Earlier today I was on a panel at Domain RoundTable in Seattle about web2.0 and domain development together with Joe Davison from TechAnalyst.com (who was kind enough to step up to the moderator plate when our moderator did not show) and Stuart Wood of WIFI.com (Salient Properties). I was pleasantly surprised with the good attendance at this 9:45am session, considering it was the night after the TrafficZ party.

One topic covered in the session was using web2.0 site building tools that allow you to develop your website in a somewhat expedited fashion. Joe pointed out that when using these tools, it is important to pay attention to the terms & contracts in order to see, who owns the users. You will need to plan for what happens when you outgrow the pre-built application and want to take your site to the next level. Joe also mentioned an article at TechCrunch that covers the different social network building tools available. The article covers Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Me.com, PeopleAggregator, Haystack and ONEsite and features a great matrix comparing all the different services.

While there are better tools available, development is not easy. Ultimately it’s not about building a site, it’s about building a business, like Darren Cleveland, CEO of Recall Media Group points out on Sahar Sarid’s blog. However there are different stages to development, and sometimes it has to be approached step by step. You start by identifying the need of the users. As Stuart pointed out, by building the site step by step, you are able to gauge user feedback and traffic patterns in order to expand on popular topics.

The last item I’d like to touch on is the potential uptake, which can be very rewarding. You can generally first expect a drop in revenue when adding content, since the content distracts from the ads. Once a site is developed, you will see more and more return visitors. In mid 2006, Marchex bought a service review company called OpenList and proceeded to integrate the review content in 29 of their domain properties. After just three months, they saw an increase in pageviews of more than 300% and a revenue increase by 90%. Most of the additional traffic originated from search engines. [Source: Marchex Provides September 2006 Data from Beta Launch of Local and Vertical Web Sites]

This also is the reason that my company SharedReviews.com is active in this space, since we think that our product review content can be very valuable to domain name owners.

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