Just a heads up on Geo service domains

[golddiggerguy]

I have around 125+ Geo domains one example here. Not great looking at all and in need of a real design. (to be actioned v soon)

Out of the 125 I'd say 70ish are live and between them over the past around 12 months have made £7xx ish from just Adsense.

To buy 125 domains at £7 = £875 Give a few more weeks and they will have paid for the domains and hosting for all domains.

Last year and beginning of the year was pence a day (34p) but lately it's varying from £4 to £10 a day. I haven't touched them in months too.

They will also then be indexed well and ready for paying local companies to advertise on.

This is really a push for anyone wanting or has some local domains to push ahead. Want any tips just ask!

My goal along with my main Local site is to be pulling in at least £10k a month from them all, this time next year.

 

[springer]

V. well done. Have you concentrated on Hull mostly?

 

[golddiggerguy]

Yes just Hull (for now) as we want to use it to get known and to get to know companies. Need to raise a Brand Awareness really. We're local to Hull this would save a lot of travelling and been local will hopefully seem better value and warmer than your call centre Yell's, Touch Locals, FreeIndex's, as we'll have faces to a voices and names etc

We'll use it as a bridge to offer other services, SEO, Web design, Marketing, PR, etc.

Will look at other cities closer to home but sticking with Hull for the minute and building a proven working model that we or others can use elsewhere.

 

[RSK3000]

Do you do much SEO work on each one i.e. backlinks etc

 

[golddiggerguy]

Do you do much SEO work on each one i.e. backlinks etc

Only SEO done (so far) would be on the titles and URL structure but as of yet no backlinks or regular posting.

That will come in October and hopefully boost the ratings/rev quite a bit.

Posting businesses on them should be half the work, back links will come from businesses wanting a little discount and a few other tricks as well should help.

Again still need a new design for them all too, again thats an October job and fingers crossed this time next year it all should be worth the effort.

 

[devolution]

I think it's possible to earn what you are thinking about...

BTW, did you use WP for all the sites, or just some?
I'm still debating whether to use my ever diminishing time to create a custom CMS dedicated to creating minisites in seconds.... It's possible, I spoke to someone who knows a bit of PHP and coding that might be able to assist, but he's pretty busy these days too...

 

[golddiggerguy]

BTW, did you use WP for all the sites, or just some?

- I think all are on WP yes. If not all 125+ will be soon with a new design.

I think it's possible to earn what you are thinking about... -

The monthly amount of 10k is 100% possible, theirs around 100 sectors included in the varying domains. If you do your sums it wouldn't take many from each sector a month to add up at £60 pa. 1 new business in each sector a month for 12 months would be £6k a month

Not saying it's a breeze to do but this model should open other doors to offering other paying services too.

I'm still debating whether to use my ever diminishing time to create a custom CMS dedicated to creating minisites in seconds -

As for the CMS would be nice but I do like WP with it's ever growing plug-ins etc

You only can try

 

[RSK3000]

This is all good stuff - thanks for sharing it with us. I am told that there is a lot of duplicate content in the wordpress software itself, so you get penalised by Google, so its not a good idea to use wp for mini-sites - not sure how true this is, though.

 

[golddiggerguy]

• The only downside/s with all of this it would cost approx £1k to set up domains, hosting, freelances (if needed) etc.
• Huge amounts of time and effort before any real rev comes in.
• You can't be a back bedroom job to run this correctly! i.e. Need telephone number (not home), there to answer calls (not at work).

We are really looking for back links to our mini sites and sector pages now if anyone wants to offer links. In return for links elsewhere. (Indirect swop)

We have had a few companies contact us through the mini sites saying can we be included on them and pointed them to the main site to sign up which is good!

 

[RSK3000]

The thing is this is going to become a full time job for someone if you want to do it right.

What I'm going to do with my geo - generics is try to get 3 - 5 sites generating some decent income and use that to finance the building out of the others. Can't see any other way because having 100 sites with two paying customers on each seems the hard way to do it. Launching two and three related sites at a time, building them out, then moving forward seems a better way forward, for me at least.

 

[rob]

- I think all are on WP yes. If not all 125+ will be soon with a new design.

Make sure you have a plan on handling 125+ WP installs!

I love wordpress, but even with say 15 sites with it on you do require some form of idea on how to roll out plugins / updates and backups.

 

[golddiggerguy]

Updating and backup all in hand auto this and that with WP is great and running an automated full backup daily.

I went all out for as many domains as possible (and still finding/thinking of more) to secure them basically. You never know when they'll be snapped up! Missed a few this year because of waiting.

This beast will be a nice learning kerb! Hopefully it will then be easy to recreate for other towns.

 

[golddiggerguy]

So hands up who's started dev old Geo domains or started regging their local town service domains ?

 

[davedevelopment]

.... or started regging their local town service domains ?

I would of done but some bugger has got them all

 

[golddiggerguy]

I'm sure theirs still a few I should have but missed or someone has.

Let me know if so

Just to add I did buy 30+ on the secondary market too, to a total of around £700+ average pricing £30-£50 each

 

[golddiggerguy]

Another update decided to change the look of the mini sites and held my breathe in case people stopped clicking on ads because of it.............. Phew they never.

With me isolating adsense ads (Creating channels) to each site HULLBEDS instead of one called HULLSITES I can see what's shining and whats not doing too great.

Beds are doing very well (hence my post the other day) and will only take time before I have added more content to get all the others on par with each other (getting on 200 now)

I had a 'ping' moment yesterday, and comments and ideas on this please.

100 domains @ £7 each £700 for 2 years
US Hosting @ £120 for 2 years
=£820 + a weeks work setup and 3 days a month constant.

Set 100 sites up with top populated cities and services. get them all indexed and ranking for 10 top phrases. Over a 2 year period they make a minimum of £3-4k through Adsense and affiliation and gain a PR of 1-2

I know thats do-able but what price would you then put on them all and individually. Saying that they have a well ranked mini site on them and generating money and leads.

Just one to throw out and get ideas from.

Cheers

GDG

 

[jwm]

Thanks for sharing what your plans are golddiggerguy, its always interesting to hear what other people are trying.

My one concern with this is trying to keep on top of 100 wordpress sites which I think Rob touched on before too. Also wp seems a very resource intensive way of managing what will be a few pages minisite.

Also I am not sure you will get £120 hosting for 100 different database installations.

I am by no means techie so someone else might jump in with a solution but perhaps consider Wordpress MU with domain mapping. If I have understood this correctly this would let you run all your sites from one wordpress install (one set of plugins, one back up etc) which would significantly reduce the workload associated with what you are trying to do

 

[golddiggerguy]

Also I am not sure you will get £120 hosting for 100 different database installations.

Wordpress MU with domain mapping. If I have understood this correctly this would let you run all your sites from one wordpress install (one set of plugins, one back up etc) which would significantly reduce the workload associated with what you are trying to do

Check out BLUEHOST, US based, cheap but does the job! and yes 100 sites with 100 DB's

For the MU install I will be looking at that but at the moment a lot of them are already setup and don't want to start tweaking just yet. But thanks for that.

Anyone else doing the Geo service / product route, if so what you finding - talk to me LOL.

I must have 200ish GEO/service.co.uk's now and feel they are a well worth an investment as a domain but 10 fold if developed.

I started with local domains to me and have now leaked into

• Glasgow
• Sheffield
• Leeds
• Bradford
• Birmingham
• Manchester
• Liverpool

:-D