Yesterday, I discussed my successes and challenges with developing my tropical bird website. Since I didn’t have much technical expertise, I was reluctant to develop my domain names at first, but I have overcome that fear, and I am always looking for a fun project.  There are many opportunities out there for people of all skills, but this post is probably geared more towards people who are reluctant developers for whatever reason.

Personally, I think that developing informational websites on category defining domain names is probably the easiest way for people to start. I would like to provide some direction for people that are thinking about development, and I hope that you can use my limited experience as a guide to make your sites better and more successful than mine have been. I hope you will share your experiences with others so that we can all learn and grow at the same time. I am a domainer turned domainer and developer, and I think it’s a better way to monetize your domain names, although it does require more work than parking.

I believe the most important thing is to find a good domain name, although it is not necessarily critical. The characteristics I would look for are category defining keywords or keyword phrases, .com, pre-2001 registration date, and in a field that is of interest to you. It should also be something that people want information about, as I like informational sites rather than e-commerce sites that take more time to develop and manage.

The topic should be fairly broad, and have many sub topics. This will allow you to build a strong base and then branch out as the site grows – sort of like a tree. Do some keyword research before buying to make sure there are enough people searching, and check for all of the long tail keywords, as I find that I get the most traffic from these. The broader the topic, the more information you can have on the site that makes sense. For example, I think something like SoccerTeams.com, FootballPlayers.com, or RockBands.com would be great, as you there is a ton of information and people are always looking to find it.

Once you have your domain chosen, the next step is to do keyword research on the topic. For the purpose of this exercize, I will use RockBands.com as the example – although I don’t own it nor know who does.

I would start by researching the most popular rock bands and then categorizing by era and genre.  I would want the articles to include information about the band, its members, hit songs, albums, records sold….etc.  I would want as much information as possible on each band, covering everything that fans and historians would want to find. Using the Google keyword tool, I would know what is searched and how much it is searched. There are also a number of other keyword tools available that are very good.

To write the articles with the information you have, you will need a good copywriter. I would find a copywriter either by asking colleagues for recommendations, posting on elance, or posting on domain forums.  It’s important that you have a copywriter who will write 100% unique articles with proper grammer, attributing any facts to their sources. Make sure you double check using sites like Copyscape to ensure the content isn’t pilfered.

While the copywriter is building out your content, you should find a company to create a great logo and either a php template for the site or a WordPress template that is easy to manage. If I can manage to do this, you can manage too.  Again, I have no development background at all, and much of what I am doing is copying and pasting into the template.

When you are satisfied with the template and design, and the articles begin to be finished, you should think about the site and URL structure to make it easy for Google to find your site. With WordPress, you need to worry about duplicate content since it creates pages based on the week, month, category…etc – basically 5x for each page you create.  There are widgets/plugins that can help you avoid the duplicate content. You’ll want to make it easy for people to navigate, so perhaps you’ll have a section of 80s rock bands and in there you will include Van Halen, Guns N Roses…etc. The URLs should make it easy, too… so either RockBands.com/80s-bands/van-halen.php or RockBands.com/van-halen.php.

In addition to pages about rock bands, you will want to add general information about rock music, rock history, instruments used…etc.  This will probably give your site more authority as it covers a variety of topics.  Again, use keyword terms and highly searched key phrases to help drive traffic to your site. Additionally, embed videos from You Tube on the site to add valuable content and things that people want to see.  There are plenty of videos available for you to upload.  Make sure you add content on those pages, as the videos alone won’t drive traffic as the search engines won’t rank those pages well without content.

Within your pages, you will need to use smart internal linking to encourage visitors to find other pages within your site and allow the search engines easily navigate through your site. An example of this would be on the history of rock page. You would probably want to categorize that page by genre, and in each genre, you would want to describe specific bands’ influence on music and culture. While doing that, you would add an internal link to the band page within your site.

Your pages should also have good meta titles and descriptions. The title should accurately describe what’s on the page, but should only be 5-8 words, depending on length, so the entire title comes up in Google. They only allow a certain number of characters in the title. Likewise, the description should be accurate and describe what’s on your page.  Each meta title and description should be different so Google knows there is different information on each page.

