DevHub is really impressive

I know, it's been around for several months now, but I just got around to really taking DevHub for a spin... and I walked away very impressed by it's ease of use, the available customizations and the very effective monetization options. There are a few short comings but for those who are either looking for a quick site setup or those who don't have the development time or skill to get themselves setup with their own site, DevHub is a great, free option that I can highly recommend.

Sprouters.info

So, one of my favorite product .info names is Sprouters.info (I also own the singular). The problem is I have very little time to do any setup of affiliates, develop unique content or market this name in order to attract the raw food fanatics or those just looking to save some money by growing their own food and making their own Wheatgrass Shooters and such. I had estimated at least 10 hours to really develop out the site and make it look good enough to eat :) Sprouters.info made the perfect test case for DevHub!

DevHub Setup

DevHub's sign up is incredibly simple and it's a completely free service. You enter your name, your website and what the site is about and you are ready to go. When you first sign up, you have 10 free sites you can create. As you develop your sites and start adding unique content to them, you'll be granted additional site credits, so don't expect to setup hundreds of sites at once like you can with services like WhyPark. But in exchange, you get a much more feature rich website, so it's a fair trade I think. DevHub wants good content as that reflects well on them and so they reward those that use their system effectively. It's a very elegant setup.
Setting up your site couldn't be easier. There are numerous layout templates and color choices to be made and these can be tweaked with background images and logos as well. You can create multiple pages and each one can be optimized - for example each page can have their own meta tags and custom built page title. You can also setup site wide scripts for things like Google Analytics, but we'll get to stat tracking later.
The really powerful feature of DevHub though is what you can add to your pages. There are numerous monetization options, such as cpa and cpc product listings, property listings and job listings (I am trying out a geo domain on DevHub next!). But you can drop onto your pages a variety of non-monetized objects as well such as autogenerated news content, widgets for things like Stocks and Games, photo galleries, blog articles and much more. They also make it very easy to add your own code so you can include your own affiliate and advertising links as well.

DevHub Stats Reporting

DevHub provides a free reporting tool for your sites that covers the basics. They show search engine traffic versus total traffic and break downs of revenue. I would highly recommend including a Google Analytics code on your sites though (or an alternative tracking system) so you can really monitor how people are finding your site, what pages are most popular, bounce rates and more... which DevHub doesn't really provide. What's there is certainly functional though for basic quick stat checking.

Summary

DevHub has a great platform. I was able to develop a very professional site with lots of features in a matter of a couple of hours (and half that time was spent on the logo :) ) and now that I've gotten comfortable with the system, I could probably spit out several sites per day. It's a great mass development platform but it does require showing that you are going to put the necessary work into the sites you create in order to be allowed to create more than 10 sites.
There are a few bugs and hiccups that I don't see as major stumbling blocks. The recipe widget for example never loaded for me, which would have been nice to have on Sprouters.info... but no major loss. I love how you can incorporate any content you want, and that there are numerous types of listing already available, but my ideal platform would allow me to create my own searchable, sortable listings and I've not seen a way to do that automatically. It will require either creating my own widget or just resorting to static html. Also, I encountered some duplicates in my product listings as multiple vendors had the same item apparently. It's kind of embarrassing to have 2 out of the 5 items I have for sale under a specific category be the same item but have 2 different prices. I'd like to see the "uniqueness" issue resolved in the future by either allowing me to override an item or just by having them choose the lowest priced one.
Finally, I'm a bit worried about SEO. The sites in their gallery are pretty much all horribly ranked. That's not to say there aren't examples out there using DevHub that are ranked well, but you'll have to use some of the time you save by creating your site quickly on good link building and such to make sure you get ranked well. I'll report back on how Sprouters.info does both in terms of revenue and search engine rankings in a few months.
You really need to check out what's possible with DevHub if you haven't already. I really believe you'll be as impressed as I am.

Domain Name Giveaway with Domain Mass Development Purchase

Well, DomainMassDevelopment.com is running an awesome special between now and the end of the month. Buy a 10 domain development package for $999 and they will give you a full 10 extra websites for free. For those that flunked out of math class, that's $50 per mini-site. But not everyone wants a mini-site. And maybe you are still on the fence, so to give you yet another reason to start developing your sites in bulk, I'm giving away one of the following domains when you purchase any Domain Mass Development package through my affiliate link. That's right. Whether you'd rather have one of their more advanced single site development packages or if you want to take advantage of the 20 sites for $999 deal going on between now and the end of the month, you are qualified for one of the following domains. Just send an email to andrew at utterdomain.com with your PayPal Transaction ID once you've purchased the package through this link and tell me which domain you want from the list. First come, first serve. These are great names and will likely pay for the entire purchase.

So what are the names?

