Steve Baik has been working in the SEO and Internet marketing industries since 2000. Although Steve has registered and developed domain names since 2004, it wasn’t until 2012 that he took up domaining as a real hobby. Today, he runs DNPromos.com and DNSelect.com, two sites dedicated to sharing resources and increasing awareness about the domain industry.
Mike: DNPromos.com seems like a solid idea, to collect domain discounts all in one place. Can you provide some additional details around what the site provides and how it works?
Steve: What you see is what you get. It’s a site that collects and publishes domain coupons codes for various registrars. The coupon codes are manually added and not automatically aggregated like many other sites.
Mike: What drove you to launch the site?
Steve:There are 4 main reasons why I started the site:
1. As someone that does business on the Internet, I have registered hundreds of domain names over the years. Since I use these coupon codes myself, I wanted to create a database that I can refer to at any time.
2. There is no shortage of coupon codes online, but I noticed that many of them didn’t work or were expired. So that is why I created my own site.
3. To help people save money.
4. To make a little money on the side.
Mike: The site allows users to add coupon codes as well. Are you seeing much activity there, or do you add most of the codes on your own? Also, how reliable are the codes?
Steve: Most of the codes are added by me. I have no problem with user-submitted coupons, but most of them get deleted because they are not relevant to domain names. I want this site to be dedicated to domain promo codes only. It is called DNPromos for a reason. The codes are reliable for the most part, but it’s hard to keep it at 100% because we’re dealing with hundreds of codes. Whenever a coupon code has an expiration date, the coupon code deactivates when it hits the date.
Mike: I’m curious about monetization. I see you have some banner ads on the site which would rely heavily on traffic. The site appears to be fairly new. Are you achieving your traffic goals? Are you an affiliate of the registrars that are listed?
Steve: Honestly, the site does not make a lot of money. Like I said, my main motivation for creating this site wasn’t to make money, and I knew making a small percentage from a $1 domain sale wasn’t going to make me rich. I’m currently running some affiliate programs and have a couple of Adsense banners on the site.
As for traffic goals, I don’t really have one because again, the site isn’t motivated by money. Most of the traffic is from organic search rankings, so whatever it brings, is what I get. Of course I want to increase traffic, but I don’t spend too much time on SEO or marketing it.
Mike: What is your ultimate vision for DNPromos.com?
Steve: I hope DNPromos eventually becomes the go-to site for domain coupons and promo codes. It’s only about 2 years old, so it is far from having reached its potential. Hopefully, the site will grow through word-of-mouth, social media, and some link love.
