Amazon aStore alternative to domain parking (Update)

I have been watching this project closely.

After around 8 – 10 weeks I am able to get an idea of the potential for this alternative to parking.

There are three domains in this project. Each receives sporadic traffic. Although traffic is infrequent it is all type in traffic (I think). This means that when someone types in PortableFans.co.uk they really are looking for portable fans!

I would say that this experiment over the last 8 – 10 weeks or so was fairly inconclusive but I thing there are grounds for some optimism. Of the three sites, Melodicas.co.uk, PortableFans.co.uk and CountryRock.co.uk there was one sale bringing in £0.84 in revenue.  However, the last 8 – 10 weeks were not the best trading conditions. Additionally, 10 weeks is perhaps too short a period to draw any final conclusions.

Amazon aStore alternative to domain parking

Amazon offer affilliates the option of setting up what they call an ‘aStore’.

Basically, its a series of pages containing Amazon products you select for the store.

Developing a minisite does take time. Although developed minisites have good money-making potential, it is probably an evening’s work for each domain.

I thought I’d explore Amazon aStore minisites as a ‘quick and dirty’ alternative to domain parking. I developed three test sites. Each took about 15 – 20 mins to set up.

The three test sites are:-

Melodicas.co.uk

CountryRock.co.uk

PortableFans.co.uk

Even though people have to buy something before you earn anything, the commission from even a few sales per month is probably enough to cover costs.

I’ll report back once I have some results – good or bad – to report.

Update Jan 2009

Since December 2008 I’ve been developing MancesterWide.com. Initially it was a series of html pages but in early January 2009 I redeveloped the site completely. Now it is powered by WordPress and I have seen a lot more visitors.

Of all my mini-sites only two are ‘doing well’ – subprimlender.co.uk and SIPtelephony.co.uk. The rest are costing me money.

I will update in due course. In the meantime if you are visiting Manchester, England please visit ManchesterWide.com and find out more about domaining at Domaining.org.uk.

SurvivalistStore.com

This is the latest site to join the challenge.

SurvivalistStore.com, and my domains SurvivalistForum.com and SurvivalistForums.com were parked on Sedo and were getting traffic so I developed a basic mini site and pointed the two forum domains to Survivalist Store.com.

Survivalism is a popular niche and I have high hopes for this domain.

My GeoDomain website – ManchesterWide.com

ManchesterWide.com - This is a welcome addition to my minisite portfolio. The difference between this site and most of my other mini sites is

• this is larger (10 pages) than the others
• it is developed using css and therefore looks more professional 
• I plan to promote it a bit

 

and if it takes off, I plan to expand and develop it into a city guide with a view to seeing if I can make serious money with it. However, I am still at the begining of a long journey so my next goal is to get some good one way links and perhaps get some feedback from other developers.

If I decide to go down that route I will write it up here.

Is this the end or is it the begining?

It seems to me that mini sites will not always be the best way of monetizing domain names. This is especially true if the domains have little or now traffic. So I have decided to bring this part of the challenge to a close.

Some people may feel differently but I think that for me, developing ‘authority websites’ has to be far more profitable than basic minisites. An authority blog that domainates it niche can be relatively profitable. Once established, individual pages in an authority blog will generate at least as much revenue as a three to five page minisite that has no more than a couple of backlinks and which is just left. The decision might be different if the domain has traffic. But unless the trafic can be monetized for a reasonable amount per month it is not worth it. The reality is that some topics do not generate much with Adsense paying as little as 1 or 2 cents per click. 

So this experiment has been interesting but ultimately unsuccessful. But this is not the end – this is only the begining. I am working on plans for a number of authority blogs. I am currently working on Domaining.org.uk, an authority blog dedicated to buying, selling and monetizing domains, but with a UK slant. Other authority blogs are in the pipeline.

I will continue to post here occasionally, but you can keep up to date with my domain name activities on  Domaining.org.uk.

 

November 07’s Minisite Challenge totals.

November’s totals have been a little dissappointing with each challenge site earning only 16 cents ($0.16) per week. Hopefully this is a exception and things will improve in December.

I have decided to get rid of any sites which I thought would never make money for me. The first to go is CSIFan which generated very little cash, and was a complete waste of time.

I will update you with December ‘07 earnings early in 2008. 

October 07’s Minisite Challenge totals.

It was an interesting month with only 9 of the 14 challenge sites registering any sort of income whatsoever.

I have decided to remove two sites from the challenge as they no longer fit the minisite challenge criteria. Domaining.org.uk and Subprimelender.co.uk are out, which has had a serious affect on income.

So now the challenge is based on 12 sites, of which only seven registered any income. This means that each site averaged only 19 cents! per week each during October.

The main implication is that the .co.uk and .org.uk domains are in profit, the dot coms are running at a loss.

This is not a problem at the moment, as I would need to examine the trends over the longer term to build up a picture of whether this is just a blip and what is really happening. So I’m not too worried – I have more text for more sites and I want to improve the look of the sites I added last month.

Career Handbook, Small Business Finance and Unsecured Personal Loans

I have finally managed to add three more sites to the challenge, bringing the total to 14 sites in the challenge. Having said that, however, there are two sites that I may remove from the challenge. The first is Domaining.org.uk which I am developing into a domaining blog. The second is SubprimeLender.co.uk which I plan to develop shortly as well. I will see how things go and decide in the next few weeks.

This brings us to the three new sites. These are:-

UnsecuredPersonalLoans.info

SmallBusinessFinance.org.uk

CareerHandbook.co.uk

Three nice names with lots of potential. The first two are just crying out for development and the thisrd could be used to promote a career handbook, or to sell career books. However, in this challenge all that matters is how much money they will make as a minisite, and I will be reporting on that, in the next few weeks.

Wow, September’s figures.

Now that I have your attention I have to say that September’s figures were a little disappointing. During the month of September the 11 sites in the challenge managed to average $0.90, compared with $0.88 the month before.

The figure is influenced by the fact that a significant proportion of my domain name portfolio is pointed to one or two sites, so the income from ‘natural traffic’ is far less.

This has important implications for the project as the break even point for .com, .net, .org and .info domains is around $0.41 per week and is around $0.18 per week for .co.uk and .org.uk domain names.

A single page minisite takes about 2 hours to complete, including writing and using my regular template. A minisite using wordpress and free articles would take about 1 – 2 hours to set up at leisurely pace (finding articles, searching for a wordpress theme etc) and perhaps 20 – 30 mins a month to search for and add articles.

In total, I would say that the revenue for the 11 sites in the challenge probably covers their costs. However, with a portfolio of 100 + domains that might be suitable for inclusion in the challenge, I may be better considering alternative monetization techniques.