• BeachfrontCondo.info - 27,100 searches a month in the US


• BeachfrontHotels.us - 110,000 searches a month in the US


• Sprouter.info - Estibot value of $420


• CarMagnet.us - Estibot value $210


• WoodBoxes.us - Estibot value $230


• FridgeMagnets.us - Estibot value $240


• WebConnect.org - Estibot value $160. Great Brandable service name


• WaterFiltrationSystems.info - 60k monthly searches at $5 a click!


• VideoEditors.info - Estibot value $240


• How-to-Franchise.com - 27k monthly searches at $10+ a click!

This is a limited time offer and these names won't last long, so head over to DomainMassDevelopment.com and order today!

legal disclaimer: must have valid proof of purchase delivered to andrew at utterdomain.com prior to July 1st, 2009. valid for new purchases using the affiliate link/site above only with a total purchase price of $999 or more. 1 domain per person. if you select a .us domain you must meet the requirements in order for it to be transferred. first come first serve. must have valid go daddy account in order to receive push.

I love WhyPark... sometimes

I used my handy little spreadsheet to register a couple of CityName+Insurance.com names today. Sure, they weren't major cities, but Corvallis and Cedar Falls are by no means insignificant. But that's not what this post is about.
One reason why I decided to register them, despite their apparent lack of value according to Estibot is that I wanted to try to improve my end user sales abilities. I freely admit I suck at sales. I'm great at negotiating, I'm unfortunately good at buying... but I suck at sales. And there's only one way to get better - try and try again. Cold calling insurance companies who have varying degrees of internet savvy was interesting and enlightening... but not very successful. But that's not what this post is about either.
So with CPC values in the teens and with thousands of apparent searches a month to capitalize on... I decided against my better judgment to go ahead and build out the sites instead of flipping them. Heck, I could potentially still resell them at some point, but chances are with such small cities that I would be barking up the same trees again in a year. And that's where WhyPark comes in.
WhyPark makes quick work of setting up sites, and with the minimal monthly fee you can really customize the ad serving, layouts and pretty much everything you could need to build out a minisite. This isn't an ad for whypark though (I won't even bother shoving my affiliate link in here). It's more of an ad for custom mass development, but that's not what this post is about either.
This post is about what I see WhyPark could do to improve it's usability and what issues I see it having going forward as an alternative to parking.

• Stats - while it's great that it allows integration of any stat tracking service - like Google Analytics - the internal stats are really quite untrustworthy. What I mean is, no other parking company shows more vistors than you actually received, but WhyPark consistently shows more visitors than Google Analytics for the same site on the same day. WhyPark is so far off, that about the only conclusion I can come to is that it's tracking bot hits, which is really not accurate at all.


• The default ad links can be a real pain - if you pay for the option to customize the ad serving, you can do whatever you want. But it would be nice to have a feature like Sedo for setting specific related key words as their random guesses are almost always wrong... either because they are duplicated or because they made them up out of thin air.


• The content needs to be more geo targeted - Granted, some sites care more about this than others, but it would be incredibly helpful to filter at least by country if not by state where a country or state is actually discussed in the content. It's embarrassing having a site about Oregon Homes for sale talking about Florida foreclosures - or worse - the things to consider when purchasing a home in the UK.


• The templates are flexible, but pretty meager in the creativity department. Sure, there are templates for a bunch of the major US Cities, but many of the images are stock photos of trees and close ups of buildings. Very few recognizable landmarks to be seen anywhere. And don't get me started on their rather "loose" interpretations of what goes in a category - last time I checked I didn't have any food in my "Family". WhyPark lists 50 pictures in the "Family" category, but only one of them is actually labeled family.. and it's of the back sides of two apparently young kids. I suppose that could make a family, but I'm not sure what site I would be comfortable putting that on... certainly not a family site. See there, you got me started!


• Building multiple sites using a common "theme" is really a pain in the neck. I can't easily apply a subset of settings like just the css for example across multiple sites. There's not really a way to setup your own tokens either, which means creating up multiple variations of a single "theme" doesn't scale well at all. For example if I have 5 auto sites, I can setup a template, but none of the content/custom pages goes with it. I can copy and paste settings between sites and custom pages, but the interface doesn't make this very easy to do at all and there's really no import/export feature to speak of. If I just want to plug in the SiteName, I can do that without too much trouble, but I can't, for example, have my own token like the name of the city or the name of the product. And so each custom page must be.. well... custom built.


• Custom Pages aren't very configurable - I'd like to see them be configurable as navigation/menu items instead of just having the option of posting them on the home page. You can set it up yourself that way (as you can see in the examples below), but it's a lot of manual setup to do it. The page title you use for the browser gets displayed as the header and there's nothing you can do about it - separate page and header text would be greatly appreciated. And you can't customize ads, images or links per page, which makes your site look like it was done by a 13 year old.

But really, I do love WhyPark. I setup CorvallisInsurance.com and CedarFallsInsurance.com in a matter of a couple of hours and that was with a lot of custom content writing, google adsense setup, tweaking graphics and beating my head against the WhyPark limitations above. My custom CMS setup based on Drupal will likely be taking WhyPark's place for the majority of my portfolio soon, though between the content that you get for free, then various templates and tracking tools... there will likely always be a place for WhyPark in my book.

