I am preparing to launch a new website on EventPlanner.com. I’ve am in the process of having the website built, and I am working on having expert articles written to help people plan their own events and to guide people on how to find an event planner. I will also be sure to include information about how aspiring event planners can start a business.

One of the first steps in getting traffic to the new website will be to get event planners to sign up for listings on the site. This will add more unique information to the website, will give visitors a reason to check out the website to find an event planner, and it will drive traffic to the website via search.

Contacting businesses to offer listing discounts can be a time consuming task, but I can now use LeadRefs to cut down on that time. Instead of finding and visiting various event planning websites, I can do searches for domain names like these:

• EventPlanner.com
• WeddingPlanning.com
• PartyPlanning.com
• BarMitzvah.com
• ….etc

These searches will provide the Whois contact for similar domain names. Although many names aren’t owned by professionals in the field, I can scan through the list and find qualified event planners. For instance, JanesSpecialEvents@yahoo.com would probably be a good indicator that emailing Jane about a free listing will yield positive results, while info@protopixel.com would indicate a domain investment company and not an event planner.

I am going to try to get event planners to sign up this way, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

It’s a lazy Sunday, so here’s an update on some mini sites I built (or had built) in 2009-2011. I have not really been building them anymore because the revenue is low and I would rather focus on my current projects if I am going to work on development.

I sold a few of the domain names on which I built mini sites in the last year, so I won’t include those below (AthensVacations.com, ParabolicSkis.com, JerusalemVacations.com…etc). The websites were not included in the deals, although the buyers likely gave some consideration to the fact that they were listed in Google. I don’t know how much value that is, but that is my assumption.

As of now, I really only track six of these sites: CabCompanies.com, HousekeepingService.com, BullRidingHelmet.com, HockeyGoalieHelmet.com, TobagoVacations.com, and SlipperyElm.com. The first two sites aren’t exactly mini sites because they have hundreds of pages of data-driven content, but I don’t consider them full development projects either.

Here are the earnings for each of these sites in 2011 and 2012 YTD:

• CabCompanies.com – 2011: $692
• CabCompanies.com – 2012 YTD: $93
• HousekeepingService.com  - 2011: $38 (built at end of year)
• HousekeepingService.com  - 2012 YTD: $69
• TobagoVacations.com – 2011: $74
• TobagoVacations.com – 2012 YTD: $19
• 2 Helmet names (use the same Adsense code)  - 2011: $162
• 2 Helmet names (use the same Adsense code)  - 2012 YTD: $31
• SlipperyElm.com  - 2011 earnings: $234
• SlipperyElm.com  - 2012 YTD: $134

I received an email from Sean Sullivan, announcing his company’s launch of BankAds.com, a managed solution for banking and credit card domain names. According to Sullivan, while the industry standard offering is a 70/30 or 60/40 revenue split, BankAds.com revenue share is “well above it.”

I want to share the details of this with you because it looks like it could benefit owners of these types of domain names (I don’t have any, and I have not had the opportunity to personally test it out).

From the looks of it, domain owners don’t have to do much to get their sites launched aside from changing the DNS, which is the same as parking. The gist of these landing pages is to compare credit cards or banking solutions and allow visitors to easily apply for the card/bank account.

The company has two dozen designs, and I am told they do a considerable amount of split testing to keep and tweak the designs with the highest CTR and RPM. In my opinion, the designs are pretty sleek. There are also widgets available for already developed websites.

From my perspective, one thing to keep in mind is that it’s important for these domain names to receive type-in traffic to be effective (or plan on doing marketing to drive traffic). Since it doesn’t appear that these websites have unique, one-of-a-kind content, they presumably won’t rank well in search engines, especially for competitive credit card and banking terms. Without the search traffic, you’re left with type-in traffic or traffic that is acquired by other means.

Sullivan mentioned something that appears to be unique to this program:

“One other feature is that is exclusive to our solution is that should any domain that is monetized with BankAds get hit with a C&D or UDRP notice our in house counsel will defend the domain owner free of charge. Our attorney has successfully defended a number of major domain owners. We honestly don’t anticipate UDRP being an issue at all, as we’re not going to take on TM domains within our solution. But we all well know, there are companies and individuals out there who will try to take domains unjustly. So having a great attorney ready to defend a domain when necessary is something that I’m sure will give peace of mind to some of our clients. “

You can have a look at some of the websites that are currently using BankAds.com for monetization:

• BestCreditCardForMiles.com
• GasCreditCards.co
• BestCreditCardForBadCredit.com
• GoldCard.com

Again, I have not tried out BankAds.com and was not paid or compensated in any way to post this. If you try it out, please think about posting your results here to let others know about your experience.

Content theft is annoying if not harmful. I am sure Google can tell what website posted an article first, but when someone steals content and uses it on their own website, it’s frustrating. As a website owner, why should someone be able to take something I created in order to line their own pockets?

Because I use WordPress for this blog and several other websites I operate, I receive pingbacks when other blogs take my content and provide a link back to the source. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other times that websites steal articles and content without a link back, and it’s much more difficult to detect.

One thing you can do to find out about content theft is to set up Google Alerts for sentences on your static pages and your high traffic driving posts. As soon as Google notices the same sentence in another article that is posted online, you’ll get an alert email to let you know about it and let you know where it is posted. With this information, you can file a DMCA takedown notice with the thief’s hosting company, or in the case of an accidental post, you can request a link back to your website.

This can’t really help prevent content theft from happening, but it can help remediate it when you do find that someone lifted an article or something important from your website.

I want to share a little “trick” if you own a directory website that lists public destinations or places, and it may be able to help drive targeted traffic to your website.

In a fashion similar to Google, Facebook has something called “Places,” which includes the address, a map, phone number, website, and fields for other information that can help people learn about the place.  These public and sometimes private places are locations that Facebook users can visit and/or tag/check-in. In most cases, there aren’t owners of these places pages, so there’s no real moderation.

I’ve found that many dog parks are listed as places. When I search Google, DogPark.com listings are often in the top ten results, as are competing websites, and a Facebook Places listing. In most cases, the Facebook places listing has a field for “Add Website.” I’ve been adding the dog park url on DogPark.com to these dog park places listings, and it should help drive traffic to the website.

I think this could potentially be a good traffic opportunity for people who have directory websites that list public places and locations. It benefits the place and also benefits my website as well.