This is a follow up on NameMedia.com / BuyDomains.com who own close to 1 million domains. About 3 month's ago I reported that they mass developed 20,000 of them in a short period of time. Well, they have been really busy goin at it. They now have launched over 110,000 interactive websites in just about every category that you can only imagine. Still the same setup however, done in the extremely popular blog style which works well overall.
It's really impressive stuff. Being able to pull this off at this scale ain't easy! Now, I really like what they are doing with this whole mass development thing for a couple of reasons which I'll share in just a bit... I have been in touch with Brian Carr over at NameMedia who is the SVP of direct search / emerging media; he basically handles all of the new cool stuff that they got going on.
Brian Carr oversees affiliate operations and domain optimization strategies for BuyDomains.com portfolio of close to 1,000,000 .. What a great job right?! Prior to joining NameMedia.com Brian was GM of business operations at the Terra Lycos network; overseeing partner services, reporting, customer service, advertising operations and the daily website experience for the network's 1 million+ daily unique visitors in the good ol' days. So he knows his stuff... :)
As far as free and effective domain mass development goes.. There isn't currently a solution on the market that I actually like or would consider using. WhyPark sucks.. DevHub is a little better but there is still nothing special about it whatsoever... So what are cheap ass domainers to do or ones who own thousands or tens of thousands of domains??! You wanna develop.. For FREE?!
Well, NameMedia.com is probably going to be rolling out their own domain mass development service / platform real soon. How soon??! Once they conclude their own internal tests and get this all figured out properly... Having 100,000+ sites provides them lots of data so we should probably see something by the end of the year I'd hope. They already have month's of data as well..
Below is some interesting notes Brian Carr has shared with me recently about their 100,000+ mass developed website's traffic and monetization strategies.
"What we're seeing is that typically at least 25% of dormant domains start getting an organic heartbeat within 4 to 6 weeks of launching with content, and with the right care taking, it grows from there. Much of that depends on the domain quality itself, it’s history and its position in the tail.
Often the lower in the tail, often the faster the growth because less established players are there. This approach is unlike anything with parked pages, which are all but impossible to grow organically."
Content pulls in visitors obviously.. It's a traffic magnet. You setup and update your website consistently... You can bet your ass of that there will be traffic coming in to your website from the search engines. You do the right SEO and you will get even more traffic exponentially! I especially like the NameMedia.com setup because the content is actually targeted and useful for the users. They are using "premium" feeds and credible informational sources.
"As far as monetization, it’s no surprise parked pages are by far the most efficient, since adding content can decrease CTR significantly. But as you know, parked pages don’t allow you to register users, drive traffic through social media sites and build organic search traffic for the long-term value.
For example, what’s interesting is in one of our tests, we started curating some of those domains that showed a “heartbeat’” and our domains started getting significant traffic from social media sources, such as Twitter – in one case even more traffic from Twitter than the second-tier search engines. And we registered users on these developed sites, which introduces a completely new monetization stream outside of CPC."
The best thing about development is that it opens up so many opportunities. Some developed domains will do the best with CPC, some with affiliate programs and whatever but you got all this options, which is great. In order to make the most of your traffic you gotta do it the good ol' fashioned way with trial and error. Lots and lots of tests with various ads, setups and so on. Don't be afraid to experiment. Just do it... It's a must. Everybody is doing it.. Duh!!
Development is no easy task, never was and never will be.. But mass development increases your chances at getting a lot more winners at the end of the day. You figure out what works, what doesn't and then you apply whatever you know for sure is making $$$ to the rest of your operation. There is nothing fancy schmancy about it and you don't need to be an SEO whiz or marketing pro. It all will make sense once you get involved hands on.
The first and most important step is to actually get started. It really doesn't matter whether you are developing the websites yourself or using a 3rd party service.. You start fresh once you ditch the parking setup. You can begin to explore with all of the options that exist with development and see what happens when you put a real effort behind something.. The rewards are near instant and every day you got organic growth... How freakin cool is that?? :)
Every day that you aren't developing just means lots of lost opportunities. Come on now... Get serious! If you wanna bring out some of that hidden potential within your domains... Well, there is only one way. Domain mass development. It's never been more affordable and easier to get up and running. You either pay up or do-it-yourself... So what you gonna do???!
Observations at WannaDevelop.com
02/23/2010: Dozens of Amazon affiliate stores for sale.. Developed by DomainMassDevelopment.com 01/11/2010: Wanna be part-owner of DomainState.com with myself and a few others? Ok, read this now... 11/02/2009: FS gets it on with WP... It's about time, no??!?! 08/24/2009: If all else fails... Who is gonna pay the bills?!! 08/22/2009: Frank Schilling has the winning formula $$$$$$
