I am excited to announce that the second edition of my free guide, Domain Monetization 101 has arrived hot off the press! Actually, there is no press since it’s an eBook but let’s just pretend that it is! While this is the second edition of the guide almost the entire book has been re-written so it might be more fair to call it a whole new book.

The idea behind Domain Monetization 101 is simple – people ask me all the time how to get started with Domain Monetization. Rather than trying to share everything I’ve learned in an email or short phone call I put all the basics together in one guide that I give-away for free. The guide covers Monetization from start-to-finish and shows anyone coding experience or not, how to build something meaningful on their domains.

To get your free copy of the book all you need to do is sign-up for my newsletter. Oh and don’t worry, I don’t send-out Newsletters every day, or even every week. My newsletter is all about education and when I do send it out it’s jam-packed with articles about Monetization, SEO, and Domain Flipping with a focus on specific techniques I haven’t covered yet on my blog.

So if you’ve been waiting to take the next step and start monetizing your domains, or if you’ve been trying to monetize your domains without making much progress, I am confident Domain Monetization 101 will help! If you are already a newsletter subscriber and you would like a copy just shoot me an email and I’ll send it over. Of course feel free to ask any questions you have in the comment section below, I’m always here to help!

Affiliate Programs are a great way to generate more revenue per visitor than PPC while delivering products that your customers want. There are two ways to go about adding affiliate products to your site, you can do it manually or you can use something called a Data Feed. Most people start-out in the affiliate space by copying and pasting code over and over, and over again. It can be tedious and if a product gets updated or removed you have no way of knowing.

Then there’s Data Feeds, the Holy Grail of the Affiliate Marketing world, okay maybe I’m being a bit dramatic so let’s just say that Data Feeds are a big deal.

What Is A Data Feed?

A Data Feed is a way for website owners to access and receive updates to data sources. In this case, the data source is the inventory of products that a company is selling through their affiliate program. Here’s an example, let’s suppose you run a site that sell widgets, yes I know, we all love widgets. So you find an affiliate program that offers thousands of widgets and you start spending thousands of hours adding these widgets to your site…stop right there, this is where Data Feeds come in.

Rather than copying and pasting the code to add each widget to your site one-by-0ne, Data Feeds allow you to import hundreds or thousands of products and easily add them to your site. Then, if the company providing the products makes changes to their product offerings, this will automatically update on your site.

If you go to a show like Affiliate Summit you will hear the term Data Feed like it’s going out of style, and for good reason, many super affiliates use Data Feeds as a core part of their monetization strategy. Just think about it, if you have a site that sells digital cameras and you’re using the affiliate program for an online camera store, you are likely to find thousands of cameras, which could means hundreds of hours of copying and pasting code. Then a few cameras are removed from their inventory and your site is suddenly out of date with no real way of knowing.

Data Feeds save time but also give affiliate marketers the chance to build more than just a few pages of products, they can build entire custom affiliate stores tailored to their specific customers.

How Can You Add Data Feeds To Your Site?

There are really two ways to add Data Feeds to your site; if you’re a developer you can write some code to add the Data Feeds, there are ways to do this with PHP that should be a snap for any web coding gurus. Of course many people aren’t programmers themselves and lucky for all of you there are some very cool tools out there that will allow you to build an affiliate store using Data Feeds without writing a single line of code.

The two options that I recommend are: PopShops and Datafeedr. PopShops is great for anyone that wants to integrate an affiliate store directly into an existing site. It allows you to easily add products to your store and then just copy and paste a code snippet onto your site. Datafeedr on the other hand is a plugin for WordPress so is great for anyone that is running their affiliate store on WordPress. Like PopShops you create your store using Datafeedr and then integrate it into your site using their plugin.

Both of these options are easy to get started with and integrate with just about every affiliate program under the sun. If you are currently offering a handful of affiliate products on your store and have been waiting to launch a full-scale store, Data Feeds are the way to do it. While they may seem intimidating at first, the amount of time they save you in the long-run is huge. Couple this with the fact that you can offer your visitors a wider range of products and update and remove products automatically and you can see why Data Feeds are so powerful.

So there you have it, and introduction to Data Feeds. As always I always love to hear from you, my reader. If you have a question, ask it! If you have experience with Data Feeds and want to share some of your own advice, do it! Comment and let your voice be heard!

