Mini-site revenue is increasing
During the last couple of weeks I’ve flipped approximately 25 of my “under construction/parked” domains into very basic mini-sites and introduced Adsense on them.
Now, looking at the Adsense stats I’m very pleased with the trend, which is pointing upwards. Before I made these flips I would average 1-2 USD a day at the most. This last week the daily average has reached about $7 which is good enough for me since the domains flipped so far are domains that I actually didn’t believe had any potential at all. At least, no type-in traffic at all that is.
Some calculations then, I love counting on potential profits when it comes to domaining. Flipping 25 domains gave me approximately $5 extra revenue per day. This yields 5×365 - (25×12) = 1825 - 300 = $1525 in extra profit every year. The 25×12 is the regfee (mostly swedish domains). The hosting is already accounted for by other projects, these domains share server.
Most likely the profit will increase after developing these domains a bit more and create links to them in related forums and such. Selling links and adspace will be possible as soon as these sites get a pagerank.
Conclusion: Don’t sit on your domains and complain about them not generating any revenue, just develop! It’s easy!
I have about 250 domains (with better potential) left to flip, will be interesting to see how this works out. I just need and excuse to not work on my daytime job and work on domaining instead. Dare I estimate? 250/25*1525 = 15,250 USD
Wow, if I keep it up, I could be making 15,250 USD extra a year. Insane….probably wont work, but I’m sure gonna try it… 
Let me tell you what I think will happen….Google will punish my mini-sites, pulling them down in ranking or even ban them….nah, let’s be optimistic instead. I’m gonna make sure I develop the domains with great content so that Google will find them good enough to rank well.
How about yourself? Are you developing or are you complaining?
6 Comments on “Mini-site revenue is increasing”
Great post! Developing pays off!
Do you write all your content yourself?
Björn,
yes I do write all my content at the moment. I don’t have enough money to outsource at the moment and I haven’t seen many cc-TLD content providers yes. I’m sure they will arrive this year though. Also, I like having 100% control as well.
I have myself tried Contentor.se for some sites, I think it’s quite cheap. Ok it’s not the best quality of the copy but I think it’s more than ok! I developed a .eu I bought for 200 SEK, with 1 page content from contentor, got some links and then sold advertising+link directly to a company for 1000 SEK/month. Quite ok!
Although an older blog, I agree. Developing is definitely the way to go. It doesn’t take much to cover the cost of owning a domain name and development can be complicated or simple, depending on the vision of the developer. I’ve developed a few and happy with the results but just recently I’m testing out using one installation of wordpress MU, (Multi-User) with the domain mapping functionality on a shared hosting plan. Each domain will resolve to look like a separate website but all managed from one install of wordpress. I have a feeling this will work for fast, mass production of regularly updated content sites for domainers. Will update with how it turns out.
Björn, thanks for the advice. I’ve also looked at Contentor and I’m thinking about trying them out now that I’m starting to gain som momentum in my revenue and own a lot of domains and mini-sites.
Justin, yes, I’ve also been using WP MU for quite some time now, as well as my own mass-development platform for fast creation of landingpages for quick inclusion in searchengines, ranking and aging of prospects and future projects.
Recently I tried to modify the usual Wordpress to enable it to host several websites, and it seems to form fine so far. Some benefits are: “www” in the URL and pinglist is back. Also, I think it is easier to sell developed domains/websites developed on Wordpress. Extracting a website from WP MU seems difficult.