Domain Name Strategies

A discussion about the different techniques you can use to make money with domain names.

There are some domain name strategies that webmasters sometimes spend time on when trying to make some money on the web. As an amateur webmaster I wouldn't waste time going around trying to take advantage of these opportunities. Spend your time learning about coding, online marketing, and thinking of ideas and looking for opportunities on the web. There are domain name strategies that make money but like anything else you have to be better than other people to be successful. If you are going to engage in these strategies, then you should devote yourself full-time to them. Otherwise, don't even bother.

Misspellings. Every day more than 20 million Internet users misspell the name of the .com or .net domain they want to visit. Some webmasters go around looking for available domain names that are misspellings of popular web sites - like walmatr.com - and either redirect those names to their own sites to get extra traffic or sign up at that site's affiliate program and redirect the traffic to their walmart.com affiliate link to try to make a little money.

Event-driven domains. Sometimes an event somewhere in the world makes a particular domain very valuable. The biggest example I can think of is when a Florida-based writer purchased a domain name BenedictXVI.com two weeks before the new pope was selected. He said he bought the domain as a game and then redirected the domain name to his blog. After the new Pope got chosen the domain was getting 100's of hits per minute. It's possible he may have checked out some online bookmakers to see who was the favorite to be Pope John Paul II's successor (Benedict was a 3-1 favorite). He did hedge his bets by also buying ClementXV.com, InnocentXIV.com, LeoXIV.com, PaulVII.com and PiusXII.com. These opportunities don't come around often and the chances of making a fortune off of of these events is low. After you buy the domain you still have to figure out how to make money from it and then convince people that it has value should you try to sell it. Another person who bought the domain name Benedict16.Com apparently waited too long to auction it. And had trouble finding a buyer. If a specific opportunity comes up where you think you may be able to snap up a domain which will become popular in the future for a particular reason then there is nothing wrong with grabbing a name for $8 just to see what happens but you shouldn't be spending your time actively scanning for these rare opportunities. Just look at these situations as bonuses if you are lucky enough to get one.

Domain name "investing". In the early days of the internet when there were 1-word ".com" domains available people bought pretty much any of them thinking that someone, somewhere would want this domain and pay good money for it. Those days are over. But there are still people think that their domains must be worth something because it has a valuable keyword in it.

Cyber-squatting. This is taking a domain name that is someone else's name. Engaging in this strategy isn't worth it. If it is a big company then they will take you to court.

Expired Domains. This is where people scan soon-expiring domains looking to buy a valuable one when it expires. Unless you are specializing in this technique there really isn't an advantage over other people. If you are buying expired names by using one of the popular web sites like Pool or Snapnames that means the rest of the world can do it too. As time goes on it is harder and harder to to be successful because there are people who have the technology to be able to snap up the expiring names quicker than the average Joe.

Quick flipping This is where you look for semi-attractive names that are available and buy them for $8 or so and try to turn around and sell them for $50to $100. This can be done but I would recomend you don't waste your time for 2 reasons. First, there is no residual income from this. It is not like owning a site that can grow it's profits over time. Secondly, the more time that passes the more the profits will dry up. It is not worth your time to pursue this strategy.

Domainers. Domainers buy up domain names that have natural type-in traffic and put up generic landing pages with ads and make money when people click-through to the ads so the domainer basically becomes a holding company of domains which passively generate cash flow.