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DevHub.com - The Next Big Thing in Domain Monetization?: New Companies Are  Making the Dream of Affordable Mass Development a Reality
 

By Ron Jackson 

DevHub.com (formerly known as EVO Landing) is a mass development platform designed by the Seattle based EVO Media Group. The company was co-founded in the summer of 2007 by CEO Geoffrey Nuval (seen in the top photo at right), CTO Daniel L. Rust (middle photo)and Sr. VP for Strategic Marketing Mark A. Michael (bottom photo).

Nuval, an honors graduate from Stanford who also initiated a course in Hi-Tech Entrepreneurship at Oxford's Said Business School, told us "When we were introduced to the parking and domain industry, we realized there was a remarkable opportunity to provide a reusable set of features to help the people in this industry develop out their portfolio, which we launched as the EVO Landing platform in December 2008.  Over the course of EVO Landing, over 3.5 million domains have been submitted and close to 60,000 of them were developed out on the system."

"While a lot of these sites were very successful in attracting traffic beyond just type-in, what we came to realize, however, was that the need for original content and even the slightest human touch is needed to take that site to the next level, both for users who land on the site and for search engines.  This is when we decided to shift gears in August of 2008 and start building DevHub." 

Our interview with DevHub's Co-Founders continues below:

 

DN Journal: Give us some details about your specific program – how you attack the problem of developing a large number of sites at an affordable cost.

DevHub: On February 17th, 2009 at we launched DevHub in public beta. Whether a user is looking to build a network of 1 or 1,000 sites, the DevHub platform provides you with the flexibility to publish, monitor, and manage useful sites that make users money. It is completely free to the user to bring over their domains or use an available subdomain (nameofsite.devhub.com).

Using our integrated drag-and-drop editor, you can easily create and publish full-fledged websites using our text, image, blogging, and embed/widget modules. Go a layer deeper by adding metatags and site titles. Further enhance the look and feel of these sites by changing the background, logo, site styles, and more.

While the platform itself uses some of the integrations and business partnerships we had made during EVO Landing, this is a completely different platform built from the ground up to allow anyone the keys to rapid, full-site development.  Some outside the industry have compared it to Squidoo and Hubpages for its ease of use and ability to monetize, while others have even compared it to a Joomla or Drupal for its advanced, flexible content management system capabilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshot of DevHub's Home Page

The platform itself is a convergence of multiple API integrations and high-end development tools that empowers the Internet entrepreneur to build quality, media-rich sites targeted at niche audiences.   DevHub takes care of the heavy lifting (hosting, programming, integration of monetization channels, and report aggregation) so you can focus on building and enhancing your network.

By breaking down the technical barriers to site development, DevHub looks to foster a community and environment that reaches brand new levels of commercial expression on the Internet.

The only true way to understand it, however, is to give it a test drive, which only takes 5 minutes and is completely free to become a DevHead (what we call those in the DevHub community).

With DevHub you can easily publish a wide range of sites:

  • Local Service-based
  • Trend-based
  • Commerce / Product-based
  • Community-centered
  • Media Rich portals (i.e. Videos, Pictures, Podcasts)
  • Vertically-focused (i.e. Jobs, Travel, Education, etc)
  • Blog-base site

DN Journal: While these sites are often referred to as mini-sites, many of the current services allow domain owners to add their own content and advertisers (or feeds) to further the development process. To what degree does your system allow this?  Does your service allow a domain owner, to plug in third party content from a source like Tinbu for example?

DevHub: The DevHub platform was made to provide users to create more than just mini-sites.  Users can build sites that are 1 page or 100 pages deep if they put a little effort into it.

We continue to add to the feature set and the modules every week, giving users a new set of things to add to their site almost every time they log in (we actually are launching our Tinbu integration in the next week).  With the flexibility of the system, users can even plug in all their own codes, feeds and we are even tied into Google’s webmaster tools.

