New Project – which domain to develop

[philiporchard]

New project to start in Sept... Just wondering which domain to go for, and if anyone has any suggestions of what to do with them.

.co.uk
Directory
Flights
TravelMoney
Universities

.com
PhoneInsurance

I appreciate you all have your own domains to think about – but thought I'd just see if anyone is happy to share any words of inspiration or advice!

 

[dee]

Would what you do with Maths and Spag translate to universities somehow ?

 

[ukbackorder]

I think directory has the most development potential. Maybe on subdomains - you could have cities, job categories, institutions, societies etc all from a main page.
eg london.directory.co.uk , plumbers.directory.co.uk , hospitals.directory.co.uk , morrisdancers.directory.co.uk etc Lots of cross-selling opportunities, advertising revenue, listing revenue, page hosting revenue, etc. If subdomains aren't a good thing (I have little SEO knowledge) then just a format directory.co.uk/london/blah blah

Years ago I used to have a site that made good commission from flight affiliates. However industry wide there seemed to be a halt to flight booking affiliate fees. Unless you have a good affiliate I don't know where you can take it beyond a hotel booking engine (so many already around)..

Travelmoney seems limited in potential.

I don't see how you could monetise universities and if you went for a directory....well... universities.directory.co.uk

PhoneInsurance - not something I know anything about. Seems a bit niche to me but maybe I'm just not thinking outside the box.

 

[baldidiot]

Depends what kind of site you want and how you want to monetize it. Eg: Do you want an aggressive affiliate site, easy ranking info site, direct sales etc..

Directory is a bit 2010 if you're talking about an old school directory of websites. DMOZ was shut down, even BOTW have changed their business model. Should be good indicators that's not worth it.

You could use it for a more editorial guide to various things, or potentially local info, but I think you'd need to have a really good game plan for that to work.

Phoneinsurance would probably be a good affiliate site if you're willing to put the effort in. Depends on what the rate and terms are though. Competition is probably high so you'd need to invest quite a bit in links and content.

 

[Muller2]

Universities could easily be a listing of all universities and then you can access things like rentals, area guides etc. But there will be limited revenue opportunities.

Directory would IMO be a lot of work and management.

PhoneInsurance - surely has to be a good and easy (smallish) site and there must be revenue or sale opportunities

 

[Ben Thomas]

Phone insurance is dead. Think about AppleCare etc. nobody is actively buying phone insurance. If they don't have AppleCare, they have home insurance, which includes items like phones etc. or they have been mis-sold it when buying a new phone with EE lol.

Personally, have to agree with both @CreativeMix and @sigh in that they're not that great, but also directory.co.uk is probably the better of the two.

I will be the unpopular opinion guy here and say flights.co.uk is probably going to be the better one to develop long term, as directories are a bit "2010" as someone put. Phone insurance is 2008, Universities is not a great name if you ask me (sorry), and travel money could be part of flights.co.uk I guess. You could run a travel agency online.

Most names there would get more money when sold, but obviously it's waiting for the buyer to happenstance.

 

[Paullas]

I would buy Flight.co.uk from @barry and devevolp Flights into a portal around deals,discounts and claiming info etc. One stop site around anything Fligjt related.

 

[Ben Thomas]

Personally Barry should just buy flights.co.uk because it would be a lot better to have cheap.flights.co.uk

 

[Paullas]

Either way but they both belong with each other

 

[BG]

I would buy Flight.co.uk from @barry and devevolp Flights into a portal around deals,discounts and claiming info etc. One stop site around anything Flight related.

You speak so much sense @Paullas -- Flight.co.uk would be a great acquisition!!

 

[BG]

Personally Barry should just buy flights.co.uk because it would be a lot better to have cheap.flights.co.uk

I have spoke to Phil about flights on a number of occasion over the years And as @Paullas say's.. They both compliment each other and would defo make sense from a traffic leakage point of view, especially from a flights perspective.

 

[DomainAngel]

Travel Money all day long. Hayes travel are spending millions advertising all over the TV at peak times e.g. during emmerdale, and that's only one company.

Already a generic term and with their advertising they're doing the heavy lifting.

You drop into serps and Google ads etc

Start as lead gen with a panel of affiliate/partner options on your site or full prepayment currency card whitelabel agreement.

Out of those domains its probably the one that would be up and running the quickest and pays the best.

Then build flights slower and bulk up the site with a community of flight experts then drip in your flight partner offering. When big enough sell to travel company like skyscanner who are still smashing it or recruit a couple of people and run your own agency with access to flight bookings so no affiliate.

I'm guessing though that you could add another great revenue stream just down the community affiliate route.

Or sell them both to me on the never never

 

[philiporchard]

Thanks everyone. All really useful.

 

[jamesbkk]

What is the budget for promotion etc? The domain is just the start and only a very small part of the puzzle.

 

[philiporchard]

What is the budget for promotion etc? The domain is just the start and only a very small part of the puzzle.

Yep, absolutely. I was just interested to see if anyone came up with something that really jumped out. My other projects are very long term... ie. 2 years developing and then slow roll out over a number of years. We've spent almost half a million in franking alone on those.

But for these I was looking shorter term with lower costs for these.

 

[Ben Thomas]

Shorter term lower costs: work an affiliate plan out with Barry to use Flights.co.uk to direct traffic to Flight.co.uk

 

[Jiblob]

Universities.co.uk is begging for a rundown of the Top 50,000 most useless University degrees...