We are the idiots ...

[TheBaldOne]

That's right 'we are the idiots'.

Why is it that the vast majority of us do not develop our domains into websites.

- Is it cost?
- Is it time?
- Is it lack of knowledge on the domain subject?
- Is it not knowing where to start building a website?
- Or is it because of laziness and just after a quick buck by reselling the domain name without doing any work?

Of course there is another option that should be added to the list, or is it because we do not think our domain names are not as good as we try to convince others that they are and 'they' should develop them into a website?

Of course we all know that a developed website with visitors is worth far more from affiliate income or even the sale of the website than just the domain name by itself that might be able to be turned into such, but very few domainers actually go on to develop websites on their domain.

Even if you cannot develop a website yourself through lack of knowledge on the subject (which can be learned anyway), or lack the ability to build a website (there are loads of programs to help you on the web), then you can hire people to do it for you from website designers to content writers they are all available for hire.

Come on be honest. Why do you not develop the domains you own? ​

 

[equity78]

Several domainers have tried to develop websites and failed miserably, lost money and never sold the sites.

This is not new and in 2020 it's a lot more competitive Google is 1000 times smarter today than it was 10 years ago. Spinning articles not going to work. Negative SEO tactics by established players to zonk your website.

You need to make it your focus and really know what you are doing, and have some cash behind you because it won't be cheap to have anything developed that's worthwhile.

I am on the net 16 to 20 hours a day and spend 0 time on little, poorly developed websites. You need to learn SEO and keep up with it, social media you better have a following of real followers.

Unless you have above average knowledge/expertise on a topic what's the point?

The other thing you do is check out any topic you think you know and how much effort you are willing to put in, then go check out the top sites out there in that niche and see if you can match it, because if you can't, you are wasting your time.

People want to sell stuff, they think tshirts for example:

Oh I got really cool sayings, I am a wordsmith, snarky, funny, My friends tell me I'm really smart.

Cool story bro, there are thousands of people just like you with already established tshirt websites, so you better be prepared to be working night and day, hitting on SEO, social, spending money on advertising, because if not, again you are wasting your time.

Featue snippets and other Google tools have taken businesses away I remember the guy from CelebrityNetWorth how Google took away a big part of their revenue.

You want to start a website, read this article first, https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com?zd=4&zi=hntnwhwu

Half assed development worked in 2006 not in 2020. So you better be looking to start a whole new business and have the skills and resources that go with doing that in the proper way.

Traffic doesn’t just “show up” at your website
Alas, in the business of websites and online marketing, traffic does not just simply “show up” at your website.

Dreams and Hope do not drive traffic. The digital landscape is littered with hundreds of thousands (millions, really) of well-intentioned websites that are ghost-towns. No one goes to them. At all. Sad.

Sadder still is the business who has gone through an amazing website rebuild, only to discover that after the excitement of day 1 of the website launch, there isn’t really any more traffic coming to their website than there was last week.

https://www.cmo4hire.com/blog/if-you-build-it-they-wont-come/

So make sure you do a lot of reading first.

Best of luck

 

[frank-germany]

Come on be honest. Why do you not develop the domains you own? ​

for me the reason is simple:

developing is a different business than domaining

if you feel you are domainer
you may not be a developer

"plan B is for losers" -
"it's hard enough to be successful in 1 business, so don't distract yourself"
-Harv Eker

 

[mpls]

I've developed hundreds domains.
You can develop how many domains you want, but without SEO, they will make the same traffic as parking.
My last 10 projects, due to lack time, I've not work on SEO, those domains make 2/3 unique per day.
Don't forget the niche, if you'll develop a site in competitive niche like insurance, travel, crypto, .... , you need $XXXX every month in order to try to compete with other sites.
Don't forget the google sandbox. If a domain has been parked for years and then moved to development, 99% will be placed in the sandbox.
This sandbox can last for 3, 6, 12 months.
Maybe forever.
Develop domains could be easy, have organic traffic is very difficult in 2020.
Last but not the least, Google is releasing update on weekly basis, your domain can perform good this week, the next week will be tanked.
I had read crazy stories, 15 yo white hat sites completely tanked, XXX people have lost his job due the update and many many horror stories.
My 2 cents: do not develop any domains if you don't know what you are doing.

