Wonderful article on domain development. Good details and theory behind interpreting your domains to WHAT you believe in as a business, not just because it’s a great domain name.

You might want to link up with Bruce Marler’s great post on this at the moment, where he discusses exactly the same idea of understanding and creating a business plan BEFORE you choose a domain, which is controversial viewpoint within the domain community. I agree at some points of this, and others I don’t.

However, the discussion is so valuable for people coming into this game, and those already switching from the PPC debacle and lack of transparency to controlling their own financial destiny with their domains.

I’m also impressed to know that Kevin is managing your blog! I’m sure I’m not the only one who would love to know how to get Kevin managing their blog, and that he even does this. (Probably only for hotodoggers like yourself).

Seriously, kudos on this article, El. Check out Bruce Marler’s article at
http://brucemarler.com/quit-blaming-the-end-users-it-is-a-domain-industry-problem/

I think one of the best pieces of advice is to learn as much as you can at least about the basics of everything involved in developing sites. You don’t have to become an expert, cause that takes years to master, but if you just gather some general knowledge it’ll give you a much stronger understanding of what all the experts you’ll be dealing with are talking about. Don’t be afraid or intimidated to ask lots of questions if an expert starts using web, server, seo, or coding terminology you have no idea what they’re talking about.

Also it’s important to recognize the Internet is dynamic and changing everyday with new technologies so whatever you do will always be a work in progress. So even when you think you’re done, you never really are. There will need to be tweaks, updates, upgrades, new features, and on and on

Sometimes a new version of a major component of an operating system will be updated on your server that will break the coding of scripts from sites you did years before. Many are experiencing this with PHP5 being upgraded on servers from PHP4. Or you might find content feeds stop working because a provider went under. I’ve come across major sites where features aren’t working and you can tell someone isn’t doing their job and monitoring the site.

The other point to remember is almost everything is trial and error. Just cause something works for one domainer’s project doesn’t mean it will work as well for your domain. There are a myriad of factors that come into play on every project that can determine it’s success.

Above all, keep things simple wherever and whenever you can. Simplicity always works best and maximizes efficiencies and time productivity.

Is DogWalker.com created by some domain development company or you make it? It looks great.

Stefan

It’s surprising how many trying to buy names have really good business plans and ideas for development. With a water tight agreement in place it would be an easy step to launch into a partnership with one of these buyers.

thanks for the great post, I learned a lot of new things. George Pickering mentioned in his comment that its good to have partners or a team, but my problem is I don’t know how to find partners or a team to help me develop my domains. I’ve developed a couple of domains but it just gets too much. So can anyone enlighten me on how to find a developing team or a partner?

Thanks,

David.