Another reason to switch to WhyPark
Building Your Website, Domains April 28th, 2009
A couple of weeks ago Stephen Douglas from WhyPark commented about some good news coming later this month and boy was he right! WhyPark announced yesterday that the service they used to charge $99 for is now FREE! This is great news and the buzz is growing among domainers.
Now, there is no excuse to not try WhyPark if you’ve been considering it. I’m moving the remainder of my domain portfolio to WhyPark from Sedo because I’ve already seen what WhyPark can do with my first 100 domains.
While there is no catch, there are some things you should know. Yes, you can get the free standard service now which in itself is very good, but there are other services they offer which can be a boon to really monetizing your portfolio but those are not free.
Here’s a rough breakdown of the add-on services:
$10/mo Enhanced plan for all your sites
+ Premium Templates
+ 10 MB Image Hosting
+ RSS Feed Integration
+ Emailed Stats
+ Social Bookmarks
+ 5% Discount on Services
+ Premium Content
+ Comments in Articles
$25/mo Managed plan for all your sites (I use this one and am very happy with it)
+ Premium Templates
+ 100 MB Image Hosting
+ RSS Feed Integration
+ Emailed Stats
+ Social Bookmarks
+ 15% Discount on Services
+ More Premium Content
+ Comments in Articles
+ RSS Feed Publication
+ Automated Newsletters
Also, for a fee WhyPark can help with traffic building by:
- promoting your sites in various sites and blog directories.
- content development and syndication (WhyPark will research, write, and syndicate articles for you)
- RSS Feed Submissions (if you are using WhyPark’s add-on Managed service plan which allows you to have RSS feeds on your sites, you can pay a small fee to have the RSS Feeds from your site submitted to feed directories.
Of course, you can save yourself some money and do all the above yourself if you’ve got the time. I know I don’t have that kind of time so I’m going to try out a few of my domains using WhyPark’s Directory Submissions and Blog Placement services and will report back in a month or so on how the link building and traffic turns out.
WhyPark may have lots of potential for domainers
Building Your Website, Domains, Making Money April 15th, 2009
When I first started domaining a year ago, I thought I would buy a bunch of domains and park all but a few (with a plan that I would actually build a few into either a full ecommerce site and/or informational site that would generate revenue through Google Adsense and affiliate marketing). However, I have found that parking the domains has produced little in the way of revenue. I know the main reason things haven’t been so great for me personally: I have sucko domain names. Some of my domains have good type-in-traffic but aren’t high quality domain names. In any case, I have spent most of my time trying to figure out how to monetize these domain names. The answer seems to be mini-sites. That’s the “buzz” these days. It really is a great idea. Now, if you consider WhyPark.com a mini-site builder, then you may realize they are worthy of your consideration and hard earned cash. I thought they were so I gave them a shot.
I really like what I see so far. In just two weeks, my traffic has increased by 300%. The problem I’m finding (but I would have this with any other site with content) is I’m spending an awful lot of time trying to do SEO for all of them.
Let’s start off with the basics with regard to WhyPark. You do have the option to add keywords so if you do your keyword research and add those awesome keywords, you’ve got one small part of the SEO done. But obviously there’s so much more to do if you want traffic. I’ve tried listing my first 20 sites in five popular blog directories and four major search engines manually and it took a few hours - painful! And I have another 80 to do! Oh, by the way, WhyPark will do any or all of your SEO for an added charge - I haven’t tried these extra services yet but may consider trying out these services on a couple of my websites to see if they can do a better job than I. I’ll post back on this if I do try it out!
So, for my first 20 sites I also wanted to make sure I had visitor tracking so I initially used Google Analytics but found it has some problems with the WhyPark sites and Google Analytics, so I switched to StatCounter.com and I’m much happier. Actually, it’s nice because it’s more user friendly than Google Analytics. I also manually added sitemaps to each of the 20 websites to Google. Between adding all my domains to the StatCounter for my website statistics and then adding my sitemaps to Google, it took another few hours.
