Jeffrey Reynolds is the President/CEO of Precision Marketing Solutions, Inc., a privately held communications and ecommerce company based on Long Island. The company’s portfolio includes about 3,000 domain names and websites in a dozen markets, the most prominent of which is AmericanFlags.com.

Since purchasing that domain a month after 9/11 on eBay for $2,650, Reynolds has turned the once vacant URL into one of the nation’s top flag retailers, with revenues doubling annually since that time. Other websites in the company’s portfolio include JackOLantern.com, SantasMailbox.com, Discrimination.com, DivorceDirectory.com, BestPsychics.com, PetSitter.com and BlackBikeWeek.com.

Precision Marketing offers a wide range of marketing, public relations and communications services on a flat fee or monthly retainer basis, as well as strategic business consulting services with an emphasis on ecommerce.

Dr. Reynolds holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration and a Ph.D. in social policy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he is a member of the adjunct faculty. In addition to his business endeavors, Dr. Reynolds provides strategic marketing, government relations, fund development and program evaluation services to health and human service organizations on Long Island including a youth violence prevention program and the region’s largest HIV/AIDS care agency.

1.) EJS: How did you acquire AmericanFlags.com, and when you were bidding on it, did you plan to build a website/business using the name?

JR: “I acquired the name in October of 2001 – about a month after 9/11 –via an eBay auction with no specific plan in mind. The second-highest bidder emailed me a note of congratulations and told me that his interest in the name was related to the fact that he had a warehouse full of American flags he was looking to peddle. It was an instant match as I didn’t have a single flag to sell and probably wouldn’t have been able to find inventory at any price given that most major suppliers were sold out within days after 9/11. In a few emails, we worked out a simple dropshipping arrangement.

I fired up my brand new copy of Microsoft Frontpage and threw together a single page website. Orders began coming in literally within seconds of the site going live and I re-couped my whopping $2,650 domain investment almost immediately. Once we had depleted the original inventory, I spent the next couple years building a base of major suppliers, expanding the product line to include US flags of different weights and sizes, world flags, state flags, military flags, residential/commercial flagpoles and more.

I never imagined the business would be where it is today, and it’s been an educational, occasionally overwhelming (think July 4th of every year) and dare I say – even fun – ride. My wife Maureen has become a vital part of the business and with infinitely more patience and tact is far better than I am at things like customer service.”

2.) EJS: Do you think a domainer/domain investor can also be a domain developer without losing his identity?

JR: “Absolutely and having a foot in both worlds has helped diversify both my skills and my business portfolio. The trend among domain investors is development and shifts in the PPC market, along with some other dynamics will likely accelerate the convergence of domain investing and development. Having said all that and getting back to the identity question, most people know me as the “AmericanFlags.com guy,” which I’ve perpetuated by speaking at TRAFFIC and doing interviews such as this one.

The flag business overshadows some of my other projects, but not to the point of great detriment. Frankly, I’ve always seen my experience in developing AmericanFlags.com as a great narrative for helping to reframe the public perception of domain name investors. It’s an all-American success story and at the end of the day, we’ve created something of real value. Done right, development can put a positive, constructive face on domaining and help us shed the misplaced “cybersquatter” label that’s been wrongly assigned by some special interest groups and media sources.”

3.) EJS: Can you give some advice to people who own domain names that they would like to develop, but have no experience with web development?

JR: “Start today. Bounce some ideas off a few friends and family members. Do some market research and talk to folks who have done it. Map out timeframes and then get to work. Good design doesn’t cost what it once did, nor does coding or content development. You can do it in small steps and scale things up as you go. And development doesn’t necessarily mean handling products, it can mean creating a directory with paid listings, a forum or some other service.”

4.) EJS: Would you have had the same success if you had simply registered a name like eAmericanFlags.com, or is owning the premier domain name essential to your business?

JR: “The domain name is absolutely essential to the business. Having a category-killer domain means having the wind at your back as you develop, test and market your product line. It means instant high-quality type-in traffic that increases almost daily. It means better deals with suppliers, more credibility with consumers and a better response from the media. The strength of our name has opened the door to significant military and corporate sales with folks who otherwise probably wouldn’t take our calls and put us at the top of a space formally dominated by multigenerational businesses within just a few years.”

5.) EJS: Do you think you could replicate the business model for AmericanFlags.com in another vertical, and what challenges would need to be overcome?

