Category: Make Money

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Domain Parking Make Money Reviews Web Design

Rapid Domain Development Guide!

I came across an interesting article via Domaining.com’s daily digest email – its a site that sells an eProduct – a step by step guide on developing domain names. Nothing new right? Well, that was my thought at first… but after reading into it a bit more I found that the author claims his guide will teach domainers how to develop a site within a day. From getting it build to monetized – and have it generating more revenue (within 60 days) than it would from domain parking companies. On top of this, the author also mentions that all this can be done without any programming skills… ok, sounds interesting.

Step by Step Domain Mini-Site Development Guide

There are plenty of testimonials on the site as well as some sites which were created by clients using the rapid development guide.

As I suspected, all the showcased sites are based on WordPress. Which is not a bad thing.

By the way, the site is called Beyond Domaining – owned by Scott Carde “a domainer who built the system out of frustration from traditional domain parking and falling revenues”.

One of the testimonials claims to have turned a domain which was making less than reg fee per year – to making it earn $10 per month. Not impressed? Well, considering the site was built within a day and left alone, thats not bad at all. If its true, then say you build 10-15 sites a month and leave them all… they make $10 each, thats $100-$150 per month. To me it sounds like it has the potential to be one of those “rinse n repeat” strategies which we all look for but hardly ever find (or can maintain).

Now, the e product is selling at $50 (special offer) at the time of writing – and I’m going to give it a go. I’m guessing it will go over most of the things I already know and use in my development arsenal, but I’m hoping it provides a nice ordered step by step process rather than going over the most obvious stuff in no particular order!

To be honest, this isn’t something I really need – but willing to give it a go so I can write a review for others. Maybe it will help me streamline the way I do things? Who knows…! But it has a 60 money back garuantee, so it gives me that assurance to give it a try.

If anyone has already tried this, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think. And if you’re considering it, why not use the link/banner below and help me earn some affiliate commission.

Step by Step Domain Mini-Site Development Guide

Note: Just because I’ve got an affiliate link to the product does not mean I will be biased in my forthcoming review. I will provide an honest unbiased review, I promise.

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Make Money Web Development

Web Designers and Developers in Demand

Web designers and developers are probably more in demand now than ever before, especially with the questionable economy. Personally, I think this is just the start. I’ve been developing web sites for over  10 years, mainly for myself, but over the last two years I’ve been taking on clients and I’ve never before had the kind of demand I’m seeing now.

During 2007, in the space of 3 months I had 2 clients. In 2008 I had 9 clients. Of course none of the projects were ever the same size or shape, but they were what I would consider small to medium size projects… sites that I’d charge between $1000 – $4000 each. Sites which were developed using ready-made open source systems such as Joomla or WordPress and using scripts such as PHP Link Directory.

Expanding my Own Business

In September 2008 I partnered with a developer and as well as working on a large domaining project, together we’ve built our own CMS and a number of custom made scripts.  We worked for several months as two separate companies but at the begining of 2009 we decided to merge and create one web design and development company called OpenCreate (at the time of writing, we’re updating the site so excuse the lack of functionality on there).

Increasing in Demand in 2009

We’re now only three months into 2009 and already we have 5 new clients on our list. We’d consider all of these to be high-end clients with large projects – $5000+

Of course this has a lot to do with our own improving portfolio and word-of-mouth promotion that has brought in new clients, but I believe the current economy also had a part to play. With so much uncertainty, the constant doom and gloom talk of failed financial systems around the world and probably being in midst of a recession – people are searching for alternative ways to make money. It’s not surprising that they are looking to start online businesses or to improve existing online presence.

It’s not only that we’ve got 5 new clients in the space of 3 months, we’ve had a lot of inquiries for small projects too – things we’ve had to turn down in order to put more effort into larger projects. We’ve also come across more people who are interested in what we do and wanting to know how they can benefit from being online.

A little Case Study

Take for example Clive, I met him for the first time in 2008 through a client. He’d been working at an events company, on a good regular salary and with hardly any interest in having a website or starting an online business. I remember him slightly mocking his friend for whom I’d just finished making a site. Now fast forward 12 months and I get a call from him asking if I’m still in the design business. We meet up for lunch and I’m surprised to find out how much his knowledge of “online business and marketing” has improved. He tells me he lost his job a few months after we’d first met and since then he had two other jobs.

Clive was fed up of moving from job to job and with the downturn in the economy he has also had to take a few pay cuts along the way. After watching how his friend (my client) had slowly turned his site into a full-time job making steadily increasing income, he was ready to give it a go. Even he’d noticed more people becoming “interested in websites” – his musician (dj) friends over the past year had “all gone online”.

Its just one example but in general I’ve seen more interest from people – whether bar staff, dj’s & musicians or business owners. There is definitely more interest and intrigue.

The Internet is Still Open!

The Internet is still somewhat untapped. Despite a larger number of people browsing the net, its still a very small percentage of people who have seen the benefits of having an online presence.

People are starting to look at alternative ways to not only make money but also save money. Traditional advertising costs ie. newspapers, television etc. are very high – there is a huge market online – advertising and having a presence online is going to become (and in many cases already has) more beneficial whether you’re real estate company, restaurant owner or musician. Not having a website for your company (or even for yourself) is regardless how big or small – is going to help your competitors. People are realizing this.

With all the doom and gloom of the economy, this could actually benefit a few business sectors – for example, pawn brokers boomed in the last recession – in this digital age it could be web developers and online businesses which benefit more.  If ever there was a time to get your web design / development portfolio into shape – it is now. Be active and be prepared.

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Domaining Make Money

Are .info Domain Names Profitable?