Again, I am no expert on this stuff, and much of what I am saying is probably overly simplified, but it’s my own interpretation of what needs to be done at a minimum. Google published a great SEO starter guide (click the link for a downloadable pdf) for web publishers, and I think every new developer should read it.  Many things I discussed are listed there in further detail, and there are also several other important SEO things as well.

So now that he basics are covered, monetizing this is important.  For everything mentioned above, the total cost should be under $1,000 plus your own labor (reviewing content and putting everything together).  Based on the price you pay for your domain name and your total costs, you will want to make sure you make enough money to justify the purchase. Some topics have higher paying clicks than others, and I am not sure the PPC rock-related content.

Tomorrow, I will discuss some ways that I think a site like this could generate revenue.  Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, criticisms…etc.

One of my readers asked me to provide an update on TropicalBirds.com, and I am happy to do so to encourage others who are like me (no development skills) to consider full scale development. I initially purchased TropicalBirds.com from BuyDomains back in May for several thousand dollars. I parked it for a couple of weeks and found that the traffic was very light, with only a few visitors per week. I was a bit surprised given the name, but my plan was to develop it.

I worked with LogoJeez to create the logo for around $200, and Kevin created the template in html.  I did some research and had a copywriter write about 80 articles about various types of tropical birds. I did keyword research on all of these birds to capitalize on the long tail, and I added photos from Wikipedia and some Adsense spots. As the weeks passed, I also added two sections for breeders – one listed by breed and another by state, with each page having different content.  I did the same for avian veterinarians by state.  I also embedded YouTube videos on the site.

One error I made was at the beginning when I misjudged the eventual size of the site.  By building it with html  instead of php, I need to manually update every single page whenever I make a change to the sidebar.  This is easy for a 10 or even 20 page site, but when it gets to be 200+ pages, it’s a huge challenge, and one that I haven’t been inclined to do very often.  With php, the sidebar, header and footer are listed on individual pages, and all other pages link to them, so you just need to make one universal change – MUCH easier.

The site has seen pretty remarkable growth over the last few months, which I attribute to the content that was written specifically for this website. On average right now, the site is seeing around 95 visitors per day, and that number is growing pretty rapidly (some days it is over 150). For a long time, only the home page was listed in Yahoo, but as of November, nearly all of the pages are listed in Yahoo and climbing. The site does well in Google, too, ranking well in many long and short tail keywords. Over 80% of the traffic is from search engines.

As I mentioned a while ago, when I was contacting breeders for link exchanges, I met a lady who asked to advertise. We struck a deal and she is the paying breeder sponsor for several of the breeder pages.  I haven’t spent much time seeking other advertisers or link exchanges due to higher priorities. The site generates revenue from Adsense, but it isn’t a very large number.  Because the site is written in html, I haven’t done any Adsense banner testing at all (too much trouble to make changes).  I currently have a link in the header and 2 link bars that you have to click through twice to generate revenue in the sidebar.

Needless to say, I became very frustrated with the difficulty in making changes, and I was contemplating selling the site to let someone else bring it to the next level.  However, I decided that I am going to build a php template and spend a couple days converting the site and then do a 301 redirect to the new pages.  I will test various Adsense configurations on different bird breed pages to see if that will generate more revenue. I will also look for some affiliate partners to offer bird food, cages and supplies. This site is full of good information, and it continues to grow – so there is no reason to sell it now.  I’ve found that tropical bird lovers are passionate, and they spend a lot of time on the site.

I built a bird forum on the site but have it blocked from Google bots due to worries about duplicate content. When a forum is first launched, the base pages (dozens of them) are the same as thousands of other new forums, so I didn’t want to be penalized.  I think the forum will be a big hit once I let it go and it gets indexed, attracting new members. Since there are about 40 posts, I will unblock it after the php pages get indexed. I will also be adding a news section to the new site.

The most important thing I learned is that content is king.  If you have good content on a category killer domain name, the search engines will find you and visitors will find you as well. Keep adding content and you will generate revenue and add value to your site. I am hoping traffic will continue to grow and that my testing will ultimately pay off.

I was recently asked to speak about development at DomainFest Global at the end of January, and I plan to provide another update on the growth of TropicalBirds.com as well as my other sites (if I have time). I will hopefully have some new information based on the new template and design of the site, and I am happy to share that with you. Development isn’t easy, but if you find the right partners, you can make it worthwhile. Just based on an earnings multiple alone, the site could be sold at a very strong profit right now. The long term goal is to keep it and increase the value – both to the birding community and ultimately to its economic value.

