Domaining for Short Profit - $500 per month

[Todd Walker]

I have received a lot of good comments on this small article/post I made, and I believed it was mentioned in the old forum, so I'm going to re-post here for new members and the new archives.

Domaining for Short Profit- $500 per Month
by Todd Walker


In my years of making money online, I have learned that you don't want to put all your work into one revenue streams, in fact the key is to make money using multiple revenue streams. One revenue stream that I use is Domaining, it is not making me rich, however, it does pay for my monthly internet expenses such as hosting and memberships I am a part of. Using domain names correctly, I make an average profit of $500 every month. This article describes how I go about doing that.


The Study

As the impatient entrepreneur that I am, I wanted to create a revenue stream that I can invest into and profit easily every month. In my research I found that buying and selling domain names can bring a nice hefty profit. However, most research I looked into described domaining as a long term investment. For example, buying a 5 letter domain name for $200 or so, and holding on to it, or building a site on it, and then reselling it for $1,000+.

In my eyes, I don't have time to take a risk for a small $800 profit, I don't have time to research domain names and speculate the possible return after building a site, marketing, etc. So, I started to study how I could make a small profit off domain names. In my study, I researched how much domain names were selling for, I found that most keyword domain names, such as, fishingisfun.com would sell for $20+ with no traffic, no site, just the name.

So, I invested in a domain name database which tells me when domain names are going to expire, what names are already expired, and what names are being deleted from the register system.

The Test:

I would go into my domain database and think of any keyword that I liked, sometimes I did some research on Google Trends to find a new hot trendy domain name. For this example, we are just going to use (piano). I search the database for domain name that are under 10 characters, have no hyphens or dashes, just solid names.

This is what the turn out looked like. Keep in mind I just did this now, so these domain names that you are about to visually see are available for you to test this theory out. However, someone might pick them up before you do.



I would probably by, piantoyou.com, or infopiano.com it will cost me $6.95 through Godaddy using the Promo code "OHY3". This turns the $9.99 .com into a $6.95 name, with tax, to be about $7.15 I believe.

So, that is my initial investment, $7.15, now to make that $500 per month, I don't buy one domain name, but will do this for about 50 different keywords, buying around 50 different domain names. The goal is to sell each domain name for $15+, this will double my investment.

The Profit:

Now, you can't expect all the names to sell within that first month, however, you can expect at least 50% of them to sell. I begin packaging them off at places such as sitepoint, digitalpoint, ebay, sedo, godaddy, etc.

Starting the price at $15 for each name... In my first test actually buying 50 names, I sold 37 of them at an average price of $22. Which equaled to a $814 revenue.

$814 Revenue - $357 (50 names * $7.15) = $457 Profit

After my initial test I kept doing this for about three months, some months I would do really well, average sale price around $25 and selling all 50 names and make a nice $700 profit, however most of the time I make just around $400-$500 when I do it.

The ones that didn't sell I would put a site on, one article, and submit that article, and then it sold.

That is domaining for short profit.


W

[VegasGreg]

Great system! Thank you for sharing.
Where do you gather your list of domain names from?
Is it a free source or how much is it?

[Brad Spencer]

Todd-

Great post! You are a brilliant entrepreneur. How is your list going?

Cheers,

Brad Spencer

[KarlWarren]

Todd,

do you have a good source for DN databases?

Kindest regards,
Karl.

[Andrew Dillon]

Great post and a great way to make money with just a few short hours a week spent on the project.

[Todd Walker]

Hey,

Well, now we currently put together our own databases, however, when I started this system I went with Expired Domains - Daily Expired Domains a really easy to implement system..

The free version is kind of crappy, but the paid version is spot on...

[KarlWarren]

Originally Posted by Todd Walker

Hey,

Well, now we currently put together our own databases, however, when I started this system I went with Expired Domains - Daily Expired Domains a really easy to implement system..

The free version is kind of crappy, but the paid version is spot on...

Thank you Todd - this is most helpful.

Kindest regards,
Karl.

[cbean]

What about the work involved in pushing the domain to the buyer etc...
have you automated this process cause doing this for 50 names seems like a lot of work
for $15 bucks, especially if the registrars are different.

[Todd Walker]

Hey,

Well, most of the time the packages would sell to the same buyer like 10 names or so, so then the push would be easier, however, yes sometimes this is annoying, I pay a VA $2.00 per domain to do this for me... if you want his information send me a PM.

He has been great to work with, found him on Elance when I posted for Administrative help.

