4 Steps to Building Out Your Domain Name Portfolio into Profitable Websites

When I get the opportunity to scan through these domain portfolios, I often see some domains that would be perfect candidates for development—domain with good keywords in a topic area that offers lucrative affiliate programs or adsense revenues. The nice thing about developing a site for search engine and link traffic is that it doesn't even have to be an expensive dot-com domain to work well, or it can contain a dash in the domain name and still get good search engine traffic.

Today it is easier than ever to create and maintain a website, and a good looking site can be made and hosted on a small budget. There are a few things that have happened recently that have made developing high quality websites as easy and efficient as ever:

• Gobal marketplace of professional designers and programmers
• Low-priced, professionally designed Content Management System templates
• Content creation marketplace
• The advent of low-cost and multiple-domain web hosting

While there are many examples in the marketplace of the elements listed above, I'll provide some specific examples here of resources that I've found to be very useful in providing quality products or services.

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The Global Marketplace of Designers and Programmers

Outsourcing has been a major buzzword over the past few years, but nowhere has it been as applicable as in the Internet industry, where a vast pool of educated and talented professionals can be accessed through a global marketplace, at a fraction of the cost of domestic services. You can leave instructions before you go to sleep at night, and half-way around the globe as the day starts, your team will work on your project as you sleep, and deliver it to your in-box by the time you wake the next morning.

Plumbers, electricians and building contractors have to be local because these are physical hands-on jobs. But the products that are delivered via the Internet can be produced in any geographic area where there is skilled labor. Programmers from India or Eastern Europe, Graphic Designers from China or South America, and writers from all over the United States can offer their services in vast marketplaces, such as eLance.

In theory, it's the perfect storm of marketplace, technology and skills to make an extremely efficient development process. In practice, it's not always easy to find folks with the skills you need, language or cultural roadblocks may occur, and you may find that in the end, finding a team you can sit down with face-to-face is worth the extra expense.

Working with non-local contractors can be rewarding, though it sometimes takes a few tries before you find a team. But once you do locate people that you know and trust, you can really develop a great portfolio of websites within a very reasonable budget.

For example, you can have a custom website design done in Romania, and professionaly XHTML coded in Germany, all for under $500 total cost.

While this work is not for everyone, and you'd be better off knowing something about the underlying principles of website development, it certainly can be done, and can be a very effective way to build out some of your better domain names.

What Kind of Website?

Static Website: A flat, static website—that is, one that does not have a database, or content management system—is a sufficient choice for websites that are not updated often. The site doesn't necessarily have to be small. It can have many pages, but if it needs regular updates and modifications, managing a static website can become cumbersome after a while.

A static configuration is well-suited for a company website, where you present a certain amount of information that does not need to be changed on a regular basis. The purpose of such a site is to provide some basic information about a company or topic, but not necessarily to generate traffic or revenues.

Dynamic Website: A dynamic site is one that has a database, and perhaps a content management system. It can be a complex project with many bells and whistles, such as message boards, widgets of all kinds, and many interactive tools, but if you're just starting out with no traffic, it may make sense to start small to see if you can first get traction with your topic.

Today, there are many tools that allow even relatively amateur developers to produce professional-looking websites for a very modest investment of time and money. The advantage to this approach, is that you can start small, develop a library of content, and build traffic from search engines and links. Now, instead of sitting on a domain with no revenues, you have the tools to build a working, growing website whose traffic grows steadily with time as you add content little by little.

Professionally Designed Website Themes and Templates

Ready-made Website Templates: If the $500 budget is too high, and you just want to get a site off the ground with minimal effort and little customization, take a look at website templates. You can find pre-designed, low-cost website templates in a wide array of topics, for as little as $59 at a template provider such as TemplateMonster.

Template Monster provides Flash and static HTML templates that are ready to go. Just add your own information onto the pre-built websites using a text editor if you have some HTML experience, or a simple WYSIWYG website coding software (one of the most robust softwares packages for building websites is Macromedia Dreamweaver).

You can take this handy quiz to determine which software may be best for you: Picking the Right Web Design Software.

Professional WordPress Templates

WordPress began as a blogging software, and has evolved into a more feature rich system that allows for very professional looking website that require little or no HTML coding experience to publish pages to your website. There are plenty of free WordPress templates you can choose from, and you can now find good quality hosting for smaller sites for as little as $6.95 per month for unlimited domain names hosted, and free WordPress and other software packages included.

One of the latest advances in the WordPress realm, is the advent of premium WordPress templates, or themes. For a modest cost, these templates are extremely well-designed, and offer a much more professional look than most free templates. They also come configured in formats that are more suitable for magazine-style publications, rather than the blog format that is usually offered for free templates.

Two excellent sources of well-designed premium wordpress themes are:

• Revolution WordPress Themes: Take a look at these themes and you'll want one right away. They're extremely well-designed, and there are several different options, such as magazine, tech, and news themes. You can use the themes as-is, or customize the color scheme or layout further to suit your needs.
• Premium News WordPress Themes: The Premium News Gazette edition is our favorite, though there are a number of other themes here to choose from, all of which are very nicely designed, and some of which include nice flash image treatments.

It's simple to set up a basic WordPress site—you just drop the theme folder into your WordPress content directory and select the theme on the admin page, and your new theme is up and running. For more complex functionality, you may need the assistance of one of the many WordPress experts available in the global marketplace, but since WordPress is a very popular open source software, there are hundreds of programmers who are very well versed in WordPress coding. In fact, even a novice can do a lot with wordpress under the hood with a little sleuthing online.

Website Hosting

Last but not least is website hosting. For starter sites, you don't need an expensive dedicated hosting provider. You can start out with a basic web hosting package that allows you to host unlimited domain names, and comes with all sorts of software in the Fantastico library, such as bulletin boards, WordPress or MovableType blog software, and many others.

We like hosts that allow you to host as many add-on domains as you want, because it encourages you to develop domains into starter sites to test the market. The formula: A nice design, some content you write or purchase from a freelancer or other source, and free add-on domain hosting.

Below you'll find a few of our favorite website hosting providers that allow you to host unlimited domains, and include the Fantastico library of free software:

• HostMonster: Host unlimited domains on one hosting account. We use HostMonster for about a dozen websites. They've been very reliable, with helpful customer support by phone or email. And the cost? Only $6.95 per month. This host can't be beat.
• BlueHost: Another host that comes highly recommended, BlueHost also offers unlimited add-on domains, and tons of storage space.

You'll be surprised at how many sites you'll want to develop—and can develop and launch live once you can host additional sites at little or no incremental cost. The premium templates can also be purchased at developer prices, which gives you the rights to use them for as many websites as you want. Just add content and a little eLance support, and your publishing empire begins!

And if you're not quite ready to build custom websites on your domain names yet, you can still do better than a simple parking page with a service such as WhyPark. A traditional parking page offers no content—only ad links. There's really no way to generate and grow traffic to your domain if it's parked at a traditional parking company.

WhyPark puts content on your site, and you can host up to 100 domains for a nominal fee. The company will populate your domain with content relative to your site's keywords. See the WhyPark Information page for more details.