strategy Developing your domain names

[heavend]

Good evening boys and girls,

It's great that everyone seem to have their favorite name they want / wish to develop in theory, some day. I have heard this over and over again in this business - that some day when there is time and when the situation is just right, and when the moon is blue - we all would develop our domains into great sites, which then would raise their values and can be sold for 100 X over. I have been guilty of this myself - as for the past 15 years I always had ideas about development, but never got anything solid of the ground.

In reality, 99.999% are registering the names and sitting on them hoping to magically get to 100 X their investment without lifting a finger. Some will be successful at just that (or lucky), but most would fail and will have to either drop their names or sell below the original purchase. This is fine, as we know in any business most would fail and hard work would separate those who achieve some mediocre success from those who really make it big.

Maybe someone would like to share the actual tools to be used to start developing. Since we all in the same boat (kind of), we may as well share some of the resources.

I understand it takes a long time and huge commitment - so my main question is

What are the fastest way to get into developing domains into websites? (outside of becoming web developer professionally or hiring pros)

I have seen a bunch of crappy websites (amazon and other affiliates, etc) being sold for a few dollars on ebay. Never really gave them a try, but was wondering if other people had success with them? My issue with amazon is - your buyer will come to you only once. Say, he will even find a product he wants, then would add it to the basket, then will see amazon checkout, and will never come to you again. (no reason to come to you if he can go directly to amazon) Maybe someone had a different experience with those and can recommend something specific?

I also have been using free html software, anyone can download and use - like NVU, for example. I like it for something simple, like informational pages, but anything which has to do with databases, shopping baskets, products for sale and we are back to either affiliate sites or professionals. Is there something in between?

I apologize in advance, if this has been discussed in the previous blogs, as I am fairy new to this community.

All best,
Alex

 

[mhdoc]

They look like a good start.

 

[heavend]

The following are 2 examples of sites I am working on. The first is a WordPress theme, the second i used a drag-and-drop website builder.
Still have a long way as I just started to put it together.
Chicagolandpages.com
ChicagolandLawyers.com

very nice looking sites.

 

[MisterSoft.com]

Making a website is not an issue. You need lots of energy, time, and funds to keep the website up and running along with SEO tedious process. Affiliates and adsense are no more effective money making avenues.
I've been in domain biz for 15 years now and personally own thousands of domains, and I think, domain-parking is the best option for me. Through parking I've not only earned decent PPC (pay per click) but also sold hundreds of domains some as much as $xx,xxx.xx

• One more piece of advice, start off 'domaining biz' as a hobby. Never rely on it 100% to pay your bills. Once you feel comfortable and you got your feet wet, then shift the gear.
• Dotcom domains are the king and always will be sought after. DO NOT waste money on other gtlds unless you find a good/short keyword. I own more than 99.5% dotcom domains and almost get daily offers on my email or through my domain Parking company.
• On your registrant info, always put this statement: "MAY BE FOR SALE" or just simply put "THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE!" This is the best marketing strategy!!!
• Moreover, enter your correct and best email address so potential buyer could contact you directly through WHOIS.
• Don't forget to mention your cellphone number as well. I've noticed that the buyer wants to buy the domain right away for whatever reasons. Your cellphone is your best and quick marketing tool!
• Since the potential buyer uses the WHOIS info to track down the owner of the domain, therefore, make sure to keep your contact info up to date.

 

[heavend]

@MisterSoft.com - thank you for sharing. I have been in business since 1999, and also own and sold a lot of domain names.
When it comes to PPC, as far as I can tell that side of the bsuiness is pretty much dead and been dead for years now. Can you please share which sites are you successfully using for PPC? I would be very happy to point my domain names somewhere where PPC actually earning. Sites like Sedo, Fabulous, DomainSponsor do not bring any PPCs worth mentioning.

