How to Earn $20,000

[soggyindo]

I'm enjoying the "What would you do with $500,000" thread that's happening here.

I thought we could try the other way around. Instead of ideas on spending money - how would you all earn a given amount of money?

Say $20,000 a year.

From domaining/ developing/ parking/ hiring out services to domainers and developers. It has to be domain related, in some way.

You're starting today - and without much resources - for instance money left over from a modest pay packet.

Let's assume a basic level of web knowledge too - ie. you know about backordering, basic website building, and you're not a newbie evaluating names.

What would your strategy for most easily earning that $20,000 figure?

:gl:

 

[soggyindo]

brokers are normally on a % deal so will (should) try and get max price tho

i read a thing about real estate agents that would suggest not. i think it was in freakonomics or tipping point...

people instinctively know the mathematical sweet spot price that is the biggest return to effort ratio. it's usually near the lowest price the client they're supposedly working for will accept. pushing the price up beyond that - say earning an extra $1000 for the client - is only going to make them an extra $100 and more than likely cost them the sale. so what real estate brokers do is push out lots of house sales at a low cost. it's the way to get the maximum commission for the least effort.

there was a way suggested in the book to beat this tendency - if you are the seller - i forget what it was now!



i'll add another option to reach the $20,000 figure, mentioned by a fellow NPer. develop 100 sites each earning $1.00 a day. this = $36,000ish. which gives you approx $160 to develop each site.

my take is to spend slightly more than that to get nice sites (for a few dollars more you can get a site that will grow into a real niche dominator, rather than merely a made-for-adsense site). and do it with less sites - quality over quantity. but that's the basic strategy mentioned you can vary to taste.

my other variation is to give 30% equity and 50% of the profits to someone who wants to run/ write the site (i never want to sell my sites, so equity is a strange thing to discuss). writing all those sites can be a nightmare, but with seperate 'experts' happily on each site it can work quite well. there's a busy time when you're showing them the ropes and answering questions, but after it settles down it's a good option.

:lala:

 

[MicroGuy]

microguy: i don't think i'm any wiser about the subscription thing. unless you mean start up a phone company with a really long waiting time for cancellations. what are some on-line examples our not clueless but not highly skilled hypothetical dude could try - - even if they are not ones you yourself have tested?

Ok...here's one example off the top of my head:

"Start a website that offers insider secrets to making money parking domains. Charge $4.95 per month to access your insider blog offering tips on selecting, buying, and parking domains. In addition, you provide a support ticket system to answer subscribers questions. Register Domainer-Insider.pro and market the site using YouTube videos, oh...and give aways a few domains each month too." Badabing.

( ...think of a service, build a site, market, build subscribers, retire. Badaboom. )

 

[-REECE-]

With all the uncertainty in the economy today, I'd probably go with development and that's what I'm working on right now. Maybe do a bit of domaining so I could get some nice direct navigation domains to develop -- other than that, I'd go with development.

 

[soggyindo]

nice start reece - this is going to be good!

do you mean you'd trade up some hand regs (because you're starting without much capital) - to be able to afford some direct navigation domains?

i take it you're talking .coms (direct navigations) - which would be quite pricey?

or do you mean keyword-rich SEO names, in other extensions?

----

my 2c worth:

• I'd find a skill I could offer busy domainers (development, writing, etc) at a cheap cost.

• Use that money earned to find the best, keyword rich domains that are exact matches of medium-high search terms (.com, .net, .org or .info). Ideally they would be memorable domains also for resale purposes.

• Develop original content and promote socially (social bookmarking, forums etc) and also do basic SEO.

• Place the sites/ names on sedo, with stats, at a premium but still reasonably priced. re-invest any profits, or sell if you get a good offer.

• Rinse and repeat.

I'd also grab any bargains i might see in my travels for resale, but play to a "quality only" rule. Pay the highest you can afford to to get the best names.

 

[henrysim]

I agree with Reece that development could earn you more than parking. but I really don't know how to develop a money making website.

is it by turning your parking sites to a mini wordpress sites or something else like BANS or Whypark?

I would be glad if fellow namepros members can give some ideas

 

[-REECE-]

Wordpress is a great platform. Some of the top domain blogs gross $1000+ /month, yet some of them only have 1 post every 2-3 days and some of them have other people do most of the posting for them still! Imagine how much that works out to per hour

Of course they're good at what they do and that's why everyone goes to their site, however I'm sure most people here are an expert at something and could develop a loyal following if they shared their knowledge in that area.

I agree with Reece that development could earn you more than parking. but I really don't know how to develop a money making website.

is it by turning your parking sites to a mini wordpress sites or something else like BANS or Whypark?

