Author: Lord Brar
11 Apr
Ever since I made my Domaining Strategy post, I have been getting a lot of comments and questions from you all. First of all, thanks a lot for your comments and messages — that is exactly what keeps me motivated to write here.
Most of the questions which you have asked will be covered in upcoming posts about traffic, revenue, outsourcing, hosting etc. In this post, I am going to answer two important questions -
1. How to minimize your development costs?
2. How to Scale-Up this strategy?
This post will be one of the most important — if not the most — posts in the series as it describes the mindset you need to succeed in the game. These points are essentially derived from my own experience developing domains over the last 9 years — so yes, they are street-tested.
Let’s get started, shall we?
Tip #1 – Know Your Niches
This is perhaps the most important tip I can ever give you — Focus on niches you already have an interest in. This will make your life a lot easier, fun and profitable. To quote Diorex from WickedFire -
I dont think that unmarried college age guys are going to be rockstars at promoting a menopause product or even a baby shower list. Look to your life experiences for things you naturally know a little bit about. Sure you can learn, but why set yourself up for a longer more difficult road.
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I’d also quote Hugh MacLeod from his HughTrain Post –
Even though the niche you are interested in may not be as profitable as pay-day loans or credit-cards but it would be easier for you to know what people really want and dominate your niche. This would translate into much higher overall profits and you’d have fun doing what you love.
PS: I have some finance domains lying around which I just can’t get myself to research into and develop! If you have an interest in grabbing them cheap, give me a holler.
Tip #2 – Think Small. Seriously.
It is particularly important to remember that you cannot satisfy everyone at the same time. If you try to do that, you end up disappointing everyone.
So, don’t try to build general-purpose and “one size fits all” kind of sites. TO make such sites truly spectacular you’d need a lot of resources — which should not be your objective.
Let’s say that fitness is one of niches I operate in. To build a general fitness site covering topics for both men and women would be absolutely crazy on my part. If I focus on Men’s Health, that would be better and easier for me but it would be very broad subject and still require a LOT of resources to create good site in.
What I would do is that I’d split the niche into further niches — building abs, reducing fat, dieting, bulking up, upper-body exercises, stronger legs, sports training, cardio-exercises, aerobics etc. — and build separate sites for them. This would make it easier for me to build the site quickly, promote my sites more easily and get more targeted traffic.
Now, I am not saying that you cannot build sites on broader topics — I do it all the time. But, be prepared to put more resources and energy into them. I have a lot of broad-niche sites but I have even more sharp-niche sites.
Tip #3 – Use “Out-Of-Box” Solutions
Don’t re-invent the wheel. If there is some “out-of-box solution” available for what you want to do, use that — even if it means some lost functionality, you will be saving tons and tons of money and/or time that you would have to spend on programming and design.
Most of the times you will be able to find a free open-source solution, all you need to do is look hard enough.
For content management use WordPress or Joomla and use free or cheap templates to change the look. For forums you can use vBulletin or PhpBB. Photopost PHP or Coppermine get the job done for a photo gallery. vBulletin will also take care of your Social-Networking needs.
Use a site like HotScripts.com to find out the various available scripts. You could download and install the script on your server — most of the times Read-Me files are detailed enough.
If you are not comfortable doing it yourself, hire a freelancer — but read Tip #5 before you do. Also, don’t use any third party hosted services except widgets and analytics.
Basically, the whole objective here is to use the already existing free or cheap tools to build your website.
Tip #4 – Re-Invest into Your Domains.
Start milking revenue from your domains right away by using affiliate links, CPA links, Google AdSense et. al. Contrary to the popular belief, sites CAN make money from low but quality traffic.
To give example of one of my own sites, it got only 8 visitors from search engine and made $147 in affiliate commission.
So, optimize your site for revenue right from the start — even though you may get only small amount to traffic initially, but you don’t want to waste it.
Now, whatever money your site makes, re-invest at least 75% back into the domain. Promote the site, get professional content written, buy new software or get custom scripting done — but, reinvest the money to grow your site.
Remember – your site’s revenue is not your pay day but rather your pay day will be when your 25% becomes substantial or if you ever sell the site.
Tip #5 – Freelancers Will Screw You
Or at least 80% of them will produce crappy stuff or miss deadlines and you will lose money with them. But it not all gloom — you have to know and follow certain rules of thumb which I will be discussing in later posts. I will embed a link to the post here whenever I publish it.
Also, if you are subscribed to the newsletter, you will get a buzz as soon as I publish the post. So, if you are not already subscribed to the newsletter, it is a good time to subscribe now.
Tip #6 – Keep Close Financial Records
The idea is to keep a detailed record of how much you have invested in a domain and what sort of returns it is getting. I have found that keeping records will not only keep you updated of your current reality but will also keep you motivated to work harder.
With my own sites, I keep an excel file with weekly details of how much traffic did the site get and how much money did it make from various revenue channels. If both don’t increase consistently, I know I need to get moving to grow these figures.
Also, do it on a weekend and don’t spend too much time on keeping super-detailed stats tracking every figure under the sun — just a bird’s eye view of where your sites are going in terms of revenue and traffic. Your priority should be creating and promoting your sites.
Closing Thoughts
Now remember — these are just the rules-of-thumb and the list is no way exhaustive. Also, every situation is unique and you will learn the most by diving in and doing. So, start working, start making mistakes and start learning!
Stay tuned for other posts on the subject including – Stockdale Paradox, The “Big Fat Lie” Media Wants You to Believe, Building Websites, Choosing the Right Host, Traffic Secrets, Art of Recurring Profits and Revenue Maximization.