 

[TRY]

Making a website is not an issue. You need lots of energy, time, and funds to keep the website up and running along with SEO tedious process. Affiliates and adsense are no more effective money making avenues.
I've been in domain biz for 15 years now and personally own thousands of domains, and I think, domain-parking is the best option for me. Through parking I've not only earned decent PPC (pay per click) but also sold hundreds of domains some as much as $xx,xxx.xx

• One more piece of advice, start off 'domaining biz' as a hobby. Never rely on it 100% to pay your bills. Once you feel comfortable and you got your feet wet, then shift the gear.
• Dotcom domains are the king and always will be sought after. DO NOT waste money on other gtlds unless you find a good/short keyword. I own more than 99.5% dotcom domains and almost get daily offers on my email or through my domain Parking company.
• On your registrant info, always put this statement: "MAY BE FOR SALE" or just simply put "THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE!" This is the best marketing strategy!!!
• Moreover, enter your correct and best email address so potential buyer could contact you directly through WHOIS.
• Don't forget to mention your cellphone number as well. I've noticed that the buyer wants to buy the domain right away for whatever reasons. Your cellphone is your best and quick marketing tool!
• Since the potential buyer uses the WHOIS info to track down the owner of the domain, therefore, make sure to keep your contact info up to date.

I agree adsense should not be the main or only revenue source. As for traffic seo is nice but paid traffic will take you to the next level. Of course if you're not able to monetize the traffic properly you will end up losing money.

 

[5dots]

The following are 2 examples of sites I am working on. The first is a WordPress theme, the second i used a drag-and-drop website builder.
Still have a long way as I just started to put it together.
Chicagolandpages.com
ChicagolandLawyers.com

Agree the pages look quite good. But as you said still a lot of time to invest to bring them ahead.

Don't you think your time would be better spent sending out 5 quality emails a day to potential customers?

 

[Bullock]

I use WP only to built rough landing pages. I do this as a proof that the domain name is real!

For instance:

byhap.com

casinohap.com

leadingcomputing.com


I wonder if I can add some pub on my mini-sites.




Regards
Domain Esprit

 

[affable]

I use WP only to built rough landing pages. I do this as a proof that the domain name is real!

For instance:

byhap.com/

casinohap.com/

leadingcomputing.com/


I wonder if I can add some pub on my mini-sites.




Regards
Domain Esprit

I like those images on your landing pages, they really pop and draw attention. They really stand out, I like that.

 

[kawalsukhi]

I have developed many of my domains into websites from past 1 year or so.

Some websites I sold away but these are remain with me.


WordpressXpertz.com/
ShoutRant.com/
LovePolls.com/
NameZeal.com/
MeraGuide.in/
NewsProper.com/

FeesCalculator.com - Going to develop soon!

 

[affable]

I have developed many of my domains into websites from past 1 year or so.

Some websites I sold away but these are remain with me.


http://WordpressXpertz.com/
http://ShoutRant.com/
http://LovePolls.com/
http://NameZeal.com/
http://MeraGuide.in/
http://NewsProper.com/

FeesCalculator.com - Going to develop soon!

Great! What is FeesCalculator.com going to be calculating fees of?

 

[heavend]

I have developed many of my domains into websites from past 1 year or so.

Some websites I sold away but these are remain with me.


WordpressXpertz.com/
ShoutRant.com/
LovePolls.com/
NameZeal.com/
MeraGuide.in/
NewsProper.com/

FeesCalculator.com - Going to develop soon!

Really like: namezeal.com
Great job!

 

[kawalsukhi]

Great! What is FeesCalculator.com going to be calculating fees of?

Paypal fees, ebay fees etc like this website.


thefeecalculator.com/ (Not mine)

 

[MisterSoft.com]

@MisterSoft.com - thank you for sharing. I have been in business since 1999, and also own and sold a lot of domain names.
When it comes to PPC, as far as I can tell that side of the bsuiness is pretty much dead and been dead for years now. Can you please share which sites are you successfully using for PPC? I would be very happy to point my domain names somewhere where PPC actually earning. Sites like Sedo, Fabulous, DomainSponsor do not bring any PPCs worth mentioning.

