Several months ago, I blogged about Fred Mercaldo and his team at Scottsdale.com who were launching their City in a Box platform, which they already successfully on sites like Sausalito.com, Chandler.com, Mesa.com, Tempe.com, and others. The sites are lauded for their contemporary look and ease of use, while the team behind the platform handles marketing and development duties.

Yesterday I received word from Fred that his team has launched Palermo.com, a domain name owned by domain investor Steve Kaziyev of NamePursuit.com. I’ve spent some time looking through the site with envy, and I think it looks great. The site has a lot of travel information, and visitors can make hotel reservations and learn about the city sites. Since Italians tend to use the .it ccTLD in their domain names, they are targeting American tourists with this site.

One of the challenges with a site like this will be finding local advertisers in Palermo. Restaurants, hotels, galleries, and other tourist attractions are presumably the target of Fred and his team, and it will be fun to watch the site progress. IMO, this is where the City in a Box platform outshines anything similar.

I am very impressed with the quality of the site, and I am hoping Steve and Fred will share results down the road. I am in talks with Fred and the Scottsdale.com team about developing one of my geodomain names, and I am sure I will share more information if and when something happens.

Congrats to Fred and Steve on this exciting launch.

I wanted to share an email I received from my friend Fred Mercaldo, one of the most respected geodomain developers whose company owns Scottsdale.com. Fred’s company introduced a new offering for other domain investors who own city/regional .com domain names. If I hadn’t developed Burbank.com and Lowell.com on my own already, I would not hesitate to turn to Fred and his expert team. If you have an undeveloped geodomain name – or if you have an underdeveloped geodomain name, you might consider reaching out to Fred about this opportunity.

Scottsdale.com has grown to include 4 additional geodomains in the Arizona market.  In building these sites, we have developed a platform and system that Becky and I realized could be used for other geodomains, and have now formally begun to market the software as “City In A Box”.

We are big believers that geodomains be developed and not parked, and there are still many cities and state names that could benefit from our services.  To see the actual site, visit www.mesa.com and www.sausalito.com.  The package includes a complete, ready to monetize website, with a comprehensive Content Management System, customizable Channel and Directory categories, fully functioning Event Calendar, Stories, Articles, Press releases; easy admin area for all banner ads; ability to have visitors create user accounts, stat tracking ability for all advertisers or anything listed on the site, so reports for advertisers are easy; blogs, and full Optimization Elements.

This is not a typical template system or mini site; this is the result of many years of trial and error in the building and marketing of Scottsdale.com, and if I had the ability to purchase this package years ago, I would have saved literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.  We are presently developing 4 other cities, and have the ability to build out 8-10 more this year.  The total price for everything is $12,500, and for a yearly fee of $2,500 we will provide all upgrades and updates in the future.

Additional information, including a spec sheet can be obtained from Fred@scottsdale.com or Becky@scottsdale.com.