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[dmouton]

Hey All,

I'm a long, long time domain owner and site builder (ie, since the early 90's) but I've only recently started thinking about my unused domains as a portfolio, and managing appropriately.

Thus far, I've gathered up my bunch of domains (lots of generics, some mis-spellings, and some topical or name brand domains) into accounts at Namecheap, GoDaddy and Dotster; redirected them to SedoParking, optimized there; setup a Google Adsense account, looked at Clicbank, etc.

So I'm trying to figure out what the 'pros' are doing as far as driving traffic to their generic sites. Is it worth the time to build pages, as opposed to using SedoParking's automated system? Do you use a particular submission service to seed all the search engines? Is there anything I can do to bump up the amount of traffic that hits the pages?

Thanks in advance!
Drew

 

[Keynes]

Good questions, Drew. In general, well constructed and SEO-optimized minisites will outperform parked domains, but its important to have a well organized site with original content. PPC via Adsense works well for most domains, although certain domains perform better with targeted CPA advertising (Adsense requires exclusive placement, so you'll generally have to chose one avenue or the other.) Make sure your traffic is natural and comes from search engines -- you can build up traffic through improving your SE rank (as paid traffic will generally void your advertising account, as its against most sites' terms and conditions). Parking works well if you optimize your keywords properly and get solid type-in/natural traffic as a baseline source of revenue. I would recommend building a few minisites with Adsense, parking some others and analyzing the relative performance. Good luck!

 

[domainer50]

I think i have an example of what your looking for..www.ebooker.biz

The name doesnet have any real meaning, but i have 20 articles on their, and it draws a fair amount of traffic and revenue via bidvertiser. So in my mind yes, develop a mini site with your portfolio and test the waters.

 

[StantheMan]

Where do you recommend for cheap hosting

Seems like it would get expensive to pay the monthly hosting fees for the minisites - especially if you are building some other sites to connect/link to the mini-sites.

I have quite a few domians that generate type-in traffic - but just not quite heavy enough to generate serious revenue. I suppose these would be good candidates to build a mini-site, but I have been hesitant because it will cost me 3-5 $ per month to host each site.

 

[Albert]

Seems like it would get expensive to pay the monthly hosting fees for the minisites - especially if you are building some other sites to connect/link to the mini-sites.

I have quite a few domians that generate type-in traffic - but just not quite heavy enough to generate serious revenue. I suppose these would be good candidates to build a mini-site, but I have been hesitant because it will cost me 3-5 $ per month to host each site.

Reseller hosting account is so cheap. You can get one around $25 at hostgator

 

[alanchau]

Seems like it would get expensive to pay the monthly hosting fees for the minisites - especially if you are building some other sites to connect/link to the mini-sites.

I have quite a few domians that generate type-in traffic - but just not quite heavy enough to generate serious revenue. I suppose these would be good candidates to build a mini-site, but I have been hesitant because it will cost me 3-5 $ per month to host each site.

Just order a hosting plan with unlimited add-on domains - then you can create unlimited minisites using one hosting plan.

There's no point is ordering a reseller, as shared hosting with unlimited add-on domains will accomplish what you're trying to do, unless you need domains seperated into individual accounts.

 

[domainer50]

Just order a hosting plan with unlimited add-on domains - then you can create unlimited minisites using one hosting plan.

There's no point is ordering a reseller, as shared hosting with unlimited add-on domains will accomplish what you're trying to do, unless you need domains seperated into individual accounts.

I used to do that exact type of hosting. However with my reseller things seem much easier.

 

[Th3Boss]

http://urlhost.net has cheap hosting and great plans, unlimited like addon,parked and subdomains along with tons of other stuff, ive been using them for like a year now.

 

[StantheMan]

Is it SEO friendly to use same sub-domain

I haven't done this with a hosted any of my sites, but I have done it before with some alumni and club sites at Homestead. It seems that some search engines don't like the homestead sites that are all sub domains of homestead. I can never get the inside pages to consistently stay in the search engine results. Will I have this same problem by hosting several domains within the same hosting account?

 

[dmouton]

I think i have an example of what your looking for..www.ebooker.biz

The name doesnet have any real meaning, but i have 20 articles on their, and it draws a fair amount of traffic and revenue via bidvertiser. So in my mind yes, develop a mini site with your portfolio and test the waters.

Your devious plan to get me to add one more unique view to your site count worked...not only did I visit, but I even skimmed some of your ebooks <grin>.

I have to admit that the prospect of devoting the amount of time it would seem to take to build up as much content as you have on ebooker is...scary. One site not so much; but doing the same thing for 10 or 20 or 50 sites seems like a big committmement.

On the other hand, I guess what I'm missing is what the 'payoff' is. Would you mind sharing what your site traffic is on most months? And is your revenue based on PPC, or pageviews?

Drew

Thanks much for the response - good info!

In general, well constructed and SEO-optimized minisites will outperform parked domains, but its important to have a well organized site with original content.

Yeah, I get the sense this is true, even if I don't know it from experience. But I guess I'm trying to get a sense of how *much* a minisite will outperform parking - that is, as a means to figure out how much of an investment (of time, and money) it's worth to get the extra traffic.

...you can build up traffic through improving your SE rank

and

Parking works well if you optimize your keywords properly and get solid type-in/natural traffic as a baseline source of revenue.

Right...so it seems that my natural type-ins will do well enough on their own with parking (based as much what I'm seeing already, as much as anything else). I guess where I struggling is in figuring out how to drive traffic (without paying for it directly, which i understand is a no-no), and improving my SE rank (as above). I've been sucked in by a bunch of SEO-web-spam purporting to sell the keys to the kingdom as far as driving traffic, and most of it rings really hollow. I guess I'm hoping somebody can direct me to a good book, or trusted site for learning the tricks of the trade.