After a two week leave of absence I’m happy to say we’re back with the third installment of our Geodomain Investment and Development series. This post is about Rick Latona’s Baja.com property—a great geodomain acquired about two and a half years ago along with an outstanding portfolio of some of the top destinations along the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico, where I live.
I met Rick Latona more than two years ago in Cabo. I had just read about his recent acquisition of BajaCalifornia.com on DN Journal and reached out to him to offer some of my related domain names. After quickly rejecting the offer, Rick came back to me with an offer all of his own—to assist him locally with the advertising sales of the newly developed Baja.com web portal.
After a few phone calls back and forth, Rick came down to Cabo and we later signed the exclusive sales agent agreement for Baja.com through my agency Grupo Igartua. When asked a year later about the relationship, Rick was quick with his appreciation, “Sergio has done an excellent job representing Baja.com to the local marketplace.”
Following the launch of Baja.com we worked together with Rick and his team to define the website’s sales strategy, advertising packages and rate structure. We averaged 5 figures in sales during the first couple of months. The domain name itself provided great type-in traffic as well as great search engine ranking and this attracted customers right away, giving the project a running start right out of the gates.
The advertising model on Baja.com is unique in that it focuses on annual run advertising and profile pages that include written content, one-way links and image galleries. No monthlies and no fees to update your content now and again. This product became very appealing to our resort customers in the Los Cabos area.
2008 and 2009 saw the start of the U.S. economic recession and this has had a direct impact on tourism destinations in all of Mexico. Coupled with the bad press regarding violence near the border and H1N1 outbreaks on the mainland, you can say it’s been an interesting ride. Similar factors have also impacted Acapulco.com in the past as mentioned in part II of our series. Numbers have slowed but interest remains high enough to sign most of our customers again for a second run.
2010 promises to be a stronger year. We have already begun our sales strategy for the winter and spring tourist seasons here in Cabo, so expect new things to come to Baja.com as soon as early 2010!
(Read Part I in the Series | Read Part II in the Series)
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Cabo is such a beautiful place. Those are some nice projects you’ve been working on, category killer geos, they have a very professional look.. :-)
Thanks Dan, actually the only one I’ve been involved with is Baja.com, on the sales end down here in Cabo. What I hope to do with this series is to showcase some of the best geodomain projects out there, the kind that inspire us to develop our names.
Great name and nice job on the site. Would love to see some links between Baja.com and the locals. Fishing and Jet Ski comes to mind. We get daily requests for both on WestPalmBeach.com
http://westpalmbeach.com/activities.html
Put up a form and see what you generate. Then take those leads to the locals and the one that pays you, promote the heck out of them.
Thanks Michael, as always great advice. There will be some new changes coming to the site after January and the travel season is beginning to improve already. I think that after a long recession year and a half people are finally deciding to go out and travel a little more like they used to!
Cabo is such a beautiful place. Those are some nice projects you’ve been working on, category killer geos, they have a very professional look.. :-)