@heavend
I use maily SEDO for parking domains. Their ppc is not that bad. That PPC revenue takes care of almost 50% of my renewal fee. At SEDO, I've a SEDOPRO account, and I'm assigned with a domain manager who works closely with the domainer. The domain manager is very helpful in optimizing my domain portfolio. Why I prefer SEDO:

• I sell lot more domains through SEDO. Success rate is very high.
• Good ROI. Most of my domain sales are $x,xxx.xx and $xx,xxx.xx
  
• Try getting a SEDOPRO account. It costs nothing for an upgrade.
• Live support should you've issues regarding domains or sales
• SEDO provides various options: 0 click, 1 click, 2 clicks...
• I've also tried fabulous, domainsponsor, on and on... SEDO is better than all evils
• I've heard many times that RENEWAL FEE is too much. If you paying more than $10 per domain renewal fee for a dotcom domain then you are not a savvy domainer. I personally pay only $8.39 per dotcom domain as a renewal fee. No gimmicks No tricks.

peace!

 

[heavend]

@MisterSoft.com well, I agree with renewal fees, of course, only lazy pay more then $10 / domain... it's been like this always. I have made a deal back in the day with fabulous.com back when they started out and haven't paid anything over $8.50 ever since....

And as far as SEDO, well they do have the worse sellers fees around, and what specially hurts is when you sell outside of SEDO, direct email, etc - if the domain is listed with them - they still charge you as if you sold through their auction. I do have quite a few transactions between X,XXX - to mid XX,XXX with them - and those fees do add up.

and as far as their PPC - very good for you, I assume you have Great domain names which bring tons of traffic and in the case of 1000 domains (like you mentioned above) - roughly $350 / month to cover 50 % cost. I haven't seen those kind of PPC since 2005 or so, but maybe the answer is in SEDOPRO account. Can you please give an example of your domain listed at sedo, so I can compare how my PPC site looks with Sedo. At any given time I also list about 1500 names pointing to them, and they bring nothing or close to nothing.... Maybe there is some special categories which work better then others? Please give example of a one or two domains which do really well for you in PPC as I assume not all of them are the same.

" SEDO provides various options: 0 click, 1 click, 2 clicks..." Please specify what you mean by this and where is it being set, and what is the preferred setting to maximize the PPCs.

btw, $8.39 for .com is a very good price. May I ask which registrar you are using and do you trust them?

All Best,
Alex

 

[MisterSoft.com]

@heavend
I agree SEDO commission fee is 15% of the sale price and sometimes 20% if the sale lead comes from outside. I think it's still worth it. For example, if you sell a domain for $5000 and the the commission is $750 (15% of $5000), you net $4250. That's an awesome ROI. I remember those good old days when the commission was just 10%. I still believe SEDO is a good avenue to sell your domains.
SEDO is a good only if have their SEDOPRO account. This has good perks.

I use godaddy as my registrar and I've a VIP executive account. No fee for that account. You just have to approach them and ask if you have a good number of domains. Godaddy is really handy when it comes to free and easy PUSH. Yes, their renewal fee is very reasonable. I'll share more info about "HOW TO GET MOST OUT OF THESE REGISTRARS" pretty soon. Though most people hate godaddy, I think GD is still better than its counterparts. GD has its own perks as well.
All the best. Peace!

 

[heavend]

@MisterSoft.com I asked tech services at sedo about SEDOPRO, will see what they say. As far as commission - yeah, I had to pay like $13,000 on the $65,000 sale, and yes, it does hurt your bottom line, but ...

Anyways - thank you very much for sharing - will see what I can do with SEDOPRO, while still trying to develop them one at a time.

 

[TRY]

Agree the pages look quite good. But as you said still a lot of time to invest to bring them ahead.

