The story of a lost mini-site developer

[harkster]

Long ago in a land far, far away there lived a hard core mini-site developer. This domainer toiled away looking for domains which might be suitable for niche mini-site development. It was hard work but he was working his way to a stable of sites producing $X,XXX per month. The success rate was not to bad and any which didn't make 8-10X reg fee/yr got dropped. All was well in domainer land.

Then one day the evil Bodis came along promising large bags of $$$ for doing little or no work and this mini-site developer was led astray and became lazy. For a while money appeared in the domainers Paypal account as if by magic and all was bright and sunny in lala land. Then as with most things which are just 'to good to be true' one day dark clouds rolled in and the Bodis money machine died.

Having been corrupted by dreams of easy riches this domainer found himself wandering in a wilderness of parking solutions looking for that ever elusive pot of gold. Sometimes things seemed to be working but after a while but soon the amount derived from parking wasn't even worth the time it took this wayward soul to change nameservers.

After a long journey through the parking wilderness one day the clouds parted and behold the warm rays of sunshine washed this most humble ones face. It was now clear that the true path was to return to the world of mini-site building.

This mini-site builder is now 'back in the saddle'. I have been fortunate enough to discover a few tools (no, I don't use content scrapers or that eBay store builder) which takes a lot of the work out of building niche sites. I do use lots of news, eBay and Amazon feeds. I am also a firm believer in original content. Biggest problem right now is finding names (use a lot of .info) and getting good content written. I have recently discovered a couple other things but don't want to mention here. Did I mention the importance of good original content.

Amazon feeds require a bit of digging to use but I like it much more than the store thing. I would like to show a few examples but for now it is best that I don't.

 

[Trickac14]

nice story

 

[netzilla]

Something I have been wanting to do for awhile now is to come up with a way to create a valuable mini-site that features some original content that requires the same amount of effort to setup as it takes to park a domain. Then maybe...just maybe...there would be some more believers like you and I my friend I am determined to do it!

 

[harkster]

Something I have been wanting to do for awhile now is to come up with a way to create a valuable mini-site that features some original content that requires the same amount of effort to setup as it takes to park a domain. Then maybe...just maybe...there would be some more believers like you and I my friend I am determined to do it!

In reality it isn't quite that easy. I have access to a tool (not available to the public - a friend) which allows some rss feed things to be created in just an afternoon more or less. There is still the matter of promotion getting original content. But there much less work involved than a year or 2 ago.

There are still design considerations to consider. I don't like sites with Google splattered all over the place The make them so ugly they will click anything to 'get the hell outa there' approach. IMHO things work best when ads are blended with content.

The following is how I see it. Took me just a bit to figure it out. Found the site when I received a link exchange request.

Guess how this site makes money with not a Google ad to be found anywhere. http://www.collectorsweekly.com/ Hint; something like www.SimplePie.org and a few folks writing articles.

 

[netzilla]

I see the their written content and the parsed ebay feed (with affiliate id) for each item category. So their means of profit is strictly ebay then?

 

[harkster]

I see the their written content and the parsed ebay feed (with affiliate id) for each item category. So their means of profit is strictly ebay then?

It appears that way. If one can lock into the right niche (which I haven't been able to do) I think eBay feeds can work well.

I lucked into some good original content and couldn't resist trying this. Will be adding the content a bit at a time. A very large and competitive niche but my costs are a reg fee name (reg'd 2 or 3 days ago) and around 3 hours work (not counting waiting for name to resolve). Since this template is mine I will throw www.LottaShoes.com out there as an example. Don't pick to hard because if anything is worse than my writing skills it is graphical design.

 

[aceeca]

Long ago in a land far, far away there lived a hard core mini-site developer. This domainer toiled away looking for domains which might be suitable for niche mini-site development. It was hard work but he was working his way to a stable of sites producing $X,XXX per month. The success rate was not to bad and any which didn't make 8-10X reg fee/yr got dropped. All was well in domainer land.

Then one day the evil Bodis came along promising large bags of $$$ for doing little or no work and this mini-site developer was led astray and became lazy. For a while money appeared in the domainers Paypal account as if by magic and all was bright and sunny in lala land. Then as with most things which are just 'to good to be true' one day dark clouds rolled in and the Bodis money machine died.

Having been corrupted by dreams of easy riches this domainer found himself wandering in a wilderness of parking solutions looking for that ever elusive pot of gold. Sometimes things seemed to be working but after a while but soon the amount derived from parking wasn't even worth the time it took this wayward soul to change nameservers.

After a long journey through the parking wilderness one day the clouds parted and behold the warm rays of sunshine washed this most humble ones face. It was now clear that the true path was to return to the world of mini-site building.

This mini-site builder is now 'back in the saddle'. I have been fortunate enough to discover a few tools (no, I don't use content scrapers or that eBay store builder) which takes a lot of the work out of building niche sites. I do use lots of news, eBay and Amazon feeds. I am also a firm believer in original content. Biggest problem right now is finding names (use a lot of .info) and getting good content written. I have recently discovered a couple other things but don't want to mention here. Did I mention the importance of good original content.

Amazon feeds require a bit of digging to use but I like it much more than the store thing. I would like to show a few examples but for now it is best that I don't.

Only a wise man can write this article.