 

[Peak.Domains]

I got interested in domaining for the purpose of buying better names to develop, made a few sales and dove in a bit deeper. Building sites is still my main thing. There's no option for "already am", so I picked "def. plan to" because I have some that I do plan to develop in addition to the ones I already have/am

You can take a handreg name that's barely worth renewing, put a website on it that earns $3 per day, now all of a sudden you can flip it for $3k.

 

[Furquan]

Developing a website requires lots of skills, money and time. Selling domain only require you a good landing page and five minutes to list your domain on every marketplace.

Google become a lot smarter and its algorithm keeps changing every month. Google recent core update has sent many websites traffic & revenue near zero. People had worked very hard and given their everything but a single algorithm change ruined all their work. If you can take that risk then you are welcome in website developing world. There are tons of tools that help you to find a profitable niche with very low to high competition there are people who can write good article/post on a niche, there are people who can build good backlinks for your website.

Developing has many pros and cons and require patience and hardworking.

Domaining has good potential & only patience

 

[RogueWriter]

I just hired a professional journalist to write 30 articles for my newest site. It is expensive, but in the long run it will help legitimize the site, give it a professional appeal that would take me months to accomplish on my own. And no, please do not inundate me with five dollar article offers. That is the exact opposite of what I am talking about. The articles are in depth profiles of local businesses, written by a professional journalist that is vested in the region, and designed to answer 'the why' question, why they do what they do and why it matters to them and to the reader. The site is based upon a county in Indiana. Once this site is 'live' I expect very real traffic to the site, especially as I refresh the site daily with picture contests, monthly coupon lists for all businesses, service directories, church profiles, recreational facilities, links for local theaters, etc. I will be promoting the site offline, as well as online, with ad cards for the site in our tourism office, campgrounds and State Park. The ad cards will be professionally designed, high end. The tag line for the site makes sense for the community it defines. My point is, there is a lot of thought and work that goes into developing a site, not just throwing up a thousand affiliate links and mumbo jumbo scraped and modified from some other guy's developed site.

Unless you have a killer portfolio that allows you to maintain a standard of living that you are comfortable with - something that very few of us actually have - at some point you have to just decide to vest yourself into a site, and put time in it. It better be something you are interested in, or it is going to be hard to get excited and maintain that level of activity over a period of months or years.

 

[7363824]

Developing websites is not that simple. Can it work for some, definitely. Will it work for all absolutely not. There is no right or wrong answer here, only us it right for you. That said I do build some sites but that's my background before coming to domaining so I feel quite comfortable with the technical aspects of it, and while my writing skills aren't all that (even a post on namepros I end up editing several times after posting to reorder or clarify thoughts or to fix typos) purchasing content is easy. I suspect its easier for me to handle the technical stuff and buy content than it would be for a non technical writer to pay for the tech work and just write. It will depend alot on your skills and how you can address any areas where you lack skill though partnerships or buying help. Like alot of things posted on here there is no one right or wrong answer even if some people act like their answer is the only definitive way to domain...im sorry but no business works like that.

 

[NickB]

That is it - You need a good looking site, great content, social media posts & engagement, plus high quality backlinks

Do this and you should be on the right track.....

It has taken me a lot of reading to understand what needs to be done and why - now it is a case of putting it all together

I like Neil Patel's blog, Sprout Social and Hubspot blogs - worth checking them out, loads of good tips, practical advice and actionable steps for newbies (like myself!)

 

[NickB]

Have one under development.........coming to the internet soon

and no it is NOT DiscoverWales.com / net / org etc etc etc
​

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Tldr: Good websites take a lot of time expertise and knowledge, it's hard, but no trickery required. Learn to develop one site and make it good and it will be rewarding.

I am a software developer by trade. I'm lucky in that sense because as mentioned by a few here already - developing any software can be one hell of a time drain. It's even more of a time drain when you don't have the expertise required in many different areas as is required in website development.

