Hi, I have a whole bunch of catchy brandable 5 letter domains. I am pretty sure that I can get around $100 per domain. Here is the question, with a little bit of work (few hrs per week) I have a system that I follow that could generate the following in ONE YEAR: 1) over 1000 backlinks. 2) over 3000 pages of unique content. 3) around 700-1000 hits per day. 4) $40-50 per day in affiliate revenue. BUT, I after that I would still just sell the Domain name, not the site that was just built. The reason for this is because I have sold sites before and transfering the codes and changing the affiliate accounts caused alot of problems. I will just want to unload the domain and let them do what they want with it. So how much more value will it give my domain if I develop it with the above results?
I think if ur gonna spend the time to do that, you might as well develop the domains into sites and then sell th site.
Thanks for the reply, the problem is, what do most buyers expect in terms of the affiliate income? Say the site is involved in affiliate programs, like Adsense...I can't just change the payee info to the new buyer...because I have other sites running Adsence. This is the sort of problem I am having.
so developing the domain and than just selling the domain would not increase the value? What do others do when they sell their sites, do they just update the affiliate payee info with the buyers info?
It depends. Can you guarantee that the backlinks be kept in tact after the sale? What anchor text are the backlinks using? It will be worth more if it is generating traffic and has backlinks. Even if the new owner has to build new content they will be benefiting from the traffic right off. The problem is can you guarantee that the backlinks will stay as well as the traffic. If you can't it is still worth a little more than an undeveloped domain imho. If the site was on a subject/product that I was promoting and your site had backlinks with good anchor text and established traffic - it would be worth a lot. Make sure your affiliate links / advertising is fairly modular. Rip out your specific info when the sale goes through and let the new owner deal with it. NO way would you want to try and transfer affiliate accounts (if even possible). Just let the buyer know up front what affiliates you are using and tell them how they can insert their own ads/links/etc.
Great answer...thanks alot. You seem to stress the importance of the backlinks remaining intact...they would be mainly from Directories and Articles, with the URL in the signature box. So I think that means they would stay.
Sounds good. The only concern would be that the backlinks have sensible monetizable anchor text. If they are just links with the domain name as link text (unless its a keyword domain name) might not be too helpful. But if the site is generating traffic then I guess it doesn't matter too much. As you say, its a good brandable domain name then maybe its ok... kind of hard to generalize. The bottom line is that if you can prove that the sites makes money / gets stable good traffic (that will not disappear right after the sale) it is going to be worth a lot more than an undeveloped domain name.
Depending on the keywords and all that, a domain making $40-$50 per day would be worth $15,000 - $25,000.
It'a an interesting question. $100 is too little to justify the work though. I wrote an article today which explored something similar which you might find interesting. http://www.takemorerisks.com/little-known-ways-of-registering-and-selling-valuable-domain-names-rapidly.html
If you can generate $100/day per site with little work on your part why would you be interested in being in the domain business? Build the sites, reap the profits, rinse and repeat.