I would be glad if fellow namepros members can give some ideas

 

[weblord]

seo+domain development for me, let's say we have a scenario something like you offer to develop domain owned by owner, owner doesn't have experience in developing only flipping, buying and selling domains. you offer to develop it making their domain(s) as either forum, blog or directory, then you turn it over to them when it's developed and fully listed/seo'ed on google.com/yahoo.com, and you charge minimal fee of U.S.$200/month you agree to develop it for 3 months, you have to get like 10 clients a month to top your goal and add some more.

 

[HcDomains]

I do have houndres mice keywords rich domains (most are nets and orgs) but it is a hard work for me to develop them since I know little about coding etc.

So my sttrategy is different to yours. I am going to sale my long ket-words domains asap cheap them buy more short domains.

The current market price for domains are dropping, esp for 4L.coms, 3C coms, and even LLL.coms. I will use all of my availbale funds to buy these kind of short domains while they are cheaper now, and waiting for the economy back in 2010 or so

I am sure my investment will get a good return by that time

 

[soggyindo]

seo+domain development for me, let's say we have a scenario something like you offer to develop domain owned by owner, owner doesn't have experience in developing only flipping, buying and selling domains. you offer to develop it making their domain(s) as either forum, blog or directory, then you turn it over to them when it's developed and fully listed/seo'ed on google.com/yahoo.com, and you charge minimal fee of U.S.$200/month you agree to develop it for 3 months, you have to get like 10 clients a month to top your goal and add some more.

nice plan!

but would there be benchmarks for the clients, @ $200 a month? (there's a big difference between a shoddy quick site and a 'deeply developed' and promoted one...) If you can solve that it sounds a good one.

I take it you mean about 40 clients a year = $24,000

:bingo:

namelinker - you're the first one to mention selling domains as a strategy. i like your long view with LLL's etc, too.

 

[weblord]

that's why i mentioned specifically forum, blog and a directory.
i think blog can be developed lower.
forum will have it's real active members posting regularly.
directory will accept human regular submission regulary.
blog will have content, i'll even write the content for them.
it's hard work I know.
just to justify the U.S.$200 for it.

all have same denominator - all needs a lot of TIME and I have plenty of it, since I stay on the internet my whole life.

clients will appreciate it since they're paying for the time that they don't have and they will have enough time to care for other things, that's the plan and in the process of promotion pr will be increased.

I guess I have tried it enough on my own sites myself to try it on another person's site.

 

[copper]

I started developing domains as well since domain parking
is crap and end-user sales are kind of slow.

Made few wordpress sites.
About to start developing site selling how-to videos using Joomla.

 

[jeffoverman]

This is an interesting question.

I would have to go with my instinct and say this

Invest in a name that your passionate on or have an interest or even as a hobby. I pick passion.

Having a passion is what makes a success I feel. Sure you can hire a web coder and say do this and do that for this name. Passion makes you happy, know your doing something productive each day.

Now having said that I would make into a website weather it be an eccomerce project or or few mini sites with many niche markets.

My first year of domaining sucked. Learned from it and moved on. Realizing in 8 years being in sales how much I hate it and I'm not to happy.

09 will be the turn around story for me and I begun my foundation of web properties.

Good luck everyone. Wonder what others say. Weblord brought up many good issues.

 

[soggyindo]

This is an interesting question.

I would have to go with my instinct and say this

Invest in a name that your passionate on or have an interest or even as a hobby. I pick passion.

Having a passion is what makes a success I feel. Sure you can hire a web coder and say do this and do that for this name. Passion makes you happy, know your doing something productive each day.

Now having said that I would make into a website weather it be an eccomerce project or or few mini sites with many niche markets.

My first year of domaining sucked. Learned from it and moved on. Realizing in 8 years being in sales how much I hate it and I'm not to happy.

09 will be the turn around story for me and I begun my foundation of web properties.

Good luck everyone. Wonder what others say. Weblord brought up many good issues.

i couldn't work out if you or i wrote this!

:lol:

so glad i picked domains around interests also - now sitting on a linked network of 70 - 80 sites i'm interested in.

here's to 09 as being successful site maintainers - not just frantic site developers!

 

[xiatiao]

work harder...!

 

[deleted984054565403]

Develop. Pick something you're interested in and blog about it, build traffic and a fanbase, and create a way to make money from the site -- subscriptions and merchandise will work.

Chances are, you're not going to sell/flip $20,000 in strictly domains unless you get very lucky from contacting several end users directly.

 

[weblord]

about 120 clients per year x U.S.$200 = U.S.$24,000
and since you deal with mostly domainers who have no time to develop, it will be a repeat order once they're satisfied, come to think of it, development+SEO, other SEO expertise i've seen is offering U.S.$200++ just for SEO

I take it you mean about 40 clients a year = $24,000

:bingo:

namelinker - you're the first one to mention selling domains as a strategy. i like your long view with LLL's etc, too.

