How to make a lot of money part time buying and selling domain names: part one
This really is the business to get into in 2005. It’s a hot opportunity that savvy investors can make a killing on when they know how. And this article will guide you step by step through the process of making money.
Don’t be intimidated by the term “investors.” I’m not talking about big money here. As long as you have an extra £5 a week, you can make a lot of money with just half an hour of your time. Do you like the sound of that? Thought so.
There are a few ways to make money buying domain names and selling them for profit. And I mean PROFIT. You’ll see why people will scratch your door to buy from you in no time.
Let’s start with the basics.
All domain names are only registered for a limited period of time. Registrars can choose to use the name for a period of between 1 and 10 years. After this, the rights to these domain names expire and the user must renew the name again. If they don’t, it will be put on hold for a short period of time and then deleted. This means that it will be available to anyone who wants to buy it!
This is where you can get paid!
20,000 expired domain names are made available every day. Some of them are very attractive and well established names.
Example. Last year the owners of Race.com inadvertently did not renew their registration fee. It was grabbed (the term used to describe the purchase of an expired name) by a savvy ‘investor’ for a few pounds and sold for thousands upon thousands to the former owner.
The owner was willing to pay large sums to the investor because he had built up qualifying traffic over X number of years and did not want to lose all his previous clientele.
Now I admit that making a sale in the thousands is rare, but it certainly is possible.
Chances are you can buy a domain name and register it for £5-50 and then sell it for £150-1000. Do this with five domain names a week, and you’ll get a huge sum of money for just a couple of hours of work.
It’s not just companies that have carelessly dropped off their domain name that will buy it. It is also other companies that will buy the name to get traffic from the former owners. It is a legitimate way to increase your customer base.
And if the previous owner and a potential new owner get into a bidding war… well… the sky really is the limit.
So there are two main reasons why people will be willing to pay you a couple of hundred pounds for a domain name.
a) They let the domain name expire due to carelessness. That means they’ll pay you to get the name back and make sure they don’t lose existing traffic that they may have built up over years and years.
B) It is a business in the same category as the one that has allowed the name to lapse and therefore will pay you to secure a rival’s existing custom.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to starting this fantastically profitable part-time business.
There are several sources of expired domain name information and research tools, some free and some that require a fee.
http://www.wehavethem.com provides lists of names to be removed. http://www.DeletedDomains.com allows you to do free and more extensive searches for an annual fee of $99. You can search for names to be deleted and also allows you to bid on recently deleted names that have already been grabbed by other ‘investors’ ‘.
What you’re looking for is an expired domain name with traffic in the last month of over 1500. Make sure the site is a real consumer site. There is no point in buying a domain name if the old site did not sell any products.
If you see a site that had tens of thousands of visitors in the last month, GET IT. Most likely, the previous owners are eager to get their name back due to their obvious success.
Also, if you see a name with high qualified traffic that is about to expire and has a high volume of traffic, use an automated capture system like http://www.snapnames.com and http://www.pool. com. This will ensure that by the time they become available, you will have registered them. The cost is around $60, but only if they get the names for you. It is definitely worth it in my eyes.
Remember that you could easily sell the name for hundreds, maybe thousands.
In Part 2, we’ll look at how you sell names once you’ve purchased them. But in the meantime, here are some domain names that were for sale at the time of writing. Now, obviously, not all names sell for that much, but it’s a very real possibility that you could stumble upon a gem in your business.
my.com $750,000
lovelife.com $350,000
fights.net $16,000
diet.us$35,000
askdoctors.com $7,500
dietetic.info $6,000
make love.info $10,000
text messages.net $17,000
ejobmarket.com $1,800
fumaros.tv $5,000
teens.org $22,000
rare gifts.com $20,000
The profits in this business are like no other. Now it’s your turn to grab your share of the multi-billion dollar domain name buying and selling industry.
Until next time…
jonathan street