Again inspired by a comment, I wanted to think through the strategy of taking hundreds of domains and filtering them to find the best one for development. The strategy would be then to set standards and develop those that met those standards. With so many domainers interested in the development of websites, this is a common issue. Do I have the perfect answer? No. But I want to think out loud with you and see what ideas there are.
The challenge
As a scientist, trying to select the best domains from a portfolio of hundreds or thousands intrigues me. I will say up front that I have never done this and so I am thinking out loud. As such I am also really interested to see what ideas you have.
Do the research
The traditional way is to do the research. You check the keywords, search volume, ad inventory and competition for a start. This is a laborious and very slow way to get through a portfolio of this size. One could argue that you should have done this before buying the domains but a portfolio of this size is bought over time and all of these parameters change over time.
Break it down
When faced with complex problems, my first step is to look for logical sub-units. So scanning through the portfolio, I see 10 domains about fishing. Should I develop 10 websites about fishing? Probably not because they are likely to end up in competition with each other and just dilute the traffic among the sites and dilute your efforts. So looking for groups of domains that could compete with each other might be my first choice.
My choice now would be to pick the best name – a high quality generic name if you have it – and add that to your shortlist of domain names to be developed. Rinse and repeat until you have a shortlist of domain names that are the best of each sub-group. Now you should have a list short enough to research. I would pick the top five from your prioritized list after the research is complete.
Next I would write a business plan for each website. It doesn’t have to be amazingly detailed but it should include expected demographics, competition and revenue model. The final step would be to enter the website development stage.
See what sticks
Is it possible to put up hundreds of mini-sites or one page landers and have traffic dictate the winners for development? This is a definite maybe.
Lets face it. This data will be very similar to parking the domains and looking at traffic statistics in my opinion. With sites of this low quality, the search engines will not provide much traffic, if any. No one is likely to link to these sites and so no traffic will flow this way. So you could take the direct navigation statistics from your parking company and pick the best earners and develop them hoping that the direct traffic stats will be matched by search engine love after development.
A great domain name is no guarantee of success
The catch is that this often is not the case. A great domain name and good direct navigation statistics is not enough to ensure a successful website. A lower quality domain name with no direct navigation traffic can outperform a great domain name. This happens over and over again.
There are many reasons why this happens. Premium domain names may remain undeveloped and the domain name has been kept as an investment. It therefore misses out on the advantages of being aged in the search engine index. It may be sold and the existing website either intentionally or unintentionally scrapped. I have seen some great domain name websites destroyed by this. Poor content, poor linking and a poor business model can also be the downfall of a great domain name. In areas with high competition, poor domain names may well outrank the best domain name because they are aged and established. Playing catch-up even with a great domain name is not easy at all.
For example, if I search for “divorce” in Google, we would expect to see divorce.com right? But it is not at the top. It is not even on the first page of results. It comes in about 19th. Take a look at the website names ahead of it and you will see there is no relationship between ranking and having a killer domain name.
A great domain name can help you towards success
So don’t get me wrong. Great domain names give you a leg up on the competition and have many advantages but they are only part of the equation. You still have to deliver the content and business plan that will help you succeed.
Summary
So this is my take on how to select domains for development from a large portfolio and I have tried to represent it graphically here. So what are your thoughts?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I like the scientific approach to this but in all honesty you should pick the domain with potential that you feel passionate about. It will become more work and likely to fail if you pick something you are not interested in or do not know much about. Picking a name that you feel for and have experience in comes natural and has a higher rate of success. Yes this is where emotion does actually take effect on a business.
Hi Ross
Logic versus emotion? Evolution versus religion next? Just kidding.
Passion is the driving force that will keep you optimizing a website even when it is not performing as well as you want. It takes you through the goodtimes and bad. Balancing that with good business sense though is the tricky part.
You have to love what you do but you need to treat it as a business too, I think.
There is no substitute for experience either in developing websites or in the subject matter of the website. Agree completely.
And, readers, always feel free to tell me I am spouting rubbish. I do not offend easily at all.
Hey! This post matches what I doing right now (again) . I’m looking at a portfolio of about 700 hand registered ccTLD (<$1) domains (december 2008) which have been parked since then. During february 2009 I’ve extracted all domains not having any type-in traffic, ie no revenue or future as type-in domains – and threw them at Google with a landingpage having content related to the keyword(-s) in the domain. Happy to see that 10-20% of the domains that I would have thrown away actually receive daily traffic now. My next step is to move these domains to my WP MU area for development into mini-sites and try Adsense on them. The remaining 80-90% I’ll try to sell after 6 months. When the WP MU step is done and some link building is in place, I will repeat this for my quality pages with type-in traffic.
I might change approch if it takes to long to work on the low-quality sites though….need to get revenue ticking in order to get renewal money.
Hey Barry…Fantastic post…Best domains…. Seems very interesting….
I agree to u by all ways especially logic versus emotion… :p
Logic is always rite…
Even I believe in this “A great domain name can help you towards success”.