Although TropicalBirds.com has been doing well on Google for some long tail keywords, and it continues to grow daily, only the home page shows up in Yahoo. When I inquired about the issue with Yahoo, I filled out a form asking if there’s an issue, and I received a canned response that may provide some information:

Q: What are some of the common reasons that a site may violate Yahoo!’s Content Policy Guidelines?

A: Yahoo!’s Content Quality Guidelines (link above) outline what we are and are not looking for in pages that we index. Listed below are some of the more common reasons that a site may violate these guidelines:

- Cloaking (showing crawlers deceptive content about a site)
- Massive domain interlinking- Use of affiliate programs without the addition of substantial unique content
- Use of reciprocal link programs (aka “link farms”)
- Hidden text
- Excessive keyword repetition

Since I am not a technical person, I don’t know what half the stuff is, nor would I know how to do it. Can anyone have a look at TropicalBirds.com and let me know what they think might be the problem? I haven’t signed up for any linking programs, I don’t have hidden text, my metas and the site aren’t filled with extensive keywords (to my knowledge), and all of the content is 100% unique – created by a writer who researched the topics for me.

I would really appreciate it if someone could provide some feedback, as the canned answer doesn’t help me at all.

THANKS!!

The goal of most websites (and businesses) is to generate “stickiness,” which is basically attracting visitors and keeping them coming back to the website or business for more of what is being offered. There are various ways a company or website can create stickiness, such as providing updated news and information (which can be time consuming and expensive) or having the visitors create their own content to bring them back.

Yesterday, I launched a forum on TropicalBirds.com in an effort to create stickiness. I have been very happy with the growth of the site so far, but I want to give visitors a reason to return.  I continue to add new content and videos to the site (no need for .TV – joking – take it easy), and traffic is rising as it gains traction in Google.  Although the site hasn’t gained much traction in Yahoo yet, I am optimistic that it will come in time.

I added links to the forum on the sidebar of every page in TropicalBirds.com, and I also added calls to action throughout the site. Since tropical bird watching is a fairly popular hobby, I believe people will be interested in discussing everything related to tropical birds in the forum. Hopefully this will create stickiness, which should help the site grow.

The challenge will be turning the eyeballs into dollars. Based on my minimal experience so far, I believe there are plenty of advertisers in this space who will be interested in capturing the attention of tropical bird enthusiasts who visit the site, and I will be able to accommodate their advertising needs when the time comes. As I mentioned before, when I reached out to bird breeders about free listings on the site, I had one breeder who requested a featured listing on the site, and now she is the featured breeder in six categories.

While generating advertising revenue isn’t as easy as that was, I believe advertisers will want to put their products in front of interested eyeballs.  I am spending the time and money to build a place for likeminded people to discuss tropical birds, and I wanted to share this strategy with those of you who are in the midst of development. As always, if you have any questions, I am happy to help if I can.

I’ve been so busy developing some of my other sites, that I haven’t had time to focus on getting advertisers for Lowell.com. My plan is to launch three more sites before I get married and go on my honeymoon (early August), and focus on getting advertisers upon my return. That said, I certainly won’t turn advertisers down, and I have been receiving inquiries for advertising space on Lowell.com and already have a paying advertiser on TropicalBirds.com.

In the meantime, I’ve established a couple of affiliate relationships to help drive revenue, and I wanted to share this idea with you. I became a LegalZoom.com affiliate, and I am offering their services on the Lowell.com Legal Services section. Additionally, I have an entire page dedicated to them on the site to attract search traffic. While it has not been optimized yet, I plan to optimize it to capitalize on the long tail search traffic once it is optimized.

While income is not guaranteed with an affiliate, the sky is the limit for earning potential. Conceivably, I will need visitors to Lowell.com to complete 2-3 transactions a month to make it worthwhile. Additionally, since I don’t have paying advertisers yet, it isn’t bumping another advertiser. In fact, I think it might encourage an advertiser to sign up, lest he lose local business to this growing Internet company.

Only time will tell to see how this plays out, but the affiliate program at LZ seems top notch, and setting this up was a breeze. In between developing some of my sites, I am going to search for similar affiliate programs for Lowell.com and eventually Burbank.com. If you happen to know of any that are great, drop me a note.