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Need advice about developing/monetising a domain

by MartinL
6 replies
I have recently bought the domain Glurt[dot]com. I had two motives for buying this domain, which are actually pretty conflicting. One reason is because I'd like a short memorable domain for an online game I am working on and the other reason is the domain has some page rank and traffic (400-3000+ per month depending on the source)-which I wouldn't mind making some money from! I hope the traffic of 400 is what is hitting the home page, while the rest is being lost to most tracking sources in the domain extensions. I believe "Markosweb.com/www/glurt[dot]com/" gives a pretty good idea of what was on the site. Anyways the reason I am posting here is because I would like some advice about what I should do with the domain!

At the moment I'm planning on contacting the old owner. I assume he abandoned the project and might be willing to either give or just about give the content that was on the site to me. I have tried using the way back machine but so far this has failed, I will try again when I get control of the domain. If he accidently let the domain lapse I'm planning on getting him to pay me back what I purchased for the domain name and I will then redirect everything to a new domain he registers for a year and then I would use my domain for my game. I think this sounds reasonable for both parties, since I got the domain through ethical/legitimate means, please let me know if you think I should just sell it back for what I paid for it!

If the above fails these are the options I am considering:
1) Seeing if a warrior is interested in partnering with me and splitting any profits depending on what they are planning on doing with the traffic/site, most likely with a cap on how much I can make so they can really run with the site. The deal would probably involve me transferring the domain once I made a certain amount of money. Basically a low risk project for a skilled warrior, but I'd have to be confident you could do it. Feel free to send offers.

2) Making a site on it myself about my game (how it is going in production), misc games related stuff, building a site, advertising, monetising and other tips on anything that doesn't fit into the above categories. Please note that I'm no expert on any of this, I just have an interest in it! Either the game stuff or the other stuff would eventually be sent to another domain later once either one gets more fully developed. Making the non-game stuff probably isn't really an option at the moment without the game stuff on the site. I could just make game stuff but then I'd be wasting the traffic and page rank. If I choose this option I am currently planning on running it on justhost.com for $2.95 a month and running it with wordpress but making it look like a standard site if I can. The problem with this is that I don't really have a lot of time to devote to this, so it would be very spare time based and making money would be more of an afterthought (I would probably have a few affiliate links and an email list I'd mail a few times a month with updates on my site).

3) Parking the domain with Sedo. Unfortunately this would probably end up pretty poorly given the ads on the domain would target the domain name which is pretty much meaningless. If anybody can think of somewhere better to park it given the type of traffic I'm getting please let me know.

4) Please give me some good alternatives!

So the way I see it (being somewhat pessimistic) my options are:
1) Money, no site for game.
2) Site for game, little money, time consuming, potentially interesting activity, help people.
3) Little money, Site for game, will totally kill page rank and visitors over time.

So basically I'm looking for any tips if I do end up doing any of the above three things and any alternative suggestions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
MartinL
#advice #developing #developing or monetising #domain #monetising
  • Profile picture of the author Toby Lewis
    It all depends what was on the domain before. Looks like it was something to do with software for kids and safe browsing. That can totally be monetized!

    Gurt.com

    It doesn't matter what you do in the future, you should definitely throw up a wordpress site and a couple of articles in that niche. You don't want to loose that google goodness.

    Then try monetizing it with affiliate/CPA offers for virus/firewall/filter software.

    It wont take much effort to do that, so you should at least test out the earning potential before you make a decision.
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    • Profile picture of the author MartinL
      The domain is "glurt" not "gurt" but thanks for the advice and the idea of using cached pages!

      The domain actually has a lot of technical and very specific information on it. I was thinking about gathering old pages of the site and then finding more information and totally rewriting it so that people actually reached information they were linked to instead of a pile of rubbbish anybody could have made up! This does not seem to be an option unless I either totally rip the old owner off (which I would never do) or spend around a day becoming an expert on information related to his posts for each post so I could totally change them.

      Below is an index thingo for what can be found on the site.
      Design
      ---CSS
      ---Wordpress design
      Digital market
      Linux / Unix
      News
      ---Web
      Programming
      ---Ajax
      ---Databases
      ---PHP
      ---zend framework
      SEO
      ---Domain names
      ---Tools
      Twitter
      Uncategorized
      Wordpress

      The index above probably doesn't show how detailed the post are so here are a few of his posts (just copy and paste them into your browser):
      webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EIURN92CxG4J:glurt.com/php-ajax-chat-tutorial+s+glurt.com&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

      webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:
      om1Z7DKydWkJ:glurt.com/twitter-api-posting-and-deleting-status-with-curl/comment-page-1+a+site:glurt.com&cd=14&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

      You have to admit, that's some good stuff. So unless he is willing to play ball (and give me permission to use his content) I think I will only post stuff very loosely related to what the site was about and far less technical (if I go the content way).

      Thanks,
      Martin
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  • Profile picture of the author Kieron
    In my opinon, you should offer feature rich content to the sites visitors, ensure you have an optin of some sort to allow you to communicate with them. It is very unlikely that you will get someone good to work on the site for a share of revenue as it normally never works out, trust me on this one. You would be better using these forums and get the advice you need and do what is needed yourself. It is better to do this as you then will not be replying on someone else to hold up there part of the deal and at least you will have control of what and how things are progressing.
    Best wishes, Kieron
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  • Profile picture of the author ezine
    @martin:
    I'm newbie here but want to give opinion.
    1. As you wish, you can contacting the old owner to get for database, and articles in glurt.com, so your domain will not be changed drastically.
    It will not hurt pagerank in next update.
    2. You can park in parked or something else, they fill the content for you, and then on next update, (in my experience), your domain will get better pagerank, because they fulfill articles.

    The only advantages are:
    1. Short domain name=you can sell it in Godaddy auction, or other auction place.
    2. Pagerank, you can update with your content, and then if they reach Pagerank 3 or even better, you can sell it in short term.
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    • Profile picture of the author MartinL
      I think I will just park it somewhere for now. Can anybody recommend a place that might make good use of the traffic? The site shouldn't charge any fixed fees or any additional expenses it should just take a cut of the revenue.

      Thanks,
      Martin.
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  • Profile picture of the author SageSound
    "Parking" a page simply means putting something on it and ignoring it. If it already has traffic, why split your potential revenues with anybody? Put up a Wordpress blog, post some content, add AdSense, Amazon ads, maybe eBay ads, etc.

    I had some domains up on Sedo for over a year, and managed to accumulate a whopping $0.42 in earnings. One of them even had pretty decent traffic.

    I pulled them off of Sedo, did what I said above, and I'm at least making $1/mo now on them. That's enough to pay the renewal fees at the end of the year.

    -David
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