for access to all 5,000 results. Each was bringing in around $1,000-$1,500/month with the premium accounts growing quickly. After the acquisition, we made the site free but left the affiliate links in place. The site has grown a lot since then [1] but the affiliate revenue still brings in the same $1,000 - $1,500/month because GoDaddy (the main driver of affiliate revenue) made some changes to its affiliate program that led to lower payouts. [1] http://mattmazur.com/2015/07/03/lean-domain-search-at-3%C2%BD/ http://mattmazur.com/2015/07/03/lean-domain-search-at-3%C2%B...