Domain name owners have been making the shift to web development the past year or so more than they have in years past. I hear it almost daily around the domain community to "develop" or your domain X will be worth a lot more developed etc.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about development, making money with websites and what I have tried.

Simply developing a domain name for the sake of making a website is not the best idea. I have looked through my portfolio and picked domains out that I thought would make some money (more than parking) if I put some effort into them and offer visitors more than just a parking page.

The biggest problem I seem to run into is what I can offer the visitors as a "product". For an example, a domain of mine ColorWax.com . It’s a domain name that explains a product for car care wax. Color wax helps fill in small scratches and fills in the scratch with the color from the wax.

I do not want to order a bunch of different car wax and offer the actual products myself. This costs money, takes up space, shipping, customer service and simply is not something that I want to do. So as the site owner, you are forced to affiliate yourself with a company or service that already offers the product and then insert those products into your site.

You can use Amazon.com’s aStore. eBay.com’s partner program or a single affiliate. With Amazon and eBay, I have not had much luck. I have not had really any luck using Amazon for whatever reason at all. I have had a little better luck using eBay’s partner network and like using it since so many people know of and use eBay, but since they changed to a PPC model, earnings have dropped off a lot.

I am running a BANS script (don’t worry about looking for it, as it’s not worth using it any more IMO) which allowed me to basically create the site. It’s functional and displays relevant products but just doesn’t seem to convert all that great. For an example using ColorWax.com, here are some stats for the past 3 months:

• Unique Visitors: 558
• Visits: 854
• Clicks: 568
• Revenue: $41.61
• EPC $0.07

Now I know it’s not a ton of traffic, but it’s targeted! People that are visiting, are looking for color wax (maybe some for candle wax). The bad thing for me, $0.07 earnings per click. Nearly every unique visitor is at least clicking on a product but over the past 90 days for the whole site, it’s only earned $41.61. That’s about $0.46 a day. Not good!

Not really worth it if you ask me. If it would do $41.61 a DAY, it would be a different story.

The good thing about the site, it’s pretty much automated. After I built it last year, added some content, I haven’t really touched it since. Could I do more with the site? Likely, but I’m not motivated at $0.41 a day revenue.

So on a development aspect, just taking products from another service as an affiliate and inserting them into a site that I develop really hasn’t worked for me. Clearly I am sending traffic to the affiliates site, but getting pennies for it because the clicker has to purchase as well. eBay’s PPC model is a bit different then Google’s.

Larger Scale

Let’s look at DotWeekly.com . This site is Not Automated. I work daily writing the unique content to provide to my readers (No I do not pay "other people" to write for the site like many other sites do). The biggest downfall to DotWeekly, it’s not automated. I could add features that are automated and I am working on that but the main thing that drives visitors to come in, is content and lots of it.

Since DotWeekly is a blog, there are about 6 or 7 standard ways to make money. Direct Advertisers, Affiliate ads, Affiliate products, Adsense, Donate button, Subscribers or add a product of my own.

• Advertisers are nice but you are also responsible to continue to provide fresh content when they are advertising. In a small industry like domaining, advertisers are more willing to pay around $100 ish a month, not so much at around $200 for a 125×125.
• Affiliate ads are hit and miss but can turn a nice profit if readers are using them and buying. These likely do very well in a pretty big industry/market with the amount of traffic Dotweekly gets.
• Donate button, not in the domain industry! I have run a donate button three times at random times on DotWeekly with 3 total donations, ever.
• Adsense. Something I have recently been trying on DotWeekly. It’s better than nothing but I will not have any ShoeMoney.com type check to take a mug shot with anytime soon. Currently around $5 a day….
• Subscribers. I have not tried this yet and I know I should as many bloggers make money this way. I will give it a try, but I want to offer my readers something of value as well!

Although I love domain names and the domain industry, it’s a very hard industry to profit from writing a blog. Domainers are cheap and the industry is very small! So picking the industry you are putting your focus on is key! You do not want a super flooded industry, so pick your niche and run with it.

Advice for development

Automated! Automated! Automated!

If you think of the vast majority of "popular" websites, they are nearly all user generated content and function based on scripts and tools. Twitter, Facebook, Search engines, Domain registrars, Flickr etc. Simply having "text" on your site as the main focus is not likely going to work.

Yes you have to continue to add functions and features on automated site but the sites basically run on autopilot. This allows you time to come up with new functions and features, while growing your site.

Unique ideas that help or entertain people.

Exclusive. Offering something that nobody else does. This can be a product or service.

Know when to say enough is enough. Not everything works and you have to know when to pull the plug when you are not turning a profit.

Test, change, try, test. Keep trying things, as often times it’s the little changes that make a big difference.

Web development is not easy. It is also not always cheap. It can be done for nearly nothing based on your skills but will take some playing around. Building is the easy part, growing it and making a profit is the hard part. The majority mindset of internet users is "FREE" and website owners can not always depend on sponsors to carry the costs. We all like things for free, but not everything in life IS free. If you offer something that is valuable to somebody, you are also likely able to charge for it.

Submitting your domain name to a domain name auction of any kind can be pretty risky. If you submit the domain with a reserve that you would be happy selling with, the risk is decreased a lot but be sure to set your pricing so you are still happy after commission fees are taken out even if there is only 1 bid to meet your reserve.

