by bencornia
2 subcomments
- > The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta).
I feel the same way about personal projects and blogs. A good idea tends to be self-reinforcing. It just needs someone to uncover it. Selling onions on the internet seems unusual but to the right person that idea is gold.
- The internet was originally promised as a way to disintermediate these kinds of supply chains, yet we often ignore these "boring" businesses for hype trains. The fact that he added a phone number and it sometimes out-sells the website is the cherry on top.
by eightturn
8 subcomments
- author here : ) happy to answer questions if you have any. We also have a twitter account here if you want to follow along: https://x.com/vidaliaonions
by stephenlf
8 subcomments
- Absolutely insane way to start a business. “Let me blow 2 grand on a domain name. Not sure what it’s for, yet.”
by breadchris
1 subcomments
- This feels like a relevant wiki page to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
by Brajeshwar
1 subcomments
- This is one of those articles that pops up here once every few years, and I love it every time. I love these stories of low-hanging, boring businesses that succeed in simple, yet strange and satisfying ways.
And of course, this helps me continue, like many others, to go domain-first on ideas that sound good at interesting times. I have enough domains to be ashamed of in numbers, but I will continue to register more, as more ideas hit me in the shower and on my walks. My wife has seen me walk out of the shower halfway more often than not to check availability and register domains. I’ve also had my share of well-sold domain names, so I don’t regret my hobby/obsession.
- I love this post. I read it a few years ago and tried the same thing. I bought and then built riverreports.com (https://www.riverreports.com/).
- What a cool story. Not tech for tech's sake, but tech that grows into something simpler, more efficient, and more world-opening for something as wonderful as the Vidalia onion
by j-krieger
2 subcomments
- > but for kicks & giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid
Boy do I wish I could just drop 2k on a whim for a vanity project
by derektank
1 subcomments
- Peter appears to still be at it.[1] Very impressed by his commitment to the bit.
[1] https://xcancel.com/searchbound/status/1996247844080996549#m
by pinkmuffinere
0 subcomment
- There is also a follow up article: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/part-two-i-sell-onions-on-...
- > Some folks can eat them like an apple. Most of my customers do.
My grandfather and my cousin, who he pretty much raised were eating regular red or yellow onions like apples like that. I had never seen anyone else do that. They would make an onion "salad" which was just cut up onion with olive oil and salt.
by ohyoutravel
0 subcomment
- Got these many years back after having been posted here. Very happy with the purchase, but wouldn’t order again as my wife hated the smell. Highly recommended everyone order these at least once.
- I love the inversion of the usual startup narrative: domain first, idea second; purpose first, scale later (maybe never)
by reactordev
0 subcomment
- Sometimes you start a business. Sometimes a business starts you. Awesome that the author saw this as an opportunity and not a down side to owning a name he never really wanted to begin with.
Sometimes the right business just finds you and you’re at the right place at the right time to see it.
- I rabbitholed into that another essay of buying domain names. The author juggles ideas by domain name. I have one called Banadana Girl .in and I was like sell bandanas lol - gotta check now the TAM for bandanas in india with women as TM. Give me ideas folks. Do you know of a bandana expert?
by liteclient
0 subcomment
- I also recently bought liteclient.com just because it was available. Finally, decided to create a vs code extension around it; I don't even know how to make one but learnt so much in the past few weeks :)
by MagicMoonlight
0 subcomment
- This is the kind of thing I’d like to do. I have so many ideas, but I’m not sure how to actually make them happen.
How much money does it take to start something like this?
by pottertheotter
1 subcomments
- This crosses from quirky to unhinged:
During a phone order one season – 2018 I believe – a customer shared this story where he smuggled some Vidalias onto his vacation cruise ship, and during each meal, would instruct the server to ‘take this onion to the back, chop it up, and add it onto my salad ‘.
- > Them: We leverage automated machine learning to enhance your existing BI visualizations with more proactive insights
> Me: I sell onions on the internet
That's exactly how I feel about AI! Instead of all that useless nonsense, just keeping it real, doing something that's actually useful for individuals and for society.
by petterroea
0 subcomment
- If I could run a few services like this that just provide useful and predictable services to a community of people I'd be perfectly happy with my life
by jrecyclebin
3 subcomments
- Great advertising for vidalias. I simply have to try one now.
by robofanatic
0 subcomment
- I bought djangosquare.com with exactly the same thought a year ago and till today I haven’t done anything with it!
- I love this guy's marketing honest and compelling
- That's very interesting. My domain purchased in 2015, finally seems to make some meaning due to recent tech advacnes. Time to do something with it.
by rootusrootus
1 subcomments
- I love onions, but never tried a Vidalia. We have Walla Walla sweet onions out here and I suspect they’re pretty similar.
- (2019)
- Do people still buy domain names and build businesses around them?
by stevefan1999
0 subcomment
- okay, at first I thought you are selling Tor access or vanity hidden service domains as Tor stands for The Onion Router, but it turns out you are selling real onions
by Forgeties79
0 subcomment
- I love how I came into this thread going “it would be fun if this was actually about onions, but it is probably something about Tor” but was wrong!
by ninalanyon
0 subcomment
- That was wonderful.
- 233 points and 89 comments back in 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053044
- I wonder what this guy would think of what I'm doing with poop.net
by throwaway0x832
0 subcomment
- correction:
https://x.com/searchbound/status/1007015211486900229?ref_src...
- It's kind of funny this guy doesn't understand his own business.
It's not onions. It's lead generation.