Like I have mentioned somewhat recently, I have a ton of domains I have registered and have never really done anything with. Some of them were part of a bigger project that never got off the ground, some were just domains I stumbled across, some were just ideas I registered before giving them much thought.
In order to protect myself from registering so many domains I will never do anything with I have come up with the following three questions I want to ask myself before buying a domain:
1. Are you really gonna build that site? Is this really a project you will sit down and work on from start to finish?
2. No, really, are you gonna build a site on this domain? It seems like such a good idea right now. I really do need to register this domain because this site will be awesome.
3. Dude, seriously. Are you gonna build the site? Well, OK. Probably not. I guess I can pass on this one.
Pretty simple thought process there that could save me hundreds of dollars a year.
But seriously, is it just part of the affiliate business that we register domains with visions of grandeur but never even get around to setting them up on the server? Or is there a way to focus on current projects and only get a new domain when a site will actually get built?
This is something I have been thinking about a bit lately and while I am sure I will fail and fall back to registering any domain I think of here are a couple safeguards I want to put in place for myself to keep me from buying so many useless and unused domains.
1. Write 10 pieces of content – Blog posts, product reviews, informational articles… I don’t care what I write I just want to have some content ready to go when I register the domain. If I do this there is a much greater chance of me actually building the site.
2. Create a graphic – I suck at graphics. So if I take the time to make a header or some sort of graphical element to the site there is a very good chance I will build the site. Or even if I just pay someone to do it I wouldn’t want that money to go to waste.
3. Prepare the datafeed – If the site will be based on a datafeed I want to have the feed ready to go when the site is up. So many times I will get nearly everything ready to build but then lose steam fixing up the datafeed.
Basically I want to have some sort of investment in the site before I buy the domain. Yeah, there will be some hot domains I will want to snap up as soon as I see them and won’t have time to do this other stuff but for the most part I want to have put something into the site before the domain gets registered.
What else can I do to invest some time or effort into the site before I get the domain?
I made a promise to myself to not buy any new domains after Affiliate Summit. So far so good, but there is one site that I would really, really like to build. Creating content first plus lining up some products sounds like a great way to see if I will actually work on it.
I pretty much want to do anything that gives me some sort of time or monetary investment in the site up front. It just bugs me to see so many domains sitting in my account not being used. Kind of like the guy who buys cars with the intention of fixing them up. They usually just end up on blocks in the front yard lowering the property value of everyone in the neighborhood.
Dude – I am so there with ya. I’m at well over 300 domains and I will never have the time to build them out!
Great suggestions.