In March I did a post about Domain Apps and some testing I will be doing with the platform. Domain Apps lets you build full-scale content sites using their platform and plug-in apps to add functionality or monetization options to your site. Like any platform I think you get out what you put in. You can’t expect any of your sites to rank well in search unless you do the same things you would do with a normal website. So that’s exactly what I’m doing and here’s what I’ve done so far:

The first step is adding domains to your account or creating content sites out of the domains you have added. Like I said, you really get out what you put in so bulk adding thousands of domains probably isn’t manageable unless you have the team and/or budget to do it. Any site you expect to rank well in Google and build-up traffic over time needs to be a real site. This means having custom, unique content written for the site, a good backlink profile, and something that keeps people coming back. I will be investing $100/site into content and SEO and think that this really is the bare minimum you should spend on building and launching a new site.

I’m always surprised when people expect these platforms to magically rank their domains in Google with no work or money on their part. You can build a great site and treat it like any other site, the advantage of a platform like this is the incredibly simple interface and apps architecture that allows for very quick site creation.

The Credit Card Offers App is a great example of an app that makes building what would otherwise be a fairly complicated site, very very easy (yes that’s two very’s on purpose!). All you have to do is add the app to any site that you are building and boom, Credit Card Offers will appear on your site. No writing code, no signing-up for affiliate programs, it just works. Setting-up each site is also very quick and you can specify all the options you’d be looking to tweak right-off the bat in a platform like WordPress.

As you can see, things like Title, Meta Keywords and Meta Description are easy to create and you can even note that the domain is for sale if you’d like. I always like to add this to any of my mini-sites or developed brands that are for sale, otherwise most end-users don’t even think to email and find-out. Next you will see Homepage Articles, Related Articles and Stock Articles. I have these in right now but soon will be switching to nothing but custom unique content that I am currently getting from Media Piston.

DomainApps does have some SEO services built-in as well which I’ll be using as part of my $100 investment in each of these development projects.

The concept of free really shouldn’t come-into your mind when you’re developing a site. Instead you need to think of the investment you are making and look at the development process as part of the investment. If you buy a domain name for $3,000, why would you not spend at least $100 to build it out? Too many people want a bulk solution, something that just gets all their domains developed and ranked for no charge. That doesn’t exist, this is investing and these platforms can work if you use them to build real sites, with good quality content, and useful features.

I plan to break-down the $100 investment per site as follows:

• $30 – Three 350-word custom-written articles from Media Piston
• $19 – Directory Submission (10)
• $40 – Sponsored/Guest Post on related blog
• $11 – Two Marketing/Link-Building Projects on Fiverr

I will continue to provide updates as I move forward. Of course I’ll be pluggin-in Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools so I can track my progress every step of the way. Also, for those who like this case study, I have parallel studies happening with Epik and Protrada that are also launching this week! Stay-tuned, more to come!

This post has been a long time coming as it has been one of the most-requested post topics from readers over the last year. With so many Domainers looking towards development as a way to monetize their domains, I thought now would be a great time to share my own checklist that we use internally.

As you probably know, I don’t develop any of our sites but have an awesome team that does an incredible job. What I did do is put-together the list of steps for our team to follow every time we build a site, and I am excited to now share this checklist with all of you.

Most of our brands start-out as 10-page MiniSites and then evolve into brands. Not every one makes the cut and that’s why we like to start small, and turn our early strong-performers, into full-scale brands.

Step 1: Install WordPress or Website Template
Some of our sites are built using WordPress, others using static HTML. Either way the first step is to get a site appearing on the domain name. This means pointing the nameservers to the right server and installing WordPress or the HTML template we’d like to use. This varies depending on the type of site we are building and the niche that it is in. I could write a whole post just about this step (and maybe I will!).

Step 2: Use The Google Adwords Keyword Tool To Find Top Keywords
This is a very easy yet often overlooked step. Take the keywords in your domain and plug them into Google. Start by organizing the list of search phrases by CPC and pick the top five, next organize by global search volume and pick the top five from here. You now have ten keywords you’ll want to focus on, the most lucrative, and the most-searched.

Step 3: Write Articles About These Ten Keywords
If you’re just starting-out I recommend you save some money and write the articles yourself. If you have money to spend or you’re already making money, hire someone to write the articles. When I first started Linton Investments I wrote just about every single article for our sites, then as a site would become profitable, I would re-invest the profits into content. There are lots of different ways you can get content written for you, TextBroker, MediaPiston, or just reaching-out to writers you might already know are all good options.

