Domain Portfolio Building

Friday, December 09, 2005

Domain portfolio building of online property can take a little bit of time to master. Monetization techniques for each domain you acquire will vary. If I mention any specific venue for monetization of domains and which domains work best it could over saturate the market. This is why I am going to leave you with broad topics that you can make money in. This will leave more money for the ones of you who are cleaver.

Type in Portfolio
The first type of portfolio I am going to cover is the one that focuses on type in traffic. This can be an easy way to make some extra bucks, and possibly even land a whale of a domain. Also, some type in domains can fetch some large checks when they are sold. A few of the types of type in domains are common words/phrases, misspellings, and short domains. The thing to watch out for with misspellings is trademark issues. Since most of the sites that get enough traffic to try to make a misspelling of the name is probably under trademark I will just offer a warning, look into this into depth before trying this market.

Type in traffic will usually offer a pretty steady amount of type ins per day. This amount will probably not increase over time. At best, it will stay the same. Of course this does not consider that the reason for the type in may get more or less popular, in which case the site will get more or less hits respectively.

Content Portfolio
This type of portfolio specializes in getting search engine traffic. Possibly even traffic from word of mouth. The main thing with this type of portfolio is that most people think that in a certain niche they cannot compete with xyz.com. This may be true, but there is still money in mini sites with some articles and other features. These articles will draw in some steady traffic, which can be converted, into money.

The actual domain name of these sites is not all that important. The most important part of this type of portfolio is inbound links. These links can come from a variety of sources such as friendly blog posts, link exchanges, directory listings, or article listings on article databases.

Unlike a type in portfolio, a content portfolio will make its money in an exponential fashion. The first month of a new site may make $5, then the following month will make $10, then $15, then $20, etc. It is important to keep this in consideration if you chose to build a content portfolio. The mantra of this type of site is daily improvement for the long haul.

Another thing to consider is that you may be able to start one site a week. This multiplies your income greatly. Let me just tell you, on my first month I only made $5, although I will not tell you how much I made this month, I can say that it has greatly improved on the initial $5 that I made.

Conclusion
There are other types of domain portfolios out there. These two should be the basis for most beginners. Other types of portfolios often require some sort of sophistication that is not available for a beginner. Now that you have some info on two different portfolios you can chose to focus on one or mix and match as you feel fit. Good luck with your domain portfolio building!