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.

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. 

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.

August 2007 totals

This has been an interesting month and I can report increased profits from Adsense this month. This is despite the fact that SIPTelephony.co.uk and DasKapital.co.uk were both pointed to SubprimeLender.co.uk  for much of the month. Indeed Das Kapital has not been rewritten yet and that is on my to do list for September.

The average weekly income per site is $0.88, an improvement of $0.55 per site over last months total. However, this is far short of the $2.00 per week, per site, set for this minisite challenge.

One thing that is clear to me is that many of the sites have content that pays relatively poorly. For a number of sites in the challenge it may be that they will not cover their costs unless they have much more promotion, other monetization options are considered and time and effort is spent on their development.   I am currently considering adding Amazon and eBay affiliate ads, as well as affiliate programms through Commission Junction and Trade Doubler. More on this in due course.

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.

100 sites at $2 per week or one site at $200 per week?

Although, tthis month, I have only added one site to the challenge, and I am rewriting daskapital.co.uk, I do have the content written for another four sites. These should come on stream next month.

As I develop the text for each site I am beginning to see very clearly, that not all clicks on adsense ads are equal! Indeed, looking at my stats, depending the site, revenue from individual clicks has ranged from under 30cents for a click! to more than $1 for a click. This is not a random variation either. Hobby sites make far less per click than business and finance sites. The question is why build additional websites that are only making a few cents per click when I can be making additional pages on existing sites that pay 50c/ $1/ $2 per click.  Now I appreciate that the amount of traffic a site gets should be added into the equation – the lower amount per click may be compensated by high levels of traffic. However, there is clearly something to think about here and this will be a theme I will be following up on in future posts.

Duplicate content

You will have noticed that some of the sites in the challenge include content from either Wikipedia or from ezine article sites.

The use of this material is permitted as long as the rules and regulations are followed precisely. However, I have been particlularly concerned about Wikipedia material as the authors of Wikipedia articles could be submitting copyrighted material that they do not own the copyright to, and I would never know. It appears to be less likely with ezine articles, as the author is usually easier to trace through websites associated with the articles, but the risk is still there with ezine articles as well.

As a precaution, over the last few weeks, I have been removing Wikipedia material from my minisite challenge sites and from one other site, not in the challenge. This process meant that I had no choice but to write my own content for several sites, which was quite time consuming. Furthermore, DasKapital.co.uk is still not finished. However, it has enabled me to add one more site to the challenge portfollio, :-

CSI Fan – This site relates to the CBS television show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and it’s spin offs, CSI:Miami ans CSI:NY.

This brings the total number of sites in the Challenge to 10.

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.