Domaining For Fun And Profit?

By Raj DashAdvertising

Last month, I talked about buying websites for profit and SEO ranking. Of course, you could overdo it and end up with too many blogs. Well, what about investing in domains. I’m talking about domains with no websites attached.

Aviva Directory is a general purpose site with some interesting content. One article, how to get started as a domainer, gives some suggestions on how you can get into domaining, what tools to use, how to pay for it all, and how to make money at it.

The primary difference between blogging and domaining is that the latter does not require as much investment in time, and can be automated to a degree. Domaining can earn you a lot of money, if you do the necessary domain name research, and there are a number of strategies for doing so. Some strategies are getting a bit dated, replaced with newer methods. A few methods:

  1. Free parking, which brings in contextual ad revenue, split with the parking host. Under this strategy you might only make a few cents per day, but if you have hundreds of domains, you could earn a few hundred dollars or more per month.
  2. Automated bulk buying, which amounts to buying hundreds of “interesting” domain names and then selling the lot for a small profit per domain.
  3. Flipping, which is usually done with domains that have been around for a while. You buy it on speculation, thinking that in the near future, it’ll command more than you paid for it.
  4. Traffic gathering. If you have a weblog or site that covers a general topic, you would have a number of domains whose names would have keywords relating to your site’s topic. Each domain would redirect to the main site. This way, you probably have to rely on type-in traffic.

I’ve only very recently started into domaining and it’s yet to make me a cent – but only because I really haven’t put in the time. If you’re interested, the potential profit can be more than the average blogger might make. Check out the Aviva Directory article for a list of tools, tips and resources. If you’ve been domaining, do you have any tips you can add?

5 thoughts on “Domaining For Fun And Profit?”

  1. Domaineering is the web-based marketing business of acquiring and monetizing Internet domain names for their use primarily as an advertising medium rather than as intellectual property investments for resale as in domaining. In essence, the domain names function as virtual Internet billboards with generic domain names being highly valued for their revenue generating potential derived from attracting Internet traffic hits. As with traditional advertising, domaineering is part art and part science. Often to be the most effective as advertising tools, the domain names and their corresponding landing pages must be engineered or optimized to produce maximum revenue which may require considerable skill and good knowledge of search engine optimization ( SEO ) practices, marketing psychology and an understanding of the target market audience. Domaineering generally utilizes a firm offering domain parking services to provide the sponsored “feed” of a word or phrase searched for thus creating a mini-directory populated largely by advertisers paying to promote their products and services under a relevant generic keyword domain. Occasionally content is added to develop a functional mini-website. Domaineers and some of those who advertise online using keywords believe domaineering provides a useful, legal and legitimate Internet marketing service while opponents of domaineering decry the practice as increasing the ubiquitous commercialization of the world wide web. Domaineering is practiced by both large companies who may have registered hundreds or even thousands of domains to individual entrepreneurial minded domaineers who may only own one or a few.

  3. We have approximately 800+ domain names in our portfolio. The majority are parked at various parking companies. Some parking companies have better templates to represent the different subject matter. A small number of them are developed websites for a variety of products and services. If you would like to read about our experiences on domain investing and internet marketing, visit our blog at http://tldnames.blogspot.com/. Leave us some feedback by posting a comment. If you would like to have a link to your site or blog added to our list, just let us know and if the subject matter fits you will be added. We would also appreciate a link to our blog being added to your blog or website. If you feel your readers would be interested in our information.

    All the Best,

    Brad Christopher

  4. Thanks, Brett, for your details. It’s nice to hear from someone that has tried. Now, I’m not sure but I got the impression that you’re still hopeful for the possibility of eventually profiting.

    Don’t forget about the Performancing Marketplace, if you are interested in buying and/or selling domains and websites.

  5. Hi Raj,

    I have experimented with both free parking and traffic gathering. Its been my experience that on the parking side of the house, a person is only going to earn a few hundred dollars per month if they have either a couple thousand sites, or if they have sites that are receiving a large volume of traffic and they decide to park it. (Example you buy a domain that has expired or from a company that had a good deal of traffic or a large number of backlinks.)

    I’ve worked with several of the main parking services and despite their promises to develop and promote parked domains, I have not seen their actions in the results.

    I have utilize traffic gathering techniques for myself and for my customers with greater success. I typically look at this as a strategic move, like populating a larger portion of the board in ‘Risk.’ My personal experience is that it has not brought me so much traffic that it justifies the expense, however it did take the property out of the competitive equation and in the case of mis-spelled domains eliminated the potential for someone to capitalize on my hard work or my clients investments.

    Now if anyone wants to make me an offer on superbbowl.com or fdord.com, drop me an email offline. 😉 (I’ve dabbled in mis-spelled domain names too, but it seems like a waste of time for the most part)

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