Warren Royal
Bobbleheads.com & Shreveport.com

Like many other successful people in this business, Royal (a guy who registered his first domain name way back in 1993) found that domains were the perfect platform for staging a comeback after disaster struck in another field. In fact he had to rise from the ashes left by the biggest economic disaster of the past half century - the subprime mortgage meltdown that decimated countless financial institutions including the ones he worked for.

To understand the attributes that enable entrepreneurs who have been knocked down to get back up, dust themselves off and create a successful new venture, it helps to know what forces shaped them, their values and their outlook on life. Royal's story starts in Camilla, Georgia, a small town of 5,000 people in the southern part of the Peach State. He was the oldest of five children who all arrived within a ten year span, forcing him to learn how to compete almost before learning how to walk!

His parents were both small business owners, so his entrepreneurial instincts were instilled at an early age. Likewise for the social skills everyone who has met him is impressed by today. His entire family; siblings, parents and grandparents were active in their community, taking leadership roles in everything from Boy Scouts to school to church life. His dad, 

Warren's dad - Richard Royal

"Growing up in Camilla had a tremendous influence on my life," Royal said. "Camilla provided me the best things that life in a small town can offer a boy – exploring train trestles, fishing, swimming in a lake, drive-in movies, building forts, Sunday School, Boy Scouts, model rockets, BB Guns, and Sunday dinner with all my grandparents."  

Cover of Camilla, a pictorial history 
written by Warren Royal and Diane Dixon

"I had absolutely no appreciation for the special gift I was given until many years later, when I had moved away to the big city of Atlanta. One day in adulthood I began to look back and realize how special that place had been.  I began to really appreciate Camilla - the family and friends, and the small-town community atmosphere that I had experienced growing up."

"So I decided last year, for Camilla's sesquicentennial (150-year anniversary),  to join my mother (Diane Dixon) in writing a book about the town. Earlier this year we were proud to publish a comprehensive pictorial history of the town, to “give back” to the community. The book, Camilla, is now available on Amazon and in local bookstores in south Georgia."

"The book also will give me another vehicle to support a cause that is close to my heart – all of my royalties are being donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). My 15-year-old son Jacob was diagnosed at the age of 7 with Juvenile Diabetes, and since that time we have been ardent supporters of this great charity," Royal said.

Warren Royal & his mother Diane Dixon

"After a few years, a large consulting firm came to BancBoston and wanted to increase the company’s competitive edge by dramatically decreasing the average time required to approve a loan.  Other large lenders like CitiBank had introduced 24-hour mortgage approvals while it was taking BancBoston 60 days to do it. We determined that we needed to develop new dialup technologies, which would allow loan officers to transmit loan file data from the field into the home office." 

"So the company was looking for department “power users” who really understood the business, but who also had a knack for technology. Because of the work that I had done with my custom systems I was selected to head up this project. Within 60 days, we had successfully implemented a PC/LAN-based system which utilized BBS technologies to receive loan data from remote laptops and route it through various departments until it was eventually pushed into the mainframe. This project allowed us to successfully roll out a 24-hour loan approval program and from that point forward, I worked in technology," Royal said.  

"Around 1990 I created and managed a large Bulletin Board System (BBS) as a hobby. I ran it from my basement and 

"I’ve gone back and forth between the internet industry and corporate America. I managed the Internet practice for a top consulting firm, and worked on and managed large IT projects for a number of top Fortune 500 companies. In 2002, I decided to get back into the mortgage industry and was the Chief Technology Officer for a leading subprime mortgage lender in Atlanta. In that role I was responsible for a staff of 35 employees, including developers, project managers, business analysts, help desk and network operations," Royal recalled.  "But In 2007, as everyone now knows, the subprime industry imploded and almost all of the companies operating in that segment disappeared overnight – including the ones I had been working for."

When disaster struck, Royal's thoughts soon returned to domains. "I began registering domains seriously back when I started the ISP, for web development projects," Royal said. "In 1995, I hand-registered CY.com and the ISP used it to provide email and web services. At that time, I remember looking through many 2-letter domains and found that about half of the ones I looked up were still available! Unfortunately, though I was engaged very early, I didn’t understand the value of generics in their own right, but rather I acquired names which could be good for development or branding.  I didn’t understand the value of targeted traffic at that time the way that others did and really missed out on some great opportunities there."