Step 4: Design A Professional Logo For Your Site
A good logo can make a big difference, and the best part is it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. I typically use LogoNerds, they can make you a great logo, for under $30.

Step 5: Identify The Category Leaders In Your Niche
Find the top five sites that rank well for the keywords you want to rank well for. These are the category leaders and if you plan on being a player in this space, you should get to know them. These relationships are critical to go from MiniSite to full-scale brand. Try to get on the phone with as many of them as possible, see if you can write a guest post for them or get a link back to your site. These backlinks could be the difference between Google Page 10 and Google Page 1. The relationships could be the difference between success and failure so this really is the most important step. Get feedback on your site, on the niche, learn as much as you can, if you’re going to build a brand in the space you should know it inside out.

Step 6: Create A Twitter Account
Any real brand has a Twitter account, period, so you should too. Once you create your Twitter account start identifying the thought leaders in your niche on Twitter. Retweet good tweets they write and contribute great Tweets yourself. Soon you should become friends with these people and hopefully become a thought leader in your niche as well.

Step 7: Create A Facebook Fanpage
Any real brand not only has a Twitter account, they also have a Facebook Fanpage. Once you create your Fanpage start posting a few articles a week you think would be interesting to your audience. Make sure to make it easy for anyone who visits your site to become a fan.

Step 8: Monetization
This step really is worthy of an entire blog post, but to get started try to find a few affiliate programs that target customers in your niche. You can easily find a good affiliate program (or two) to get started with on OfferVault. This will get you started, as your brand continues to grow you can start looking at options like direct advertising and lead generation.

These are the basic eight step that we follow. Of course this is only the creation of your brand. Keeping your brand running and building it up from here involves doing more but this is a great place to start. Remember, just throwing a site on your domain is not a way to generate lasting passive income. Make it fun, learn about your niche, and build a real business. Oh and when you do, make sure to email me and tell me all about it!

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I talk to a lot of people who have been told what I like to call “Minisite Myths” or general exaggerations about what to expect from a MiniSite. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of MiniSites and know from experience that you can absolutely generate nice income from MiniSites…it’s how you get to the income that many of the myths come-into play.

So if you’re starting to develop domains in your portfolio, or if you’ve already been developing and don’t know why you’re sites aren’t making any money, one of these myths might have something to do with it.

1. If You Build It They Will Come. I call this the “Field Of Dreams Myth” and I think it’s probably the most common one that I see when contacted by readers. There is this idea that if you put a 5-10 page website on one of your domains it will suddenly rank well and begin getting traffic and revenue. I’ve heard a number of people say to me, “I paid the developer $500 and the site doesn’t even make a dime after six months!” I ask them what they’ve done and they usually act surprised, as if the domain and the site were all it took. It takes more than just putting a MiniSite on your domain to make money, sure you can get lucky but expect to do more if you want to rank well and make money.
2. You Can Use An Auto-Blog or Content Spinner To Rank Well. Gone are the days where you can just spin tons of articles or run an auto-blogging script or plugin to rank well. You can still find lots of articles online about how much money you can make putting your content on auto-pilot, many are outdated or simply lying in order to sell their service. You need high-quality unique content to create sites that will rank well over time.
3. Having An Exact-Match Domain Will Guarantee First Page Placement On Google. Exact-Match domains can allow you to rank better in search engines but they won’t do it alone. If you’re trying to rank well for any somewhat competitive term you’ll have to get some real backlinks and social media mentions. Google is hip to most of the old techniques used to game the system, it’s no longer about tricking Google but instead creating long-term value. The major benefit an exact-match domain has is a typically high CTR and since CTR is part of Google’s ranking algorithm this could in turn improve your rank.

The moral of the story here is that many people thinking making money with MiniSites means just putting a MiniSite on your domain. The MiniSite itself is the foundation for your business. You need to get high-quality backlinks, create lasting partnerships and drive the business to hit your goals.

I like to think of it as if I’m opening a physical business out on some lone side-street in the middle of nowhere. This really is where your site starts, it usually won’t have any traffic, nobody knows it exists. If you started a physical business you wouldn’t just sit in your store and wonder why nobody knows about you, you’d get the word out! You would create relationships with the community, advertising in places your customer goes. Take the time to build the business, don’t just expect the business to profit simply because it exists.

Pro Domainer Sidenote: Of course if you have a domain name with a nice steady stream of type-in traffic (over 10,000 uniques/month) a MiniSite is all you need to make money. That being said, you’ve probably already been bringing in money parking, in most cases you’ll be able to significantly increase your revenue by creating a good site with Affiliate or Lead Generation offers. 

