Morning Folks!!
We all know mini sites are all the rage. But do they really work? In a word....no they don't. They make me feel good, but I make less money and that does not make me feel good. So if you develop, you need to develop a business, not just another site. Better yet, develop a relationship with the end user. The income will out perform PPC by as much as 10x or even more. Much more.
So I can look back over the years and without doubt, short of a full blown business, selling traffic to the end user that understands traffic and is sick of paying thru the nose for unknown quality is the way to stabilize your income and then grow it again.
It is really not uncommon to make 5x, 10x, 20x as much. And on domains with traffic that PPC can't convert, the numbers are even more substantial. Right now I am looking for an end user for a domain I have. Specialties.com that makes ZERO on ppc but has 100 daily visitors. When I turn $0/day into $10/day, I can move to the next domain. Repeat, repeat, repeat. End users are getting more sophisticated and in time this will be much more common.
Point is, when you are looking for answers, look in lots of different directions. Mini sites could work on one domain and have no results on another. Test, Test, Test. That is what allows me to write these things with a fair amount of confidence.
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
Kevin
The problem with that strategy though Rick is you are speaking about a very limited amount of domainers that own top one worders capable of getting a direct relationship traffic deal. The average domainers don’t have those kinds of ultra high end domains to work with.
Anyone with a 2nd or 3rd tier domain would be spinning their wheels contacting hundreds of prospects to no avail and the”time cost” of doing that would outweigh the deal value even if they got a deal because it wouldn’t be for significant dollars to offset the time acquisition costs.
I think the strategy is everyone needs their own strategy tailored to the kinds of domains they own.
Sure if I own Loans.com, I can pop a killer direct deal with Wells Fargo. But if I own GreatLoanRates.com you won’t even get past the secretary. And a site will do better on GreatLoanRates.com vs. a ppc landing page because a site will give you more opportunities to do all sorts of profit centers.
Sites don’t perform instantly, sometimes not even until months later, because they have to be grown and allowed to blossom like a garden. But they do perform better than ppc pages if you have a long term growth strategy. And yes development is a ton of work and you have to constantly retool things as new content and site solutions come out all the time.
When you become a site builder you are never”done”. There is always something more you can add to make your sites more featured and attractive to advertisers.
You are absolutely correct that direct relationship ad deals are the most lucrative. I do those all the time and they are by far the most exciting ones.
If anyone needs help with these kinds of major direct ad deals feel free to contact me, if you have a one worder to work with I can get you major Fortune 500 type ad deals.
Advertising@BigTicketDomains.com
UFO.ORG
Yes, mini sites might index on the SE’s but the additional traffic they pull and the lower conversions don’t work out.
I think someone should do a no BS post showing the relative likely payouts.
The best mini site concept IMHO has already been done by the astute bigger players and that is using onsite links to closer match users with more appropriate ads with a small amount of content to get indexed.
Totally agree that you need to either be an end user of traffic or deal with an end user to get that required uplift in revenues.
But everyone peddling an investment should be able to show the financials that prove the viability….. what’s the ROI and Payback etc.
Jim Holleran
Rick,
You are so right regarding Mini-Sites. I would need 20-30x more traffic to make the same money than to just park those domains and to me mini-sites are a waste of time.
Gordon
The right minisite can make you a lot of money.
I have a 3 word computer related domain that made me $20-$30 per month parked.
I built an 8 page website for it, now spend probably 3 hours per year on the site and it now makes me $200-$250 per month.
You can’t do this with all your domains, but if you are going after a specific long tail term and the PPC for your niche is decent – you can do very well with minisites.
UFO.ORG
Gordon,
You’ll be right in come circumstances but not in the majority.
Remember, if the payout works favourably then the developers might as well just develop for themselves. Thats the thing, the barriers to entry are so low that there is no reason to do work for others…..
Altaf
Every one has his own arguments. All are correct in different directions, I see!
Gordon-how much time do each of us get after doing all works? Again, if we engage third party , it needs own time, money & guidance too.
Kevin, an one worder plural .org leading where?
I got one worder ccTLD.I booked some based on reading your & Rick’s adv. Will that help any purpose?
Regards,
Mark
Right your are, sir!!!
Every domainer out there needs to understand that the number one rule to successful direct marketing is relationship marketing. Supposedly, 96% of all searches lead to absolutely nothing. A click or a visit is just a click or a visit. But ask for and receive a response or a lead generation form being filled out is 100% successful. It really is the not only the next step for domainers to realize but it is vital.
Reminds me of a seminar I attended years back by a successful infomercial marketer. He stated that his company used to sell his customer lists for a buck a name. A buck a name, these folks purchased an item from his company and he could care less (at the time) about continuing the relationhip he worked so hard to establish.
Bottom line, one click, one visit, or one purchase is just the start. Start a relationship and you can buy an island in no time.
