2020 has already presented our team with a few opportunities to help individuals launch their side projects online. In January we announced the addition of five new TLDs coming to our portfolio later this year. These new extensions will provide platforms for beauty industry professionals and knowledgeable experts to brand their projects using domain names that match their passion. In February, our .Cars, .Car, and .Auto team attended the NADA Expo with our partner Rackspace and shared how .Cars domains can help automotive businesses launch new projects with better-branded URLs. We also sponsored six hackathon events in three different countries, providing .xyz domain names for participants and giving them a platform to present their projects to potential users around the world.
We know that a website is key to sharing your project with a global audience, which is why this year’s XYZ Quarterly theme is Creating Your Ultimate .XYZ Website. Each quarter we will provide you with tips on how to build a .xyz website that serves as the perfect platform for your specific idea. To kick things off, this quarter we’ll be showing you how to turn your hobby, side hustle, or passion project into your ultimate .xyz website.
Personal hobbies and passion projects are among the biggest sources of excitement, joy, and fulfillment in life. They introduce us to people who become lifelong friends, guide us into communities that become foundations in our lives, push us to grow personally by stepping outside our comfort zone, and whisk us away to the most amazing places.
A project, hobby, or side business that you care about deserves its own home online via a dedicated website. In this article, we’ll help you get started with advice on how to build the ultimate .xyz website and share examples of .xyz users who have created inspiring websites around their passions.
Sharing your expertise on an industry or hobby that you care about is a great way to pass your experience on to others. It can help members of your community get a strong start on their journey, and create a greater sense of personal satisfaction from your work. Whether you’re an expert in navigating 18th-century literature, making homemade kombucha, or planting a balcony garden, there’s most certainly an audience that can benefit from your tips and experience. When you use your website to share what you know, it gives you the freedom to publish many types of content while documenting the information, findings, and discoveries you’ve amassed throughout your years of experience. You can start a blog and share your writings through social media and newsletters, or embed video content dispensing your advice.
Liucid.xyz is an example of this kind of information hub. Red Dot Design Award winner Annie Liu created blog on her site with posts about her experience mapping a career in design, tutorials on illustration tools, and new design techniques for her readers to use in their work. She connects updates from her social media feeds on Liucid.xyz as well, making the site a one-stop hub for readers to find her tips and insights.
While Liucid.xyz has grown into Annie’s multifaceted educational tool for the design community, your information hub site could take any form you like. However you choose to build it, your .xyz site is equipped to grow along with your knowledge and the community you share it with.
Building a website dedicated to your creative endeavors gives you a platform to share your point of view with the world. Your website is a perfect place to share the things you make in your free time; whether that’s telling your short stories, showcasing watercolor pictures you’ve painted, or displaying your carefully curated collection of comics. Since your website can look like, feel like, and say anything you want, you also have the freedom to mold it in your image while displaying your unique style and personality.
Create pages dedicated to each of the things you can’t live without, and tell stories about your personal experiences. Generate a following by documenting your daily habits as they relate to your passions, and you could soon find yourself gathering influence in that community.
Katie Novack is a blogger and self-proclaimed lover of exploration who documents her creative journey on her website TheWonderList.xyz. Katie uses her personal website to share her experiences and recommendations on travel destinations, health and beauty, and food and drinks. The name TheWonderList.xyz itself comes from Katie’s wonderment about the world. As she explains, “I created The Wonder List because I have a strong passion for learning about the world and I am always ‘Wondering’ where my journey will take me next! I love sharing everything from fashion tips to my global diary and all in between. I chose a .xyz domain because I think it’s part of a new movement of entrepreneurs and companies who want to go in a different direction than the norm. It’s part of the reason why The Wonder List is so unique. A new outlook on the world through the lens of XYZ.”
The lists, reviews, stories, and experiences Katie shares on TheWonderList.xyz give her readers the same knowledge she’s gained. By sharing her journey to find the wonders in life, Katie has developed an engaged following on her site.
