How to make money online with Domain Names

Previously, I have written an article on how to earn cash and make money online. In that article, I have listed five different ways to make money online – and one of them is through domaining. In this article, I will thoroughly discuss how can we earn cash and make money online through domain names. Domain names are what we known as the names that we type on the address or URL bar of an internet browser to access a certain website. For this site, the domain name is www.BusinessAccent.com. This is the name that you shall remember to instantly access in an internet browser a site that full of business and money making articles.

So are you now eager to know how can you earn cash with this internet names? Domain names, particularly dot com, net and dot org, cost only about 10US dollars in a year (check out the registrar Namecheap). In twelve months you can have an ample time to make any domain worth ten times or a thousand times by methodically and patiently developing it. Or you can just snap great domain names, and without developing them, resell them at prices higher than you have bought them. As an experienced domainer, I only invest in dot coms, since these are the most valuable and easy to sell domain extensions out there. I would not be discussing here on how to earn millions of dollars by selling domains which are worth of millions (like business.com, gays.com, sex.com). Of course they have been purchased and registered a couple of years ago when good one-word domain names are still available. Now, even good two-word dot com domain names are already difficult to find. Moreover, there are already no four-character dot com domains that are available for registration. But don’t worry because you can still make money online with these domain names by following these steps:

Brainstorming for a name that sells.

A name that sells should possess the following characteristics:

1. Must be short (one word to two words is acceptable)

2. Must be easy to remember (practically speaking)

3. Must be understandable (so as to be loved by the people)

4. Must be a dot com (this is the highest and the most valuable domain extension)

5. Must be clean (be sure that the domain name have not been used before for a porn site or have not been blacklisted before)

6. Must be rich in search engine results (try determining the domain’s value and number of searches in Estibot.com)

7. Must be generic and not trademarked (be careful of trademarks, they might snatch the ownership of your domain names)

8. Must be a name of your interest (so that if you can’t sell it, you can enthusiastically develop it into a website and write some contents of your interest)

9. Must be available (you can search at the site of domain registrars if they are still available)

Take note that the above list is for searching great names that are available. If you are a reseller, then you can first examine a list of domains which are for sale by sellers, and do the techniques above to evaluate the potential values of those domains.

Buying or registering your domain name

Now that you have figured out the domains for your domaining business, your next move is to register them if they are still available. My two best domain registrars are Namecheap and Godaddy. You can also search for domains which are for sale at a low price by domain owners. Domain owners usually sell domains that are already near expiring and domains that are already useless to them. Just remember, “ a garbage to other maybe a treasure for you”. You can find and buy low cost domains at Namepros.com. I recommend this forum since they are popular, reputable and most of all – free.

Pricing your domains for sale

Before you sell your domains, of course you need to first determine what should be your selling price on these domains. Your price will depend on the profit you want to earn (means selling price minus acquisition cost of the domain) and the span of time you are willing to wait until you can sell a domain. If you are not sure on the value of your domains, there are paid and free appraisals services out there. But unless you own a premium domain name, paying for appraisal may not worth it. I suggest you can go to Namepros forum. There you can meet fellow domainers who can assess a near value of your domain name. You can also try Estibot.com, a free domain appraisal engine site. The valuation in that site, may not give you the accurate value of your domain, but may give you a clear idea on how to price your domain by reading some important statistics like, number of searches, alexa rank, pagerank, visitors per month, etcetera. Ultimately, it is still you who will price your domain. Just be sure to price them reasonably, so as not to drive away buyers for making your selling price awfully high.

Selling your names

Now that you already holding good domain names, your next move is to resell them or develop them. In this article we will discuss domain selling. You can sell them to two kinds of buyers – the resellers and the end-users. If you want to earn money right away, there are domain resellers who will buy your domains quickly. Namepros is a forum where you can list, auction and sell your domains instantly at no charge. However selling domains to resellers are less profitable, since resellers are also sellers, who will pay your domains at the lowest possible price so they can still make a profit once they sell your domains to other buyers in the future. In contrast, end-users buyers will be willing to pay for your domains as much as high as they can pay you. But finding end-user buyers are not easy as finding domain resellers. However, finding an end-user buyer is worth to invest effort and time, since this means substantially a higher profit. You can also park you domains at Sedo.com while waiting for buyers to come. By parking at this site, you can earn through pay-per-click while waiting for your precious domains to be bought. Below are some tips to find end-user buyers that will pay for your domains for more.

1. Search for the owners of the other extensions of your domain. If you own the dot com which is more valuable, then you are selling a more valuable domain to the owners of the dot net and dot org of your domains.

2. If you own a generic domain name, you can sell it to big companies who are under that generic name. Example, if you own GreatBPO.com, you can sell it among top BPO companies in the world.

3. List it in top domain listing sites and wait until an end-user comes to buy your domain. For this, I recommend Sedo.com. To have a better chances of getting attention at the site, you can parked it and gain traffic statistics to let domain searchers know that your domain has a value for receiving traffic.

If you have other tips on how to make money online with domain names, please feel free to comment and add you thoughts here. Anyway there are still more articles that I will published as my domaining experience grow.