Don’t Drink The “Develop Your Domains” Kool-Aid
April 12, 2008 · Print This Article
The biggest theme in the domainersphere in the last few days has been about development of domains. Many people are saying that this is the way forward for domainers and the best way to profit from domains. Elliot talks about his ideal portfolio. If you look at the direction he is heading in, he is basically reducing the number of domains he holds in order to concentrate on developing a few successful websites. Lord Brar talks about how he makes money from domains – essentially he develops them before reselling. Over and over we hear about how “pure” domaining is dying, and domainers need to hop on the development bandwagon.
All of this is somewhat ironic to me, as I’ve come into domaining from an SEO background. As Peter would say, I’m an SEOmainer. So, I’m moving in the opposite direction that everyone is recommending – I’m doing less developing, and more pure domaining.
I’ve got nothing against development and indeed, I continue to develop websites. However, I think the problem with the recommendations I see is that most domainers underestimate the amount of time, money and energy that goes into developing a successful site. It’s actually quite incredibly large. It’s also important to recognize that developing a site is actually fairly trivial in the scheme of things; what’s difficult about making a website successful is marketing, and marketing is a relentless, demanding, and never ending task.
Given that one of my goals (and goal of many domainers I’ve met) is to develop large streams of passive income, development is not the best way to achieve this. What’s more, given the time and energy commitments that go into building a website, it is hard to scale. Really, you can only run a limited number of successful websites, no matter how good you are at delegating. However, there is no limit to the number of domains you can own and profit from.
So, in short, yes, development is great. A great domain plus expert SEO is a killer combination. If you’ve got a flair for SEO and marketing, and apply this to a category killer domain name, it is likely you will do well. But going down this route is not for everyone. More importantly, I don’t think that development in any way replaces pure domaining – it’s just a nice addition.
Written by admin · Filed Under Domaining
