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]

@phpbetter Linode

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

I’ve been building websites with Claude Opus 5.5, but a friend recommended trying Codex for better visuals, thanks to ChatGPT’s image generation.

My experience so far: even with GPT-6 Astra, Codex misses details that Opus usually catches. When translating sites, it sometimes skips passages or goes too far, translating language names in the language picker that should stay in their native languages.

But the visuals? Definitely better. I built several sites with it today, including a more polished https://t.co/fgkjoBnGC4 with a hand-drawn-style logo.

For websites that need more custom artwork, Codex is a great option. For coding accuracy and attention to detail, Claude Opus 5.5 is still comfortably ahead in my experience.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@LearnDomaining It is Three.JS

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

One guy. No coding or art background. Two days. A world full of monsters. 🐾

I just built https://t.co/75na4pdVPa, a game where you can raise your own monster, grow crops, craft items, explore, and battle.

The part that still feels a little unreal? I built it with AI tools helping me handle both the code and the art.

My workflow:
💻 Claude writes the code.
🎨 Codex generates the 2D art.
🧊 Those images go into an automated Blender workflow to create 3D models.

My job? Design the gameplay, decide how the systems fit together, and keep refining the UI until everything feels right.

And yes, “one more small UI change” has taken up a very large part of these two days. 😂

What makes this exciting to me is how quickly an idea can become something you can actually play. A creature you imagined becomes a pet on your screen. Then you give it a world to explore, things to grow, and enemies to fight.

There’s still plenty to improve and build, but seeing all these systems come together in just two days has been incredibly rewarding.

Come raise your own Monster Pet:
👉 https://t.co/75na4pdVPa

#GameDev #VibeCoding

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

Just got my first-ever in-game purchase! 🎉 A player from the US made the purchase. 🇺🇸

It was only $0.99, but seeing someone enjoy a game I built enough to spend money on it feels incredibly encouraging. A small start, but a meaningful one! I'll keep experimenting with in-game purchases and making the game better. 💪

Come give it a try! 🐾 MonsterPet blends elements of Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and Pokémon into a monster-raising adventure. Grow crops, decorate your home, and raise your monsters to explore and battle!

👉 https://t.co/75na4pdVPa

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

One guy. No coding or art background. Two days. A world full of monsters. 🐾

I just built https://t.co/75na4pdVPa, a game where you can raise your own monster, grow crops, craft items, explore, and battle.

The part that still feels a little unreal? I built it with AI tools helping me handle both the code and the art.

My workflow:
💻 Claude writes the code.
🎨 Codex generates the 2D art.
🧊 Those images go into an automated Blender workflow to create 3D models.

My job? Design the gameplay, decide how the systems fit together, and keep refining the UI until everything feels right.

And yes, “one more small UI change” has taken up a very large part of these two days. 😂

What makes this exciting to me is how quickly an idea can become something you can actually play. A creature you imagined becomes a pet on your screen. Then you give it a world to explore, things to grow, and enemies to fight.

There’s still plenty to improve and build, but seeing all these systems come together in just two days has been incredibly rewarding.

Come raise your own Monster Pet:
👉 https://t.co/75na4pdVPa

#GameDev #VibeCoding

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@umaireee95 The latter.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

Hello Türkiye! 🇹🇷 Just sold HelloTurkiye․com for $5,000!

Anyone here from Türkiye? Say hello in the comments! 👋

My domain sales have now passed $200,000 this year, already beating last year’s total! With more than two months left, I’m hoping to reach $300,000 and set a new personal record. 🤞

This month also came with a surprise. I received a $100,000 offer for a US geo .com domain and accepted it. But the buyer suddenly backed out, then came back with a new offer of just $40,000.

From $100K to $40K after I’d already said yes? That was an easy no. 🙂

You win some, you lose some. Still happy to celebrate this $5K sale!