We try to keep it fun for our DevHeads, providing newsletters on best practices or once we launch major features/partnerships, and a weekend update is sent out that features the best sites created on the platform that week.

DN Journal: The #1 question on domain owner’s minds will be, will this service make more money for me than parking the same domains? Since this is a new category, with many of the service providers having been open less than a year, there is not yet a long track record for comparing results, but based on what you currently know, how do you answer this question from your customers?

DevHub: With DevHub the potential to make more than parking is there, and we’ve seen it.  People who have taken the time and effort (as little as 5-10 minutes a day) to truly develop out their sites on the DevHub platform have seen significant increases in the their daily traffic, which translates into major revenue upside.  With direct parking feeds dropping so significantly in the past year, 

the ability to use website advertising feeds (which haven’t experienced that same drop), in addition to other sources of monetization, is now even more lucrative for the domain industry.

DN Journal: Many developers say there are additional benefits, beyond immediate monetization, to moving beyond the parking page. For example, more “curb appeal” for potential buyers, less likelihood of inadvertent trademark infringement (from ads served by the PPC company), etc. What do you see as the added benefits of following at least a minimal development strategy?

DevHub: Domain holders have the greatest asset of all. We never thought of our competition as the domain parking industry but more of the 18 year old kid at home who buys free-cat-health.info and is able to generate $50 a month in organic traffic and affiliate offers. Meanwhile a domain holder that owns CatHealth.com is sitting on parked page maybe making a $1 a month on PPC and hoping to sell it off.

Domain holders are in a VERY good position to translate their assets into an actual media network. Much like bloggers utilize Wordpress to build their blog network, domain holders should seek to utilize DevHub to build out their website network.

Take a look at our gallery at www.devhub.com/gallery to see examples and the wide range of sites people can create on DevHub.

DN Journal: Parking is a well established industry with many major players. Your service category is the new kid on the block. How do you see the equilibrium between these two sectors (parking and mini-site development) changing over the next couple of years – do they both hold their own, does the balance of power shift, etc?

DevHub: We are pretty sure the major players in the parking industry are looking to move beyond current solutions, especially as they continue to be squeezed in margin by the major ad providers.  Rather than a shift, I can see these guys partnering with development solutions to bring their own brands beyond just the parking space.  We have been talking to quite a few of these guys lately and it should be interesting as the year progresses.

DN Journal: Thank you for filling us in on what is happening with DevHub. Anything you wouild like to add before we go?

DevHub: A couple of points…EVOLanding.com a is fully retired system.  DevHub.com is a completely new platform that has been built from the ground up on cutting edge technology and offers a solution even beyond the domaining channel to anyone without the technical skills or time, but has the desire to build a monetizable website.

We encourage domainers now to transition from the ‘what can you do for me’ to the ‘what can I do for myself’ mindset, as this will help them out in the long run.  And if you are in that mindset now, then DevHub is the place for you.

Beyond its ease of use, it is the flexibility of DevHub that has attracted over 3,000 users since our launch one month ago.   If you want to create a professional looking site that you can lease to a real firm – DevHeads are doing that.  If you want to put in your own ad feeds / affiliate deals or sell your own banner space and take 100% of that revenue – DevHeads are doing that.  If you want to create a blog that has the products or services you talk about right beside that entry – DevHeads are doing that.  The expression of creativity and ingenuity on the DevHub system is really unlimited and the DevHead community continues to amaze us with new things to feature week after week.   (see www.devhub.com/gallery to see what we’re talking about)

Lastly, for the domainer community specifically, we are working with a couple of design and content development third-party services which will be providing development on the DevHub platform for those with very large portfolios that they cannot develop out themselves – so look out for those services in the next few weeks!

Click any of the links in this table to learn about the mass website development services provided by other companies featured in this DN Journal Cover Story

Bonus profile of content provider
Tinbu.com

Click Here to Go to Page 1 of This DN Journal Cover Story

*****


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