Pine Needle Lawn

LakePlace.com is an ever evolving business. Over the years we have been able to establish ourselves as THE leading web portal for Minnesota lake homes as well as cabin rentals and resorts (Wisconsin, too!). We have experimented with several business models in a quest to build something substantial and scalable.

Recently we launched several “mini-sites” to enhance our online presence. For example, our Brainerd Real Estate mini-site features a lot of great articles about the Brainerd Lakes region. Our Hayward Real Estate mini-site features several articles about the Hayward Lakes area. We plan on building these mini-sites out in the near future and expect them to contribute greatly to our overall strategy.

2010 is shaping up to be our most exciting year since we launched. We really feel like we have built a foundation out of massive granite stones – and it’s time to bring in the framers.

My business partner Cameron and I have been buying up domain names for many years – we own a lot of them. We have always looked at them as cheap real estate…and if you sit and wait, you will eventually see a return on the tiny investment.

Over the years we have sold several domain names at a dollar amount that has probably covered the costs of all of them. We have even turned down some pretty big offers on a couple of our best domains…with the assumption that they will continue to rise in value…and if they don’t – oh well, not a huge deal.

Recently, we leased a cheap server for 3 years so we could launch some of these domain names as websites – this means potential buyers would achieve additional value if they decide to purchase one of them. We launched a Hayward Resorts website, a Brainerd Resort website, Lake Superior resort website, the Lake Vermilion Realty website (actually, this one is not for sale), the MN Fishing Report forums and several others.

All of these sites were built in just a few minutes using an open-source software package called Wordpress. It is the same software we use to run the PineNeedleLawn. The beauty of Wordpress is that there are thousands and thousands of developers out there building addons and themes which allow you to extend the software…and most of these addons (called plugins) and themes are free! If you have a little bit of programming knowledge, you can take what is available, hack it up a little, and make it perfect for your application.

Again, the sites above are very simple examples of what can be done in minutes. Just think about what you can do if you take some time. Visit Wordpress.com for more information on the software.

I have been out of competitive sports for a long time – for me, business filled the gap…and the major search engines are my favorite place to compete with the big guys. Our newest website – LandBin.com – is starting to make its way up the first page of the major engines for Minnesota land for sale as well as Wisconsin land for sale. We are competing against websites that have raised millions in venture capital and they take their search results seriously. It has taken more than a year to climb towards the top of this category and the last little bit is going to be the hardest. If you do a search for any terms related to lake homes in our markets – you will get an idea of where we plan on ending up. We will see you at the top.