Monday, January 15, 2007

Getting Started with Domain Investing

“The domain name is 21st century real estate,” says Warren Adelman, president of GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest domain name registrar. “The economy is being increasingly driven by the Internet sector.”


The smart investors with big money are now jumping into this market. Major investors like Ross Perot and Howard Schultz (Chairman of Starbucks Corp.) are investing millions of dollars in the domain market. You know these guys are not going to put millions of dollars into some fly-by-night idea.


How can the average investor get started in domain investing even when it looks like all of the “good names” have already been bought up?


The secret to investing is not buying up domain names hoping that someone is going to type your name into their browser winder. Instead, to make money with domain names, the secret is buying expired domain names.

Every day around 30,000 domains expire for one reason or another. A lot of the time the webmaster just doesn’t have the time anymore to update his website or he has just lost interest. Sometimes the webmaster has just forgotten to renew. Many of these webmasters have put considerable work into developing their websites and domains. They have created a large link structure with thousands of links, they have achieved Google page rank, they have listed with Yahoo or DMOZ, or they have invested into other forms of off-line marketing. The average investor is able to leverage the work already put into a domain to create large profits.


One place to find expiring domain names is etrafficwiz.com . Here you can find traffic indicating information about the domain (links, Alexa rank, etc) and register to purchase the domains in a private auction before they go into the public market. The program is easy enough that the average person is able to evaluate and purchase these expiring domains and turn them into cash!


There are several ways to make money from an expired domain that gets traffic:


1. Redirecting targeted, profitable traffic to other sites you own. If a domain name has traffic already, you can redirect it to one of the site you already own. Buying domains relevant to the topic and keywords of a previously made site is a quick, easy, and cheap way to increase your website traffic.


2. Use parking services for passive income. If you don’t have an existing website you can still make money from domain investing. The parking services host your site for free and display ads on your site. When a visitor clicks on an ad, you get paid. It is that simple. One top park house is Sedo.com.


3. Resell domains for fat profits. Just like in real estate you can buy a domain name under market value in a private auction and then sell for a profit in the open market. Find a great name like FunnyAds.com and you could be cashing in on a $100,000 paycheck.


4. Build a site to take advantage of the current traffic. Imagine how much easier it is to launch a website when you are already receiving traffic from an existing link structure or a domain that is already listed with the major search engines. You would be able to save a ton of time, money, and energy.


5. Redirect traffic to affiliate programs. Affiliate programs will supply you with links to existing websites. When someone makes a purchase you get paid. Just redirect the traffic the website is already receiving to an affiliate program and watch the cash roll in. Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com/) is one of the top affiliate programs and is free to join.


6. Hold onto domains while they increase in value. You can simply just hold onto your domain while you watch prices, demand and value rise and supply go down. Don’t forget to park your domain in a free park house to make money while you hold your domain


The fact is, domain names are becoming a limited resource. Domains are like virtual real estate, as the supply goes down, the value of the real estate goes up. Smart investors are buying domains that have great potential and are making a nice paycheck while waiting for the value to increase. Check out etrafficwiz.com for more information of how you can invest smartly in domain real estate.

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