So here I am bogged down in development. I am working on 3 development projects at the moment (all my own), not including Lowell.com, TropicalBirds.com, or my blog. I just acquired SushiRestaurants.com and Coffeehouses.com, and I think these names are best suited to be developed. My problem is that I don’t know when I am going to have the time to develop them.

For both of these names, I think a directory site should be built utilizing a database, but I don’t have the skills to manage a database at the moment. I have worked with databases before, but not related to a website. I also don’t have the time to really fully commit to developing both of these sites in addition to the sites I am currently building.

This has been the problem (albeit much, much greater) for some of the large portfolio holders. How do you develop your high value (but maybe low traffic) domain names when you are working alone? What do you do with the names you intend to develop while you are waiting to develop them?  Do you park them to earn a bit of revenue, but risk losing Google positioning?  I personally wouldn’t do the later, but what do you guys think?  What’s my best bet with these two domain names?

One fairly simple development strategy that I am beginning to use involves building a website template and using that for all minisites. Instead of building a brand new web template for every site, save some time and money and use a very similar template. It doesn’t have to be fancy or flashy, but as long as there is room for content that can be viewed on a variety of browsers and screen sizes, room for Google Adsense banners, and room for other advertising banners from direct-to-advertiser sales (or affiliate relationships), you should be okay.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this for sites with a considerable amount of content or for high value domain names, as you probably want those to be more customized, but for your mini-sites that will have 5-10 pages each, I think one template should be sufficient. For those debating whether to use HTML, WordPress, or another type of tool, I am not the best person to make a recommendation. I think WordPress is easy, and I use Dreamweaver for HTML, which I learned on my own. Both are fairly straightforward and self explanatory – especially with a bit of background in HTML coding.

When it comes to the technical aspect of web development, my skill level started off at somewhere near a 1 on a scale of 10.  I am now probably around a 2.5, but I am still able to add pages to my WordPress and HTML sites easily. I’ve been told that I should use php to create my header, navigation and footer – which I probably should, but I’ve been too busy to learn. In the long run, I probably would save a ton of time by committing to a few hours now, but it’s hard to do that with so many things going on at the moment.

From experience, I can tell you that building a mini-site using strong SEO techniques will help increase traffic to a domain name/website. The more traffic that visits the site, usually the more revenue the site earns. I think if you put some time into development – but keep the time/financial commitment in line with your expectations for the site, you probably can’t go wrong. As I’ve always said, feel free to drop me a note with questions, and if I can’t answer them, I will try to put you in touch with someone who is more knowledgeable.