In an attempt to increase my
revenue from domain parking, I've been trying to move away from Sedo so
that I can control my own content and advertisement while at the same
time keeping my labor overhead low (by overhead, I mean MY time :). I'm currently trying two different
options and I'm weighing them by different criteria. Oddly enough,
revenue isn't a major focus of the comparison. I'm assuming that because I'm able
to use Google AdSense on both platforms, I'll have a comparable revenue per visitor (rpv) on both.
The two different platforms
I'm currently experimenting with are ExpressionEngine and Typepad.
Here's a breakdown of the criteria I use to compare.
- Operation Cost (per domain)
- ExpressionEngine
- For multi-site management, there's a $25 fee per domain that you add to the system.
- The one time licensing fee for this CMS is $99.95 personal version and $249.95 for the professional. This includes one year of free updates and applies only to major release version you purchased. Each additional year of updates is $20.
- TypePad
- With only one low monthly fee of around $15 I can have an unlimited number of blogs/domains
- Ease of setup (per domain)
- ExpressionEngine
- Once
your preferences are set, adding new sites/domains in the system is easy.
However, you need to set up a virtual host for each new domain and copy over
the index.php, .htacces, and a 'path.php' file that contains all
necessary global variables. (all sites have to be hosted on the same
server for the multi-site management feature to work)
- Typepad
- You need to add a
new blog, which is really easy. Then you need to map your domain to
your primary typepad domain name (myaccount.typepad.com). This is a
very easy process.
- Design/Template availability & ease of implementation
- ExpressionEngine
- There
aren't very many 'out of the box' templates available for EE, but once
you create one generic template it can be copied over and used with any
other domain. I created one template but it's very ugly and
customizing it per domain is a little bit of a pain, but isn't that
hard. For some full sites that I host on EE, I've taken WordPress
templates and tweaked them to work. Overall, the templating
capabilities of EE are very powerful and flexible, but getting up and
running can sometimes take longer than I desire for just seeding a new website.
- Typepad
- The number of layout
and theme combinations on Typepad is really impressive. I can have a
near perfect look and feel for my site in about 2 minutes. I give the
design/templating feature in Typepad two thumbs up!
- Ease of content addition
- ExpressionEngine
- Once
you're set up, adding content to ExpressionEngine is super easy. It's
a little more flexible than typepad in that you can create separate
'weblogs' and assign them custom fields. I've used this to have a
main content blog and a seperate product or links directory blog. Even though they are named 'weblogs', it doesn't mean that they appear that way to your visitors. It's just data after all, and with EE's powerful templating system you can do whatever you want with it. The ability
to separate content like this, but have it all in the same db for
potential cross reference is something that I think is very valuable.
- Typepad
- Adding
content to Typepad is as simple as posting to any other blogging
software. The only 'content separation' you have is through assigning
categories to your post, but it works more like tagging than a
hierarchical category structure. You can however, add 'pages' to your
blog which appear as .html pages in your webroot. This is pretty good
SEO for content pieces that you want to appear as more permanent.
- SEO
- ExpressionEngine
- You
have a fair amount of control over how your URIs are structured. Since
your article file names are automatically suggested by breaking apart
the title, you can set a preference for using '_' or '-' as a word
separator. With content, you can adjust the WYSIWYG bold and italic
button html to have either <strong> or <b> or <em> or
<i>; whatever your preference may be. Overall, there are very
few limitations in EE that directly affect your ability to search
engine optimize your structure or content.
- Typepad
- For
normal posts, you're pretty much stuck with the way t\Typepad names and
organizes them. However, even if you have a theory on URI structure
that would discount Typepad's value, I've seen some really high
performing Typepad blogs that would make you second guess yourself.
- The two biggest SEO gripes I have about Typead are:
- The
images you upload have a path associated with your primary domain
(myaccount.typepad), so it's difficult dis-associate your sites if
you're using images.
- You map your domain to a Typepad IP, you
have to create a cname record to point to your primary domain. This
makes it practically impossible to dis-associate completely.
- Expandability
- ExpressionEngine
- There
are tons of really good modules for EE that allow you to grow your site
more if you ever decide to make that energy investment. Adding a
forum is super easy and the user base for one site can be the same for
all sites. This is the same for the Wiki module as well.
- Typepad
- If
I wanted to really build out a site that I started off on Typead, I'd
probably need to export (if possible) or scrape the content and rebuild
it in EE or whatever CMS I intended to use.
- However,
there are tons of cool widgets available for monetization and content
that are easy to plugin if I just want to increase the 'meat' of the
site.
Overall, I don't think I'll decide
completely on one or the other. I'm definitely sticking with
ExpressionEngine for my serious site development and parked domains
that I expect to eventually grow into full sites. The ease of use
with Typepad though is so high that I can't resist using it when I'm concerned about my available time. Both are very good alternatives to just parking your
site with a 3rd party. Especially once you get picked up by a search
engine and start to see the real value of your traffic and their clicks :)
