Domain Names

With all the good type-in names taken, domain parking has lost its luster. Domain Development is the next big opportunity for domain name investors like yourself.

Here’s a quick ‘to do’ list for you to get started, and if you think this information is useful, I highly recommend you take a look at my step by step illustrated domain development guidebooks. They walk you through the process of rapidly launching content rich, SEO optimized, search engine friendly, feature rich, web sites, image galleries, discussion forums, and social networks.

Good business-people know that time is money, and I can guarantee you that if you are interested in boosting your domain income through domain development, you will be able to launch professional looking fully featured ‘premium’ web sites much faster and more efficiently if you follow my guidebooks, versus if you start from scratch and try to do it yourself. Your time is valuable, and $50, the price of my guidebooks, is a small price to pay if it saves you hours of research and trial and error.

I wrote the Beyond Domaining guidebooks because I wish I had had something like them when I entered the domain name industry and was getting my butt kicked not knowing what I was doing. If you buy my guidebooks you will be able to launch better sites, much quicker, and you can focus on higher value projects much sooner. My guidebooks can be found at Beyond Domaining.

Below is a quick high level primer on getting started with domain development. My guidebooks carefully walk you through the steps of launching feature rich, web sites, image galleries, discussion forums, and social networks.

1) Set up a hosting account at your favorite registrar. We recommend jRegister.com. They offer reliable professional web sites and domain names and free open source software installations at a very low cost. jRegister.com allows you host multiple database driven web sites on your single hosting account. The Beyond Domaining guidebooks walk you through the step by step process of setting up your hosting account.

2) Install a Content Management System (CMS). Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla are your best bets. WordPress is the best for newbies. The designs and functionality are professional and the installation and management is the easiest. There are many advantages to Drupal and Joomla, but for newbies / non-developers / non-programmers those advantages are probably out of your reach. The Beyond Domaining guidebooks shows you exactly how to install your CMS and gives you tips and tricks to ‘optimize’ the installation. The Beyond Domaining guidebooks give you a ‘running start’.

3) Once you get the ‘framework’ of your site up and running, you’ll have to customize it and configure it. There are all kinds of tips and tricks that can make your site look, and more importantly, function, like a professional web site. This includes integration with things like: Google AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Auto Search Engine Submission, SEO Optimization, XML Sitemaps, Cache-ed Pages, Photo Galleries, etc, etc. This is where the Beyond Domaining guidebooks really excel. They show you all the ‘tweaks’ and tips and tricks in a very easy to follow step by step illustrated fashion.

Without the Beyond Domaining guidebooks, this will take a good amount of time for a newbie, probably a few months of research and trial and error until you actually ‘get it’ ‘for real’. And once you learn how to do these things, you can actually make a lot of money on AdSense. That money grows over time as your sites gain inbound links and greater trust from search engines. Most of my developed names that used to make a few dollars per year on parking services like Parked.com, Domain Sponsor, and Fabulous, now make a few dollars per day as developed sites. More importantly, because of the unique SEO strategies I lay out in my guidebooks, my revenues are now growing with inbound links, free content, and user generated data, whereas before, on parking pages, they were declining.

4) Once the framework of your site is up and running you need to fill it with content. This might include you handwriting articles. But the better strategy is to gather free articles from various sources on the web. There are a lot of other sources out there for free articles. You just need to know where to find them and how best to work with them. The Beyond Domaining guidebooks show you the best ones and how to actually use those sources. Another way to do this is to hire these articles out to freelancers at places like Craigslist. Its also important to develop different pages of content for the most popular keywords related to your site. You should use a keyword tool like Google’s AdWords Keyword tool:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Type in your keywords and then write / acquire articles targeted at the most popular keywords. The SEO results will come from unique content.

5) Once you’re finished filling your site with content, you can start marketing it through link building and article marketing campaigns strategies. Our Rapid Web Site guidebook details these strategies.

6) Be patient. Domain Development is not a quick fix. It typically takes 1 – 3 months before your site gets fully ‘picked up’ by the search engines. Sometimes it can take up to a year – read this Case Study on Income Results from Developing a Hand Registered Domain Name. But once these sites are up and running, they’re basically like little soldiers that bring back a lot more ‘plunder’ to their master than those pathetic domain parking pages did.

