How would you go about a Development partnership

[DomainMagnate]

As a domain owner how would you go about a development partnership?

That is as the titles says partnering with someone to develop your domain with a unique site and well converting monetization methods, do link building and promotion to generate higher revenues. Assuming the developer-partner covers all the developing, hosting costs and you only pay part of the revenue and possibly a % of the future sale what would be reasonable terms concerning revenue split, as well as future sale percentages?

Consider that it's not a big .com generic worth 5-6 figures, but rather a name in the 4 to low 5 figures max.

 

[Tia Wood]

From a developer's perspective: I have waited years and years for a development partnership to come along because I was holding off for either a good domain or a great business plan.

How we did it was; I received a fee to cover some expenses upfront. The other person was responsible for hosting. We combine our efforts to brainstorm on best practices, methods, etc, etc.

The problem with most domainers who want a "development partnership" is that they believe owning the domain name is enough risk to make it worth a developer's time.

In essence, you are asking a developer to put all of the financial, time and talent forward while you sit back and risk $0. An arrangement like this is very high risk for us.

However, let's say you do find someone who is willing to work this way: you have more leverage by offering a large chunk of revenue plus future sale.

And make sure this ends up in writing signed by the both of you.

 

[DomainMagnate]

NameHoney, thanks for the comment, I'm actually interested in both sides of the matter here. So from a developers point of view, assuming you cover all the development and promotional costs, what % of the revenue would you consider reasonable and at what terms? Another point here is that maintainance costs are minimal after the initial development/promotion so how should the parnership % continue after say a year or more?

 

[Gerry]

This is basically where I was going with this thread:
http://www.dnforum.com/f181/how-long-does-take-you-thread-434433.html

 

[DomainMagnate]

This is basically where I was going with this thread:
http://www.dnforum.com/f181/how-long-does-take-you-thread-434433.html

No.. not at all, but you can have this shameless plug Doc

You were asking there about timeframes for service providers, here it's about the common terms for a development partnership. So what are your experiences in the matter, I understand you were looking for someone to help develop your sites?

 

[Gerry]

No.. not at all, but you can have this shameless plug Doc

You were asking there about timeframes for service providers, here it's about the common terms for a development partnership. So what are your experiences in the matter, I understand you were looking for someone to help develop your sites?

Not a shameless plug at all.

I wanted some honest answers. And those timeframes are important (to me).

In other words, don't tell me you are going to charge $400 for a site when it is a free template or a script you have that allows you to do it in 5 minutes. When I find out, that will be the end of any business in the future.

The entire purpose of that thread was to get an idea of what each task takes in time, which is correlated to money.


To me, a partnership would be all involved parties to take responsibility for certain tasks.

For example, logo and banners...I can knock these out in no time at all. I can charge 50bucks or more for each one. Or, I can include this service as my contribution.

Writing...well, I can certainly do this if need be.

Development - I can knock out a site in Joomla or Wordpress in very reasonable time.

This is where things need to become streamlined and simplified. If you write content, then write content. If I do art, then I do the logo or design. If someone else does the programming or tweaking of WP, then that is there assignment. See? Each person does their part. And those parts put together equal the sum total - a site. No one has to concentrate on being able to "do it all" or take bids for particular parts.

Now, monitizing. Lets say we want to use adsense. There is a plug in for adsense that allows three content ads and three link ads on wordpress. Each person involved would share equal chance in making a few bucks by submitting their Adsense Pub-ID. Banner rotation - I can not use Amazon. But I can use Google Affiliates and Chitika among others. You use CJ or Linkshare. Each banner rotation would have specific affiliate codes to link to your account.

There are ways of doing all of this as a reasonable cooperative effort. The point is, I don't want someone struggling to do a logo or banner if they are a programmer when I can do it in no time. In other words, don't stress over it. Its taken care of.