Turning your own creative pursuit into a website is a great way to get your work noticed and appreciated.
If you are someone who tends to work on many small projects, give them the proper recognition they deserve by putting them on your website. Your website is the perfect place to aggregate all your creative pursuits and showcase them in one place. By creating pages for each project and sharing your inspiration behind them, you can also become an inspiration to countless others like yourself. Keep in mind that the more you share your projects and work, the greater the chance someone will see it and potentially pay you for that work.
Video game journalist Andy Kelly uses his website UltraBrilliant.xyz as a home for his humorous, interesting, and sometimes bizarre internet creations. Andy’s creative output on UltraBrilliant.xyz includes his award-winning short film series, Other Places and an interactive science fiction story he wrote, and also showcases multiple popular Twitter accounts he’s created like @DarkStockPhotos and the Louis Theroux bot.
As a creative, Andy always has some kind of project going on outside his daily job. He uses his .xyz site to promote these projects to a larger audience, and in turn, gives his creations the recognition they deserve.
Using your site as an extra-powerful online journal to chronicle life events can help you get more fulfillment from the experience. If you are embarking on a personal transformation, you can share progress updates and track your journey. If you are taking a physical trip, you can provide updates along the way and impart the lessons you learn through your site. If you’re learning a new language or skill, document your progress so that others can look at your experience when they start down the same path.
The Colebrook family uses their .xyz site BigBlueDot.xyz in precisely this way. They visited 21 countries over an 18-month journey and shared photos and updates on their site. Followers of the Colebrook’s travels could track them via the site, and even witnessed the three Colebrook children’s first experience in making their own web pages. Now that the trip has ended, the site serves as a detailed digital scrapbook for the family and their supporters to revisit, so they can always keep the memories of that experience close to them.
Creating BigBlueDot.xyz helped the Colebrook family document their trip and provided an educational experience for their children. Sharing you or your family’s journey online can help increase your enjoyment of it while serving as an inspiration guide for others.
Competitions can unite avid fans of a particular industry or practice in a way that advances the entire medium forward. On your own website, you can create open competitions whose entries could introduce you to new ways of thinking and improving your current methods. Competitions encourage the sharing of information while also motivating entrants to think outside the box to have their submission stand out from the crowd. Whether you need a logo for your business, a new way to improve your product, or simply want to see what kind of interesting inventions could lie in our future, using a competition website gives you a direct way to solicit those ideas from many different sources.
Architecture competition website Uni.xyz presents design-related problems to designers and architects around the world. These problems range from globally impactful challenges like re-developing prisons for maximized rehabilitation, to dreaming up the most exciting interactive performance venue. The nature of the competitions invites creativity by asking entrants to wrap their heads around massive challenges.
Hosting online competitions can generate inspiration and new ideas in your community. A competition website can be a valuable tool for pushing a medium forward.
If you find that your homemade products or personal skills are in high demand with your friends and family , you may be able to grow that into a personal business via your website. Many small businesses today are born this way. Creating a website for your brand not only increases awareness, but gives you a platform to promote your products and services that you fully control. You might try setting up a company store to list your offerings and give a detailed description of what makes your business different from the competition.
Utah dad Chris Blair found his niche when he lost nearly 60 pounds by following a ketogenic (or “keto”) diet. During his diet, he created a custom protein shake mix that contained the necessary nutrients to power him through his day and later shared his recipe online to much acclaim. Recognizing the potential of his creation, Chris got to work building a presence for his brand online at KetoChow.xyz. He grew the business through his site’s online store, and began expanding his product offerings by adding new drink mix flavors. The side hustle became so successful for Chris that he’s turned it into his full-time gig and the family business.
Your side business could get a massive boost from having its own well-built website, just like KetoChow.xyz did for Chris. Either way, listing your goods and services online makes it available to a worldwide audience.
