Most Profitable Developed Site Category

[metrisoft]

I need some advice on the most profitable developed site category. I have recently purchased several different types of developed sites hoping to figure out which category will be most profitable but I'd like to hear your opinions. Which of these site category (generally speaking) is the most profitable?

-Blogs
-Free online tools/gadgets (i.e. image hosting, url shortening, domain tools, etc)
-Web Directories
-Arcade/Game sites
-Niche mini-sites
-Forums
-Niche stores (i.e. Amazon, Ebay, etc)
-Other?

 

[R9V.com]

-Blogs can be a one man magazine in a sense - 1 recently sold for $15M
-Free tools great to create a free advertising venue for your other sites, wont get much thru adsense
-web directories...thing of the past unless you have several billion to upstart a new google
-Forums - still tons of potential genres with high paying ads that are uncharted - also noticed you doubled the estibot value of the one you recently got off me in a few weeks - kudos! Forums will continue to be great micro/niche socials and many are adopting social site features
-mini sites - need to make many to find which have best payouts
-others; dunno, let me know when you got the next big thing and im down to invest :P

 

[Marck]

I think out of those a forum has the potential to build up the most value.

 

[labrocca]

Forums are great but could possibly take the most work. However they are my personal favorite and imho the most fun.

I think you should add webmaster sites including forums,blogs, and tools. These sites can generate solid PPC.

Arcades suck. MFA's place your adsense account at risk as they are against TOS. BANS imho are overdone but some are very successful with them (not me). We directories are useless now as Google penalized the majority of them so no one buys links anymore.

 

[Ben42]

The most profitable is whichever one you can get the most traffic from. Free traffic = Huge Profit.

BANS is bad, google is on the hunt for these sites. Blogs seem to be very SEO friendly.

No matter what you do though it's all about SEO. A semi-busy forum will make you more income than 50 blogs nobody goes to.

 

[metrisoft]

So, where do you draw the line between an Amazon Affiliate site and a BANS? How about between a "niche mini-site" and a MFA (Made for Adsense)? How does Google differentiate?

 

[SonnyCooL]

Bans and amazon is pretty good if run it properly, i have few forum n blog with Bans build in , it does convert some traffic to sales ...

 

[soggyindo]

-Blogs can be a one man magazine in a sense - 1 recently sold for $15M

yikes! which one was that? I'd have imagined it needed daily posts, by 5 or so writers, plus advertising folk, designers etc to get anywhere near that level (not one man operations)?

i just check the CPC rates (and think which will drive traffic to that), as a general rule. although, i'd rather have 10 sites about topics i like than 1 site on a topic i hate with 10x the CPC rate. it's a silly business approach but great for feeling like you're living, not working.

 

[-Raja-]

yikes! which one was that?

Bankaholic.com

Source:
http://www.guruofsales.com/affiliate/affiliate-marketing/401/bankaholiccom-sells-for-15-million

The incredibly famous blogger (& one of my three blogging heroes) Darren Rowse of ProBlogger wrote an article today about this one blog run by one man, Bankaholic.com is a Wordpress blog run by John Wu, Darren said that he received emails reporting that Mr. Wu blog was sold for up to a nice $15 million to PaidContent.org The deal is to pay $12.4 million upfront and another $2.5 mill over the next 12 months and Mr. Wu will remaiun blogging on the site.

 

[soggyindo]

thanks, Raja.

it does seem to be one guy. amazing. average looking blog, average name.

the value of being in a high-priced niche, eh?

 

[-Raja-]

thanks, Raja.

it does seem to be one guy. amazing. average looking blog, average name.

the value of being in a high-priced niche, eh?

Yes, its due the high paying niche and the alexa ranking the price is so high. Also, the Blog name is Attractive.

 

[soggyindo]

has anyone read - or hazard a guess - how many uniques bankaholic would be getting?

 

[metrisoft]

Thanks for the feeback so far. It sounds like blogs and forums are winning out. The downside is that they can be a lot of work.

Personally, I have been much more successful with a certain niche store of mine than any other type of site but it's still to early to tell if it will be a raging success.

Any more opinions?

 

[Phil]

has anyone read - or hazard a guess - how many uniques bankaholic would be getting?

Here's the info you're looking for from
Statsaholic about Bankaholic :D

http://www.statsaholic.com/www.bankaholic.com

 

[bloggernoob]

i think it depends on what you are comfortable with. if you like writing, got with a blog, if u'd rather admin, go with a forum. if you can code, develop a higher concept site. I personally like blogs cause they are easy to SEO. The trick is to get a lot of them up and running, it would be impossible to update a large collection, but if you get a few up that become popular, you can start a small blogging empire. i have a few friends who have popular and high PR networks of blogs that do really well for themselves.

 

[barefoottech]

Blogs be far have best Return on Investment.

But be careful, there is a fine line between blog and Splog (spam Blog).

2 things to watch out for with blogs.
RUBBISHY comments
Losing Focus.

I maybe the Minisite KING ,but I am also the Blog Emperor with over 100 BLOGS

 

[SymbolicDomains]

What Blog sold for $15M?

What Blog sold for $15M?

 

[soggyindo]

i think it depends on what you are comfortable with. if you like writing, got with a blog, if u'd rather admin, go with a forum. if you can code, develop a higher concept site. I personally like blogs cause they are easy to SEO. The trick is to get a lot of them up and running, it would be impossible to update a large collection, but if you get a few up that become popular, you can start a small blogging empire. i have a few friends who have popular and high PR networks of blogs that do really well for themselves.

have you got a link to some so we can see how a "network" might operate? i always feel sidebar (self) links seem spammy and amateurish - there must be a better way.

thanks bloggernoob

and trips - 300k uniques a month in a high paying niche, not bad! cheers for the info

 

[bloggernoob]

What Blog sold for $15M?

i think gizmodo or engadget sold to aol for like 15 mil. there are a lot of blogs that are worth that much. think techcrunch.com, perezhilton.com. a lot of the popular general niche blogs can sell for high prices cause the traffic they get.

all of the technorati top 100 should fetch at least a few hundred thousand is it was to sell.

as far as seeing a blog network in action, just check out the bottom of engadget.com

granted, this is one of the most popular networks out there, but you can do thsi on a smaller scale.

 

[soggyindo]

as far as seeing a blog network in action, just check out the bottom of engadget.com

granted, this is one of the most popular networks out there, but you can do thsi on a smaller scale.

thanks! rep added.

this is definitely a good idea. i'd thought of placing ads for my other sites (higher on the layout), but i like the basic premise.

i don't suppose anyone knows a script/ plugin to add a few feeds from your other sites -- as engadget does there?