Six Lessons Learned from Domain Pigeon’s First Six Weeks

This needs to be starred about taking all advice, ever, but particularly taking advice from people who are a) like you and b) unlike your customers. I always ask my forum buddies for opinions on new things (never turn down another set of eyes), but you have to take them with a grain of salt: at the end of the day, they're not the ones who pay you money.

A lot of folks had very strong words for my last redesign -- including at least one person who thought keeping the designer's name on it was akin to professional slander. My customers liked it, as evidenced by metrics(+).

Guess whose opinion matters?

+ Metrics: accurate, appropriate, and timely numbers which inform decisionmaking. Pick any two. Grumble grumble... but I do love them.

I am one of the demographic that initially used the site after either a HN or Cnet link (can't remember which one). I actually purchased a domain or two and made a mental note that I will use the site next time I am in the domain market, as I found it very useful.

For someone like me, I only look at domains once every few months at most. I just don't have an active appitite for purchasing - but when I do, it is a big priority. If you offered limited time access for a $5 a pop fee or something similar, I think you'd have a large audience (myself included).

I love how you're open about your numbers. How you (debatably) made mistakes, and how you recovered -- and how I remember when you launched DomainPigeon :)

Keep up the great work, and tell more stories.

Its easy to say. Its hard to do, particularly with dynamic sites. Google Website Optimizer is a halfway decent solution if you can get it to work. I hope to have another halfway decent solution available for Rails users sometime in the not-too-distant future, as I'm sort of fed up with the GWO "all tests incur 1.5~2 seconds of extra load time as we figure out what URL to redirect to, because that totally won't murder your conversions" problem.

Design can't slay the usability dragon alone. Well-said. I liked your article because you didn't even come close to saying 'X ways to succeed' but felt like you shared the highs and lows and mediums of startup.

Add a new section to your site that scans books or other sources, and constructs sentences made up of 5 words or so, and offer them as domains to be registered. Maybe that will work better. Example: "Itwasadarkandstormynight.com"

That is a tip that should be more written about. It currently exists in the “find your niche” form but it is wrong. People think “All I have to do is to find my niche then, everyone will use my product”. Instead of finding your niche, narrow down your audience.