yourfirstvisit.net

A VERY MINOR LANDMARK

So after thinking about doing so for years, last week I finally bought yourfirstvisit.com, and (after the usual comedy that happens when I get mixed up with technology) re-directed it so that if people type “yourfirstvisit.com” into their browser, they’ll get to the home page of this site instead.

What that means practically is that more people who mean to get here actually will get here. Emotionally, it brings me back to the days in early 2008 when the site’s first set of research and resulting material was done, and what was left were the questions of what name to use for it and how to pull the whole thing off technically.

So I’m gonna go back there for a bit, and then wander back to now…and yes, for obvious reasons I have created a whole new category for this post!

WHY THIS SITE BECAME YOURFIRSTVISIT.NET

I began thinking seriously about this site in mid-2005, and not long after designed the basic information architecture.  (For more on the history of the site, see this.) Most of the fact gathering and research happened in 2007, and the resulting base set of inferences and recommendations got developed in late 2007 and early 2008.

What was left was the final decision on the technical underpinnings—which became WordPress, but deployed as a CMS, not a blog—and the name of the blog and its domain name/url.  I had a strong working title that helped keep in sharp focus the purpose of the site—“The Dictator’s Guide to Walt Disney World”—but knew that wouldn’t work!  Not only would it be potentially offensive, but it was also more limiting than I wanted it to be.

I knew that the basic approach of this site (a guide for first time visitors on perhaps their only visit that told them, based on analysis and strategic reasoning, exactly what to do on just one page, but that then gave next best options ranked in order in case they couldn’t follow one of these instructions) would be helpful for many settings beyond Walt Disney World—e.g., tent-camping at Yosemite, a holiday visit to Manhattan.  So I wanted a basic title broad enough to cover many settings, and settled on a sub-title under whatever that basic title was going to be of “The Walt Disney World Instruction Manual” for this site and its content.

I’m not sure where the basic title of “yourfirstvisit” came from, but it was at least subconsciously shaped by several items at the Magic Kingdom—there’s a recorded message at park open that says something like “whether this is your first visit or your hundredth visit…,” there’s a plaque with similar words, and there are “1st Visit” buttons all over the place.

But there it was, and what I needed was a domain name.  So I checked availability, and while “yourfirstvisit.net” was unclaimed and available, someone else already owned “yourfirstvisit.com.”  But they wanted $500 for it.

Now I was perfectly happy to spend money on making this site better for its readers.  For example, since the site opened I’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars in staying for multiple nights in every single Walt Disney World resort hotel, several times in many of them—for example, after major refurbs—and in almost all of the distinct room types (the only exception I can think of is the Princess Rooms at Riverside, and I’ll get to those soon).  And as a result of this investment, I’ve both written reviews and when needed have updated the resort rankings.

But buying yourfirstvisit.com wasn’t going to make the site better for its readers, and I never thought that “yourfirstvisit” would become enough of a brand that people would search for the site by name or type the url directly into their browsers.

Well, as usual I was wrong. Almost half a million people have gotten here by typing the name of the site directly into their browser, and a hundred thousand more through one of more than 13,000 different search strings that include “first.”  Meanwhile, enough traffic was going to yourfirstvisit.com that its owner replaced his big “for sale” sign with a little sign and a lot of big Disney World ads.  And every time I got more traffic, his selling price went up!

So more and more people who needed the help of this site were going instead to a one page site littered with ads but with no help…and the price of fixing this kept going up!

The about a month ago a couple of things happened.  One is that I struck a deal with an advertiser that would create new cash flow that would fund buying yourfirstvisit.com—even though the price had gone up by a factor of more than 15 since I opened this site.  Second, through a broker, I got an offer of almost half a million dollars for this site.

Now I didn’t design this site for a liquidity event, and have no intention of ever selling it! And I don’t run this site for money.  Rather, I think that if you provide a great service, the money will take care of itself.  But the offer to buy this site sharply reinforced the point that every time that this site grew, so would the price of yourfirstvisit.com, so that the sooner I bought and redirected that domain, the less it would cost and the better people seeking this site would be served.

STILL YOURFIRSTVISIT.NET, BUT NOW ALSO FINDABLE FROM YOURFIRSTVISIT.COM!

So it’s now done—type  yourfirstvisit.com into your browser, or click on the link, and you’ll come back to this site’s home page!