WhyPark has a section titled Site Settings where you can add your Statistic Code (from Google Analytics or StatCounter or your favorite tracker) and also a section for Sitemap Verification. Doing the sitemaps was a pain though going back and forth between WhyPark and Google: first, add the Domain Name to Google, click verify and then choose method (I chose META tag since it was simple to copy the one line of HTML code and paste it into WhyPark’s settings), then back to Google to click Verify and then adding the name of the sitemap to the just added Domain. By default, all the generated sitemaps from WhyPark are http://www.DOMAINNAME.com/google-sitemap.cfm so that made things easy.
As I mentioned, I have found that in the two weeks my domains have been with WhyPark, I have seen a large growth in traffic compared to what I was receiving through Sedo. But to be fair, I did get a lot of people coming in through organic traffic generated by the WhyPark content so I really can’t compare the two. Receiving organic traffic was surprising because I don’t think the WhyPark content is entirely engaging and actually some of it is out-of-date. But it did work nonetheless so I can’t complain!
All in all, WhyPark may be the way to go if you find your PPC sites aren’t generating the revenue you’d like to see and you’re looking for an alternative.
Domain development dilemma
Building Your Website, Business, Domains March 28th, 2009
So, I have this dilemma. A dilemma that I’m sure most domain owners (or domainers) face at some point in their domaining career. What the heck should I do with all my domains!? There are a lot of great things you can do depending on the time, patience and budget you are willing to work with. Things such as:
Domain Parking
Mini-Sites
Ecommerce Store
Wordpress Sites
Domain parking is great if you have a lot of good domains with natural type-in traffic because you will likely generate decent revenue for all the PPC’s that you receive. The only caveat is that there is a lot of talk about how the PPC earnings have gone down likely due to the economy and other factors. I personally think people have gotten more technically savvy and realize what a PPC site is and avoid clicking on the links.
If you’re new to domaining, some of the places you can park your domains are Sedo.com, Skenzo.com, Parked.com, TrafficZ.com, WhyPark.com, ParkingRevolution.com, or ActiveAudience.com,. Some of these sites have strict requirements regarding their acceptance of your domain portolio such as you must currently be earning a certain amount of revenue through your current parking provider or you must have at least 1000 domains, etc. I believe Sedo is the only one on my list above that does not have any requirements while the others do. (Sadly, I tried to get a couple hundred domains parked at Parked.com and I was rejected probably because my domains were not of the caliber they were looking for so for now I stick with the one that still loves me, Sedo. :) )
However, I’m considering WhyPark.com. Why? While it’s one of the few places where you PAY to park your domain, you have the greatest customization through them. You can add images (theirs or yours), relevant unique content, SEO, custom pages, etc. You can even ad your own ads! You can park up to 100 domains for $100 so that essentially costs you $1 per domain if you have 100 domains to park! (Sorry Sedo! I still love ya though!) :)
So, with that said about parking domains and stagnating revenues, there has been a lot of hype of a new way to develop domains called mini-sites. This is a neat concept but a fairly new one so I’m going to wait on this until the results are in. The concept being that you purchase a mini-site for your domain from a company such as MiniSites.com or AEIOU.com. The site or sites that you have created are usually a 1-page up to a 5-page site with a few articles written for that sites keywords and, of course, advertising so you can earn revenue. Costs vary but can range from $80-$250 per site from the two sites I mentioned. I’ve read mixed reviews on these especially regarding the actual results of their SEO generating a true increase in traffic. If that’s the case, then there’s always room for improvement and with a little time, who knows…maybe they can achieve true SEO perfection.
E-commerce is one of the more time consuming ways to develop a website; that is if you’re going to go the traditional route (eg. create website, get inventory, market your site and then sell/ship products). If you’re planning on creating multiple e-commerce sites at this level, then I’d have to say you’re nuts! 
It could be possible even if you hire a full-time shipping staff and leased a warehouse for your inventory, but even then, having just one e-commerce store would be enough of a management workout! One of the other ways that you could have your own e-commerce store with minimal management and no inventory is to have an Amazon Associate Store. I wrote a couple of posts about doing this if you’re interested: A great way to setup and online store and Instructions for setting on an Amazon Associate store. I’ve got a couple of AOM stores setup and plan on creating a couple more but need to work on the SEO for them (gosh, it seems that darn SEO is a full-time job in itself!)
