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How to Develop Domain Names for Profit

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redemo

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I have wanted to get this conversation started somewhere since last year. So rather than hoard all this information I'm just gonna throw caution to the wind and share what I know. Hope to see lots of people contribute with your own ideas and tips and questions.

Here's a 13-point very rough guide to domain name monetisation. Follow it all the way through you WILL make money [moderator edit: this is not guaranteed]. Also this is a new post today it's not copied and pasted from anywhere. After your domain name is profitable you can keep developing it to get more traffic and clicks or sell it and buy better domain names with more traffic opportunities. There are no right and wrong answers. No two setups are the same. It's trial and error. What works for you might not work for others and viced versa. You will make mistakes. It's inevitable. We're only human. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and keep improving until you find your domain name monetisation system that works.

Contents
  1. Niche
  2. Keywords
  3. Domain name
  4. Hosting
  5. C.M.S.
  6. Theme
  7. Customisation
  8. Menu
  9. Publishing
  10. Indexing
  11. Traffic
  12. Ads
  13. Clicks
Step-By-Step Guide
1. Niche
Choose a profitable niche and something you are confident writing about. Ideally you have some personal experience in the subject and can share information that is not available anywhere else, or a unique angle on existing information. Random examples of profitable niches: Home beer making kits, buying cryptocurrency, collecting modern art, learn to speak a language, anti wrinkle treatments, vape kits, self publishing, domain name investing (y), website reseller hosting, family ancestory, D.N.A kits, credit card applications, life insurance, home energy swap, starting a business. Practically anything that people want and businesses are selling you can post about and get ad click revenue.​
2. Keywords
Research keyword volume using any of the free keyword volume tools. The keywords should be relevant to the niche you have chosen and the country and language that you are targeting. Try to choose transactional keywords. Why? Because users looking to buy things are more likely to click your ads. You can get many visitors for some keywords that are informational not transactional. Also with keywords you want to identify short tail and long tail. Why? Because later on your blog posts will be targeting long tail keywords and over time you will rank for the shorter keywords. Once you are more advanced it's a good idea to pay for your software and it will remove the limits. But if you are strapped for cash you can find many good free tools. Remember that these tools are most often providing search volume based on loose estimates from indexed keyword rankings. Take the data with a pinch of salt. It's variable. You won't know what's what until your website is ranked on search engines and getting traffic.​
3. Domain name
Register a good name that includes your keywords (it doesn't have to but it's easier). Try to use .com T.L.D. if you can but ultimately the content and structure of your website is more important that your domain name. After all a domain name is just an address. But an address that looks the part will attract more visitors on the same street than an address that doesn't look the part. One or two word names in .com or your local c.c.T.L.D. is the best solution. You can find an expired domain name or buy one. Just do your proper research on the name. You can also lease a domain name instead of buying it, or lease to buy. There's got to be someone on Namepros you can do a deal with.​
4. Hosting
Connect your domain name to a reliable hosting provider and activate your S.S.L. certificate. If you are developing many domain names it's a good idea to buy multi-site hosting. Check what's included in the hosting package carefully. Some web hosting companies give you hosting plus S.S.L. plus mailboxes all for one monthly fee. Other web hosting companies make you pay extra. Also check the customer reviews for the hosting company. If it has bad customer service reviews don't touch it with a barge pole.​
5. C.M.S.
You can use any most of the C.M.S. available including Wix, Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Blogger or if you have programming skills you can code it yourself. The two very important things from your customer's angle is speed and usability. Speed means that your website loads very fast on all devices. Usability is a broad term that includes customers being able to access your website from any device and perform all the required functions. If your website is slow and doesn't operate on smartphones then don't expect it to rank well in search engines.​
6. Theme
Activate your website's theme. Choosing a good theme is not the easiest of tasks. No theme is perfect. You should look for a theme that has good ratings and built by a professional company. If you are using Wordpress many themes have a free version to start you off and a pro version for around $ 50 if you want to unlock more features and get support from the creators. It's very much trial and error. Try not to spend too much time choosing a theme. Better to start posting and change your theme later.​
7. Customisation
Customising your theme shouldn't take more than one day but it's very important you cover the basics. You need a professional looking logo even if it's plain text. Most new customers will glance at your logo automatically just to remove a red flag. Look at the Namepros logo. It's simple, professional and tells you exactly what to expect on the site. Other customisations are the favicon which is becoming more and more important. Again look at the Namepros favicon for inspiration. nP. Very simple but recognisable and professional. You don't need to complicated it. There are too many other customisation to list now but you can find them in search engines or ask.​
8. Menu
Create your main menu with the main pages that will be on your site. Too few menu items looks weird and too many menu items looks cluttered. Go for 5, 6, 7 or 8 menu items. Again I'm taking the easy route and using Namepros as an example. There are 8 menu options which is perfect. Home, News, Buy Domains, Sell Domains, Requests, Appraisals, Blog, Chat. You can add or remove menu items depending on what you think your customer needs and doesn't need. There's no right and wrong. It's very much trial and error. Look on similar sites to see what menu items they have. All sites are different but the most important ones will be on most sites in your niche.​
9. Publishing
When your website is all set up you should publish one blog post every day. Start by creating a simple blog post template that you can find in search engines. You can either create and post a new blog entry every day but what some people do is create 30 blog entries all in one go and set them to publish daily for one month. Your life is so much easier this way but the choice its yours. Why post daily? Because one post a day will keep updating the publish dates on your X.M.L. site map which will in turn ping updates to all the search engine you want to rank in. Another update. Another update. Another update. This is what gets your website ranked in search engines. Then the search engine calculates which updates are good and which updates are sh-t. The good ones get shown to customers searching for relevant keywords. The sh-t updates are either ignored or put on search results pages that almost nobody visits like page 2, page 3, page 4. If your updates are on one of these pages it means they are sh-t compared to what's on page 1. In this scenario you want to compare your website against the page one websites and see how you can improve. Every time you change something and search engines re-index your website they give you a new score. You need to improve this score over time. I think that's how it works.​
10. Search Engines
If you set up your website properly if will have an account with Google Search Console where you can submit your X.M.L. sitemap. X.M.L. site page lists all the content you have allowed search engines to see. Most people only need to submit their website's X.M.L. site map once and it will automatically get crawled after that. Some people get impatient and manually submit their X.M.L. site map to Google for faster indexing in search results. You can do this if you want but it's optional. Generally with search engines just follow their rules and guidelines and you'll be fine. Most search engines have a help website you can search end find like a checklist of ways to improve your website for search engines.​
11. Traffic
If you've followed all the steps so far you start to see visitors come to your websites from search engines. Your tracking software will tell you what the most popular pages and blog posts are and many other things like what country your customers are in, what kind of device they are using and so many other things. Try not to get too distracted by all the data. Most importantly is you want to see your traffic steadily increasing, as well as the number of pages viewed per visit and length of time customers spend on your website. Remember we talked about good updates and sh-t update? Well if you improve your metrics its how to tell search engines that your website is sending good updates. You can also increase traffic through nowadays through many other methods but social media is one of the best. Look on search engines for how to do this. The main point about traffic is quality beats quantity every time. Thrill your customers with a great user experience and they will naturally want to engage engage. Or disappoint your customers with sh-t content and badly designed website and they will throw you the pooey end of the stick.​
12. Ads
You're all set up with a professional looking website which maybe took you a month to get bang on. Your website is indexed in search engines and getting lots of new and returning customers. This might have taken you another month. So you're 60 days into this dark cosmic void of wonder and now it's time to include some advertisements. Don't do it too early. Be patient and choose the right time. There's all the information you needs about ads in search engines. Key points are make sure the adverts you post are highly relevant to your customers. They will be much more likely to click and make a transaction. Don't just whack on a skyscraper banner and expect gold coins to start magically rolling down the hill and into your trouser pockets. It doesn't work like that. Really think about how you will integrate your ads to best serve your customers and bring you some bangers and mash.​
13. Clicks
If you've done everything right you will get ad clicks. It's the end step on a logical process that starts with research and ends with commission. You obviously want to make sure the money you spend on your domain name is less than the money you receive in ad click revenue. But some people also factor their time in to the equation. That's up to you but here's a simple calculation of year one expenses and profit. You paid $ 50 for your domain name. Then you paid $ 50 for hosting which included free S.S.L. All your software was free. Total expenses $ 100. A ton. $ 1 daily ad clicks for 10 months is $ 300. Your profit is $ 200 in year one less your liabilities for tax. Two tons. $ 1 daily ad revenue is kind of the bottom end. It should really get to $10 or $20 daily ad revenue which could land you with $ 1000 or $ 2000 or more (or less). If you get confident buy better domain names which probably cost you more. Start paying for automation software that save your time. Successful people with good domain names that are properly setup and monetised can earn upwards of $ 50000 per year.​
Thanks to Namepros and everyone who contributes on the forum for being awesome.​
 
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How did i miss this? WOW.

Well done! Looking forward to its development.

Samer
 
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Great content, leaving a comment in the hopes others will jump in as well. Appreciation to keep content like this going here on Namepros!

Cheers
 
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Very important information, thanks for sharing with us.
Last year I started this experience and started building a website for healthy nutrition and it was fun, but for other reasons and obligations I did not continue to the project but I am really seriously thinking about it and your valuable ideas today gave me some hope and inspiration to try again.

Best Regards
Devanos
 
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Good stuff mate - one thing I would consider is extending the length of time of before putting ad's on your site and doing it when enough visitors are finding it.......there really is no rush, mine has been live for a few months now and I am not even contemplating putting ad's on the site until I get to 5k - 10k + monthly visitors (will hit 1k this month) as it has an impact on site loading speeds and the general user experience - which is now a big Google ranking factor.

As long as the project has been budgeted correctly people should be able to afford to focus on top quality content and really focus on building out the site before zoning in on a dual long tail and content keyword strategy....

Just my 2 cents......
 
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Good stuff mate - one thing I would consider is extending the length of time of before putting ad's on your site and doing it when enough visitors are finding it.......there really is no rush, mine has been live for a few months now and I am not even contemplating putting ad's on the site until I get to 5k - 10k + monthly visitors (will hit 1k this month) as it has an impact on site loading speeds and the general user experience - which is now a big Google ranking factor.
You're spot on mate. Too many people make the mistake of whacking ads here there and everywhere right at the beginning. It can't be done willy nilly. Like you say get 150-300 daily visits first.

As long as the project has been budgeted correctly people should be able to afford to focus on top quality content and really focus on building out the site before zoning in on a dual long tail and content keyword strategy....
Exactly mate. Quality all the way.

Just my 2 cents......
Your comments are really helpful mate. If you flag up mistakes it'll make part 2 even better. This is just the rough draft. Didn't want to die with it unpublished! Cheers.
 
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You're spot on mate. Too many people make the mistake of whacking ads here there and everywhere right at the beginning. It can't be done willy nilly. Like you say get 150-300 daily visits first.


Exactly mate. Quality all the way.


Your comments are really helpful mate. If you flag up mistakes it'll make part 2 even better. This is just the rough draft. Didn't want to die with it unpublished! Cheers.
No mistakes on your side (y) looking forward to the next chapter........
 
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whoa this is massive I was thinking of developing a name I hand registered few weeks ago and setting it up on WordPress, the niche is in health and fitness, this is my first project hope more will follow; I am less than one year into Domaining , I will be waiting Eagerly for the part 2 of this Thread thanks man I did appreciate.
 
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Happy World UFO Day. I'm compiling part 2 of domain name monetisation guide. It's going to be a step by step check list of actions you can take to start generating ad revenue from your domain names. Expecting to publish the e-book this month but it's a lot of work and I'm running a full time domain name monetisation business at the same time! Please post here before National Simplicity Day (July 12 in appreciation of Henry David Thoreau) if you would like any specific information to be included. Cheers.
 
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Thanks and looking forward for part 2
 
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There is a control panel on the ad networks where you can see all customer clicks including what products they bought and the total basket value. The commission structure is 5 or 10 %. Yesterday a customer clicked an advertising banner on one of my websites and spent £ 100 ($ 138.20) because there was a special offer with 30% discount. The commission for that product line was 10 % so I earned £ 10 ($ 13.82) from one click. It's kinda cool when one ad click covers the reg fee for a whole year. Generally my click reward is £ 1 ($ 1.38) or £ 2 ($ 2.76). Target for 2021 is 20 websites earning £ 10 ($ 13.82) each every day. 20 websites x £ 10 = £ 200 ($ 275) every day. When I sell those domain names next year with developed websites that get traffic and are generating revenue the domain name value is considerably higher than if I just parked it. But I guess other domainers get so much type in traffic from premium names that they don't need to develop and can just park their names. I can't afford premium names so the solution I've chosen is to develop names I either hand registered or bought for $ 25 or $ 50. If my plan works and 20 websites generate £ 200 ($ 275) every day it's £ 73000 ($ 101000) every year. Most of my websites are 90% automated.
 
