Ken Lin

- Entrepreneur, Domain Investor ( Developer ( & Wanderlust → See My

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

Excited to share my first public interview in over 20 years in the domain industry! 🙏 Huge thanks to Bob Hawks (@AGreatDomain) for the detailed article about my journey and the story behind dotDB. If you're curious, feel free to read and share!

https://t.co/UdhhmcSLKb

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@SkShahriarRobin Thank you! 🥰

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

A few days ago, I posted that I had just acquired https://t.co/JzE0qQf3ih…

…and that my brain immediately started building the whole product before the domain even finished transferring. 😂

Well, this time the dangerous part of domain investing became real.

LowGI is now live. 🚀👉 https://t.co/JzE0qQf3ih

It’s a web app that lets you take a photo of your meal, or upload a food image, and AI will help estimate:

📸 Food recognition
📊 GI value
⚖️ Glycemic Load
🍚 Carb estimate
📈 Meal history & daily tracking
💡 Smarter food suggestions

No registration is required to try it.
Just open the homepage, tap the photo area, take or upload a meal photo, and get a detailed GI / GL analysis instantly.

The idea came from something very personal.
My father has been carefully controlling his blood sugar for years, and I often hear my parents talk about “low GI foods.”

That made me realize:
Most food-tracking apps are built around calories.
But for many people — especially those managing blood sugar, diabetes risk, metabolic health, or just trying to eat smarter — GI and GL may be even more meaningful than calories alone.

Cal AI showed how powerful photo-based food analysis can be for calorie tracking.

I wanted to explore a different angle:

Instead of “How many calories is this?”

LowGI․com asks:
“How might this meal affect your blood sugar?”

The target users may not only be fitness-focused young people.

They might be our parents.
People with diabetes risk.
People trying to manage blood sugar.
People who simply want to understand their food better.

That is why I tried to make LowGI as simple as possible:

Take a photo.
Get the analysis.
Understand the impact.

So far, I’ve independently built around 30 websites.

Together, they now make a little over $1,000/month through ad placements and affiliate programs.

Not bad… but I’m still building new sites at the speed of several projects per month, and honestly, that income is not enough to cover my AI token bills yet.

My AI usage alone went over $3,000 USD in the past month.

Ouch. 😂

But I believe if I keep building, testing, and launching, one day I’ll create something people truly love and use at a much larger scale.

Maybe not quite @levelsio or @marclou yet…
…but I’m trying to learn from that spirit:

Build fast.
Launch often.
Keep improving.

Maybe LowGI will be one of those small bets that turns into something much bigger.

Would love for you to try it and tell me what you think:
👉 https://t.co/JzE0qQf3ih

#BloodSugar #LowGI #HealthyEating #DomainDrivenDevelopment

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@Tanvir_Rahmann I didn’t know about Cal AI until I saw your reply. Thanks for the information! It’s really interesting. I’ll try my best to follow the Cal AI model, but with a GI-focused version instead of a calorie-focused one.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

Just acquired the domain LowGI․com.

My brain immediately started building the whole product before the domain even finished transferring. 😂

LowGI․com instantly makes me think of an AI-powered app where you take a photo of your meal, and it helps estimate the GI value, log your diet, and suggest better food choices.

Basically:

📸 Take food photo
🤖 AI recognizes the meal
📊 Estimate GI value
🥗 Track eating habits
💡 Suggest smarter meals

Now I need to dive into how far AI image recognition can go with food detection and GI estimation.

This is the dangerous part of domain investing.
Sometimes you don’t just buy a domain.
You accidentally buy yourself another project. 😅

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@LaurentVaissade I’m not sure if the term is commonly known, but I’m very familiar with GI because my father has to strictly control his blood sugar. I often heard him and my mother talk about “low GI food”.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@KaderBouargoub Are you from Romania? https://t.co/tJGEO6Lncl looks nice, I own Turda .com btw.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

After selling CapeOtway․com, I reinvested part of the proceeds in two more pure geo .com domains: Belagavi․com and Ahilyanagar․com.

Cape Otway has only 34 residents. Belagavi and Ahilyanagar are Indian cities and districts with a combined population of over 10 million.

Sounds like a pretty good population swap. :)

Why these two?

Besides the fact that I have always been bullish on the Indian market, each of these two domains has its own compelling reason behind the acquisition.

I recently turned down a $38,000 offer through DomainAgents for another Indian city .com, even though that city has a smaller population than Belagavi. That gave me confidence that Belagavi․com has strong potential too.

As for Ahilyanagar․com, it is the new official name of Ahmednagar. According to NameBio, Ahmednagar․com sold for $900 earlier this year, and I acquired Ahilyanagar․com for less than that.

If the old city name is worth $900, I believe the new official name in .com should be worth even more. And I’m perfectly happy to wait 10 years for the right buyer. 😎

#DataWiseInvesting #GeoDomains #dotDB

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@duudcom @timmurphyau I recall that I also own the domain name for a small suburb in Melbourne: https://t.co/SThw7vvekv.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

I love Australia! 🇦🇺

I just sold CapeOtway․com for $4,000.

Apparently, Cape Otway is a cape in Australia. My Aussie friend @duudcom told me it is a tiny place with only around 34 residents. Not exactly the kind of location you would expect to generate a nice four-figure domain sale!