Don't you think your time would be better spent sending out 5 quality emails a day to potential customers?

Potential customers? If you mean advertisers I am not at that point yet with this network of sites. It will be the hub if you will for at least 40 other sites such as chicagolanddoctors.com, chicagolandlawyers.com, chicagolandads.com, chicagolandaccountants, etc.

 

[Kate]

Development only works well if you are dedicated and develop about something you are passionate about.
Anybody can put up a site, but as said above, getting it to rank well forever is another matter.

The only thing that cannot really be automated is the production of unique, quality contents. That's why so many sites are just scrapers and have little original contents.

Then there is monetization. The easy way is to plaster your site with Adsense, but I don't like that very much because you become too dependent on Google and partners, and to me it's another form of parking really. And it's not going to make you a lot of money unless your site is very popular. Now you can try something else like affiliate schemes. Experimenting and diversifying is good.

What I've described above is the typical amateur blog/website.
It simply takes too much time for very little pay. It's a great hobby but not a full-time job usually.

The other approach is to set up an e-commerce store and sell stuff. Gadgets for example. You don't have to reinvent the wheel: ready-to-use platforms like Prestashop, Magento etc are available even for free can be quickly set up. You can be selling the very same day. But you need to find your niche.

This is true for any business venture, including domaining.

I alway advise people to pick domain names they could develop, because:
a. they have some clues about the niche/industry, that can possibly increase the odds of a sale
b. developing can be a plan B. But in reality this seldom happens because we all have busy lives.

 

[heavend]

@Kate "ready-to-use platforms like Prestashop, Magento etc" this is very interesting and in fact - what I was originally planning to do to start. can you please provide more details and maybe differentiate between which are better, and where to start?

 

[mhdoc]

I have started adding domain names to my Shopify store. I am still working on the traffic generation part, but am finding it fairly easy to set up a decent looking store. I have wanted changes to the free template I am using a few times and the response from support has been excellent. $29/mo for the plan I am using but that includes hosting and makes all the ugly backend details like PCI compliance their problem. PixSe.com if you want to see what it looks like.

 

[TRY]

Just 1 example, You mentioned amazon. People made money but the small commissions made it difficult for them to scale up. So what are people doing? They get their products from china, make a few changes to the the product like color, size, etc. Put their private brand on it then sell it via Amazon except now they are making 40% +. As well as selling on their website. Putting up a website is the simple part. Marketing and everything else is the most difficult and important part of the business that will make or break you.

 

[5dots]

Potential customers? If you mean advertisers I am not at that point yet with this network of sites. It will be the hub if you will for at least 40 other sites such as chicagolanddoctors.com, chicagolandlawyers.com, chicagolandads.com, chicagolandaccountants, etc.

Sorry, I meant end-users.

 

[SirDrago]

Prestashop, Magento etc
These easy to install scripts are useful and a benefit for a starting entrepreneur but what I believe to be the greatest challenge is finding wholesalers, distributors and dropshipers that offer integration with the above scripts.
Basically what we need is a "Plugin store" for WordPress and those scripts mentioned above.
If anyone knows of any please share.

 

[affable]

Paypal fees, ebay fees etc like this website.


http://thefeecalculator.com/ (Not mine)

Cool. So, do you sell on eBay yourself or are you just going to provide this website for those who do?

It would also be useful to have a site that can figure out just the Paypal fees for people who use Paypal to pay and get paid for domain sales. That way you would know what they are going to take from a given amount of money. Might be useful for buy now type domains sales pricing.

 

[kawalsukhi]

Cool. So, do you sell on eBay yourself or are you just going to provide this website for those who do?

It would also be useful to have a site that can figure out just the Paypal fees for people who use Paypal to pay and get paid for domain sales. That way you would know what they are going to take from a given amount of money. Might be useful for buy now type domains sales pricing.

First I need to prepare it and then I hopefully sell on flippa..I never sell a website on Ebay!