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.
Ms Domainer
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Good post, Jamie!
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everything.tv
Jamie by subscribers you mean charge a subscription to read the blog ?
I agree domainers are cheap, and you are dreaming with a donation button. People don’t want to pay for well known publications they are not going to pay for a domain blogger.
I notice over the last few months you seem to be wondering if you should stop writing the blog. I write one just on one extension so its even more of a small market. I wonder do I keep writing it, because there is no money in it.
Jamie Zoch
Subscribers, like for a Newsletter. Then you collect email address etc.
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For the donate button, I just look at it as a way of saying “Thank You to the site owner”.
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I am thinking of making some changes due to the amount of time and effort put in and the small return. I will either sell, change formats (different industry) ad some function/services or something along those lines.
Andrew Douglas
I definitely know where you are coming from, and I’m making changes to my development approach as well. Just adwords, Just amazon/ebay affiliation of products, even just direct advertising, doesn’t pay the bills.
Part of the issue is product selection. Sometimes in domaining we find ourselves with a domain name because “it was a good deal” and not because we really analyzed the market for that product. Color wax sells for, what, $20 on the high end? Most of the products are under $10. Your average affiliate sale from a $10 purchase isn’t going to go far. So part of development is product selection. But development is complicated. It’s not just product selection either.
Marketing is incredibly important but scaling up marketing for dozens, let alone hundreds of domains is impractical, especially if the revenue potential for the domains in question. How much time or money can you spend on a site that is averaging less than .10 per visit? Well, actually, there’s quite a lot that could be done in that regards. If you figure you are generating about $75 per 1,000 visits, that’s not too bad. If you could actually get 1,000 or 2,000 visitors a month instead of 1,000 visitors every 6 months. The problem is, in your example, Color Wax isn’t searched that often. A few hundred exacts a month. So really, your market is too small if you are targeting just the color wax keyword. That’s not to say the domain couldn’t be used in the broader “Car wax” category, but you would really need to create some unique, targeted content or something to get to that point. Point being, development needs to consider the size of the market for your product and the competition in that market for advertising, etc.
I really like this site and hate to see you frustrated with blogging in this industry, but you’ve gotta do what you gotta do. Personally, I think your strongest posts have been around direct marketing – the pitchmen style posts – in combination with your knowledge of domaining. It made for great reads. If I had any advice I could give it would be to combine that direct marketing interest with your “DotWeekly” domain to make a weekly internet marketing “magazine” that focused on products and sites that you could affiliate or that you could get paid to promote.
Best of luck, whatever you decide.
Jamie Zoch
Thank you Andrew for the comment! I like writing the direct ad style postings (marketing) and that was one of the directions I was thinking of taking with DotWeekly.
Mike - domainimal.com
if you build it they will come, only works in Kevin Costner movies
the keys are growing lots of traffic and successfully converting that traffic. if you cannot convert it well you still may be able to sell the site to someone else who thinks they can, and get a decent sale price. even if developing doesnt make you hoards of cash if you are able to raise the amount of targeted traffic coming to the domain that in fact should raise its value to buyers/end-users who see that traffic as leads.