Develop Domains in Bulk

For those just joining us, I've recently covered how to find available domain names in bulk. The links and spreadsheet I provided work best for Geo domains, but you can bulk register products and services, too. I've also shown you some great available .tel domains that I found using my spreadsheet and searching in bulk, so it's proof that premium names can be found! But how do you go about developing your sites in a way that is cost effective? That's what we'll cover in this post. It's not a complete reference but it will provide some direction for at least where to get started.

Don't Develop Your Sites

Parking is a valid use of a domain that already has traffic, but I'm not just talking about parking. Unless you were buying single keyword .com domains back in the 90's or you buy dropped domains with traffic, chances are your parking traffic won't cover your registration fees since Search Engines hate parked sites. So what do I mean? Well, one option that doesn't require development is .tel. You don't develop websites on .tel domains. The .tel registry runs the website for you. That's why domainers who park their sites, don't like them... because they can't park them. But it also frees you from having to do hosting and development. All you have to do is put content and affiliate links, build back links, advertise the site and get your site listed in search engines and you're making money without a single dollar spent on hosting, design or development. Dot Tel requires new thinking and new approaches to monetization, but it can be done. But that's "non-traditional" so let's look at more traditional services.

Why Park

You can point your domains to WhyPark.com and set them up in bulk in a matter of minutes. Now that WhyPark offers a free level of service now, you can even try it out without any cost, but they've hooked me. I just upgraded to their Enhanced Service and I'm really impressed with what you get for just $10 a month. You can't get shared hosting for that kind of price per domain, that's for certain. The downside to WhyPark is that their features are going to be limited compared to what you could do with your own web server, but for non-developers, and for developers who have way too many things on their todo list, WhyPark is a great solution.

Custom Development

I'm not going to lie. This option is not for everyone. It's a lot of work if you're a developer (I know, I'm in the middle of a large scale project myself!) and it can be quite costly. But the advantage is you have full control. If you are going to be running more than a handful of sites, then you'll need to step up to at least a VPS Hosting Solution which start at around $19 a month. Once you have a web server, you can choose one of the many Content Management Solutions out there such as Drupal, Joomla or even WordPress. These systems are fairly complicated to set up in such a way where they handle multiple domains, and most require third party components/add-ons to do it well. Once configured though, you can generally push content across multiple sites, pick and choose themes as appropriate, install and manage addons such as shopping carts or whatever features your sites need, and do administrative functions such as backups, restores and provisioning of new sites fairly easily. What you won't get with this solution is any hand-holding, any help with keeping the software up to date, your websites secure, your data feeds preloaded, your ad system installed or any other feature for free. It's all up to you. With great power comes great responsibility.

So is there a better solution?

Mass Domain Development Services

There have been a number of companies offering mini-site creation for anywhere from $99 to several hundred dollars per domain. You give them a domain name, some information about what you want on the site and a chunk of change and you get a hosted website with a few web pages, a template based design and some rotating Google ads. That's all well and good, but if you have any idea about what it takes to go from a mini-site to a really profitable web site, there's still a lot left to be desired here. That's where DomainMassDevelopment.com comes in. They create sites in bulk and are focused on providing exactly the kinds of services you need to get profitable quickly. And because they are taking advantage of the economies of scale that other mini site offerings don't have (at least not yet), they can do it for a very, very good price. At the lowest volumes, you get 10 domains for $999, and their bulk discounts can save you as much as %25 from there.
While I've chosen the custom development route for my largest project, I'm considering using them for at least two other networks of sites. If you only have a couple of sites but want more than what most mini-sites offer, they also have plans for you, too... including a WordPress based site with 30 custom created articles and 5 video posts for just $2499. If you looked at my cost estimates for developing GreenTips.TV, you can see that I can't really even do that much development myself at that kind of price. And I'm pretty cheap!

... Profit

So you've gotten your domain names, you've chosen how you want to develop them, how do you profit from them?!? Well, if you consider your registration costs, development costs, maintenance costs and renewal fees, if you developed just a single website, then that site has to recoup thousands of dollars a year in advertising, listing fees, affiliate links or whatever your monetization strategy is. But let's say you own and operate 200 sites. How much do you have to make per site, per day before you can retire? Well, okay... not retire, but how about not have to work full time at a day job? So, at 200 sites X 365 days a year, all you have to do is earn about $2 a site per day to make nearly $150,000 a year. $2 a day. $2. Per day. If you operate 500 sites, at 365 days a year, all you have to do is earn about 75 cents a day per site to be making 6 figures in profits a year!

It's a big freaking leap to go the mass development route. I'm 5 figures deep already. But now I've got 600 geo domains in my pocket... guess what I'm gonna do with them?