If you have an idea you are passionate about pursuing, whether it be a personal journey, a side business, a new app, or founding an entire community, one of the most powerful ways to reach your goal is making a website for it. Your website gives you the freedom to fully express yourself beyond the limits of social media, provides you with a creative outlet, and serves as a home on which to build your network.
If you’d like to stay updated on XYZ’s outreach efforts and receive the new quarterly right to your inbox, be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates and news.
Yours.xyz – Alibaba customer (China)
Food delivery has become a staple of the new normal. Thanks to autonomous delivery robots like the ones from Starship.xyz, customers in select U.S. college campuses and European Union countries can get their groceries and food delivered without having to worry about interacting with a person at all. Thanks to their popularity and helpfulness, these self-driving delivery robots are starting to make their way into new markets. Customers looking to safely order food and other goods in China while isolating can try this service for themselves with this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, Yours.xyz.
Yours.xyz is a Beijing-based tech company that builds and produces the first and only team of self-driving delivery vehicles in China. The Yours.xyz team says they use a mix of advanced technologies, hardware research and development, and a customer-focused business operations strategy to create the delivery robots. The company’s goal is to compete with other unmanned delivery vehicles already in use in other countries.
The design of Yours.xyz’s vehicle is an important part of their business model. Yours.xyz highlights the compact and “cute” design of their robots as a key step in getting customers to use them to make purchases. Yours.xyz also points out that each vehicle is lightweight, compact, and built to be self-sufficient. The company claims each robot can cover a distance of up to 1 kilometer on its own, while also scaling curbs and navigating crowded public squares. Yours.xyz programs each vehicle to complete sales to customers independently by circulating along a set route and solicits customers while it roams. Customers can purchase products from the Yours.xyz vehicle and pay with it as well.
Getting around the outside world is a primary challenge for delivery robots. To pass this test, Yours.xyz builds each vehicle with slip-free tires. Their website explains the goal of this design is to prepare the robots to cruise down flat roads while also being ready to transition to climbing up steps, slopes, and other tough terrain. Yours.xyz says the shell of each vehicle can withstand rain and other bad weather, as well. Their site also features a video showing that each vehicle has a “self-driving brain” which contains its anti-collision safety devices and environment recognition tools.
Yours.xyz’s CEO, Lin Peisen, founded the company after accumulating years of technology and operations experience. He has specific interests in artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and seeing the future of the “unmanned economy,” and the Yours.xyz robots are at the intersection of all three. Lin’s intention for Yours.xyz is to create a new retail system that uses technological innovation to solve the cost problems of the current retail industry.
The company has continued to grow since its recent launch in 2018, and Lin says they have secured more than 300 orders for their robots already. He expects the company to deploy more than 1,000 of its machines in 2020. Yours.xyz has also worked with fast-moving Chinese consumer brands like Nongfu Spring and Master Kong, and launched logistics platforms in Japan and South Korea in the hope of future expansion into these markets.
The next great ideas in tech come from creative minds putting their passion toward solving common problems. Yours.xyz has big plans to establish themselves as a market leader while keeping their focus on making retail faster and easier. Do you have a solution you’ve been dreaming of turning into your next startup? Bring it to life by putting it online with your own .xyz domain!
JakePrice.xyz – eNom / Open SRS customer (United States)
Acclaimed artists and creatives have been choosing to brand their portfolio websites on .xyz domains since the TLD first hit the web in 2014. From award-winning writer MelissaHung.xyz, to renowned French street artist Levalet.xyz, to budding superstar VFX director TimHendri.xyz, individuals at the top of their industries continue to trust in .xyz domains as the best method to broadcast their creations to the world. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday profiles another accomplished artist who chose to showcase his body of work using a personally branded .xyz website: JakePrice.xyz.
Jake Price is a filmmaker, action sports videographer, snowboarder, and Pacific Northwest native who has produced many notable creative projects in the action sports and entertainment industries. Much of Jake’s work has been created in partnership with the biggest names in action sports, like Vans, Volcom, ESPN’s X-Games, and MTV’s Nitro Circus.
