This is a controversial area as there are many compelling arguements against the creation of hundreds and hundreds of minisites. As far as I am concerned I think domainers need to develop out their portfolios. Development increases the value of domain names and minisites that show strength are ideal for further development.

With this in mind I wanted to quicly share a few forum threads that will be helpful if you are considering minisite development.

1.) 6 Months Later: $300 Daily w/Adsense (Lessons Learned) - 32 pages of minisite Q and A from the Warrior Forum

2.) How YOU can REALLY reach $100/day + w/Adsense! If you liked 1.) above you might find this post from the Warrior forum interesting

3.) Making a domain earn £1 a week from Acorn Domains Forum

4.) The Clickbump Method from a Warrior Forum member

5.) Help and advice for newbies…….. from the Affilliate 4 u forum

Here is a post from several years ago saying something similar.

From A to Z – the 7 steps of building profitable web sites | OBannons Leap

While many respected experts take a different view.

John Chows view..

Big Sites Rules, Small Sites Drool | John Chow dot Com

……….which is similar to this one.

SEOmoz | Five Reasons Why It’s Better to be Big & Popular than Small & Niche

There are many articles advocating the development of authority sites as the best way to maximise returns. A few years ago it was all the rage for people to set up blog networks with big ‘authority sites’ that were developed to dominate their niche. However, domainers are in a slightly different position and have to be aware that parking is no longer a viable model. Even minimal development could generate sufficient income to cover renewal fees and mass development has proven to be very profitable indeed.

Three other minisites have been set up on PortableDehumidifier.co.uk, CancellationHolidays.net and OilFilledHeater.co.uk.

This means that I have started 12 geo sites, with lots, lots more to develop over the coming weeks and months.

AllInOnePCs.co.uk is a site about All In One PCs, obviously. Its a basic minisite template site with privacy policy. If it shows any strength I will develop in out, so we will see what happens.

I’d hoped to get more done over the holiday period, but this is the first since the holiday began.

Eventually there will be an up to date list of my minisites in the links section.

More in due course……………….

I’ve started a discussion about this thread on UK domaining forum Acorn Domains, here……..

Join the conversation…………..

I’m slowly forming a geo network of sites targetting major English cities. ManchesterWide.com was the first. Over the last few months sites for Birmingham and Leeds have been added to the network. Bristol, Newcastle, Liverpool and Nottingham will follow in due course.

In addition, I added Manchester Breaks to the network some time ago.

Except for my Manchester site, they are all basically pages that need to be made into robust sites.

I think a mistake that many geonetwork developers make is to fail fully build out their network before moving on to the next site. There are lots of reasons why this is a good strategy. However, I believe the money is in development, so I want to build out the existing nine sites before moving on to the next ones.

The revenue goal I have set for myself is $1 per day, per site. Is this achievable? The way I look at it, if a $1 a day is achievable, so is $5 and $10. How easy that is, and whether I think its worth the effort, is something I will discuss in future posts.

Pure domaining usually involves buying quality domains and parking them with one of a number of parking companies such as NameDrive.com and Sedo.com. The problem is that domaining world is changing – in fact it always has been changing – and its clear that domainers who fail to adapt will be left behind.

The solution is simple – goodbye pure domaining and hello domain developing.

There are many changes that could influence domaining in quite significant ways but my main concern is ‘more difficult trading conditions’ predicted by financial experts. I am old enough to remember the economic problems of the 1980 s and 1990s. Whether we are headed for a world recession or a 1930s style depression is far from clear at this point of time. What is clear is that we are going to be hearing a lot more about ‘problems with the economy’ over the next 2 – 5 years, and very little of it is going to be good news! Just about everyone,  who thought that they could buy quality domains and live off the parking revenue for the rest of their lives is probably in for a big shock.

