Domain name monetization is a common concern for domainers regardless of the size of their domain name portfolios. Many domainers find minisites to be a very effective way of monetizing their domain names. Minisites are simply content websites of between 1 and ten or more pages (there is no official definition) whose content is tightly focused around a particular topic or niche.

I get the impression that minisite and niche site development is an area that until relatively recently, did not receive a lot of attention from the webmaster community.  It is not clear why mini site development has been neglected in this way. One explanation may be that webmaster forums often talk about building large content sites which become more profitable when they dominate or monopolize a particular topic or theme and rank well in search engines. On the other hand if all people want to do is make money from domain name traffic there are domain name monetization companies who supply domain name owners with parking pages that make money when people click on the ads on the pages. Perhaps there is the fact that these sites are sometimes associated with controversial Made For Adsense (MFA) Scraper Sites. MFA and scraper sites are not covered by this article.

Minisites are a middle ground between domain parking pages and larger sites. Site owners who build minisites can monetize their domain names without sharing revenues with domain parking companies. The downside is that they need to find content for their minisite. Furthermore, minisites can dominate smaller niches and as Chris Anderson discusses at some length in his blog The Long Tail and book of the same name , endless choice really is creating unlimited demand.

Domain Name Monetization

Many domain names will have traffic simply because people type the name of the thing they are looking for into the address bar and then type in “.com”after it - say, “widget.com”. Other domains have traffic because they are linked to from other sites. The domain may have changed hands one or more times over the years, but traffic may still be generated by these old links.

Obviously, traffic like this can be monetized and there are a range of companies who will set up ‘parking pages’ for these domain names and split advertising revenue generated by these parked pages between the domain owner and their parking company. These companies include Parked.com, Sedo.com, Afternic.com, TrafficZ.com, DomainSponsor.com and Fabulous.com. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Building a minisite

This is the next stage up from simple domain parking. On the whole some sort of website development experience is helpful. In some cases your web hosting company will also need to be able to support PHP sites and have a MySQL database option. In my particular case my hosting company did have this option, but only in their more expensive business packages. Options here are basically:-

1.) Purchasing ready made sites - Companies such as WhyPark.com, PPC-Sites.com and 1Plus.net will actually give/ sell you ready made sites containing relevant content. According to posts on discussion forums these sites have helped some people make money. Alternatively, you subcontract the work to an experienced website developer. 

2.) Content management software - If you prefer to build your own site consider content management / blogging software. There can be a significant learning curve if you are new to these systems, but they have a lot of fans. The best ones are available from Drupal.org, Joomla.org and blogging system provider Wordpress.org. There may be others. I can recommend Wordpress, but I have not used the others. The Dosh Dosh blog has a post that includes a list of 18 wordpress blog templates that have been optimized for Adsense ads which you may find helpful if you want to go down this route.

3.) Build it yourself - Simply build websites using your normal web authoring software. Free web design templates can be found on a variety of sites such as Open Source Web Design and free stock photo sites include Stock Exchange.

There are a great many web site revenue generation options including Google Adsense, eBay’s affilliate program, Amazon’s affiliate program and Yahoo Publishers Network.

Some people park their names for a while with one of the parking companies mentioned above, but it is not essential. These parking pages have sophisticated analytical software that tells you where traffic is coming from and what search terms visitors are using. Then they build a site using the information collected while the domain name was parked.

The best sort of content is unique material you write yourself or that has been written for you by, say, a freelancer for example. The content of article websites such as ezinearticles.com can be used for free, but subject to modest conditions, and you may be able to use material produced under Creative Commons, Copyleft and public domain material. However, you are advised to check rigorously to ensure that you do not infringe copyright. Google’s search engine is supposed to penalise sites with duplicate content but I am not convinved that will stop you being found by Google altogether.

Some general discussion about minisites………….

There is some debate about the money making potential of a few big sites against the potential of many small sites. This discussion at the Sitepoint web developers discussion forum is interesting - 1 site @ $100/day or 100 sites at $1/day? Whats your approach? . This article on Gareth Hodson’s blog concludes that fewer sites are better. Internet guru John Chow, agrees in his post Big Sites Rules, Small Sites Drool on his own blog. In reality it is not uncommon for developers to start with a number of minisites and if any site indicates any sort of strength or money making potential to concentrate on developing those sites into larger ones.

In terms of development strategies, there are a number of sites which explain the variety of steps and development options open to you.

A good starting point may be the article From A to Z - the 7 steps of building profitable web sites .

These two articles take the reader through the minisite development process - How to create a simple minisite and Making a domain earn £1 a week. [around $2.00 (USD)] This is also the theme of the discussion thread Making a Domain earn £1 a week on the UK domain name discussion forum AcornDomains.co.uk.

NetBusinessBlog.com has revisited minisite developement a few times. Developing a niche minisite is discussed in Building a Niche Mini Site Part 1 and Part 2. In Find Keyword Rich Domains Fast then Build a Niche Mini Site we are taken step by step through the development of the niche mini site SalmonRiverRafting.co.uk.

The Namepros.com domain name discussion forum had a general discussion on minisites - What is the purpose of “minisites”. The SelfMadeMinds blog expands on this topic in Mini sites don’t always make mini money and Mini-sites revisited.

The website Monetaryweb.com has a four part introduction to developing niche websites.

Conclusions

At the beginning of this article I pointed out that some people feel that larger sites are more profitable than niche minisites. That may be true. However, niche mini sites can be useful for a variety of reasons. For example, if the niche is a small one, it might not be worthwhile building a large site on that topic. I also think the creation of diverse minisites may help to bring a little diversification to a webmasters website portfolio, especially if their portfolio is dominated by a small number of large similar sites on similar topics. For domain name traders/ domainers mini sites can also help monetize domain names just enough to cover costs while waiting for someone to buy them. Finally, some people may just enjoy the research and development of brief targetted mini sites on a range of different subjects. They may not make as much money as larger site owners, but for some people the research and development process is what matters, as, to them, the whole project (and the money) can be a lot of fun - and there is nothing wrong with that!

Added 4th Oct ‘07 - Also worth reading:- 

Five Reasons Why It’s Better to be Big & Popular than Small & Niche in SEOMOZ.org

and

The Pros and Cons of Microsites As An SEO Option in SearchEngineLand.com