How can we realistically make this claim?  The answer is simple.  We are consistently beating our competitors.  Our competitors spend large sums of money year after year on advertising.  Instead, we invest wisely in Internet real estate (domain names) and waste zero dollars on advertising.  We've been heavily investing in Internet domains since 1998.

Has our approach been easy?  No.  But it has been very successful.  Even in the beginning, acquiring the highest quality domains was challenging.  As one of our first domains, we thought $50,000 was a premium price to pay for CameraLenses.com.  In 2010, it was appraised at over $500,000.  We own more than one hundred investment grade Internet domains.

We are still adding quality domains to our array.  However, just as in the children's game Monopoly, the longer the game runs, the tougher it is to add quality properties.  Today, we find ourselves owning more high quality camera gear websites than anyone else.  We've never invested in an Internet domain and regretted it.

In this Internet age, brick & mortar stores are much more challenged.  One competitor, Ritz Camera, closed 365 of their 740 stores in 2009 (Click here for details)  In comparison, our sales doubled more than three times in 2009.

Instead of attempting to sell every product line under one website, our business is subdivided into multiple websites, more like a shopping mall than an individual store.  CameraGear.com is the highest level and does give the customer access to every product we offer.  However, an example of a subdivision site is CameraFilters.com.  A deeper subdivision is SkyFilters.com.  We have found most customers appreciate this easy method of finding products.  And as equally important, re-finding products plus easy word of mouth advertising are benefits of our domain hierarchies.

Search engine ranking is very important for any business.  As the Internet population is now learning, matching search terms with exact domain names leads to high search engine rankings.  The top four search engines (Google - 73% market share, Yahoo - 15% market share, Bing - 9% market share, and Ask - 2% market share) all appear to value this approach of matching search terms with exact domain names.

A quick and easy way to verify search engine ranking is to simply use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google.  Clicking on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button with a specific search term directly takes you to the website with the #1 ranking.

We are currently listed #1 for the following search terms, (partial list). 

Our track record has proven that purchasing the plural generic domain name for a specific product is the most profitable method.  We only invest in .com domains.  Our domains do not have numbers, dashes, or unwanted words or letters.

Investing in the right domains and building quality websites has made the need to spend money for advertising obsolete.  The search engines do the advertising for us, at no cost to us.  Our advertising budget is zero.  With this business structure, our basic historical growth rate has been "Sales double every four months".  Our recipe for success is to simply have the right domain for the product, the lowest prices on the highest quality products, and great customer service.

Are we the only company that uses generic domain names?  No.  Click here to see a partial list of other generic domain names.

Once a domain is acquired, there is still a lot of work to develop it into a successful website.  To offer the best customer service, same day shipping is required.  The only way this can be achieved is by carrying an inventory.  And the inventory for each product line can run into millions of dollars very quickly. 

Here are a few milestones of our success to date: