question Is building out a domain not as expensive as I thought?

[Gary Moore]

Sorry this is long, but this is a big question mark to me.

All the time I hear domainers say "I will build this out instead of selling it". Or "I just threw up a landing page". And it makes me think these people have many, many sites. Which I can see the potential income from this through affiliate marketing and other ways. But how do people afford this starting out? I have 2 sites and both cost me hosting each month and other small costs. Now, I know my way of doing this cannot be the best as I am using GoDaddy for both. One with their built-in web developer and the other with their Wordpress plugin. But looking across the net, whether it's squarespace, GD, wix or any of them, they all cost per site (at least from what I understood). Even if I go with WP, don't I have to pay hosting for each site? How can I afford to build out 10-20 of my domains like this? Or is there some big piece of the puzzle I completely missed?

 

[carob]

This is a waste of time and will not make money, just concentrate on domains.

A few years ago some very good names could make some money this way, but Google has killed that.

Wordpress is free and so is 000webhost.com and freehostia, but time is money.

 

[Gary Moore]

This is a waste of time and will not make money, just concentrate on domains.

A few years ago some very good names could make some money this way, but Google has killed that.

Wordpress is free and so is 000webhost.com and freehostia, but time is money.

So basically, just concentrate on flipping names, correct? One site I have is a personal site (blog) and the other is a domaining site, mostly to give my names another platform to sell on. But, I assume buy your comment, I shouldn't spend the time developing other sites to add value to the domain names.

 

[cdboard]

if you have many domains, get hosting that does not charge per domain.

 

[JamesCrew]

Developing domains have their benefits as long as the domains you are planning to develop have potential (to be monetized without investing so much effort, money and time).

I would suggest that you identify if you have any such domains that are worth developing, and then start by developing one by one. Do not go developing multiple domains at a time as you will not be able to completely focus on each domain.

Remember, just developing a domain by adding a Wordpress theme and couple of content pages isn't going to help you anyway. The site also need marketing and promotion, social networking and etc., you get the picture, right!

Wordpress is free and doesn't cost per site. All you need is a hosting where you can host domains you plan on developing.

You said something about launching a domain portfolio. I would say, go for it. It's always a good idea to have a business identity, it looks more professional and can always help in ensuring buyers that they are dealing with a professional business, instead of an individual.

 

[Gary Moore]

@JamesCrew I do have a domaining site up, dailydomaining.xyz. I haven't had anyone give me feed back yet on it, like good or bad points, but it is my main focus at the moment. I have tried to make affiliate sites in the past to no avail. So when I keep hearing domainers talk about building out a site, I was wondering if there is something I was missing. Just looking at all aspects of domaining and how to build a profitable business out of it. I have about 78 domains (prob mostly crap since I am new) but I have 1.5 years to have my web business up to 6K a month. That would allow my to move out of my reg job and keep my current life. That's my short term goal.

 

[carob]

So basically, just concentrate on flipping names, correct?

I would, yes. Sites are secondary and take time and there is no guarantee of any return on any time you put in. And as JamesCrew said, you need content, marketing, promotion. And you need maintenance. And linkbuilding. Putting that time into domains is more likely to earn a return. Even when the affiliate stuff works, it doesn't earn much. Who is excited about $5 or $10 for a good month's clicks? A lot of bs figures and myths get kicked around on this lol.

You could do just one site and use it as a lab to learn about traffic and stats. You might see tiny traffic and see there never would be much chance of earning there.

 

[JamesCrew]

@JamesCrew I do have a domaining site up, dailydomaining.xyz. I haven't had anyone give me feed back yet on it, like good or bad points, but it is my main focus at the moment. I have tried to make affiliate sites in the past to no avail. So when I keep hearing domainers talk about building out a site, I was wondering if there is something I was missing. Just looking at all aspects of domaining and how to build a profitable business out of it. I have about 78 domains (prob mostly crap since I am new) but I have 1.5 years to have my web business up to 6K a month. That would allow my to move out of my reg job and keep my current life. That's my short term goal.

OK now, just saw your website and the first thing I would like to ask, why aren't you using Wordpress? The site looks old school and doesn't have much to attract visitors (no offense meant). Wordpress is not only easy to use but it also has so many options that you can effectively use to make professional websites.

You mentioned something about your web business, may I ask, are you a designer, developer or a marketer or etc.?

You could do just one site and use it as a lab to learn about traffic and stats. You might see tiny traffic and see there never would be much chance of earning there.

That's a great advice. Start experimenting by developing a single domain. It would definitely give you a precise idea of how the whole development thing works and what is required to take things to the next level (flipping that domain+site).

PS:
I am in the middle of developing a car rental site, I plan to make it a proper business site (with search engine rankings and whatnot) and then to flip it. If this experiment goes as I have planned, I have more in pipeline to develop.

Good luck,

 

[Gary Moore]

To be honest, I didn't use WP because I had a GD webbuilder subscription I wasn't using and thought I would put it to use. My personal site naturallymoore.com is build on WP (well the Godaddy WP hosting). I was trying to keep the domaining site more minimal, but I understand what you mean, and thank you for the feed back. As for my web business, that's what I am trying to establish (unless domaining isn't really a webbusiness and I am using the term wrong in this case). Basically, a business I can run from home is what I am trying to accomplish.

 

[Gary Moore]

are you a designer, developer or a marketer or etc.?

I'm a graphic designer, and run VTC and AV systems, as in conferences and high profile DV meetings.

 

[ivey]

If you Buy GD hosting you can build as much sites as you want under that one hosting account, instead of paying separately for each domain. I focused on selling domains because i though development was costly and time consuming but I am evolving. If you can come up with a creative idea for a domain website then you can monetize it..But plan well first. If this wasn't possible then flippa wouldn't be doing so well.

 

[JB Lions]

Sorry this is long, but this is a big question mark to me.

All the time I hear domainers say "I will build this out instead of selling it". Or "I just threw up a landing page". And it makes me think these people have many, many sites. Which I can see the potential income from this through affiliate marketing and other ways. But how do people afford this starting out? I have 2 sites and both cost me hosting each month and other small costs. Now, I know my way of doing this cannot be the best as I am using GoDaddy for both. One with their built-in web developer and the other with their Wordpress plugin. But looking across the net, whether it's squarespace, GD, wix or any of them, they all cost per site (at least from what I understood). Even if I go with WP, don't I have to pay hosting for each site? How can I afford to build out 10-20 of my domains like this? Or is there some big piece of the puzzle I completely missed?

I know plenty of people making a good living doing affiliate marketing. It's harder nowadays but still doable. You're more apt to find them on forums dedicated to affiliate marketing, good forums, not the ones full of people looking to run a newbie. Or if you can afford it, try to go to one of the conferences like Affiliate Summit.

Domain, a few bucks. Hosting, shared hosting works just fine for probably 99% of the sites out there, you can get that for under $10 a month and use it for multiple sites.

Development. A lot of people get others to make sites, content etc. And you won't find many of those types actually making any good money. You should learn to build sites yourself. Create your own content. Another problem is people go into very competitive markets, fail, become frustrated etc. You need to really check out the competition out there, see if you can fit in somewhere. I would recommend to people just starting out, even those who have done it awhile, go niche.

Let me give you a quick example of something I'm actually researching. Cheese. Big site is cheese.com. The niche stuff are the inner pages. Let's pick one - Montasio Cheese. Put that in Google or Bing, you'll find a page on Cheese.com ranking on page 1. You'll see it's available at Amazon.com, they rank on page 1 as well. They also have an affiliate program. In Bing/Yahoo and Google, you'll find montasiocheese.com ranking on page 1 for montasio cheese. You'll see they have affiliate links to Amazon.com, but old ones, because they have broken images.

So with that example, you can see:
Big category with inner pages being niche on page 1
You see a site dedicated to that keyword, montasio cheese, exact match keyword domain ranking on both Google and Yahoo/Bing. That's for when you see people posting here that doesn't happen. They don't know what they're talking about, because I can find examples all day long.

 

[adi4u4882]

If i were you, i would not upload a picture of my daughter on a public website.
And the other site dailydomaining()xyz/, is not professional at any means, just bootstrap and make it responsive and usable on all devices such as mobile, tablet and PC.

 

[Gary Moore]

If i were you, i would not upload a picture of my daughter on a public website.
And the other site dailydomaining()xyz/, is not professional at any means, just bootstrap and make it responsive and usable on all devices such as mobile, tablet and PC.

You are correct, I need to make some changes to my personal site. And follow up on bad ideas, like the pics. I have been updating my domaining site each day as I receive feedback. I'm going to be upgrading it to work on mobile within the next couple weeks. I really appreciate you taking the time to look it over and give me your opinion.

 

[Gary Moore]

@adi4u4882 I took the pic of my daughter off my other site. As for my domaining site. What kind of things, besides mobile did you see that I should work on?

 

[SupNames]

Just my 2 cents, but as others have said, it does take time and effort to develop a domain into and income producing asset if you go the website route. Personally I identify specific domains I want to develop, and those are few and far between. I use shared hosting from Hostgator and WP which is free. I use a more or less standard template and outsource most of the SEO and content. Even with this "system", only about 2 out of 10 sites will be profitable. I still have a long way to go in figuring out where to invest my time and energy.

 

[adi4u4882]

@adi4u4882 I took the pic of my daughter off my other site. As for my domaining site. What kind of things, besides mobile did you see that I should work on?

This is just my 2 cents.
Since the is going to be your portfolio, it need not need any other special additions, you can even get a wordpress theme and use it for a while until you get the gist of it, maybe add your contact info such as email , phone number.
And instead of waiting for customers, you can try to contact small business or other people who might be interested in your domains, just try sending them a formal email but be sure not to spam them, and try to get more information about domain market as possible.
Coming here was a good start, there are few other sites also, try to follow the domainers who are doing quite well, by reading their blog and by reading their posts on forums.

Regards.

 

[Gary Moore]

This is just my 2 cents.
Since the is going to be your portfolio, it need not need any other special additions, you can even get a wordpress theme and use it for a while until you get the gist of it, maybe add your contact info such as email , phone number.
And instead of waiting for customers, you can try to contact small business or other people who might be interested in your domains, just try sending them a formal email but be sure not to spam them, and try to get more information about domain market as possible.
Coming here was a good start, there are few other sites also, try to follow the domainers who are doing quite well, by reading their blog and by reading their posts on forums.

Regards.

Thanks for the input. I have my contact info on the Contact Me page. Should I add it to the front page as well? I have started adding logos for what I consider my better names, kind of similar to Namerific and PlentyofBrands. I do little updates everyday, but I am working on a WP version and will move to that when I am happy with it. I use WP for my personal site, but I had an extra GD builder that I wasn't using, and I had no idea that I would start getting as many views as I do. So, that's why I went that route to start.
I do read about 5-7 other blogs, listen to Domain Masters and Domain Sherpa. I have also reached out to Michael Cyger and Shane Coultra by email, and got some feed back from them. So trying to learn and hit as many places as I can each a day.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Hosting is cheap. Write your own sites. HTML is easy to learn. Create a product or service. I made 20K a year selling a PHP script that I wrote. Learned everything online, self taught.

Currently selling a WHOIS lookup script: WhoisLookupScript.com

My best domain sale was 5K but I have lost money overall on domains.

 

[CJ6]

A hosting site that allows Add-on domains will allow you to host as many websites as you want. I have this and have a landing page on my domains. (I like to check out the stats.)
I only pay for 1 domain per month, then create an add-on domain for all others. Cheap and easy.