On JakePrice.xyz, Jake shares his venerable history of film projects via a well-designed catalog of videos, complete with individual pages for each project. Jake employs a minimalist layout on his site, which offers a clean display of his films on the homepage. Jake’s About section gives a perfect snapshot of who he is by using pictures and interviews instead of long blocks of text. Jake also lists household name brands like Vans, The North Face, and Kodak, who have chosen him as an ambassador thanks to his celebrated status within the snowboarding community. For those interested in working with Jake, he’s listed his CV and past awards, and makes it easy to book him for commercial projects via his contact page.
Visitors to the Cinema page of Jake’s site can view his notable work, like Vans’ first ever all-women full-length snowboarding team film, Listen to the Eyes, which Jake directed. The film features Vans’ global snow team riders Hana Beaman and Mary Rand, as well as Snowboarder Magazine and Transworld Magazine Rider of the Year winner Leanne Pelosi.
Listen to the Eyes was shot entirely on 16mm Kodak film at various mountain spots throughout the Pacific Northwest, and is packed with impressive runs, massive airs, and exciting trick combinations. Between these exhilarating action shots, Jake paints a peaceful and inviting picture of the region he calls home, and gives a glimpse of his life on the mountain with 3 pioneering women blazing trails in the snow.
Outside of his work in action sports, Jake has filmed commercial spots and music videos for well-known entertainers and brands as well. He directed, edited, and produced the music video for rapper Buddy’s single Hey Up There featuring Ty Dolla $ign, which was filmed using a vertical frame camera to be played in the Spotify app. He also directed and edited a series of commercial spots for Wild Mike’s Ultimate Pizza, including one particular commercial which features Nitro Circus creator, MTV personality, and Motocross legend Travis Pastrana.
As a veteran and respected name in his field, it’s no surprise Jake has enjoyed being the subject of some impressive press profiles. ESPN.com wrote a feature on Jake and his rise to becoming a snowboarding cinematography luminary, charting his path to success while detailing the history of his personal blog. He’s also been the recipient of numerous features in Transworld Snowboarding Magazine, a staple in the action sports community.
A personal portfolio site can serve many purposes, and JakePrice.xyz is a shining example of this. Professionals in any industry can benefit from building a website with personality that stands out to visitors such as new clients, fans, and recruiters. You can follow Jake on Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram to keep up to date on his new projects, or dive into his film catalog on Vimeo and YouTube. If you’re inspired to walk in Jake’s snowy footprints by building your own personal portfolio site, get started by grabbing your own .xyz domain!
StoryLiners.xyz – GoDaddy customer (Spain)
Everyone loves a good story. Stories entertain us, motivate us, and inspire us as we navigate through our daily lives. Being that stories are such an integral part of how we communicate with each other, it makes sense that storytelling can bring significant benefits to the marketing and communication we put out for our brands and businesses. This story-based approach to content creation has been steadily growing among marketing professionals. If you are curious to learn more about it, then you’ll want to meet this week’s #WebsiteWednesday: StoryLiners.xyz.
As a storytelling marketing company, StoryLiners.xyz aims to help their clients create a cohesive message in their branded content. This specific and engaging narrative is then used to create a deeper connection between the brand and their target audience. StoryLiners.xyz specializes in teaching storytelling techniques to be used naturally in a company’s existing marketing strategy. This includes services like story producing, storytelling training, and even help crafting branded content and story writing.
The StoryLiners.xyz brand was created by experienced storytelling pundit Gabriela Lacob, former Creative/Head of Development of a TV production company. Gabriela built her storytelling knowledge through working nearly two decades in the TV industry, and has harnessed that creative background to apply it to traditional content marketing. Gabriela was able to marry both the business and creative sides of her past work experience to create the StoryLiners.xyz brand.
StoryLiners.xyz provides storytelling marketing training and content creation assistance. Their first goal is to help you discover and tell the story of your brand. Next, StoryLiners.xyz guides you in telling that story to your customers in a way that will get it noticed, be understood by your audience, and create a point of reference that leads to stronger connection.