You need to know about front end languages, back end languages, cloud based infrastructure management, security, best practices, at least a basic knowledge of website design. Then you need the knowledge of how to troubleshoot issues, how to make issues visible to you, how write robust code that won't break the moment you edit it.

The alternative to this is to be at the mercy of others for their expertise so you have to hire someone or settle for a free website builder that allows for nothing in terms of bespoke functionality. To me bespoke functionality is the key to a useful website. I guess that's why a lot of people on here have mentioned about 'generating articles' to slap on their websites, because it's an easy default purpose for a website. But to me just the thought of creating a site that has generated articles on it about things that I'm not interested in taking the time to learn about and write myself sounds utterly soul destroying on the face of it.

As for SEO... It's not a dark art that you can just be an "expert in" in my opinion and experience. If your site has good content and you at least follow the basic guidelines of how to layout a website document AKA HTML then your content will be found by those that are looking for it.

If your content is a lot of gibberish then yes, you might need to start playing tricks on it, but most normal websites don't. They have titles, descriptions, meta tags, og tags and then a sensible and structured layout of the page using HTML tags that most logically describes the content that they are showing (header tags, main tag, aside tag) and this is because it makes sense for maintainability. There's no trickery involved or scripts to make it happen.

As for me. I buy domains in two categories, ones that I believe I could develop one day and ones that I believe have inherent worth.

I have one main site that I develop as a side project. I am lucky because I can draw from the stuff that I get exposed to in my day job as a software developer like the latest software development trends that make development quicker and hosting a site leaner and less expensive. But despite all of this I have only realised modest financial reward and its one hell of a tiring endeavour.

I spend pretty much all of my spare time working on my site. Even then my inbox is full of people moaning about how offended they are by something someone posted on my site or they're asking for features that the site doesn't provide yet. It's one hell of a drain, but I manage to draw some reward from it because I've put so much effort into it. It's something I can be proud of.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want to make a decent website that's worth visiting then it takes a lot of time and knowledge. Unless you have a combination that works for you that you know reliably makes money with minimal effort and minimal outlay then you'd be better off focusing on one domain to develop and making it something you can be proud of and that in itself is rewarding for you and your visitors.

 

[wildomains]

I tried developing some of my domains into small websites. I don't have the skills really. I find it tedious to write articles even spinning existing ones. I don't want to put a lot of money into developing sites only to find they still don't sell. It puts the risk/reward up. If there was automatic software that builds up a website with new content etc at low cost then maybe I would do it.

 

[Recons.Com]

So I have 5000 domains. Are you suggesting I develop those all? Can you imagine amount of work and investment? At minimum 10 hour of work, that is 50 000 hours. With 50 hours a week that will take 20 years if I do nothing else. Plus 10 articles for each average at $5 each, I will need $250k for that.

And the benefits are dubious. A buyer might have different idea and might change his mind once he sees what is there. You will have to deal with upgrades, hacks, ddos attacks etc.

I am developing some domains but not for sale. As a business, as a passion etc.

 

[golan]

So just 5 articles a month costs a maximum of $250, from that it is likely I will attract over 1,000 visitors in the first month and growing to circa. 10,000 per month by the end of the year, and these are direct visitors.

Stop dreaming, man. It's not year 2015 anymore.

And most important, please stop posting these theories, or, okay, experience from the past years, as facts that work today. Some noob may read it and get inspired and dump their money and time and other resources in this, only to found a damn huge hole in their family budget.

Domaining and development are two very different businesses. Can one combine them? Sure, but only if he knows what he's doing. One can't just become a successful developer without some crazy knowledge in SEO, not in 2020.

Disclaimer: I'm in SEO since 2006.

 

[DomainGist]

I've founded two Alexa top 100,000 websites, ditched them both.

They took up a hell of a lot of time and neither offered sufficient financial reward to make it worth the effort.

Next time I'll build an eCommerce site rather than one which relies on Adsense & Amazon affiliate earnings, I feel like the ad economy peaked somewhere around 2011 and has been in decline ever since.

I mean... its quite demoralising when you build a site getting 15,000 visitors a day and 55% of them have adblock installed.

