This Monday's edition of Domain Development tackles the world of lead generation as an alternative way of making money with your domain names. This guide will also include one of my own websites which I successfully developed into a lead generation site, and eventually sold on to a company in that field.
For those unfamiliar with lead generation, it is a way of acquiring data from people who are interested in a certain product of service. There are many ways of acquiring leads in 2015 (Facebook ads, Twitter, Yelp listings, Google Adsense), but we're going to talk about lead generation in a fairly basic form by just developing out your domain name(s).
You can make money with lead generation in a couple of ways: firstly, you can charge per lead. This involves agreeing a fee per lead which you sell to a company. This tends to be a fairly low payment, but it's easy to manage and request payment. The second option is to create a partnership with a company in which you receive a percentage of the profits for a successful lead.
To be successful with lead generation, it's a good idea to start with a domain name that you own which has popular keywords and plenty of advertisers for those keywords (or a high Cost Per Click estimate). A popular keyword in this case can range from 500 searches per month to much higher, depending on the industry or niche.
One of my first successful lead generation websites was on the domain name CheapConservatories.com. This only had around 400 searches per month in the UK, but due to the popularity of conservatories, and the high prices involved, I was able to partner with a UK company to sell leads to them for a certain fee.
To create your lead generation website, I'd recommend using WordPress and I'd also recommend making your site look as professional as possible; this includes the photography, the logo and the theme.
I'd recommend using the Avada or Altitude Pro WordPress theme; both of which I outlined in my "5 Top WordPress Themes for Domainers" a couple of weeks ago. Both of these themes are well designed and both have excellent potential as lead generation themes.
You'll also need to install the five recommended plugins here, as each one will be put into use on a lead generation site.
Whatever niche you're in, you will need to create a convincing front page which includes clear links to contact pages and other informational pages. As well as those links, you'll also want to include your keywords in an H2 tag heading, and H3 tag heading and in instances of bold and italicised paragraph content throughout your homepage. This used to give an SEO boost, but if I'm honest I'm not sure what effect this has now although I still follow these steps anyway. If you have no idea what an H2 or H3 tag is, don't worry SEO will be covered in another edition of Domain Development.
Creating your front page is the most important part of creating a lead generation website, so you should spend time on getting the photography, text and graphics right. Take a look at other websites in your niche to see whether there is any information that you should include on your home page.
If you're looking for free photography for your website, you may be interested in trying out Pixabay which provides free high quality stock images.
Once you've created your front page, you should create subsequent pages for any service or product that you're going to offer. These pages should be informative - giving the reader enough detail to allow them to make a decision on whether to contact you or not. Of course, each page should include clear links to your contact page to make it easy for your visitors to initiate contact.
Your contact page itself should include a contact form from the Contact Form 7 plugin as well as other information such as a phone number (if applicable) and links to live chat (again, if applicable). Adding a phone number to your website will make your lead generation site appear more trustworthy, and may also bring more leads.
Phone numbers can be acquired extremely cheaply via Twilio.com. An 800 number or a local number from over 20 different countries can be acquired here for just a couple of dollars per month. You can configure your lead generation number to forward to your own phone number, you can configure it to Twilio's own voicemail service or you could even forward the number to you're lead generation partner's phone number to deal with leads directly.
At this point, I'd like to show you a lead generation website which I set up and then sold to a company in the niche; DentalWebsiteDesign.com. The term generates around 800 searches per month, and has a high CPC with many companies vying for lucrative design and SEO contracts with dentists across the USA.
I used the Avada theme to create a compelling website, and designed the logo myself. The photography on the website is a mixture of Shutterstock images and screenshots from the current owner's portfolio of work. The homepage includes all the details necessary for any visitor to sufficiently learn about the company as well as having clear links to the contact page (listed as "Get A Quote").
Each service offered - web design, social media management and SEO has its own sub section with further pages with high quality content targeted to specific keywords. The site also contains a portfolio and a pricing page - again, both with clear links to the "Get A Quote" page to help attract more leads.
I also wrote a number of blog posts on the site to help attract potential leads from natural search traffic for some long tail keywords.
This website took around a day to complete, with further content added later on. It's a site that can be easily replicated and transferred to other niches for a very minimal outlay.
Once you've created your lead generation website, it's time to start contacting companies in the niche you're targeting to see if they're interested in buying your leads. A simple email introducing your website and the service you're offering should be enough to initiate a conversation. After that, it is just a case of attracting leads to your website through either type in traffic, search engines or social media. Or a combination of the three.