Do you know any other MiniSite Myths you’d like to debunk? Want to add to the conversation? Comment and let your voice be heard!

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In January I started a Case Study on Epik Product Portals and then put this test on hold with the launch of Appraiso. So now I’m calling March, Month Two of the test and I’d like to update you on what I’ve done and the results I have seen.

Just to refresh your memory, the domain names is InfraredCamera.net and the keyword phrase “infrared camera” gets 14,800 exact-match global searches and has a CPC of $4.44. This domain meets the profile of domains that I’ve consistently made $xxx/month with which is why I like it. However, it is in a very competitive niche so often to get a name like this to that level it will take 6 months to a year.

On January 6th I posted an article titled “What Is An Infrared Camera?” that I paid one of my content writers $12 to write. My plan was to add 3-4 articles/month, however like I said Appraiso took-over and this went-onto the backburner. Still, there was some absolutely positive progress in the right direction even with one article.

This domain was receiving about 10 visitors/month when it was parked so with one article it has more than 6x the visitors with 66% of the traffic now coming from search vs. 0% before. The site has not generated any revenue yet but I wouldn’t expect it to, this traffic level is far too small. I usually don’t see sites make any money until they’re getting over 1,000 visitors/month.

This month I will be adding more articles and backlinks so I can provide a Month Three update in April. Please understand that what I am doing here is trying-out Epik and sharing my experiences. I am not saying that I’m moving all my domains over to platform development or that I think any mass development platform is better than a static HTML or WordPress site.

What I am saying is that I’ve heard good things about Epik from several friends who actively use the service. I want to try it out and share this with all of you. I know people have some strong feelings about Epik and my posts about this service have definitely been some of the most lively. All that I ask is that you understand that I’m not saying everyone should develop thousands of names using a platform but instead that these platforms can be used to build real brands just like WordPress or Joomla.

Of course as always, comment and let your voice be heard!

There’s a new domain development platform in town from the makers of popular Domain Investing Platform Protrada. It is aptly called DevName and it is already making waves in the Domaining world.

DevName has taken a unique approach to platform-based development by allowing domain owners to use their own revenue feeds thus keeping 100% of the revenue. The system is also fully integrated with TextBroker so you can easily build content-rich sites without having to manage a team of writers.

The sites themselves look pretty stunning and definitely look nothing like a parked page and there are tons of ways to customize the look-and-feel to really make it your own.

Of course talking about it is one thing, seeing it in action and putting it to the test is another, and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. Just like I’m testing-out Epik I will also be testing out DevName and giving you the full scoop. So stay-tuned, this is just the beginning and there’s a lot more to come.

Congratulations to Winged Media on another great addition to the Domaining space, I look forward to pushing the system to its limits and getting some sites ranked and making money! Protrada users can access DevName directly from Protrada making this platform more extensive than ever before, so stop reading this and start developing!

When people talk about buying domain names for development the focus is often metrics like search volume and CPC. Don’t get me wrong, these metrics are definitely important and I don’t buy a domain name unless it meets a certain threshold. The problem is that people buy based on these metrics only thinking that they have a great development candidate, when they really don’t.

The important thing to remember about domain development is that the goal of building the site is to get traffic, and if page one is occupied by people with five-figure/month SEO budgets, you might not stand a chance. The problem is that many Domainers jump-into markets with high search volume and CPC without first taking the time to understand the market. Then, one year later when their site is still on page two or three of Google they complain that development didn’t work for them. The problem wasn’t the domain or the website, the problem was not taking the time to understand their market.

Let’s take a look at something like “Los Angeles Hotels” – a search term with nice volume and CPC, but a look at page one should tell you that you don’t stand a chance of ranking well for this term.

As you can see, the top of the search results is dominated by Google Adwords ads, then below that are some of the biggest, most heavily SEOed websites on the Internet. If you think you’re going to outrank sites like Expedia or TripAdvisor you better have a huge budget because it’s an uphill battle.

Of course, some people do have multi-million dollar budgets and then you can target more saturated or competitive markets. However, most people don’t which means you’ll want to find markets where the top sites haven’t spent a small fortune on development and SEO.

So remember, when you’re buying a domain name for development, don’t just look at the search volume and CPC. If you truly plan on developing the domain look at the market, understand who the players are, and decide if you can realistically do what it takes to get onto Google page one.