My next project will be eCommerce.

 

[Peak.Domains]

Now all i need is a developer, and we'll split the profits. Does that make sense?

Sometimes, those deals make sense. I have experience with this, so I will share my thoughts broadly and in general...

I know someone who partnered with an SEO + content marketing firm because he had a domain worth $xxx,xxx (like actually worth that, got offers, etc not "estibot" value). In that example, it hasn't really worked out, but it can sometimes. The issue is that they are having trouble allocating resources to this project, since it's brand new and not earning anything yet, they are focusing on their existing clients/properties. This puts the domain owner in a bad spot, since he can't really move forward until his partners do. This is why its crucial to have a very clearly defined schedule / list of responsibilities and expectations / what happens if either party doesn't meet them. As a domain owner, this is something you would need to look out for. Also, if the site starts earning 1k, 5k, 10k per month and then they start to slack off and just collect the split, what happens? Need to think about + plan for all of this very carefully.

In your case, whether or not it makes sense for the developer will depend on what skills or time/effort you're bringing to the table, or what existing resources (For example if you had a big network of social media pages about drinking - that would be a big asset for a new site). It will also depend on what is expected of them.

Being able to take a brand new domain and turn it into a profitable website takes a diverse set of skills, often takes quite a bit of time and resources, and if someone can do that - they don't really need you if they can just find their own domain, unless you're also going to be doing x, y, z to bring value to them as well.

From the developer's point of view they're going to build a website... market it... create the content I imagine... generate all of the traffic... so you have to figure out how it's worthwhile for them to do this with you, instead of just buying their own domain and doing the same thing. What are you doing to earn your split of the profits, is what they will wonder. This is what you will need to sell them on. Why partner with you when they're the ones taking a domain and turning it into a profitable website? It could be that you'll be helping on the content, doing a ton of outreach to brands etc, covering all of the expenses like hosting, SEO, marketing, paying the writers that they manage, or other skills you have.

Whether or not a JV like this makes sense really comes down to what each partner brings to the table, if there are complementary skills, etc. I have teamed up with someone who is a master of on-page SEO. I provided the content, which took a lot more time than it took them to optimize it, but it took them years in the lab to develop their skills, too. I did more work on that project in terms of raw hours, but I also learned a ton and had these new skills for every subsequent thing I worked on.

I have also teamed up with someone who had a huge network of FB pages. I did all of the content (several articles every single day), I managed the social media, I curated ideas for articles, basically 90%-95% of the day-to-day work on this project for months and months, in exchange for just 10% of what the site earned when we sold it... but to this day, that is still one of my most lucrative endeavors, because the value that they brought to the table with their traffic source was so immense that it amplified the work I did in such an extreme way.

So if you're bringing traffic, resources, or other things that will amplify the work of the developer, it could be very worthwhile for them

 

[NameBuyer.com]

It used to be the case that websites received a high ranking on Google simply for operating on a domain name that exactly matches a user's search term, but that hasn't been the case since 2010 (I believe that was the year).

Ahhhh, the good ole days.

I had myself a network of over 400 restaurant sites, all on separate domains and my Google AdSense revenue was growing by about 50% per month. The sites were all keyword domains. When I could get a name like "CityName"Restaurants.com (for example SunnyvaleRestaurants.com) it would hit the first page of google in about a month, like clockwork. All of the sites were legit, I maintained the restaurant listings to be accurate and up-to-date, had reviews by users in each city and everything was humming along.

At the click of a button I could update the template of all 400+ websites.

At the peak I was above 10,000 real users per day, all bot traffic excluded. My revenue from AdSense alone was just starting to go over $1,000 per month. It looked like it was just a matter of time before it was at $5,000, or even $10,000 per month for very little ongoing maintenance work. Then Google's Panda update hit and by next month my revenue dropped to about $150 per month. This is after 100s of hours of work put into developing this. We had restaurant owners paying for advertising, and it's hard to keep them once you aren't in the top of the search engine results.