When considering purchasing .info domain names for investment (whether new registrations or purchases made in the secondary market), it’s important to focus on how you’re actually going to make money from your portfolio. In fact this applies to all kinds of domain names, not just the .info extension.

I’ve found that a lot of people look down on the .info extension – without a good reason in most cases. I completely understand for some people investing in .info extension isn’t as worthwhile, usually because they have such big and rich .com portfolios that the smaller returns you get on .info’s just takes too long to add up.

But! For the majority, I’d say it is still worth investing in if you can find the right name to fit the extension. This is very important… you have to be careful which name you pick because unlike with many other extensions the .info’s work well mainly within the “information” niche.

At the time of writing, you can hand-register .info domains at a number of domain name registrars for around $1 each. GoDaddy for example is offering new registrations for $0.99 + icann fees = $1.12 per domain.

These promotions are not new, they’ve been ongoing since the release of the .info extension a few years ago. A lot of domainers and developers say that these promotions have hurt the extension – making it appear as “cheap” and “spammy” (more explained on this later). This may be so, but it still doesn’t take away from that fact that there is money to be made on them.

A few months ago I registered about 50 two word .info domain names – the total cost was about $55 – within a few weeks I sold 5 of these domains for over $30 each. Fair enough, it hasn’t changed my life, but that’s a pretty good return on investment however you look at it. Just from selling 10% of the names I’d made a total of $180. That’s about $174 profit from $6 investments. Not bad eh!

So what about the other 45 names?

Since registering them over 7 months ago, I’ve already sold about 40 of the names. Other than the first 5, the rest of them I sold for $2 – $5 each. A couple went for $10 each. Still I made profits on each and every single one of them so far. And, the best thing about it is that I still have 10 left. Out of these 10, I’ve developed one into an information/review site for domain registrars – and from the other 9 I will keep 6 (the best ones from the 50) and probably drop the other 3.

So based on my own experience, I’d say .info domains are definitely profitable – IF you know what you’re doing.

I think a lot of people have bad experience with .info’s because they registered poor names – names which don’t fit the extension – and in some cases people took a gamble on LLLL.info domains thinking a buyout would occur and they’d make good profits. Wrong.

Brandable domains don’t suit the .info extension and more often than not they don’t make profits… neither do acronyms (with LLL 3 letters being an exception).

If I see a website’s url as — BestLaptops.info (as an example) then automatically I’d assume that site to be some kind of information base, reviews site or price comparison site rather than a site actually selling laptops. I don’t expect it to be a company – I expect it to be either an affiliate site or just a site filled with information about which are the best laptops. Most people view .info’s in this way – and I’m assuming that’s what the intention is behind .info

I see people register domains such as  “iComputerShopping.info” – from experience I can safely say these names do not sell well – especially to the reseller market. With names like this you’re trying to brand what is intended to be an information site… not a company or product. It just doesn’t make sense. Below are a few more examples of names that don’t really work…

  • TotalBlogger.info – what’s this supposed to do? provide information about someone who’s a total blogger? good brandable name, but wrong extension.
  • MissFashion.info – same as above
  • 247ShoppingMall.info – could be a site about all the 24 hour shopping malls, but very restricted and again branding rather than keyword based.. wouldn’t get much organic traffic.
  • UKLK.info – four letter .info, hard to resell to domainers, possible to sell to end-users who own companies with those letters, but this creates a lot of work trying to find the end-user.

You see, there are a number of reason’s why a numerous types of domains don’t work well with .info – there are a lot of things to take into consideration when buying them.

I only buy names that I can quickly flip to other domainers or at aftermarkets such as sedo / ebay / tdnam etc. I prefer not to chase end-users with .info domains because its hard enough to find buyers for .com’s – it takes a lot of time. And time is money.

I see it like this… the amount of time I’d spend trying to find an end-user for a $500 brandable or acronym .info name – I could flip 100 .info to resellers for $10 or so and make more money with less effort. So I don’t bother going after brandable .info domains – they’re just too much hard work to sell.

Below are some examples of names which make sense with the .info extension –

  • VirusInformation.info
  • HipHopMusic.info
  • DivorceProcedures.info
  • FinanceSchools.info
  • EnergyProviders.info
  • StudentAccounts.info

Ok, most of those names are mine – so it would seem biased. But think about each of them – they fit the extension and would be very easy to develop a site / mini-site on them. The ease of seeing and realizing the names potential – together with the ease of development (basic blog/wordpress / mini-site) helps to sell these names to resellers. Lets take “StudentAccounts.info” for example, it would make a perfect site for students to learn about which accounts /credit cards are best for them as a student. Turn it into a simple blog and allow user reviews / comments – add a forum perhaps? Now, just add a few affiliate links or google adsense – and there you have it – easily developed / easily monetized useful site for a niche.

I’ve had offers above $40 for most of those names – but I’ve declined, mainly because I have development plans for them or because they are parked and getting good traffic. I know that by spending an hour or two on each of the domains – I’ll have them developed to a basic stage – enough to earn me $5-$10 per month in adsense revenue at least. So it’s not worth selling for so low… I’m just not in that much of a rush.

So, to conclude this article – I think .info domains names are definitely worth investing in. If you can find them to hand-register, then its a bonus. But even if you can’t find good suitable names to hand-reg you can still have a look around at the aftermarkets and forums – there are occasionally names being sold for under $30-$40 … which in the right hands could be worth a lot more.

NOTE: as you can probably tell, I’ve written this article in free flow – not a great structure to it, so I do apologise. But I will be doing a full write-up on .info domains within a few weeks so stay tuned. In fact, register for a free account and add yourself to the mailing list – you’ll get a weekly newsletter with all the sites updates and articles… oh and available domain names lists.

Till next time 😉