What the domaining industry will look like after 3 or 4 years of economic recession is anyones guess. In a recession we would see lots of things happening that have not happened for a long time – increased unemployment, falling financial markets, people having less disposable income and lots of bankruptcies. Domainers should expect domains to take longer to sell and lower sales prices when they do sell (only good news if you are buying, not selling). PPC revenue is likely to be affected as companies attempt to save money by cutting back on advertising costs.  If people are generally spending less then affiliate ad revenue is likely to be affected too. On the positive side buyers will see more quality domains dropping and cheaper domain sales prices.

If ever there was a time for domainers to become domainer-developers, that time is now. Even basic websites will make more revenue than domain parking. Developing out domains just makes good business sense.

Basic web development skills are reasonably easy to acquire and there are many shortcuts and templates to make things easier for you. A simple minisite or niche site consisting of no more that 5 – 25 pages can be set up quickly using free templates or by using Wordpress (Wordpress.org). I am not saying the domain parking industry is finished – far from it – but developing sites is just such a better option.  In times of economic difficulty the pressure to maximize revenue is even greater than it used to be – goodbye pure domaining and hello domain developing!

Perhaps the most important event this month was ICANN’s decison to relax the rules about naming domain name extensions. Now anyone with enough cash can buy their own domain extension. So we could easily see new top level domains like .sex, .london and .eBay. Is this a disaster waiting to happen or will this open up the pool of available domains. See what expert domainer Elliot Silver has to say on this development  and see what other people are saying about ICANN’s decision in this post on TheDomains.com blog.  

Meanwhile, the Self Made Minds blog has a post that offers some tips for domainers thinking of leasing rather than selling their domains. Once you have read this, read this post about domain leasing agreements and then look at leaseadomain.co.uk/. This is all very early in the development of this market, and I would recommend that you get yourself a good lawyer before taking the plunge in this highly speculative area. This is one area novice domainers should avoid completely.

Next, here is a short introduction in how to use the Wordpress blogging platform to build sites that actually look like sites, rather than blogs. This will be especially useful for domainers who want to develop domains into minisites, for example.

Many domainers are taking their best domains and developing them into fully fledged websites. These new internet entrepreneurs have learned how they can make a decent income by either selling their domain with its established website for good money or by developing their domains and enjoying good regular incomes. I like reading about successful internet entrepreneurs and this article How I Built A Six Figure Internet Income about the income potential of blogs, from the Financial Hack blog, is quite inspiring.

Finally, this post about domain name appraisals on the Domain Junkie blog is well worth reading. It compares domain name appraisals from Moniker and Sedo and recommends obtaining appraisals from two trusted sources before negotiating a price for a domain.

I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of good .org.uks left. I know they are not worth much yet but do you think they will be a good long term investment for further down the line? The same with .me.uks as well.

Domaining.org.uk gets readers from all over the world so its worth explaining a bit of background first.  

In brief, .org.uk and .me.uk are two of a number of UK Second Level Domain Names and the best known is .co.uk. – me.uk is for personal domains and org.uk is for non-commercial organisations. However, like the Top Level Domain .org, over time .org.uk and .me.uk have been used for a wide variety of purposes and in a variety of enterprises.

It is true to say that domainers, generally, prefer Top Level Domains such as .com and .net although demand for country code domains like .de (Germany), .cn (China) and .co.uk domains is also quite strong.

Compared to .co.uk demand for .org.uk domain names is relatively weak and I would guess that the main market for .me.uk domains is domain name speculators and some website developers.

Sales prices of .org.uk domain names have not been that encouraging and are far below .co.uk prices. There is no reason to think this is ever going to change, at least in the forseeable future. This means that, in my opinion,  all but the most generic and sought after keyword rich .org.uk domains are going to be of interest to domainers and end users.

Reported sales on the website DomainPrices.co.uk, which lists reported sales prices of uk domains, are worth looking at and back this up. (Of course, these are ‘reported sales’ and many, many sale prices are never revealed.) 

