http://www.unicycle.com/

Unicycling enthusiast John Drummond, a technical writer at IBM, decided it might be fun to sell a few cycles over the Internet. Seven months after unicycle.com debuted in 1999, Drummond, of Marietta, Ga., was so overwhelmed by demand that he enlisted the help of his wife, Amy.

The pair soon sped sales up from $150,000 in 1999 to $900,000 this year. No, there wasn't an inexplicable uptick in the clown population. They attribute their success to a straightforward Internet domain name.

"Customers found us at the top of their Google searches," he says. So in 2003, when Drummond looked to profit from his other hobby, banjos, he naturally sought to pluck banjo.com. He had paid $4,200 for unicycle.com, but the owner of the banjo address wanted $150,000.

Drummond won't say how much he ultimately paid, but he's happy with the deal. Banjo.com pulled in $120,000 in sales in 2003 and is on track to reach $450,000 this year.

From Forbes Small Business Magazine

Domain Names for Dummies

