DNJ Newsletter

Repaving the Parking Lot: Have Domain Developers Won the Debate?
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Hearing from developers like McCullough and Carter may get you psyched up to run out and build a website on your favorite domain, but what if you have no development skills at all? There are a couple of options, with an obvious one being to outsource the work to others. You can pay a web design firm (which can be costly) or save some money by looking for freelance designers, writers and SEO specialists at place like elance.com. 

“When you outsource a project, you often lose control and you rarely save money. Offshoring is moving part of your operations to an offshore area where it is less expensive. Our clients wanted to hire people anyway. They just do it through us to save money and increase productivity. They like paying one flat fee a month for their staff. For example, we lease webmasters from $895 a month, flat. For those clients that can and want to manage their own projects, we are an ideal solution. If they want someone to do everything, they are better off outsourcing. Incidentally, we have many clients that offer outsourcing using our staff,” Latona said.

With the new emphasis on development, Latona, who is also a major domain investor, is seeing a lot of familiar faces knocking on his door these days. “We have many customers in the domainer community and we expect those numbers to keep growing. We welcome new business and fight hard to earn the trust of each prospect but we also grow a great deal from our current client base. We put a lot of focus on helping our clients. I love looking at our weekly management report and seeing customers with 40 leased employees that started with only one. When our customers grow, iWebmasters grows along with them.” 

Latona knows both sides of the fence very well. He has fully developed sites that have become solid businesses as well as domains that are currently monetized through PPC. We asked if, in his experience, development work had usually paid off in significantly more revenue than leaving a domain parked.  

“I never develop a great domain, just because it is a great domain” Latona said. I think it is a huge mistake to get into the manufacturing business, just because you own manufacture.com (Editor’s Note: which he does). A business person should understand the market they are going after and have a thorough business plan before making an entrance."  

"It also depends what your motives are. If your goal is simply to increase traffic by gaining in search engine ranking, link popularity and return visitors, it is a much easier task. If, however, you’ll need to interact with clients or vendors, stuff boxes for shipping and manage an inventory, it gets significantly more complex. It’s business 101 but profit equals revenue minus expenses. Developing a website can increase your expenses. Our iWebmasters.com service helps you keep your expenses low," Latona said.  

"What we offer is the ability to put our in house writers to work to push out more than a paragraph with relevant content that fits your domain. We have been buying and selling advertising since 1998. With this comes a rolodex of media buyers, ad agencies and lead buyers that can be tapped to monetize your domain. We can also answer calls and emails from users and potential advertisers. Something that most portfolio owners have no interest in doing."

Benko added, "One thing I want to make very clear is that this service is not for everyone and we are more than likely not going to turn your domain into a full blown stand alone company. We can but that takes years and lots of patience. If your domain is making $3,000 a month you are not going to hand it off to NoParking.com and immediately start making $6,000 - $12,000 a month."

"We are here to provide domain holders with another option that has much more potential than pure parking. I personally put a lot of value on the potential of a good generic domain. Many generic domains do very poorly when parked. We like to take those generics and turn them into viable sites that can be monetized with content, advertising, product placement, reviews, and a direct connection with people or companies that can service the category relevant to the domain," Benko said.

"We of course like generics and domains with type in traffic but we don’t always have the need for Grade A domains to make the model work. For example: Candy.com, Candy.net and Candy.org are all great domains that we would consider. A developed .net can easily generate just as much as a .com assuming both get no type in traffic yet carry the value of being a strong generic term. I would not be building a company on a .net, per say, but a “No Parked” .net can work out just fine."

As we noted earlier, quality development is hard, time consuming work. That is just as true for the people at NoParking.com as it is for you which means there will be a limit to how many people Benko’s company will be able to work with. “Oh without a doubt," he said. "We are not arrogant or snobby, however we are extremely picky about the people we work with. We interview the domain owner before we interview the domains." 

"Our model also keeps us from getting 50 calls a day. Most people like the model until they fully understand the model. We lose a lot of our customers to fear and greed. They like the part where we put a ton of effort and time and resources into developing the property but cannot understand why we should share in the proceeds if the domain is purchased. We are only limited by our resources and right now we have the resources because the demand is not overwhelming at this point in time," Benko said.

Finally, let’s say you are one of the fortunate few who has one or more true tier 1 domains (for example a jobs.com, loans.com, homes.com kind of domain). Because of the demand for those kinds of properties you obviously have the most options of all. You can usually make a very nice income leaving your domains parked or you can sell them for a truck load of money. But let’s say you want to retain ownership but boost your revenues above what they are now, without going 50/50 with a partner. 

As you can see, there are many development options for domain owners out there and in the months ahead you will likely see more new ones surface. Best of all, no matter which option you choose, if you pick the one that best fits your personal circumstances, odds are the outcome will be more money in your pocket!

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