Also, one final note, it is critical to remember that you need more than just a domain name with a website to rank well. Backlinks are critical and if you aren’t building backlinks targeting the keywords you want to rank well for, you probably won’t see the results you’re looking for. If you don’t know how to get started, make sure to read article, Backlinks 101.

Parking, it has become a bad word in our industry as more and more Domain Investors look for ways to grow their revenue. People were making money hand-over-fist until 2007 when the sky fell and parking became a much more challenging way to make money. That being said, I still know plenty of people who make five-figures/month parking so if you think nobody is making money parking, think again.

For me domain parking has been a great way to pick development candidates. Not only does parking give me valuable data on the kind of type-in traffic my domains are getting, but I can also see how that traffic turns-into revenue for the advertiser. The other day a single click on one of my domains brought in $2,500 for one lucky advertiser, but a mere $5 for me. Still a $5 click is nothing to be upset about, in fact, it should be a sign that you could be making more with that particular domain.

I park just about every single domain name that I don’t have developed and have a few favorite services (listed in no particular order):

• TrafficZ – great interface, detailed stats, lots of different landing page designs. They’ve also been around for a long time and have a team of developers that are constantly working to improve the system.
• DomainApps – this used to be called WhyPark and it’s a very innovative platform that is really somewhere in between parking and development. You can add some great interactive features that allow you to make a site that is truly useful to your visitors.
• DomainSponsor – run by Oversee, there’s a lot of technology running behind the scenes here and they are constantly innovating. Now that Oversee is no longer running Moniker and Snapnames they have even more time and focus for DomainSponsor so I expect even more things from them this year.
• SmartName – this is a parking service run by popular domain listing service Afternic. They make nice pages that don’t look like your typical parking page, and you can get 5% cash-back if you park and sell a domain through Afternic which is a nice plus.

I use a simple formula for determining if a domain name I have parked would be a good development candidate. If the domain makes more than $5/month I pull it off of the parking service and develop it. Typically I can increase the revenue by 5x-10x pretty quickly and  once it starts to rank well in Google it only goes up from there.

So if you’ve been avoiding parking like the plague, you might want to give it another chance, you might be surprised what you learn about your domains! Of course if you have domains with strong type-in traffic parking can still be a very good way to monetize thousands of domains, like I said, I know people making five-figures/month parking so there definitely still is money to be made in parking itself, it just takes the right kind of names!

I started a new series on my blog focused on finding domains that are expiring that make great development candidates. I really like sharing domains that I think could become real long-term assets generate passive monthly income. This has turned-into one of my most-read series I’ve ever written…however, typically it takes me hours to find even a few names so I’ve found that doing this as a weekly post just isn’t realistic.

Finding domains that are good development candidates is very hard work since it takes the right kind of domain to really get the most bang for your buck. So I’ve decided to move this series to my monthly newsletter. Thanks to everyone who has supported this series and I look forward to bringing this to you every month direct to your inbox!

Finding good expired domains for development takes a lot of time and some weeks you might not find anything that is a good fit. It takes a lot of patience and due diligence to make sure you are making a good investment so don’t rush it, the right domains are out there, but you won’t find perfect development candidates every day like you do with domains that make good flip candidates.

If you want to know what I look for in a an domain that would be a good fit for development, you can look below. As for tools that I use, Protrada is at the top of my list – this tool has honestly saved me countless hours every single week. That being said, f

• I like names with medium search volume, a good CPC, and in a market where there are half a dozen affiliate programs I can think of using right-away.
• If you want to get down to the numbers themselves I typically look for keywords with no less than 1,000 exact-match global searches and less than 10,000. Why limit it to 10,000? Typically terms with this much volume are a lot more work to rank well for so I go for the low hanging fruit in most cases.
• A good CPC to me really means anything above $0.50. I just want to see that advertisers see some kind of monetary value in people who search for this term.
• There is no one set of qualities for the perfect domain for development. Also I don’t follow the rules above every time I buy an expired domain and you shouldn’t either. Sometimes I do buy names with a very high search volume in the hundreds of thousands and with a CPC of only $0.23. That being said, a vast majority of the expired domains that I buy for development do meet the criteria I outlined above.

Bam! Now you know what I’m generally looking for in an expired domain name. If you want to know what I do once I buy a domain for development make sure to read – Domain Development 101. If you’re so darn excited after reading that article that you want to dive right in and build your first site, make sure to read – WordPress 101.