Lost in the crowd

Most domain name auctions are filled with A LOT of domain names (several hundred) from really good to so/so domain names. Unless your domain name is one of the really good ones or holds a very attractive starting price, your domain name can easily be lost in the crowd as just another domain.

I always think running a No Reserve auction with as low as price you can start with, will attract the most bidders and your chances of it selling for a good price is likely to happen. This can make your domain stick out in the crowd. People get silly during bidding and value often get’s trumped by the want factor. No body likes to lose. Running a no reserve auction clearly holds the highest risk but often will result much better returns then if the domain starts with a higher reserve.

Problems

It is hard to predict problems but websites are prone to problems and since most domain auctions are held online, this has to be on your mind when you submit a domain name for auction. From DDOS attacks, to software failures, they happen. The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auction was a recent example of this. Live bidders in house and online at the same time but online bidding stopped due to problems with the online bidding software. This is a domain name sellers nightmare! Your domain is coming up, bids start coming in and all of sudden online bidding isn’t working and only house bids are taken… your bidders just took a serious hit and you can’t do anything about it.

Will the auctioneer fumble pronouncing your domain? Lack the passion you have for it? Where is your domain in the line up? 1st, 50th, 250th? You have no control.

Buyers

In any auction, it not only takes one interested buyer, it takes TWO to make the price go up. If you are selling your domain name outright to a buyer, they make an offer. You can counter offer if you choose and help increase the "bid" on your domain. If you are happy, you sell, if not, you pass or wait on another counter offer. Domain auctions basically work the same way, minus the fact you can’t help increase the price during the auction. If you have a reserve set and the buyer meets it and no other bidder feels like jumping in, you are stuck as the seller with no way to help increase the price at that point.

You want to set your reserve at an attractive price to help with bidding but doing this also leaves the chance of 1 bid at your reserve. If this happens,  your likely going to be selling for a price that you wouldn’t be happy with, plus paying a commission.

Timing

This is a hard one. Most of the time when you submit a domain for auction, it is months before the auction even starts. Since you sign a contract after the domain is accepted, you are pretty much stuck with it in the action. A lot of things can change in a short period of time and this could effect your domain name.

Promotion

Many sellers assume that your domain name submitted for auction will be promoted by the auction company to buyers. Not just any buyers, the ones who you think would be the perfect buyers, end users. This doesn’t always happen. Keep in mind that you are likely paying at least a 10% commission. Is submitting your domain and just the fact that your domain is in the auction worth the 10% sales commission if it get’s that 1 bid and sells at your reserve?

If you submit a domain to auction, plan on doing some work on your end to promote your auction! If you are doing this anyway, why not just try and sell it yourself? That’s a good question because you also hold a lot more control.

Worth it?

Yes, some domain names do fetch a nice price at domain name auctions. I have sold several at auction that I was happy with the prices they got. All the domains that I did sell for prices I was happy with were No Reserve auction starting at under $100. I would start them at $0 but most auction services have a minimum price. Often times the domains were the ones with the most active bidding as well.

On the other side, if you run a reserve price (higher reserve) your risks are cut down a lot and I guess it can be worth putting it in the auction but again be sure you would be happy with the reserve price and it selling at that. It happens a lot, 1 bid at the reserve price.

It’s always best to Hold and Wait for the right buyer to come along, putting steps in place that allow interested parties to contact you. When you have people contacting you with interest in purchasing, you hold the upper hand and will likely yield the best price as well with no commission and a lot less risk!

There is a sleep talker blog that is taking the world by storm. The site is called "Sleep Talkin Man" and the owners of the site sadly used a blogspot sub-domain for the site at sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com .

The people behind the site are a married couple and the man happens to talk in his sleep. Not only talk, dude says some seriously funny stuff! Tons of one liners that any comedian would die for coming up with really! Read it, you will laugh your ass off. Be sure to click "older posts" on the bottom right of the home page to see older entries.

Dude says some crazy stuff in his sleep!!!!

From a domain name aspect, in late December of 2009 they did register the domain name SleepTalkinMan.com which forwards to the blogspot page but the first entry to the blog is Feb 19, 2009. So it took a good 10 months before they noticed the importance of owning the .com domain and took the easy way in and used Blogspot. You lose a lot of control but it is easy to use.

I would of used WordPress myself (here is how to install a wordpress blog if you are not sure how to), as it’s free and you have nearly unlimited control and options with WordPress. Not a sub-domain on WordPress, get a hosting account and load it directly on your server!

Back to more about domains…

Since "Talkin" is really slang, they should of also registered SleepTalkingMan.com with the G in it for those who type in the "normal way".

The couple failed to register the domain with the G in it but somebody else was sure to register it and it does get some traffic.

Another domain they could register is SleepTalkerBlog.com (currently available) because that is the "natural term" a lot of people are searching for. Also likely to get traffic, looking for the site.

Now it’s hard to tell exactly what the natural search term will be, but it should not be that hard to decide. Sound it out, think how YOU would search for such a site.

SleepTalkerBlog.com makes perfect sense. SleepTalkerBlog.co.uk makes sense as well since they are from the UK.

Anyway, funny ass site so check it out. Secondly, I hope I explained a couple things about domains and using WordPress to help as well. Read all around DotWeekly.com and you will learn just about every thing you can about domain names, internet marketing, branding and much more.