Domain Development - part 5	2.5/5.0 (4 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Barry Goggin May 16, 2008

I wanted to discuss direct commercial domain development in this post including lead generation, services and e-commerce. The financial return is often more direct on these types of websites rather than indirectly through advertising.

Lead Generation

Generating leads for your own business or for someone else’s business is a quite common development strategy. This can range anywhere from a brochure site with a contact form to fill out to a full fledged website with articles and widgets all with the goal of convincing the visitor that this service is for them.

You have probably seen this type of referral service on tv for dentists or lawyers and the setup is similar on a website. You can act as the middle man just like these referral services passing along the leads you generate.

This can be a time consuming effort as you have to market your site to both the visitors and to the service providers. You need to have agreements with the service providers as to cost per lead and what data will be provided, at a minimum.

You also need to have clear data policies visible on your website preferably with an opt-in or clear acceptance of your data policy by your visitor to store and transfer personal data without liability. You may also need to provide them with a way to unsubscribe if this is an ongoing service.

The marketing tools you can use on your website include reviews or testimonials, email newsletter sign up, widgets such as calculators or other useful tools, articles of interest and biographies of people providing the services.

Trust is an important part of lead generation so make sure your site looks professional and with a clean look. Make all the information easily available with minimum clicks to get there and provide an address and phone number.

Lead generation can be quite profitable but you need good personal and marketing skills as well as patience and perseverance.

Services

If you are going to provide services directly yourself, then most of what I said about lead generation applies. You will need to communicate why your visitor should choose you over anyone else providing the same service and respond quickly to any inquiries.

Marketing tricks should be used. For example, putting proofs of wedding photos online or even final photos online will mean that the bride and groom will often send that link to others effectively marketing you to their contacts.

Always make it easy for people to “tell a friend” if they see something they like on your website. Linking your online marketing to your offline marketing is smart. Use your website address on business cards, flyers and any marketing materials you provide. Cross-market with complementary services e.g. if you are a wedding photographer, cross-promote with a videographer or a caterer.

Developing a website to provide services or market them is a serious commitment of time and energy. This will not be a strategy you will use for many domains unless you are paying people to run them for you.

E-commerce

E-commerce comes in all shapes and sizes and with all kinds of commitments of energy and time. For many who want to sell physical items, they worry about storage and shipping. Many e-commerce sites use drop-shipping to get around those issues. A wholesaler will provide the goods and ship them to the customer directly based on the information you provide. You make a profit on the difference between the wholesale cost and retail cost you charge. This can be invisible to the customer so that it appears that the product comes from you.

The key to this kind of business is finding the right wholesaler, meeting the volumes they require and keeping competitive on price. Any e-commerce site will require dealing with the customer, processing charges and handling any issues and inquiries. A serious commitment of time and effort as well as money is usually required.

Again for a domainer, you will not be developing many of these sites as the time involved in running them is quite considerable.

Summary

These type of development strategies are not for the faint of heart or the light of pocket. If you do follow one of these strategies, it will be for one or two domains unless you have other resources to call upon. Serious marketing and customer relationship skills are needed and a serious financial commitment to marketing is often needed especially when starting up.

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