I've long been contemplating getting into the online business, and now have finally decided to plunge in. As I do not have a lot of cash to invest into the business, I decided to buy a bunch of domain names and sell a couple of them to generate 'seed capital' for starting the websites(two). I'm also considering parking some of them and see if they generate enough money to pay at least their subscription. I'm not very familiar with webdesign etc, so I'm hiring an expert webdesigner who'll design and maintain the two sites for me. My plan is to develop the second website's userbase, and then try to sell it off to generate some instant cash that can be invested into website1. Am I heading in the right direction? Which site is best for parking my domains? (godaddy is expensive ($4 per month), and their ads are not targetted to my websites name)). How much can an average website with 2000+ active users, and a reasonably interesting content can make from advertisements? Thanks for your response.
2000 active users generally means many times that in guests so I'd expect it could in theory be making $10-$20 a day just in adsense.
I doubt that would get you much seed capital fast in the beginning... any by the way, if it would get you good money - what would be the point to develop more sites, you could just stick with buying & selling domains? Hmm... I wonder how much you are going to spend... but it requires some money to hire expert, and get him to maintain sites. Well... that could work, although it might be a better option to first develop one website, that you can use to generate user base for a second website. Then sell second, and repeat. Perhaps I would consider reading what other people are doing, and how they are doing. Getting an established website might require anything from 1-5 years (1-year being in the very low end of the scale for many people) depending who you are, what you've done, what kind of resources you have and so on. If $4 per month is expensive... then I really think that your budget might not get you the expert to design & maintain your site, although I wish good luck to you. Perhaps you could re-think about your business model again, and browse these forums (and other websites).
Maybe Sedo for your parking? Can sell it there too, I sold a domain there last week but I had to spend $39 to get it on their featured list, otherwise your domain is lost amongst 4 million others unless it stands out for traffic.. I myself think that starting with one site is the best. I'm new like you and I have 3 websites being developed at the moment. i regret it now because I have to spread my marketing budget over the three of them. So what I'm doing is mothballing 2 for the moment and putting my energy into the one I've spent the most on because I really need to get my money back on that (2nh.com). I'm on the learning curve like you are
My suggestion is to start small, read more, get hands on experience. As for site design, how about using Wordpress or some free templates stuffs.
Before starting any online business i think firstly you need to accept this one fact cash = success i believe the more you invest not just in cash but time also the better you will get out of it.
Here is the best advice I can give you. Learn html, css, php, mysql. That way you can make your own web sites. You can save a lot of money that way.
hmmmm... That sounds like one guy I work for. I personally haven't ever spent a cent on my websites, I usually get everything free from the people I work for then use them as personal sites or test sites. My main income comes from the freelancing I do. You should really learn HTML and PHP. Then everything else under the sun will follow...
@Crimsonc : Thanks a bunch for giving me the estimate. The more I learn about this business the more I realize how difficult it would be to achieve this number. @Game Producer : Thanks for your analysis of my plan. I lately realized that selling domain names is not as easy and lucrative as I thought in the beginning.. specially on a shoestring budget. However I managed to get a reasonable profit from selling a couple domain names, but generating sufficient seed capital this way seems to be extremely difficult if not impossible. I'm planning to get the webdesigning work done by the freelancers on DP, from what I know, their services seem to be reasonably priced. I still think paying $4 per month for parking a site that generates not even half that amount is not economically prudent.I have 50+ domains to park, and am not willing to risk losing my hard earned money. @101freehost, Nystul, widewebtalk, rmartish, GMROCKS : Thanks a bunch for your comments. I'm already learning HTML,and will try to learn PHP, CSS and Javascript after that. Wish me luck
no problem, I've never sold domains so I don't really know how much money goes there - but as a method for "quick cash" I would have some doubt. Anyway, good luck with your path.
you can park your domain on my server and put your google ads on an index page or a coming soon page until you get it up for a dollar a month!
I think sedo offers good site parking...but I'm not sure. I've never used it before, but some of my friends say its enough to pay off subscriptions.
There is a recent blog set up fever in DP, and people are selling their service to set up an automated blog for less than $10/site. Do a search on it in DP and you'll find them. You may want to pick a couple of your domains that you think can generate higher adsense income, and ask these guy to make you two websites. This should get you started to have a feel of web biz in a low cost way. BTW, I think you can park your other domains for free at seoparking.com.