If you found this post useful, please remember, good business-people know that time is money, and I can guarantee you that if you are interested in boosting your domain income through domain development, you will be able to launch professional looking fully featured ‘premium’ web sites much faster and more efficiently if you follow my guidebooks, versus if you start from scratch and try to do it yourself. The Beyond Domaining guidebooks are the books I wish I had read when I got started developing my domain names. I would have been able to go from parked revenue to developed domains revenue much more quickly. The series of guidebooks can be found at Beyond Domaining.

Affiliate programs are another way to earn more money from your domains. If you have a blog, email newsletter, or web site you can promote affiliate products and earn commissions on the sales you generate.

You can even generate affiliate revenue from your parked domains

This is a trick most domainers aren’t aware of

Parked.com allows its parking customers to place custom content at the bottom of their parked pages. Custom content, meaning, you can put whatever you want there. At the very least, I recommend adding some relevant text content to the bottoms of your high traffic and/or high value names parked at Parked.com – this will help with SEO, will make your site more useful, and will garner more trust from your visitors. In addition to content, you can also use this space to put links to affiliate programs. This is an excellent way to earn even more money from your parked domains. I am only aware of this being possible at Parked.com.

Here are the top two Affiliate Programs you should start with:

ClickBank
ClickBank offers eBooks and other electronic products for online purchase. Promoting ClickBank products is a good way to make money online. There are thousands of products in most every category of interest. Find products that are in line with the interests of your users and then promote those products.

If you are a domainer, here is a great way to get started with affiliate marketing

If you own a Domain Name industry blog, newsletter, domain, or web site, you can easily earn more money by writing a blog post, web review, or email newsletter promoting my Beyond Domaining guidebooks. After signing up at ClickBank, you’ll get a special URL to use in your promotions. Do a quick search for the Beyond Domaining guidebooks and then promote them on your web properties and/or newsletters.

You can also use your ClickBank affiliate links to promote the Beyond Domaining guidebooks in your signature panel, and in your posts, in forums such as DNForum and NamePros. My guidebooks are highly relevant to other domainers and the conversion rates are excellent because we have good word of mouth from delivering a high quality product. There are lots of ‘Domaining’ eBooks out there – but none that cover Domain Development. Back up the truck folks. You can make some good money promoting Beyond Domaining guidebooks through affiliate links from ClickBank to other domainers.

If you don’t like ClickBank, or if you want the ability to promote two different branded Domain Development products, we also have an affiliate program available through PayDotCom (many non-U.S.A. based publishers prefer PayDotCom over ClickBank).

If Domain Development is not of interest to your users, you can still find thousands of other interesting and useful eBooks that will appeal to your users. There are eBooks at ClickBank covering everything from weight loss, to online gambling, to the stock market, to search engine marketing, to affiliate programs, to stress reduction, to getting out of debt, to relationship problems, to seduction techniques, and more. Every Domainer and/or online marketer should consider a ClickBank promotion component.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction is another place to look for affiliate programs. Commission Junction’s product list is vaster and is not limited to electronic products like ClickBank’s. They have all sorts of things from electronics, to travel deals, to pet food, and more.

Domain parking is very simple and the details of how to park your names are too basic for this website. If you have questions about parking, you can visit any of the parking provider web sites below for more information.

Domain parking is not something we advocate here, however it does have its place as a holding area for domains that are waiting to be developed or sold. I have listed the top domain parking companies below. You should visit their websites and familiarize yourself with the ‘look and feel’ of the different parking companies’ layouts. Test your domains at several different services and then consolidate at three to five different services. It’s amazing how drastically performance will vary by moving a name from one parking company to another. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula – its all trial and error.

My preferred parking companies:

Domain Sponsor
Text only landing pages. Auto-optimizing layouts. Excellent reports.

Fabulous
Good provider, but unfortunately, I don’t think they accept new applicants anymore.

GoDaddy Cash Parking
Good for international domains. They charge to enter their program though. That’s bogus.

NameDrive
Excellent layouts. Park and Sell program lets buyers see stats and bid on your names.

Parked.com
Payouts twice per month. Excellent templates. Upload your own photos. Good for adult.

SedoPro
Good for international payouts. Excellent reports. Invite only. Must get an invite.