@afternic @NameBio #DomainInvesting

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@maxitrol_404 No, the buyer came to me. I don’t advertise my domains.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@Lrex DotDB count and .com

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@BrexPodcast use dotDB

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@InvestmentBankg I host all my sites on Linode, and yes, you can host yours without any knowledge of server management.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@Syedmairaj4 Yes, you can definitely build great websites and services on these awesome domains using AI. :) I can’t wait to see your sites go live!

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@dignitydomains $10

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

I got 7 bookings in the past 9 hours, mostly from the 100 new sites I launched earlier this month.

Here’s a fun detail: one African destination has been bringing in more bookings than any of the others lately. I hand-registered its .com domain and built its site as part of that batch.

It’s a perfect example of the long tail. A destination doesn’t have to be world-famous to attract travelers. There are people looking for all kinds of places, and the internet makes it possible for them to discover destinations they might never have heard of otherwise.

Even in a far-flung corner of Africa, if there’s something worth visiting and people are traveling there, there’s an opportunity to connect them with the right local experiences.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

I launched around 100 new travel sites last week, all built on pure geo .com domains, and they’re already starting to bring in bookings. Today, I got three bookings within about an hour, two from the new sites, including https://t.co/dneUt2dbbb.

That’s not typical, though. Lately, I’ve been averaging one or two bookings a day. My favorite among the new sites is https://t.co/6M2VIsQE9t. Polar adventure trips can bring in a high commission per booking, but they’re niche, long-tail products, so bookings tend to be few and far between.

The idea behind these pure geo .com travel sites is to capture long-tail demand at scale. One or two sites might bring in only five to ten commissionable bookings a year, which wouldn’t amount to much. But with 100 sites? Or 500? That could add up to more than 1,000 bookings a year.

I now have 160 of these sites, and I’m still building.

My latest acquisition is PortGrimaud․com, named after Port Grimaud, a canal-side town in southern France known as the “Little Venice of Provence.” I’m planning to turn it into a travel site over the next few days.

If you own any .com domains that consist purely of a tourist destination name, with no extra words, feel free to let me know. I may be interested in buying. I generally only consider .coms with a dotDB EMD count of 10 or higher. 👉 https://t.co/MJyMJ80WmB

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@AgenticChris Haha, happy to share! It only cost me around $200 total in Claude and Codex (ChatGPT) subscriptions. Those tools helped me build the whole Monster Pet game! 😄

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@domhaul I have no idea about it, the GoDaddy broker didn't reveal anything.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@bornverse What a coincidence! 😀

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

Just acquired Aggregators․com.

Funny enough, much of my work and business over the past 10+ years has revolved around aggregators. I worked in digital marketing for an ecommerce price comparison site, then built my own projects, including a vertical search engine for real estate and sites aggregating everything from restaurants to plumbing services. For years, aggregator businesses were my main source of income.

The playbook was fairly straightforward: build large numbers of searchable pages targeting long-tail queries, like “[location] homes,” “[product name] prices,” or “Thai restaurants in Taipei.”

Each page might attract only a little traffic, but across thousands or millions of searches, it added up.

Between 2015 and 2020, this worked incredibly well for me. Combined with Google’s AdSense for Search ads, it honestly felt like a money-printing machine.

But as Google kept changing its algorithms, that model became less and less effective. In my experience, new sites could no longer launch and quickly pick up huge amounts of search traffic the way they once did. I eventually stepped away from the aggregator business entirely.

Of course, aggregation itself is still everywhere. Google News brings together news from publishers around the world. Indeed gathers job listings from company career pages and other sources into one searchable platform.

So, what should I build on Aggregators․com? I’m still figuring that out.

I asked AI, and it suggested a directory of aggregators. An aggregator of aggregators. 😂

It fits the name, but I feel there’s more potential here. Maybe a SaaS platform that brings multiple data sources and APIs together, making them easier to search, combine, and use?

I have the domain. Now I need an idea worth building on it.

What would you build on Aggregators․com? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@ishmilly https://t.co/KyMNGjeIWH

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@aqqbba Travelpayouts, GetYourGuide, Viator.

[Ken Lin @KenLin1985]

@domhaul Yes, I think so!