JR: “Sure, we could replicate the model, though I’m not that hot on creating more work. Running a full-fledged site with more than 2,000 SKUs is an immense task just in terms of order processing, customer service, purchasing, inventory management, shipping and receiving and accounting. I’m content to build out some smaller properties that reflect personal interests or work with the seasonality of the flag business, but am not looking to start a new endeavor of the same magnitude right now.”

BONUS!

6.) EJS: What other projects are you working on at the moment?

JR: “We just launched PetSitter.com, a directory of professional pet sitters and our third new project so far this year. We’ve got two other projects on the drawing board for the Summer/Fall, though I’ve been focusing a large amount of my time on increasing our PR/marketing client base. We’re really good at helping folks attract free media attention through press releases, direct pitches and promotions.

We’ve also taken on some clients and helped them increase their sales conversions by refining the checkout process, boosting product descriptions and making some other minor changes that can have a huge impact on shopping cart abandonment. It’s been rewarding to take some of the lessons we’ve learned and help others scale new heights in terms of visitors, revenues and their own expectations.”

While the debate over whether building city/community sites (at least in the US) should only ever be built on .coms might continue for some years to come, let me share one particular situation–though very rare it be—where doing so on an extension other than .com (and more particularly, on a .org) makes perfect sense:

Earlier this year, I picked up a city.org (San Marcos; just north of San Diego) for a 75,000 population city in California with excellent demographics, an extensive and broad-based commercial/ business community; and not one, but two top-rated colleges; including one of the highly desired Cal-State campus’.

In my pre-purchase analysis, I discovered via search on the city name that there were not one, but in fact no fewer than two of these identically-names cities in the US (plus a number in other countries); and that the .com version was already an operating city site for the Texas city with this same name.

What I realized is that it would be not just O.K. to build out such a .org, but actually smart to do so; for no less than these four reasons:

#1: Anyone visiting the .com Texas city site looking for information concerning the CA city; regardless of how they got there (type in or search engine); would quickly realize that the .com was clearly not the place they were looking for; leading them to click away and keep looking (this is where good SEO comes in) for the correct city (once I begin build-out; probably in 2009; I’ll request reciprocal homepage button/ links; me to the Texas version; Texas version to me; to further insure that any confused visitors will quickly find their way to the city they were looking for; whether CA or Texas).

#2: Relatedly; since this is not a big-name “touristy/vacation-type” city, most of the site visitors (who will be seeing the local/ area businesses’ ads) will be the actual residents of this California city, and not vacationers from outside the area. Because this is so, remembering that the “official” (it’s official if you make it so) city site is located at city.org and not city.com will not be anywhere near the problem it is/ would be with well-known, high-visibility cities like Palm Springs, Chicago, and San Diego.

#3: As others have pointed out as well, the .org is well-known (at least in the US) as the extension where you can expect to find usually useful, valuable, unbiased facts, information, and other content from government and (non-profit) organizations.

Additionally, many 100′s (1000′s?) of city/ town/ county governments throughout the US already use .org as their official “city hall” address.

These two deeply ingrained perceptions of .org sites fits right in with what you may/ likely want your city site to “feel” like to Internet visitors anyway; they already come with built-in trust and authority.

#4: While “experts” debate on whether this is true or not; and/or how much difference it makes in the search engine positions if it is; the .org sites may be receiving a greater weight than .com due to their “unbiased/ government” reality/ perception.

And while the .com version of this city could have cost perhaps as much as $30,000-50,000 or more even if they’d sell it to me (no; I didn’t ask), I was able to negotiate the .org down to less than $1,600 due to its–mistaken in this rare case—perceived great inferiority to the .com.

This approach can also work for popularly-named communities/ “area designators” like Apple Valley, Happy Valley, and Sun Valley (it’s a real eye opener how many valleys there are in the US with the same name); each of which valley (name) are readily able to support multiple extension city/ community sites, since each are in different states.

So; while in the overwhelming majority of cases the .com is clearly the way to go assuming one can afford it (though I agree that those that say that a successful, “can make a very nice living from it” city/ community site can be created on probably most any extension [ though I'd personally only use a .com or .org in the US ] ); a .org can still be a great, more affordable way to create something worth having…and someday selling.

Bottom line? If you can’t afford the cost of a city.com (or even if you can but want to buy cheap/ risk less), see if you can find yourself a nice (I’d recommend 25,000+ population; especially if it’s not a resort-type city) city.org where the city.com is a built out, in-use site…in some other state/ area/ community.

So; while they certainly remain the first choice if money is no object; expensive city.com sites are not the only path to successful city/ community website businesses.

Happy hunting.