Want to Monetize? Don’t create a Minisite, Create a Network

Minisite this, minisite that.  It doesn’t take a seasoned veteran to realize that content is king and always has been. Put a little content, make a little money.  That’s the hopes and the dreams of everyone who own thousands of domain, hoping to make a little on each one by parking or creating a glorified parking page, ie minsite.  Most of us don’t own that killer generic domain and can only dream as we read the posts of the big boys that scold us for being so petty and bottom feeders, and are forced to create something to bring traffic. The first move is to create content.

Home, it’s what we do or love.  It’s what we know.  Buy generic domains in your niche category and build.  Create content, write stories, take pictures, and update daily.  If you like it, others, will as well.  Start with long tail generics and save your money for better names.  Now you’ve done it and Wow! you haven’t earned shit.  You have regular readers, even thousands and day and you can’t bring in $100 a month.  I’ve been there and I figured out unless I was a leading blog in my niche, getting advertising was a long tedious process.  Even when I got it, it wasn’t worth my time and effort until I teamed up with other medium sized blogs.

Advertisers want a targeted audience first and they want lots of it.  Your little 1000 people a day blog, or even 5000 a day isn’t enough.  But what if you could get 20 other blogs or sites together?  Once you’ve reached that status you’ve essentially formed a network that you can shop around.  Power in the numbers.  You and your 1000 a day combined with 20 other blogs become 60,000 a day and worthy of attention.  The next step was to go to a company that could find advertising for the network.  Adify is one of the best.  There are many others that cater to certain niches as well.  I used to be in the financial bloggers category and most use InvestingChannel.com. Both of these companies are built on forming networks out of niche sites and banding them together to make them more appealing.  They usually do the legwork building the network but they would probably given you a pass if you hadn’t brought the whole team.  The last and a little harder to make money with is blogads.  It’s a bit outdated but it is still based on the same premise.  Take sites and form “hives” and sell them as a package.  I still make money every month from forming my own hives even though I don’t have a site anymore.  I put the hive together and get a piece of the action as long as they use blogads.

So instead of getting mini, perhaps think of getting bigger.  Pooling all the hard work of yourself and others in your category and try and monetize your network.  If everyone that shows up on domaining.com got together and formed a network (excluding the big players that don’t need it) , I guarantee the advertising revenue would increase for all.