Now that we’re well-into the second half of 2010 I thought it would be an excellent time to write a post about how my strategy has changed this year. By strategy I mean the way in which I generate revenue for my business. I think that in this industry you should be re-examining your business at least monthly – things are changing fast! I can already sees ways that things like Google Instant Search will likely change my strategy in 2011.
If you’ve followed my blog over the years you’ve seen me experiment, at times successful, at other times, not as successful. There’s a reason why my tag-line has always been “Adventures in Domain Investing,” this is still the Wild West folks and it’s all an incredible adventure. Most of these changes were inspired by changes in the market, lessons learned from experienced Domainers like the Castello Brothers and Rick Latona, and of course good old trial and error. If you wanted to summarize my changes this year into one sentence it would be – “I’ve changed my focus from launching many small websites to launching and managing full-scale online businesses.”
Okay, enough rambling – now to the good stuff! Below are five ways I’ve changed my strategy in 2010.
- Stop building many small sites, focus on several big sites – turn them into businesses
- Move-away from AdSense and Affiliate Marketing and focus on Lead Generation and Direct Advertising
- Use my top sites to test monetization and design strategy more
- Develop internal tools for my business that allow me to automate common tasks
- Managing my finances in Quickbooks rather than Excel – it took three years but I finally did it!
Want to hear a bit more detail about each of these points? Subscribe to my newsletter as I’ll be covering this and much more in this week’s issue.
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Morgan,
Great post! Question: are you still developing 5 minisites/month (I remember you saying that in a previous post)? Or, are you continuing to do that while focusing on larger sites too?
Best,
Ian
I think your logic is correct.
Thanks for the positive feedback @PPCIan!
You know me, I still can’t resist! I’ve built a total of about 25 sites this year but most of my focus goes-into 2-3 of them.
Thanks @RH!
You have been one of the biggest proponents in the domain industry over the last year or so of affiliate marketing. Would you share with us why the sudden turn in your philosophy?
Thanks for your comment @Anthony!
I have been a big promoter of affiliate marketing. Towards the end of last year I met some people that were doing well in the lead generation space, that’s been part of my inspiration. The other reason for this change is moving one step further up the revenue ladder – affiliate is definitely better than AdSense…but Lead Gen can be a HUGE step-up from affiliate marketing depending on your niche.
I’ll be getting into this more in my newsletter this week!
Yes, I decided to slow down the pace of new sites, take a step back and evaluate which sites are the most important in the short run and focus first on those. Having dozens of minisites which don’t rank is no way to make money. For more competitive phrases you really need to do some work obtaining backlinks.
how are you doing most of your setting up of lead generation and direct advertising ?
is it simply a case of making a phonecall to prospective companies ? i did contact leadpile after a recent article here but they don’t service australia and the sites i could have used them for they didn’t cater to. Thanks so far !
I have been trying to get into lead generation too. But, it seems not that straight forward for newbies like me. I found good information from Newfoundnames…but not enough detail to get me started. It would be nice if someone is willing to share info and stats with us on one of their lead generation site. But I think it’s a niche business, so it’s understandable if people aren’t as open about it.
1.Stop building many small sites, focus on several big sites – turn them into businesses
2.Move-away from AdSense and Affiliate Marketing and focus on Lead Generation and Direct Advertising
That is what I was thinking all the time and now I just have started on one project and definitely am going for the big site development .
There is a little money in Affiliate marketing !
Morgan,
Do you have more strategic detail behind the list of what you are changing? Maybe you’re using the SMART format?
It is great that your business is always changing and evolving.
@Rafael – I do and am putting it in my weekly newsletter!
I agree that affiliate marketing is a no go , it does work for some but i have never had luck , i am willing to say that the quality of a site also contributes to better clicks in that situation although i felt my sites were ok and should have done better