Today’s “Female Friday” interview focuses on web developer and domainer, Tia Wood.
Tia shared with us her experience with rebranding her business to Vabera, moving to a new office location, and more.
The Vabera office.
DomainGang: How did you come up with your new business, Vabera?
Tia Wood: “My new business name is a tribute to my daughter. She’s thirteen years old and so creative when it comes to writing and drawing. She came up with a character called the Codvambera (we own the .com. She will be publishing her artwork there). When I as looking to rebrand myself as a web developer from my name to a business I wanted a name that meant something to me so I came up with that name based off her character, the Codvambera.
I probably broke the business branding rules because the name itself doesn’t mean anything but it’s short, memorable and the dot com was available. I figured other companies can brand names that essentially don’t mean anything then why can’t I? I’m not afraid to go against the grain and bend a few rules.”
What was your motivation behind your move to an office location, and how has the experience been so far?
Tia: “I’ve been working from home since the start of my development career back in 2000. It was a great way to be with my daughter while she grew up. However, there comes a point where work seems inescapable and for me, cabin fever set in. After so many years, home was no longer my sanctuary. Downtime and work time started to blend together.I weighed the options carefully before making that move and ultimately I decided, especially for my own sanity, that it was time to make the move. It was time to grow from being just a freelancer to growing a business. I needed a space to do that and home just felt so stifling. I wanted a professional setting for clients and a place dedicated to the business side of my life.
It’s been four months since I made that move and I don’t regret it a bit. It’s opened up a lot of opportunities professionally and personally. My daughter gets to come to work with me. She has her own office. I’m so proud to give her that. I want her to be an entrepreneur so I encourage her to follow her own natural talents. I get to meet random people and experience Florida wildlife, something I would have never done working from home.”
Did you consider sharing offices with another company?
Tia: “I researched every scenario I could think of before getting my own office. My town isn’t small, it has 30,000 people but it’s not well developed either. We are sandwiched between Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando so all the focus is there for business and tourism. There just isn’t a lot of opportunity for single entrepreneurs as far as office space.”
Please share your thoughts about the new Internet name space, the gTLDs.
Tia: “I’m still on the fence. I did buy two; toy.clothing and ugly.sexy. ugly.sexy was bought as a joke. I know most people would go after adult related keywords but I wanted something that wasn’t intended for the extension. It’s going to be a nice experiment developing that one out.
Overall I feel the new gTLDs is going to be a hard sell to regular users and how those users accept these domains is all that matters to me. Without those eyeballs there will be no end users to buy domains. My only plans are to sit back and see what happens and maybe do a few development experiments. It’s not that I want these to fail. I am just cautious at this point.”
What do you anticipate for the future of the domain industry, and that of web development?
Tia: “I see most domain investors realizing that it’s not so easy to turn a profit developing their names anymore, not like it used to be ten years ago. This is a different kind of internet with new technology, new search rules and just about every search engine on to our old tactics. Unfortunately, I still see domainers today who develop their domains using those old tactics.You can’t build a pseudo businesses on top of your domains, let it sit for years and wonder why the traffic and revenue never come.
You have to nurture it just like a real business. It’s time consuming. It’s expensive. But the payoffs are huge. Do your research, take your top few domains and build those out. Don’t aim to build every name in your portfolio especially if it fractions your time away from worthwhile projects.”
Many thanks, Tia, for this informative interview. Looking forward to finding more exciting developments in the future, from Vabera.com.
This post is 100% true!
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Great interview!
And congrats to Tia for her bold new move.
🙂
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Thank you, Ms Domainer!
I luv the name and the progress. Good luck, Tia.
Thank you! I appreciate it. 🙂