As a web developer, I come across many domainers who have the same basic misinformed view of what web development can actually do:

"I have hundreds of domains which receive $50 a day total with PPC. If I can develop these names to be spiderable by search engines, therefore increasing my unique visitors, I can greatly increase my revenue!"

What happens is the domainer will spend time and/or money turning parked domains into developed sites only to discover that the development methods they were choosing are either as good or worse than monetizing via PPC except now they are out the development costs to find this out.

So what happened? The domainer:

...didn't do their homework, carefully weighing the options.

Development is NOT the only method to monetize a domain name. Besides parking, you can join an affiliate program, lead capture, sell to end users, use a platform and so on. The more experienced of a domainer you are, the more you figure out what works best and for what type of domains. Experiment around until you find something that works to your advantage. Sometimes you have to try many different options but never go full force with an open checkbook if you haven't explored the options first.

...dove into development without a roadmap.

Ask yourself: why am I developing this particular name instead of parking, selling, X, Y, Z? If the only reason for development is because you have hope that a little green payday leprechaun will visit your Paypal account on a daily basis: this isn't good enough. Your website has to fulfill a demand of some kind, in some fashion in order to be monetized. You cannot slap $2 articles purchased from some stranger who lives in a dark alley, paint on the Adsense and except to quit your day job over this.

...believed development was the pot of gold at the end of the internet rainbow.

Ah! So, who has fed you these Domainer Lucky Charms with horseshoe shaped development dreams and rainbow colored revenue promises? Domain development is not the answer: it is nothing but a solution among an array of solutions. Those who have you believe otherwise are feeding you sugar laced cereal when what you need is the bananas and yogurt.

...has a severe case of Project ADHD.

Even I catch myself jumping from project to project sometimes. But domainers: you guys can get crazy with it! What happens when you build 50 sites that barely monetize? The same as if you had 5,000 sites that barely monetize: a pile of wasted internet air. Concentrate on one project at a time and do it until you have successfully monetized it. Use the success of this one project to launch your next one and so on, so forth.

...bought into the internet illusion of fame, fortune and success.

When you think of the internet it is too easy to allow yourself to believe that millions of people are waiting behind their computer screens just for your website to manifest itself into existence, eagerly waiting to click on your ads, sign up for your services and become addicted users of your site. WRONG. Keeping a visitor's attention is hard work. Getting them to click on an ad when they know its an ad is even harder. Giving them a reason to come back is hardest yet.

...was too afraid to invest in their visions, goals and business plan.

The owner of a one word generic .com reached out to me and asked for help on how to improve his website. It didn't need much as it was already developed and the current web designer was on the right track. I sent him a quote for less than $400 on a few template changes that would make a huge difference in the display, functionality and upsell of what they were doing. I check the site from time to time to see if the current designer went with any of my suggestions as they were a huge improvement that corresponded with the domainer's concerns but nothing has changed.

Unfortunately, the common theme with most domainers is that they want development to come as cheaply, easy or fast as possible and will sacrifice quality or important implementations to get it done.

Don't get me wrong: expensive, custom development may be an overkill for the type of development you are doing. HOWEVER, low cost development is not the smartest route to go, especially if you want to build an actual business or brand with your domain.

Your thoughts?

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