For the past few years, my primary source of revenue has been domain sales. Lately, with domain sales lower for me in the last 10 months or so, I have turned to development to generate revenue. I’ve been building out websites, testing ways to monetize websites and domain names, and selling advertising space on my blog and my developed websites.

Although the “easy money” (if you could call it that) is no longer coming in via domain sales, I think this will turn out to be my most successful year. Sure, it was fun working less and enjoying life more last year and the prior year. However, it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as doing what I am doing right now. I’ve used this past year as an opportunity to learn about web development, marketing, sales, social media, and a whole bunch of other things I hadn’t paid much attention to without a true need to do so.

Just about anyone can sell a good domain name if the price is right. The challenge is to be able to increase the value of your domain assets during difficult times. The most obvious way to do that is to increase revenue and traffic, and that is done with development (unless a big company names a product/service after your domain name and decides to pay you a bundle – much like winning the lottery, this happens infrequently).

If you are just getting involved with domain names, I hate to say it, but the easy money isn’t here right now. I do think we are still in the very early stage of this business and domain values haven’t peaked, but I caution anyone who is coming in here to make a quick buck. You need to have a longer term strategy carved out before you spend money aimlessly. Back in April of 2008, I posted my 5 year plan, which is always evolving depending on what deals come up, but I always do what I can to stay on track.

If you are just coming in to the domain industry, I recommend that you create some goals and write down how you will achieve them. The low hanging fruit isn’t really there to be picked any more, but there are plenty of ways to become financially independent from this business, but you need to stay focused.

Although I believe a great domain name can help catapult a company’s website over others in search engine rankings, I believe the content on the site is as important when a person develops it. Owning Lowell.com and having the Lowell Spinners section at Lowell.com/lowell-spinners.php probably helps my website’s rankings (although the second “lowell” may be overkill”), it’s the good and fresh content that continues to drive people to the site during the season.

If your content isn’t accurate, some people may not even notice, and it’s just a bit of a disservice to them which they won’t realize until they bet a friend at a party and turn out to be wrong. Others who are experts on the topic, the people who might want to advertise on the site for example, will think it’s unprofessional if there are many errors. At best, they will send you a small email to point out your inaccuracies. At worst, they won’t return to your site and won’t contact you about advertising.

It’s also imperative that the content is unique to your site. Sure, a city’s history doesn’t change, but they way it’s presented should be unique to your website. Facts are facts, but oftentimes, one site leaves off some facts and each site’s information is different. Research is important to get facts correct, and that can mean researching a variety of trusted websites and offline sources for the correct information. Oftentimes, it can be as easy as calling on an expert to get the information. This is time consuming and expensive, but it’s well worth it.

Tomorrow, I will provide some insight in to hiring a good copywriter and preventing plagiarism/content theft. A domain name, cool web design, and great SEO are all very helpful to driving traffic, but good and unique content will keep visitors returning for a long time.