Long gone are the days when domain speculation and domain parking was a viable business model. Today, domain investors and consumers are expecting strong domain names to deliver valuable information and services. Hitting on a parked page full of pay-per-click link brings frustration to consumers and an immediate (worthless) bounce to the domain owner. Now is the time to get that domain developed.
Developing a Domain Plan
Domain development can be an expensive proposition. Therefore, make sure you go into the effort with a well formulated objective and vision for the domain. Simply slapping up a site with a half dozen pages and no objective will not only bring you little if any traffic, it will guarantee none of them convert.
Start with a taxonomy of the keywords in the domain–carefully research and study how people search for those concepts. This means building a deep domain knowledge of your niches or verticals.
Use that taxonomy of keywords to build a sales funnel. Organize broad research and exploration keywords, and associated content pages to drive visitors into more specific conversion landing pages. This will add value to customers and help you increase lead generation efforts.
Engaging a Domain Development Team
Now that you have a high-level plan or concept for one or more of your domains, it is time to find a domain development team. Remember your primary objective is to generate leads and convert advertising to revenue–not win a beauty contest or web design award. This is critically important!
You want a domain development team that understands:
- traffic generation
- search engine optimization
- search engine marketing
- email marketing
- social media
- lead generation
Web development and expensive graphic designs can be second generations of your domain development. The first iteration should be focused on getting you in the search engines, generating traffic, building credibility, and creating an architecture for future growth.
Launching a New Domain
Getting the domain up and populated with content is only half the battle. Now you need to get traffic–consumers–flowing in. Traffic is critical for two important reasons. The first is more obvious than the second–you need eyeballs to market to and people to buy. However, the second reason is probably the most critical…
Consumers, especially on the Web, are completely unpredictable and behave totally irrationally.
Therefore, you need a significant amount of traffic to your domain to do meaningful lead generation and conversion analysis. Until you get some reasonable level of traffic you will always be guessing as to what will really make visitors convert into revenue. This is the point at which your domain has real value and you have a real business model.
Building Value in a Domain
Domain value is directly related to consumer value. If you are publishing valuable content, generating meaningful audiences, and in a meaningful market–your domain is worth something. A domain name sitting in a portfolio or parked for marginal revenue is worth only a tiny fraction of what a developed domain is worth to an investor or your own personal wealth.
