A *realistic* article on developing

[snoopy]

Found this article a breath of fresh air, someone actually willing to give a realistic account of development and secondly it is coming from someone with a huge amount of experience in the area,

Some excerpts,

2012 – A Year of Failures

"* I setup a bunch of new sites, but none of them have made any money:"

"* Buying Sites – I purchased 20 sites such as TipTopTens.com and Stuffonmycat.com but they have not worked out too well. About 1/2 the sites ended up making way way less than the seller’s said they were, and the rest are doing ok but not great. "

" Minisites – I shut down my network of 4000+ minisites because the domains were not getting much more traffic than years ago when I had them parked. I paid for over 14,000 custom written articles for these minisites, as well as thousands of other pieces of custom content such as Flash games, plus I spent a lot of time developing a content management system for all of this."

http://www.impulsecorp.com/2012-a-year-of-failures

 

[Billy01]

Agree Plus 100

Minisites waste of time

Just set up a parking account with Rook Media great service

Picked Apps 2 years ago and we're doing very well under both banners now

Spot on. The world is different since Penguin and Panda and a lot of money will go to pipe dreams this year if you don't change direction.

 

[Blue Wren]

Thanks Snoopy.

 

[eBranding.com.au]

Found this article a breath of fresh air, someone actually willing to give a realistic account of development and secondly it is coming from someone with a huge amount of experience in the area

I agree, excellent insights from Eric.

He's very open about the performance of his portfolio and there's some excellent articles on his site that I highly recommend reading.

 

[Ashman]

Found this article a breath of fresh air, someone actually willing to give a realistic account of development and secondly it is coming from someone with a huge amount of experience in the area

Great article. Thanks for sharing Snoopy.

 

[DavidL]

Yeah a sad tale for sure.

I agree 2012 has been really tough for development. All boils down to Google having had more success in combatting SEO (both white and black hat) than ever before.

As one of the commenters said he needs to focus on just a few rather than launching dozens every year. Also needs to pick sites that have a commercial angle too rather than those that don't

Eg to me it looks like he's put a lot more work into http://bigcelebrities.com/ than http://cheapflowers.com which is surely the wrong way round?

Snoopy, after being wrong for so many years about development being a total waste of time, it looks like you were actually ahead of your time and you're now finally, nearly right!

 

[Chris.C]

The day of easy internet arbitrage is over.

Too be far it's been in obvious decline for the last 2 to 3 years, but I think 2012 will go down as the turning point.

These days developed sites need to be offering genuine real world value to end users (above and beyond what already exists) or it's just a matter of time before you find the site struggling to rank.

And of course building something that has true real world value takes a lot of time energy and effort so you need to make sure that your developments have decent margins (ie each visitors is worth at least $1.00+ per visitor) which is extremely hard to do if you are just running advertising on your site.

So website developments now need to move up the food chain, at least to lead generation for a high margin product if not outright sales.

 

[snoopy]

Yeah a sad tale for sure.

I agree 2012 has been really tough for development. All boils down to Google having had more success in combatting SEO (both white and black hat) than ever before.

I don't think the year has been particularly tough for development. It has been tough for low quality sites that should not be in the index and were only previously ranked due to taking advantage of loopholes in Google's system.

Whenever someone is being deranked someone else is moving up. Having said that it is still a world gradually moving to a paid model rather than search engines giving away traffic.

Snoopy, after being wrong for so many years about development being a total waste of time, it looks like you were actually ahead of your time and you're now finally, nearly right!

I've never said development is a total waste of time. What I have said is that stuff like MFA, "minisites", getting someone to do a dozen sites etc that domainers describe as "development" has no legs, it is a short term way of making money, even then most lose money doing it.

If a site has no business model it is never going to get far. If the business model is displaying advertising & organic traffic traffic it probably does not have a business model, that is a circle.

This article is a great one for the people claiming to making money with large numbers of sites, claiming everything they develop makes money, people selling domain development services etc, most of it is BS.

 

[Offtap]

2012 was our best year easily - but we don't hire cheap non-english speaking writers and there's not a single adsense ad anywhere.

Snoopy is right - if that's your business model, its time to move on.

 

[findtim]

Its a good aticle but its not "evidence" across the board, the only thing that seems common here is that everyone has a different view of what the word "development" means.

eg: davidL is right that cheapflowers should have had more effort, snoopies right that MFA sites are not "developed sites".

I have to agree with snoopy that a developed site is one that HAS a business model, everything else is MFA/MINI/PARKED, you might as well call those a pyramid scheme as there is no product.

thus chrisC says "offering genuine real world value to end users " and "at least to lead generation for a high margin product if not outright sales" is getting more to the mark of what a site needs to be.

its sounds there is a lot of common opinions here, 2013 should be interesting.

tim

 

[Shane]

I read about half way through the article and got bored. I don't know who this guy is, but I can't imagine wasting time on any of the ideas he had for websites.

2012 was my biggest year in terms of income from developed sites. My existing sites made more money, and I added two new sites which started making money very quickly.

Google certainly made things more difficult with some of their changes, but a focus on generating more revenue from each visitor has plugged that gap.

If you can't make money from developing websites, then you're doing it wrong.

 

[eBranding.com.au]

I don't think 2012 was a bad year for development either.

If you're putting out crappy sites with no business model and no value to end users - it's very unlikely that you'll make money.

Most of my sites made good money this year and they're still ranking as well or better after all the Google algorithm changes throughout the year. The lead up to Christmas in particular was an absolute cracker for revenue.

Google algorithm changes have impacted on crappy sites that provide minimal or zero value to users. I have no issue with that.

The harsh reality is that many sites created by domainers provide very little value to end users. If you think about the websites people use on a daily basis, and then compare those to some of the rough sites that domainers throw out (in bulk) - it's a pretty stark contrast. Search engines aim to provide results that are useful to its users, many domainer sites aren't.

 

[Blue Wren]

He speaks on the subject. http://www.ricksblog.com/my_weblog/...-of-them-have-made-any-money-eric-borgos.html