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Yesterday a customer clicked an advertising banner on one of my websites and spent £ 100 ($ 138.20) because there was a special offer with 30% discount. The commission for that product line was 10 % so I earned £ 10 ($ 13.82) from one click.

Update. The customer went back to the store today and purchased some more items. Customers placing their first-time order receive a discount e-voucher with 20% off their second order if it's made within 7 days. Anyway that £ 10 ad click has now increased to £ 14.50 ($ 20). It pays to understand the funnel. If you are working on one product it will help you to buy the product yourself to understand the complete customer journey experience and sales funnel. You can always send the product back for a refund before the return period runs out. All of this will be in the e-book part 2.
 
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Part 2 of my e-book will be split into four main parts

Register ➤ Develop ➤ Monetise ➤ Sell

1 ➤ Register domain names with keywords people are searching for
2 ➤ Develop high quality websites that help people solve problems
3 ➤ Monetise your website with relevant ads that pay you commission
4 ➤ Sell your website or maintain it for regular traffic and income
 
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Just saw this thread. Good stuff - thanks!

Following...
 
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Just saw this thread. Good stuff - thanks!

Following...

Thanks @cbd cool name mate. I have changed the title of chapter 1 from "register" domain to "acquire" domain since it includes to buy as well as to register from available. Also sent moderator team some messages about what can be allowed in terms of external links and also affiliate links. Hope to finish and publish the ebook this week and my set deadline is on Saturday 31 July. All sensible questions asked in this thread will be included in the second ebook. It's many hours of work and I might like to receive some commission from ad clicks so I might end up publishing on an external site and share the link to the forum according to Namepros rules. Will send the final draft to the moderator team for approval and take it from there. Cheers.

Chapter 1 ➤ Acquire
Chapter 2 ➤ Develop
Chapter 3 ➤ Monetise
Chapter 4 ➤ Sell
 
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Dont forget plugins! contact form plugin, all in one seo, my theme is installed via plugin.
I have about 8 plugins i use on each site. one has a chat room that is installed via plugin
 
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I never understood this..

why people who claim to know how to make good money want to publish books to profit from them... I mean if u do it for others then it should be free...and if u do it for u then u already have money making method u describe in the book

the golden rule is to never pay for a book that describes how to make money.
 
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I never understood this..
Stand by to understand.

why people who claim to know how to make good money want to publish books to profit from them...
Learning and teaching are symbiotic. By sharing what I know the community becomes wiser. Others will share what they know and we become wiser still. My single intent is to help people who drop domain names to NEVER drop domain names again. If as a result of traffic I am allowed to profit from affiliate ads within my ebook why shouldn't I profit. With all due respect this content took me like 10 hours to write but a lifetime to learn. If you disagree then don't click any ads. Simple. Anyway there are no ads in this thread.

I mean if u do it for others then it should be free...
What do you mean it should be free? It is free. Where does it say you need to pay anything?

and if u do it for u then u already have money making method u describe in the book
That's correct it's making money for me. And? Sharing information opens the floor to comment and criticism through which we learn better ways to monetise domain names. Very few people become wealthy without regular collaboration with their peers.

the golden rule is to never pay for a book that describes how to make money.
You seem like a cool guy/girl but that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Why are you on Namepros except to read how to sell your domain names? If you were making enough money from selling domain names then you wouldn't be reading this thread unless it's your entertainment or you - like everyone else - is looking for ways to make a profit.
 
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@redemo

Can you give us a couple of examples of websites you've built?
 
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the golden rule is to never pay for a book that describes how to make money.

Hi

Totally agree!

it's a suckers trap
without empirical proof, it's just hype and propaganda

imo....
 
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