Is it more profitable for me to buy expired domains and flip them, or buy expired domains and develop & monetize them?
Well I have never have much luck selling domains besides the odd one on Sedo so if it was me I would be looking at the 2nd option.
I too would create and optimize my own domains. It gives me a greater sense of satisfaction and gives me complete control of the site that I will eventually flip.
I suppose each domain name has own history and you will not know for sure what it was. So in any case that is a risk to buy expired domain names.
all depends. if someone would like to buy the domain right away and you can make a profit sell it. other domains may need some additioanl work to make them more desirable.
Most likely you'll make more by taking a month or two to develop the domain. People love to see the numbers, so keep track of the uniques and sales/clickthroughs.
It's just frustrating. I've spent the past three years developing sites and I haven't even made enough from adsense to get a paycheck. I must have been doing something wrong. I didn't have any money to spend on promotion. However, I did spend several months submitting my sites to search engines and directories every night. I thought perhaps domain flipping would be easier. I'm tired of paying for hosting and not making any money.
if you can develop the site , then it's better to develop and sell it as a whole domain, site & content
I would like to do that, but the problem is that they are blogs. I don't know how I would transfer the content to the new owner in that case. For instance, I changed hosting plans at one point. I saved all my files off the server and then uploaded them to the new server under the new hosting plan. Then I installed wordpress. All my posts were gone, and I had to repost everything, even though I saved all my files. The same would happen to the new owner of the sites, and he would think I had ripped him off.