    Warren Royal & Steven Kennedy
at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York - Sept. 2008

"A couple of years before that, in 1998, I had become very active and successful in acquiring a large number of quality generic names through domain drops. I developed some proprietary automated technology that allowed me to monitor and “catch” dropping domains. During this period, I obtained dropped names like Hologram.com, Selma.com, Honk.com, Procurement.com and others.  But I did not do so because of parking potential or resale opportunity – I obtained them because I had at least an inkling of an idea as to how they could be developed to serve a specific purpose," Royal noted. "Most of my success in this space has been derived from website development, not from parking or buying and selling. Over the years I have developed many websites and communities in several different vertical markets."  

"Between 2002 and 2007, I was heavily focused on managing corporate IT initiatives and had pretty much “checked out” with regard to my domain portfolio. However I sustained my portfolio, sold a few names, parked many of them, and still managed some community sites which I 

"For my first major projects, I decided to focus on names which had a very straightforward, easily understood business model.  I have a lot of domains which could be used for complex business ideas (like Procurement.com), but for my first large projects I wanted to start out with sites which were much more easily understandable and obvious – like domain names representing popular common products (for a web store)  and geo domains."  

"I began to attend some of the top domain shows, met many of the industry leaders, and attended some auctions and soon began to see opportunities for great domains which would fit perfectly into my plans. I purchased Bobbleheads.com (and its twin brother Bobblehead.com) at auction and bought Shreveport.com from Rick Latona. Since then, I’ve bought many more smaller ones which have these same qualities and potential, and have sold other names to finance these purchases," Royal explained.

"Over the years, I have been fortunate to have developed some experience and skills that have been invaluable to me in this industry. My business and finance  

Rick Schwartz with a Domain King 
bobblehead doll that Royal produced  
and handed out at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 
New York conference in September

"Shreveport.com is fully developed and launched, but our marketing is still getting off the ground. I have a great local guy, Tom Pace, who has been a leader in the media there for about 30 years, and he is helping me with marketing and content.  We are very pleased with the site, and with the response that we are starting to receive," Royal said.  

"We really hit the ground running with Bobbleheads.com. Since I am using a great CMS (content management system) for the core of the site, and I found some great shopping cart software, I was able to get the site up very quickly, while doing nearly all of the work myself."

"I began making sales immediately, and sales have absolutely exploded since the election and Christmas seasons began. I have tried to keep things as simple and cost-effective as possible, but, as of this week it has outgrown my ability to run it 

• Get the best domain name that you can afford. Your domain should communicate your product or service very clearly and easily, and should be readily identifiable as being associated with your exact product or service.  And having a great, memorable name will give you instant credibility. For example, when I am in Shreveport, I have an immediate credibility advantage over competitors with the domain Shreveport.com. 

• Keep it simple. Complicated, convoluted business models might work, but are much more difficult to set up and sell to customers, vendors, and business partners. When I mention Bobbleheads.com, people know exactly what to expect to see there. And it’s easy to understand – everyone “gets it”.

• Stick with .COM – if you go with anything else, much of your work may be for naught, as your efforts will drive traffic to the .COM version of your name, because that’s the extension that your customers will remember – or think they remember.

• If you can’t afford a category-killer domain for a large geo or product category (they are expensive!), look for a name which could be a good niche directory. For example, I bought JobShops.com last year very inexpensively (4 figures), and I love this name. There is a tremendous opportunity for a paid membership directory site for owners of job shops. This could be a substantial business which generates significant listing and advertising revenue.  And there is some great directory software available to make these easy to set up and manage.  If that’s not your thing, you can also buy good geo names for smaller communities, and these can be very successful with great content and direct business marketing.

With that Royal was back off to deal with the final days of the Christmas rush at Bobbleheads.com. In the outside world PPC revenue may keep right on sinking, but it won't make a hill of beans difference in the Royal household. He has put in a lot of work to get where he is today - but now he is the one in control. It is a wonderful place to be - a place you can get to as well if you are ready put on your gloves and hard hat and start developing!