The following is a guest post by Joel Ohman:

If buying a domain name and having no clue what you are going to do with it is domaining kindergarten then buying a domain name only to slap up a mini site on it with no regard for monetization, optimization, or marketing is not much better and probably puts you at about the 3rd grade level in “domaining school”.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that you should keep in mind from the very beginning of the domain name buying process all the way to the very end (although there really shouldn’t be an “end” when developing domains and marketing them because the process is never ending if done correctly).

1. Monetization – Before you even buy a domain name you should have a plan for getting the domain to make you money. Learning how to monetize a domain name is absolutely crucial if you want to not just stay in business but strike it big. Even if you are one of those domain investors whose sole goal is to flip domains for a profit you still are potentially leaving money on the table by not developing and monetize your domain name inventory. Not only will your inventory of unsold domain names bring you residual cash flow you will also make your domain names increase in value as potential buyers see domains that you have already with pages indexed in Google, backlinks pointing to the site, existing traffic, Page Rank, etc.

2. Optimization – Optimizing your developed domains for both visitors and for search engines can seem like a never ending task but in all reality if you have a strong framework and process that you can duplicate from one site to the next then this step is not something that should take you that long. Do your homework and get things right from the very beginning. With the very first site you develop make sure to get things exactly right and then clone this framework onto your other sites. For example, many domainers use Wordpress to build their mini sites. Find plugins and other addons to customize WP so that it is as SEO friendly and user friendly as possible. While this may take a while for the first site that you develop it will be a breeze to copy this set up onto your other sites.

3. Marketing – Marketing your developed domains to build traffic is the most time consuming part of the post development process. In fact, if you know what you are doing it is easy to put up a professional looking website full of useful content in less than 30 minutes time (assuming you already have the content on hand). Marketing is the part that most people get wrong. While I am a firm believer in the power of keyword domain names because many times for certain long tail search terms you can rank in Google simply based on the power of your domain name alone with minimal content and little or no marketing this is not the case for all niches to be sure. If nothing else I would challenge you to have an action plan for publishing content to your site consistently, build links to your site consistently, and solicit feedback from your site visitors on ways to improve your site. If you follow these 3 simple beginner marketing tips then you will be head and shoulders above many other domainers who ignore the marketing process entirely.

 

Hopefully this very general framework gave you some things to keep in mind when you develop your domain names and build traffic to your developed domain names.

About the Author: Joel Ohman has a goal of making it easy for everyone to find superior domain names over and over again by using DomainSuperstar.com’s domain name tools.