What makes it even more interesting is that, according to dotDB, CapeOtway․ai was registered just this month. Perhaps the buyer of the .com is also behind the .ai registration? => https://t.co/yIJ2JjAjwv

I honestly cannot imagine what a quiet Australian cape has to do with artificial intelligence. Maybe an AI-powered lighthouse? A chatbot for penguins? Whatever the plan is, I hope the buyer puts the name to great use.

This is not my first Australian geo domain sale either. In 2021, I sold ShellyBeach․com for $2,500. Shelly Beach is near Sydney, while Cape Otway appears to be closer to Melbourne.

Next time I visit Australia, I may need to make a little pilgrimage to Cape Otway, enjoy the scenery, and personally thank this tiny cape for bringing me a very nice sale. 😂

@afternic @NameBio

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@timmurphyau @duudcom Thanks for the Aussie insight! Now I really need to visit Cape Otway and drive the Great Ocean Road someday. 😂

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@alashik143 @duudcom I never do outbound.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@LaurentVaissade https://t.co/S3u8RNWOU9

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@TLDInvestors I own Masturbators .com lol

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

It feels like a real shame that the community of 50,000 players was not carried forward in some form. Even if the site was not highly profitable at the time, a gaming community of that size would probably have meaningful advertising revenue potential today if it were rebuilt and operated efficiently.

If I were you, I would seriously consider rebuilding https://t.co/HYXK9c6vtx as a modern casual gaming platform, using current web technology instead of Flash, and treating advertising monetization as the starting business model. The name is short, memorable, and flexible enough to grow into a broader gaming brand over time.
You may also want to look into the story behind https://t.co/JRdem0HVe1 and its founder. I think it is a very interesting reference case for how a simple browser game site can grow into a meaningful and sustainable business.

Having built https://t.co/YcL09zeSUv myself, I have come to believe that strong, memorable domains combined with simple games and a real player community can still be very powerful today.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@jn Thanks for sharing. I hate it when big corporations treat small affiliates this way, especially those who are genuinely trying to promote something meaningful.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

Just acquired two more exact-match .com domains, both tied to real product categories and established industries.

For domains like these, my original idea was to monetize them through Amazon Associates by promoting relevant products.

I initially applied for Amazon Associates only to promote books and eBooks on https://t.co/0biET7860m. It did generate a few sales, but before the commissions even reached the payout threshold, Amazon closed my account because I had not generated enough qualifying sales within the required period. The commissions were voided as well.

I had actually been planning to expand this model to more product-focused domains, so the closure was quite disappointing.

Does anyone have experience with good alternatives to Amazon Associates?

I’m looking for an affiliate platform with a broad selection of relevant products and solid conversion rates that could work well for monetizing product-focused domain names.

#DomainDrivenDevelopment #AffiliateMarketing #eCommerce

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@olivermbs I own some best .to domains such as https://t.co/AjjhIH2dqh

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

About a month ago, I launched a new website on an exact-match keyword .com domain.

No backlinks.
No promotion.
No social campaign.
No paid ads.

I simply built the site, submitted it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and waited.

One month later, the difference is huge.
On Bing, the site is already getting around 5,000 impressions per day and more than 100 clicks on some days.

On Google, the same site is still getting only around 5 impressions per day, with less than one click per day on average.

This is not the first time I have seen this pattern.

From several sites I’ve built recently, Bing seems to respond much faster to exact-match domains, especially when the domain clearly matches the search intent.

Google, on the other hand, feels much slower. It often takes months before the site gradually receives more impressions and better rankings.

For some of my sites, Bing is already sending thousands of clicks per day, while Google is still slowly warming up.

Bing may be smaller, but if you can win there early, it can be a very helpful early boost for a new site.

Sometimes the fastest opportunity is not where everyone is looking.

#DomainDrivenDevelopment #ExactMatchDomains

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

Just acquired Mangala․com.

This is exactly the kind of domain name I love.

In Sanskrit and Indian contexts, Mangala can mean something auspicious, and it is also associated with Mars.

But in Turkish, Mangala is also the name of a traditional strategy board game in the Mancala family.

One word.
Multiple cultures.
Completely different meanings.
One powerful .com domain.

I have always been fascinated by domains like this.
I own Seine․com, which is the famous river flowing through Paris, while “seine” is also an English word for a fishing net.

I also own Muscat․com, which is the capital of Oman, while Muscat is also a famous sweet and aromatic grape variety.

With domains that have multiple meanings, choosing the right development direction can sometimes be difficult.

But with Mangala․com, the direction feels clear.

I plan to build it into an online game based on the rules of Turkish Mangala, with multiple language versions, and see whether it can become a game enjoyed by players around the world.

Maybe this will become my next https://t.co/YcL09zeSUv experiment.

And here is another reason I love this kind of project:

According to dotDB, “Mangala” is already registered in 52 extensions.

That means even if the development experiment does not work out as planned, the domain itself already has meaningful underlying value.

That is the beauty of Domain-Driven Development.

You start with a strong domain.
You build something real on it.
If it succeeds, you may create a valuable business.
If it fails, you still own a valuable digital asset.

Are there any other interesting meanings of “Mangala” that I missed?

Feel free to share!

#domains #domainnames #indiedev #gamedev

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@fulcrumtheory Thanks for sharing! This is exactly what I‘ve observed too.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@NewMediumCo Linode + Cloudflare(They offer free SSL certificates)