Domain Development is a blog series that teaches you how to create money making websites from your domain portfolio.
For those unfamiliar with lead generation, it is a way of acquiring data from people who are interested in a certain product of service. There are many ways of acquiring leads in 2015 (Facebook ads, Twitter, Yelp listings, Google Adsense), but we're going to talk about lead generation in a fairly basic form by just developing out your domain name(s).
You can make money with lead generation in a couple of ways: firstly, you can charge per lead. This involves agreeing a fee per lead which you sell to a company. This tends to be a fairly low payment, but it's easy to manage and request payment. The second option is to create a partnership with a company in which you receive a percentage of the profits for a successful lead.
To be successful with lead generation, it's a good idea to start with a domain name that you own which has popular keywords and plenty of advertisers for those keywords (or a high Cost Per Click estimate). A popular keyword in this case can range from 500 searches per month to much higher, depending on the industry or niche.
One of my first successful lead generation websites was on the domain name CheapConservatories.com. This only had around 400 searches per month in the UK, but due to the popularity of conservatories, and the high prices involved, I was able to partner with a UK company to sell leads to them for a certain fee.
To create your lead generation website, I'd recommend using WordPress and I'd also recommend making your site look as professional as possible; this includes the photography, the logo and the theme.
I'd recommend using the Avada or Altitude Pro WordPress theme; both of which I outlined in my "5 Top WordPress Themes for Domainers" a couple of weeks ago. Both of these themes are well designed and both have excellent potential as lead generation themes.
You'll also need to install the five recommended plugins here, as each one will be put into use on a lead generation site.
Whatever niche you're in, you will need to create a convincing front page which includes clear links to contact pages and other informational pages. As well as those links, you'll also want to include your keywords in an H2 tag heading, and H3 tag heading and in instances of bold and italicised paragraph content throughout your homepage. This used to give an SEO boost, but if I'm honest I'm not sure what effect this has now although I still follow these steps anyway. If you have no idea what an H2 or H3 tag is, don't worry SEO will be covered in another edition of Domain Development.
Creating your front page is the most important part of creating a lead generation website, so you should spend time on getting the photography, text and graphics right. Take a look at other websites in your niche to see whether there is any information that you should include on your home page.
If you're looking for free photography for your website, you may be interested in trying out Pixabay which provides free high quality stock images.
Once you've created your front page, you should create subsequent pages for any service or product that you're going to offer. These pages should be informative - giving the reader enough detail to allow them to make a decision on whether to contact you or not. Of course, each page should include clear links to your contact page to make it easy for your visitors to initiate contact.
Your contact page itself should include a contact form from the Contact Form 7 plugin as well as other information such as a phone number (if applicable) and links to live chat (again, if applicable). Adding a phone number to your website will make your lead generation site appear more trustworthy, and may also bring more leads.
Phone numbers can be acquired extremely cheaply via Twilio.com. An 800 number or a local number from over 20 different countries can be acquired here for just a couple of dollars per month. You can configure your lead generation number to forward to your own phone number, you can configure it to Twilio's own voicemail service or you could even forward the number to you're lead generation partner's phone number to deal with leads directly.
At this point, I'd like to show you a lead generation website which I set up and then sold to a company in the niche; DentalWebsiteDesign.com. The term generates around 800 searches per month, and has a high CPC with many companies vying for lucrative design and SEO contracts with dentists across the USA.
I used the Avada theme to create a compelling website, and designed the logo myself. The photography on the website is a mixture of Shutterstock images and screenshots from the current owner's portfolio of work. The homepage includes all the details necessary for any visitor to sufficiently learn about the company as well as having clear links to the contact page (listed as "Get A Quote").
Each service offered - web design, social media management and SEO has its own sub section with further pages with high quality content targeted to specific keywords. The site also contains a portfolio and a pricing page - again, both with clear links to the "Get A Quote" page to help attract more leads.
I also wrote a number of blog posts on the site to help attract potential leads from natural search traffic for some long tail keywords.
This website took around a day to complete, with further content added later on. It's a site that can be easily replicated and transferred to other niches for a very minimal outlay.
Once you've created your lead generation website, it's time to start contacting companies in the niche you're targeting to see if they're interested in buying your leads. A simple email introducing your website and the service you're offering should be enough to initiate a conversation. After that, it is just a case of attracting leads to your website through either type in traffic, search engines or social media. Or a combination of the three.
Domain Development is a blog series that teaches you how to create money making websites from your domain portfolio.