Best,
Mark
Esa
Spot on. I hope more end users become aware of the value of the traffic that comes through generic domain names.
The way minisites do work is in gauging the end user interest. Through a minisite contact form, end users often send inquiries, and open up a channel for creating that relationship. A minisite doesn’t cost much, and the investment is a good one if you can make even a single end user connection through it.
Michael
I build sites to flip, not to socialize.
Myles Agnew
Rick,
I think alot of domainers get the name selection backwards I register domain names with keywords that are growing in search and increasing in demand.
Then I develop a site which has keywords relevant information and capture leads to develop that relationship your talking about.
I’ve only started doing this the last 6mths but my leads are growing in multiple niches and now I’ve got JV offers from product owners wanting to advertise on my sites.
Surely that worth more than a domain with a logo and layout that doesn’t even have a customer base?
Kevin
Several of the commentators above have recognized the real value of site development. It’s not just about comparing the daily revs to PPC.
Obviously, if you have a landing page model where every link is creating income it’s going to outperform a site in that respect. But at the same time, the ppc landing page is the most limiting thing you can do to a domain’s true potential.
A site EXPANDS your domain’s visibility to potential end users. The more content you have synched to your keyword, the more SE indexing you have, the greater the likelihood someone in that industry will come across it and become a potential end user sale. It’s like adding BILLBOARDS in the SE’s to get more eyeballs on your domain.
A site also shows an end user a lot more ideas of what can be done with a domain than a stupid fricking landing page.
I got the deals for Property.com and Widgets.com for Rick after we put sites on them. Nothing fancy, nothing huge, just enough to give a vision of some possibilities that I feel helped me to do my job when pitching both of those properties. Sure I could have gotten deals on them probably without sites, but both of those domains have been there for years waiting for big deals and strangely within a short period after the sites went up on them, the deals came. Call it what you will, and yes maybe the deals would have happened anyways and it was just coincidence, but in my mind, I think when a big end user looks at a small site like those they say in their minds we could do something way bigger and better and it gives them perhaps some inspirtation, vision and challenge to go for it.
So the people knocking sites aren’t seeing the BIGGEST reason to develop and that is getting your domains MORE EXPOSURE IN THE SEARCH ENGINES and making them look A THOUSAND TIMES MORE EXCITING AND PRESENTABLE when you do END USER PITCHES for Selling, Leasing, Joint Ventures, and Direct Advertising Deals!
So again, for goodness sakes people, it’s NOT ABOUT making fricking AdSense click income over PPC income, IT’S ABOUT INCREASING YOUR CHANCES OF FINDING END USERS TO DO THE REALLY BIG ACQUISITIONS, LEASES, DIRECT ADVERTISING PLACEMENTS, AND JOINT VENTURES WITH!!
THIS IS THE REAL REASON AND WHERE THE BIG PAYOFFS ARE IN DEVELOPING!!!!!!!!!!!
UFO.ORG
If these mini sites sit on the vendors servers, then all as it takes is Google to come along and treat that IP range like they do with static landing addresses and your investment is smoked.
No search engine rank = no incremental uplift in value. Whereas direct navigation URLs are outside this dependency.
Mike Cohen
It’s funny seeing some people who were anti development just a year or two ago now swear that development is where the money is.
LOL :)
Of course development is where the money is.
Advertisers are spending the big bucks on actual live web sites.
What they spend on parking channel is chump change.
You want the big bucks? You got good domains?? You need to continue investing in them.. Build them up. It is a process ;)
Kevin
To give you an example of what can be achieved one website we’re working with that gets high income visitors just locked up a 3 month display advertising deal with a major international Bank for $10,000 Per Month.
Another site focused on education, just got 3 new advertisers in 2 weeks at $2,000.
I have a deal closing Monday which is a 1 year display ad deal for $12K.
So like Mike just posted in the comment above this one, it is a PROCESS. You don’t hit gold overnight. You start with a small site, build up traffic, add more features, grow a steady user base, add more features, do some promoting and marketing to get links and your PR up, keep working it until you’ve got a nice size enterprise site and then you go after the direct advertising deals, joint ventures, leases and end user sales.
Development is not just building a couple page site, putting up AdSense and going on vacation thinking now you’re in the money. If that is all you’re doing then go back to the PPC model.
Also, there are instances where you can actually make money with 1 page sites if you have a cool little utility application on there. I’ve got a couple of those also and they are making coin every day. One does text messages, one does
tiny url’s, another does quick url dialing. So I don’t want to knock little sites entirely. But usually its the small sites that you grow into enterprise sites over the course of a year or 2 that have the opportunity to create lots of new income streams with the most profitable being selling display advertising or getting JV deals.
My ad sales reps have corporate advertisers looking for more domains to advertise on so contact me if you have highly targeted traffic domains with sites on them. And if you have a big traffic domain and need a site put on there first so you can get a corporate ad deal we can arrange that also.
Advertising@BigTicketDomains.com