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Buying a Domain
The process of registering a new domain is relatively standardized, with a registrar (GoDaddy.com, eNom.com, etc.) acting as your intermediary to the central registry. By opening accounts with the most common registrars, you’ll be prepared to buy and sell domains from other domainers, allowing for an easy and painless change of ownership.
If you’re in this to make money, you have to have the foresight to select good domains and be able to turn them into a profit-center. With a little business sense, it is possible to take a small amount of capital and an understanding of the domain market and generate a substantial amount of money from your domain portfolio by putting your money to work for you.
By selecting domains with natural traffic or the likeliness for future growth, you can create a recurring fortune from your domains.
Now I'm just going to quickly brief you on a lot of the the domaining industry and how your education with me can help you make a living with domains and how I get into a lot more detail inside my book.
Types of Traffic
Domains may have link-pop — or “link popularity”— traffic, leftover from a site that once existed at that address, or type-in traffic, the result of curious visitors typing a domain into their browser to see where it goes.
Typo Domains
Typos, considered the “dark side” of domaining, can make a person a lot of money, but also put you at risk for lawsuits. Typo traffic runs a fine line between generic words, potential trademarks, and blatant TM infringement.
Traffic Monetization and Domain Tasting
Parking companies make their money from the traffic redirected from your domains, and in turn pay you a portion of the ad revenue. An entire market has evolved around “traffic tasting” or “domain tasting,” allowing a registrant to test a domain for traffic for a few days, and if they are not satisfied, get rid of it and receive a refund.
Development: Monetization Beyond Parking
While parking is easy, there is often much more money to be made from development of the domain name into a full blown site with real content a direct revenue channel from your visitors or advertising network.
The Domain Name Aftermarket
With a little foresight and a lot of patience, an $8.00 domain can multiply into a potential sale worth hundreds or thousands to the right buyer. While it will not make you a recurring income, getting in on the domain name aftermarket and selling a currently-registered domain to others is a great way to make some money.
Finding a Good Parking Company
Parking companies vary in intuitiveness, payouts, and regional focus. By gaining an understanding of the pros and cons of the major parking companies, you can get a head start and find the right fit for your domains.
The Differences in Parking Companies: Making More Money with the Same Domain
Optimizing your keywords to maximize revenue is an often overlooked but very important part of being a successful domainer. By relying on a few essential resources, there have only been a few times where I was not able to get the revenue above what it was making previously. You will also discover that certain domains will perform better at certain parking companies, so spending a little up-front experimenting to find the biggest payout can result in making you extra money consistently.
Best Practices when Buying and Selling
In the domain marketplace, there are usually far fewer buyers than there are sellers. As a buyer, this gives you the upper hand, meaning you have plenty of room for negotiation. I’ll explain my tactics for knowing when to buy, what to watch out for, names to avoid, as well as the best avenues for selling domains.
Being a Savvy Buyer
None of us like to blow money for no good reason. A savvy buyer throws out the seller’s opinion as to a domain’s value and has his own set of criteria to gauge a good name. Most of the names you will see for sale are junk, while a tiny percent will be good names at a reasonable or high cost. A successful domainer can zero in on the one percent or less of good names listed at a bargain price.
Selling Domains and Interesting Ways to Do it
I don't do much selling. My goal is to get a nice stream of recurring revenue going to pay for the registration renewals for my current revenue producing names, and then use the remainder to add additional quality names to my portfolio, essentially creating passive income. However, when it comes time to sell, there are a few important things to keep in mind. To give you an advantage over other sellers, I’ll highlight a few lesser known techniques to market domains.
Appraisals
Domain appraisals can never truly capture the full potential of a domain’s value, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Smart domainers generally avoid paid appraisals, knowing that they can be way off, both high and low. Don’t let a lowball appraisal discourage you; someone may turn around the next day and offer you a nice return on that domain. At the end of the day, a domain’s worth is purely as much as your buyers are willing to pay for it.
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