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.

 

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.

Domaining.org.uk has a forum

When I found out that there was a forum plug in for WordPress (there are a few actually), I decided to give one a try. The results of my efforts can be found  at [.....forum now removed......still liked the plug-in though..]

I am really impressed with how easy it was to install. It is simply a WordPress plug in that can be configured from the wordpress dashboard. The plug in comes from xdweb.net and more information and download details can be found at http://www.xdweb.net/wordpress/2007/03/15/xdforum-20/

It will be interesting to see how visitors respond to the forum and to see how the new content from posts on the forum affect ranking, traffic and revenue.

Challenge Results – July 2007

Well it has been an exciting time here at mini site challenge HQ. As the team (er….OK just me!) gathered around the computer screen on the 1st of August to see the final totals from Google Adsense, the excitement in the room was almost too much to bear.

So, here they are…………….

But, just to remind you, there are nine websites, so far, in the minisite challenge. The challenge is less than one month old. The total revenue generated by these nine sites reflect the fact that most of them are very new. The sites have been monetized using Google Adsense.

It takes time for new sites to be integrated into Googles search engine – perhaps 3 – 6 months, and these sites are too new.  So this problem is reflected in the revenue figures. 

Finally, there is clearly a big difference in the traffic that different sites have been able to achieve. The performance of some sites in terms of visitor traffic was dissappointing – there is no other word for it. Some sites performed quite well in terms of visitor numbers – better than I expected. So the results have been very mixed, but it really is early days for these sites.

The average income per site each week was $0.33. [*] This is $1.67 short of the goal of $2.00 per week, for each site,  set for this challenge.

This month will be spent consolodating these sites, improving SEO etc, adding pages, and possibly adding a few sites to the challenge – so I am sure next months totals will be even better…………………………

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[*] Here is the way I calculated the weekly figure………………

Total for month was multiplied by 12 months to get ‘yearly total’.

‘Yearly total’ was then divided by 52 weeks to get the weekly total.

This weeks new additions

Four more sites have just been included in the challenge. These are:-

DasKapital.co.uk - this is about Karl Marx’s classic text on capital and capitalism. It has an important place in political and economic history and some argue that it still has relevance today. Leaving the politics to one side it is clear that a site devoted to the academic study of this historically important book would be of interest to academics and students alike.

SIPTelephony.co.uk - this site covers Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) telephony, a new emerging technology. SIPTelephones.co.uk is also pointed to this site.

ResidentialMortgages.org.uk – this site is slightly more ambitious than the others and will be a detailed advice site around UK residential mortgages.

Domaining.org.uk – blog relating to the buying, selling and development of domain names.

As a general point it is worth mentioning, and this applies to many of the sites in the challenge,  that single page sites are quite limiting. I have a few single page sites and I have a lot of concerns about their money making potential as they are at the moment. This means that my plans are to develop all of my sites to have a minimum of 3 – 5 pages each.   

So for the next stage in the challenge I think I will spend August developing the sites in the ministie challenge before moving on to developing more sites. There are 9 sites in the challenge. So thats a goal of $18.00 per week for all 9 sites. Thats also $8.67 per month, per site and $78.00 for all 9 sites. (The calculation to get $8.67 is multiply $2.00 by 52 weeks to get $104. Then divide $104 by 12 months.)

My site SubprimeLender.co.uk received a welcome boost of traffic last week when I pointed a couple of my domains that have type-in traffic to that site. However, the topic of the domain names are unrelated to finance, loans or subprime lending, so the traffic does not convert into ad clicks very well. This is cheating a little, but as my goal is so challenging I have to use every opportunity open to me. However, I think that because of what I suspect is a very poor conversion rate from unrelated traffic, this move will have a limited effect on earnings.