Most of the top sales of .org.uk domains reported on Domain Prices, are:-

Betting.org.uk £1,351 ( $2,700) May 2007

Mobile.org.uk £675 ($1,350) Oct 2006

Locksmith.org.uk £510 ($1,020) Jan 2008

Counselling.org.uk £370 ($740) Mar 2007

Apply.org.uk £250 ($500) April 2007 

There was one reported sale of a .me.uk on the Domain Prices site – HouseInsurance.me.uk which sold for £1,000 ($2,000) in December 2007.

I believe that domainers considering adding .org.uk and .me.uk domains to their portfolios should understand that only the most generic domains and sought after keyword rich names have a reasonable chance of appreciating in value. However, they are likely to be worth much more if developed into websites.

Domainers determined to buy .org.uk or even .me.uk should concentrate on buying domains on topics that people are searching for and are in demand such as business and commercial topics and, more generally, domains that can be used for business/commercial websites.   Brandable domains should be avoided at all costs. Also, in my opinion .org.uk and .me.uk domains are unlikely to appreciate as fast as domains with more sought after extensions.

Having said this, it is true that there are many more ‘good’ domain names available to register with these extenstions.

In terms of search engines optimization, a key word rich .me.uk will rank as well as a .co.uk domain, containing the same keywords, in the same order. Furthermore, because Google ignores hyphens, keyword-keyword.me.uk is viewed by Google as the same as keywordkeyword.co.uk. So, many domainers are establishing ‘minisites’ and niche sites on domains with these extensions and will register and develop the hyphenated version of the domain name if the non-hyphenated version is not available. Minisites can produce an encouraging monthly income and, by developing substantial numbers of these sites, they can become a significant revenue stream, in addition to any appreciation in the value of the domain. However, the amount of earnings can vary enormously depending on the topic. I have produced an introduction to developing minisites and niche sites which you can find here.

So although prices of these types of domain names will rise as the general tide of domain name prices rise, I believe that they will always be the most problematic of domains and most illiquid. This means that only a very small proportion will be worth buying and keeping for the long term. Furthermore, it takes time and experience to be able to identify those domains with potential.

The strength of these domains is the fact that they are relatively cheap if bought at registration fee prices and, if developed, can frequently be made to rank well in the search engines. However, whether building and monetizing one (or two or three) large websites is more profitable than building a substantial portfolio of minisites, or niche sites, is a matter of considerable debate.

So what do you think? Have you had success selling .org.uk and .me.uk domains. Are you holding on to the best .org.uk and me.uk domains in the hope that they will appreciate in value? Have you any experiences of developing minisites? Share your thoughts below……..

Here are a number of interesting links that should help your domaining activites over the holiday season….

To start off, here is a valuable list of 12 domaining tips from DomainerPro.com. Similarly, Jeff from Domainbits.com  writes a clear and easy to understand Guide to Investing in Domains. 

Next, domaining news website DNJournal.com has a great article on one of the domaining industry’s best known professional, Frank Schilling. Highly recommended.

Now, I appreciate that many domainers are not developers. So I thought that this article from the Dosh Dosh blog,  Building an Online Empire: 16 Types of Websites You Can Create for Profit, will be really helpful for domainers who want to know a little about the sorts of websites developers are building and may require domain names for these websites, such as forum sites, directory sites etc. Obviously, it will also be useful for domainers who want to develop their own websites! And if you are thinking of developing, the Dot Sauce blog includes 10 Outstanding (and Affordable) Scripts for Developing Your Domains. As a general rule developent is more profitable than parking but there are a range of factors that need to be considered when deciding to develop.

There is still a lot of debate about whether domainers should park or develop their domain name portfolio. For domainers with larger domain name portfolios the decision is an important one. Many of the key issues are discussed in this great article on Rick Schwartz’s blog.

There is also an interesting interview with Rick on the website Domisfera.com. Finally, the BBC, the UKs national non-commercial broadcaster, looks at the impact of emerging and developing countries on future develpment of domain names and the net in this interesting article.