 

[mindless]

First off I can only state what I have experienced and it may not work for everyone. But here is the process I would use:

1) Focus on picking up expired domains with traffic with high PPC terms.
2) Do NOT focus on flipping non-traffic domains. The amount of return per hour of work is not as great as you would hope, I promise..... Go for the big one later.
3) Flip traffic domains after X period of time that do not make over Y amount.
4) Pick up higher traffic expireds with money from flipping smaller traffic names.
5) Hold some parked domains to generate passive income.
6) Start to use X percentage of revenue to develop solid generics.

Using this I now have developed domains that make XX to XXX range per month and also still have more passive X to XXX domains parked with traffic that has shown to be stable.

I find a mix works best. You would not want a stock investment in all one stock, same here, hedge your bets with a mixed portfolio of developed generics and traffic domains, AFTER generating revenue with traffic domains first.

I am sure someone will point out a flaw, but its worked for me. I am now cash flow positive on my expensive domaining habit and used a portion of the proceeds to buy the car I have been wanting

That said, I still work for a living but have learned working smart and not hard on the domaining front has paid off.

Hopefully no secrets revealed the domaining gods will shoot me for.

 

[weblord]

that's where my services comes in.

that's the beauty of domaining even if you reveal a method, still it will work uniquely with you, i think you have some tricks off your sleeve that's yours to keep.

2) Do NOT focus on flipping non-traffic domains. The amount of return per hour of work is not as great as you would hope, I promise..... Go for the big one later.

Hopefully no secrets revealed the domaining gods will shoot me for.

 

[mindless]

Very true, we always hold something back

And yes, your services have for sure came in handy on the names I have developed

 

[cplmjk]

mindless - wow man, your strategy sounds solid.... definitely gonna borrow a bit of it and see what i can do with my portfolio!

 

[Seabass]

First off I can only state what I have experienced and it may not work for everyone. But here is the process I would use:

1) Focus on picking up expired domains with traffic with high PPC terms.
2) Do NOT focus on flipping non-traffic domains. The amount of return per hour of work is not as great as you would hope, I promise..... Go for the big one later.
3) Flip traffic domains after X period of time that do not make over Y amount.
4) Pick up higher traffic expireds with money from flipping smaller traffic names.
5) Hold some parked domains to generate passive income.
6) Start to use X percentage of revenue to develop solid generics.

Using this I now have developed domains that make XX to XXX range per month and also still have more passive X to XXX domains parked with traffic that has shown to be stable.

I find a mix works best. You would not want a stock investment in all one stock, same here, hedge your bets with a mixed portfolio of developed generics and traffic domains, AFTER generating revenue with traffic domains first.

I am sure someone will point out a flaw, but its worked for me. I am now cash flow positive on my expensive domaining habit and used a portion of the proceeds to buy the car I have been wanting

That said, I still work for a living but have learned working smart and not hard on the domaining front has paid off.

Hopefully no secrets revealed the domaining gods will shoot me for.

You just revealed the golden goose really.

This is what many hard real estate investors do, or some variation of this. I know that some use the "buy three, keep the best one, then sell the other two" method......then repeat again with three more, thereby amassing an amazing portfolio of real estate properties.

 

[mindless]

To be honest, when I wrote the step by step post the mindset I had was, if I had any sort of info when i started in this business/addiction what would it be. The post is the short version of what I wished I would of known.

I will say, no matter how hard you try you will stray and make bad decisions on purchases, BUT that said the goal this "how to earn 20K" thread has to me is to make 20K more than you spend, and it is possible with the method described.

Really no secrets there but you do not see them all in one place very often.

But like everything else, anytime any information is given theres always the worry of creating competition for yourself

I keep waiting for the angry PMs.....

 

[mmelen]

I would sell my sites and get a steady job

 

[jeffoverman]

I would sell my sites and get a steady job

or you can do both....im in the same boat right now...michigan is killing me and being a small business and retail, just burned out... took on a midnight job for cash flow reasons, doing a few orders a month from the business still and keeping a few small accounts that i do have...building out couple sites as we speak...

the internet is amazing and fun...domaining and ppc parking is not fun for me...would be if i came into the game early or had type in traffic .com name..lol...

many good thoughts by the others...i been doing a pro and con list on a forum and a niche market...think it boils down to finding good moderators, get a few members that follow your passion to post everyday then you have the headaches of selling the advertising... keep going back and forth on a forum issue... tomorrow my thoughts may change, lol.... want things to be in placed by jan 09 and on paper...realistic goals that i can do, not high expectations... right now concentrating on renewing few names, letting a few dump and be cash flow + in 09 starting in feb or march...

these are bad times for everyone right now... right now cash is king...when i tell couple people this they laugh at me and there buying things left and right...i did the fast growth, got burned and now taking each day as a new day..slow and steady....if i get thinking on 10 things its all overwhelming, lol...

may 09 be all good for us!