Once the revenue drops to this level and isn't growing, it is just better to abandon it than to have a half-maintained mess that is not very useful. Because the problem is, it isn't worth putting time into for a stagnant $100-$150 per month website. Once you don't put time into it, it doesn't even make the $100-$150 per month.

So my take is, it takes a large effort nowadays to make headway for just 1 website. If it's your passion, then great...go for it! But if it isn't, it's likely to not be a very useful site and at the same time will likely reduce your chances of selling the domain.

To me, a half-baked site just cheapens the perceived value of the domain. If someone has a $20k+ idea for a domain, then goes to the site to see a WordPress template with affiliate links, what kind of impression does that leave them with?






Here's my walk down memory lane. The actual site looked better because there are some images and other things missing now.


Main Site - Where we sold Ads



Example of the Individual City Sites





Then.....Panda

 

[TheBaldOne]

@frank-germany - Strange, I can both walk and run. Am I the fastest walker or runner, no, but then again I do not try to be, my aim is just to be able to be proficient at both for my needs.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Website development and domain name investing are two very different things and require a completely different set of skills. Most of those who give investing in domains a shot aren't able to turn a profit, let alone know how to build and market a website. Advising them to start developing domains is a recipe for disaster most of the time.

 

[NLP]

IMHO, these are very limited ways of generating revenue. They can work but there are many other ways to generate revenue. You have to be industrious and not afraid of hard work (and patience).

They are, but it's important to acknowledge that the landscape has changed. As someone stated earlier, it isn't 2015 anymore. It's not easy to get organic traffic anymore. Meticulously developed sites with fresh content, social signals, and a solid brand can rank well — but that isn't always what domain investors think of when they think "development." Some do that very well. Others are looking for fast, cheap options, and have no idea what it takes to launch and run an actual business.

I used to code by hand, before everything was on content management systems. Development is absolutely the way to go if someone has an aptitude for it, the right names, and that's how they want to spend their time.

Personally, I enjoy the design aspect and *some* coding, but not the daily and monthly maintenance, especially if it isn't a subject I'm interested in. I understand how it is a labor of love and immensely profitable for some, but I get bigger thrill from negotiation, and pure selling.

That is my business model, and what I enjoy the most. To each his/her own.

 

[bmugford]

Unless you have a really solid plan and knowledge, development can just be a potential money and time sinkhole.

Most domain investors own many domains, so it is just not practical.

Brad

 

[equity78]

I’ve had a number of domains developed, my latest is aijobs.com
Hasn’t made it any easier to sell though.

It probably won't.

People see a developed website, they think it's for sale.
Website buyers want to buy on your multiple of revenue and profit
Other buyers may feel that they don't want to buy because the site is developed in a manner they don't like, or that it has been used in a shady way or has a bad link profile.

A lot of other variables, if you are developing 98% of the time you are the end user.

 

[NickB]

for me the reason is simple:

developing is a different business than domaining

if you feel you are domainer
you may not be a developer

"plan B is for losers" -
"it's hard enough to be successful in 1 business, so don't distract yourself"
-Harv Eker

If you can make money from a website then some of that can invested into better domains......

"Best of both worlds"

 

[DomainGist]

They are, but it's important to acknowledge that the landscape has changed. As someone stated earlier, it isn't 2015 anymore. It's not easy to get organic traffic anymore.

Then when you get that organic traffic its not guaranteed that it will be as profitable as you hope.

The ad economy has collapsed with more money going to video ads on YouTube and less on traditional text content.

A ridiculous number of people have adblocker installed.

Affiliate cookies seem to have shrunk loads, where merchants would offer 60 day cookies and now offer 7 day etc.

Getting the traffic is only part of the problem. Twice I've succeeded in getting a hell of a lot of traffic to websites, but monetising it was the more difficult part.

I will have one more crack at a large content site soon though.

 

[Saeid Nejati]

I am not agree with you to develop domains to not sell them cheap. If you want to develop a domain then it won't be by domain itself. You need to have passion for what works you do. You need to be motivated for that startup idea an so many works may make you so bored. But I agree that if you could build a brand or an idea for a domain could be great for selling it more expensive and it may need more time to appears in minds. Advertising is so important to sell a domain at good price