Lastly, you can setup simple Wordpress sites. Those are probably the easiest to mass produce on your own. This is what I’m considering doing but WhyPark is still in the running.
Wordpress pros - free, lots of free templates
Wordpress cons - time, time and time (time to setup which isn’t too bad but the time it takes to maintain articles is going to be painful not to mention all the SEO that needs to be done for every site), plus I would have to pay for hosting all my sites.
WhyPark pros - I will have more free time then compared to the Wordpress option (even if I spent time customizing my sites through WhyPark)
WhyPark cons - it will cost me $1 per domain and I probably won’t know how good their SEO truly is until AFTER I sign up.
So for me the bottom line is how much is my time worth and which option is likely to generate a nice monthly revenue in the long run.
What is a Domain Name?
Domains, Technical Stuff February 12th, 2009
A domain name is the part of a website address or URL that follows the “http://www.” Take Apple for example: their domain name is apple.com, but their URL is http://www.apple.com. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Remember that because it might help you win a trivia contest! J And speaking of trivia and Apple, did you know that apple.com is one of the oldest still-in-existence domain names that got its start way back in 1987? Okay, enough Web Mom Geek talk!
A domain name is the unique name for your website whether you use it for business or for fun. All domain names have a “dot” extension (for example, WebMomDomains has a “dot” com extension which looks like WebMomDomains.com). And there are many extensions out there, not just “dot” com. If you go to a government website, you will see a “dot” gov (.gov), a military site will have a “dot” mil (.mil), an educational institution will have “dot” edu (.edu), a business can have a .biz, an informational website can have .info, etc. These extensions are all TLD’s or Top Level Domains. New ones are being introduced every couple of years or so. For example, “dot” me (.me) is a new domain that was recently made available to the general public. And yes, that is “dot” me as in about “me” (actually the original intent of the “dot” me was for the country Montenegro but it has become extremely popular for personal use) . So if you’re looking to really personalize your website and your name is Joe Schmo, you can get a domain name JoeSchmo.me.
What is Domaining?
Business, Domains, Making Money February 12th, 2009
Domaining in the simplest terms is the buying and selling of domain names. For domainers (people who buy and sell domain names), a domain name is essentially like an internet real estate market. Like the real estate or stock market, the domain market can fluctuate depending on the economy as well as other circumstances. There are trends and the serious domainers follow them closely. Just like stocks and real estate (and we all know you’ve heard this phrase), you want to buy low and sell high. Most domainers have hundreds and sometimes thousands of domain names in their portfolio. Generally, they consist of a mix of new and after market domains. They hold onto them until they feel it’s the right time to sell and especially if there is a person willing to pay market value or more for it.
In the “old” days (late 80’s to early 90’s), dot com’s were freely available and many domainers during the early years bought all the premium domain names thinking that someone would pay top dollar down the road for them. Of course, during that time there were many people that thought these folks were crazy, however they would eventually have to rescind their comments because those very “crazy” folks were selling their domain names for thousands of dollars years later. Were they smart? You betcha!
Well now, it’s a completely different situation. All the so-called good names are gone for the dot com’s and dot net’s but are they? Well, yes, all the good ones were already registered but not everyone hangs onto their domain names. Often, they are auctioned or sold off in the domain aftermarket on sites such as Sedo.com or tdnam.com or they expire unbeknownst to the owner. If you keep an eye out for an expiring domain name or one that is up for auction, you can buy them and turn around and resell them for a much larger profit. While that sounds simple, it does require a good understanding of the domain market, and in particular, it requires knowledge of what constitutes a valuable domain name. So like real estate or the stock market, you need to follow the experts. They will give you insight into where the trends might be leading.
What is Domain Forwarding?
Domains, Technical Stuff February 8th, 2009
Domain forwarding is a redirection of your domain name or URL to another URL. For example, you might use domain forwarding if you have a blog on Blogspot.com called bluetrees.blogspot.com and you want to have a simple domain name that your friends and family can remember such as bluetrees.com - so you would purchase a domain name bluetrees.com and forward your blog domain bluetrees.blogspot.com to your new and improved domain name bluetrees.com.
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