In practice, this can take the form of marketing approaches like the one Kisaburo.xyz employs. By sharing his history as the 4th generation owner of a kimono design company, Kisaburo.xyz creator Kisaburo Iwamoto promotes the brand’s fresh new take on the traditional garment and how he has put his personal touch on it.
Another great example is ed-tech platform Faceboard.xyz. The company promotes its gamified, collaborative teaching tool through its creator’s experience as a former teacher who saw how traditional teaching methods can be time consuming and leave students discouraged.
Factual development is a key focus within the scope of StoryLiners.xyz’s offerings. The company presents that marketers can be tempted to stretch the truth and play it loose with branded language. They further advise that your brand’s story must be presented using facts and verifiable claims, or it can border on the dangerous practices of fluffery and false advertising. StoryLiners.xyz’s training is designed to help you craft an engaging narrative around your brand while making sure that you are using only truthful statements.
Testimonials from satisfied customers on the StoryLiners.xyz site praise the company’s ability to help them clarify their concept and turn it into a compelling narrative that guides customers and brings the desired results from their content. If you’re interested in trying out StoryLiners.xyz’s service for your company, you can reach out to them through the contact page on their site. You can also follow them on Twitter at their memorable handle @StorylinerSxyz, where they share helpful articles on storytelling marketing and branding.
ImpactCoaching.xyz – GoDaddy customer (United States)
Today’s highly competitive global business landscape means companies are often looking for an edge. One key method businesses can use to gain separation from their competitors is by improving talent acquisition and adding development training for their existing workforce. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday offers a robust platform that aims to provide top of the line personal development for companies around the world: ImpactCoaching.xyz.
Founded in 2011 by TTI, ICF, and Association of Coaches certified advisor Barry M George, ImpactCoaching.xyz is a business coaching platform that integrates with an organization’s existing HR platform to deploy a full fleet of personal development programs for their employees. The core teaching principles of ImpactCoaching.xyz are built on Barry’s 30-year career as a veteran in executive leadership for multiple Global 100 companies located in business hubs like the U.S., Taiwan, and Germany. Barry has leveraged the knowledge he gained from his global network of senior executives and industry leaders to create a platform that helps accelerate the personal and professional growth of ImpactCoaching.xyz’s clients.
Through ImpactCoaching.xyz’s service, companies can utilize Barry’s web-based CoachSimple system, which is offered in 109 languages and has adopters in over 130 countries. Once the CoachSimple service is linked with an organization’s HR and leadership departments, the company is assigned qualified coaches that work on an individual level with their employees. This tailored training is made to help each employee unlock their professional goals by training them in areas like teamwork, performance, executive leadership, and career acceleration.
If you’re interested in trying the CoachSimple system for your organization, you can start by simply creating a partnership between your current HR platform and ImpactCoaching.xyz. This integration will allow you to access assessments which deconstruct personality types, then utilize the job benchmarking tool to create a profile of the ideal personality type you should be searching for when evaluating candidates to join your team. Your organization will also gain access to the “People Analytics” tool, which aims to help managers make hiring decisions based on factors like management and communication style, level of need for recognition, and even trustability.
ImpactCoaching.xyz also promotes its service as a way to help companies train current employees. Their executive leadership training is made to help prepare workers for senior-level positions and career advancement within the company. Their platform’s ability to help design roles for current employees that match their strengths and allow them to flourish could be a benefit to your organization as well.
The comprehensive approach to workforce training and talent evaluation that ImpactCoaching.xyz’s service provides has helped them become a leader in the professional development industry. ImpactCoaching.xyz lists renowned companies like Amazon, Yahoo, Ericsson, and Xterra among its clientele, and has been recognized as a member of the exclusive Forbes Coaches Council.
If you want to try out ImpactCoaching.xyz’s methods for your company, you can contact their team 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can also stay up to date with them on social media through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr.