[emini_guy]

How long have you been doing this? And are the profits steady?

Thanks.

[Todd Walker]

Hey,

Average profits about $400-$500...

About 5-6 months.

I have always bought domain names, but buying a lot recently the past 5-6 months for the main purpose of selling for short profit.

[Pat Lovell]

There's a great website that is free to join where you can manage your domains and it has a few really cool free tools inside. One is a really nice tool that 'spins' domains by keyword.

DNZoom By Bido | Domain name auctions and domain portfolio management (it's still in beta)

Pat

[Todd Walker]

Hey Pat,

Nice, I was literally looking at them this morning... seems pretty cool, and when i have time, I'm definitely going to look into that more.

[Bishop81]

The ones that didn't sell I would put a site on, one article, and submit that article, and then it sold.

What do you mean by this?

[Todd Walker]

Hey,

I would use wordpress.org as a backend, place the Michael Fortin Copy Theme on the site, then change the header to match the same theme that the site is on...

Write a 500 word article, and submit that article to Ezinearticles.com and other article directories, and then the site would sell for about $30 with the domain name.

It was a way to get rid of the domain names that didn't sell yet

[goralka26]

Wow, thanks for sharing this useful information with all of us. Very informative, and I am definitely going to try it out. Thanks

[Texas_Guns]

This method works. I've used this method, but put a different
spin on it that I don't see others doing, and have made as much
as $5,000 profit.

[nico52]

Todd,
Which sites did you get the best response and prices for your domains? I recently looked into this and picked up some domains I thought would be good to flip. They are brand new and don't have content or traffic. Would it be worth my time to get some traffic and back links for them? If anyone is interested:

www.dearclassmate.com
www.membersonlysale.com
www.stayconnectedwith.us
www.stayconnectedwith.me
www.stayconnectedwith.com

I don't know if any of these will sell so we will see what happens.

Adam

[Brian Tayler]

Awesome post Todd.

Just for fun I purchase the two domains you said you'd probably purchase. I'll try selling them on the various sites and see what happens.

Thanks,
Brian

[kfount]

Originally Posted by Todd Walker

I have received a lot of good comments on this small article/post I made, and I believed it was mentioned in the old forum, so I'm going to re-post here for new members and the new archives.

Domaining for Short Profit- $500 per Month
by Todd Walker


In my years of making money online, I have learned that you don't want to put all your work into one revenue streams, in fact the key is to make money using multiple revenue streams. One revenue stream that I use is Domaining, it is not making me rich, however, it does pay for my monthly internet expenses such as hosting and memberships I am a part of. Using domain names correctly, I make an average profit of $500 every month. This article describes how I go about doing that.


The Study

As the impatient entrepreneur that I am, I wanted to create a revenue stream that I can invest into and profit easily every month. In my research I found that buying and selling domain names can bring a nice hefty profit. However, most research I looked into described domaining as a long term investment. For example, buying a 5 letter domain name for $200 or so, and holding on to it, or building a site on it, and then reselling it for $1,000+.

In my eyes, I don't have time to take a risk for a small $800 profit, I don't have time to research domain names and speculate the possible return after building a site, marketing, etc. So, I started to study how I could make a small profit off domain names. In my study, I researched how much domain names were selling for, I found that most keyword domain names, such as, fishingisfun.com would sell for $20+ with no traffic, no site, just the name.

So, I invested in a domain name database which tells me when domain names are going to expire, what names are already expired, and what names are being deleted from the register system.

The Test:

I would go into my domain database and think of any keyword that I liked, sometimes I did some research on Google Trends to find a new hot trendy domain name. For this example, we are just going to use (piano). I search the database for domain name that are under 10 characters, have no hyphens or dashes, just solid names.

This is what the turn out looked like. Keep in mind I just did this now, so these domain names that you are about to visually see are available for you to test this theory out. However, someone might pick them up before you do.



I would probably by, piantoyou.com, or infopiano.com it will cost me $6.95 through Godaddy using the Promo code "OHY3". This turns the $9.99 .com into a $6.95 name, with tax, to be about $7.15 I believe.

So, that is my initial investment, $7.15, now to make that $500 per month, I don't buy one domain name, but will do this for about 50 different keywords, buying around 50 different domain names. The goal is to sell each domain name for $15+, this will double my investment.

The Profit:

Now, you can't expect all the names to sell within that first month, however, you can expect at least 50% of them to sell. I begin packaging them off at places such as sitepoint, digitalpoint, ebay, sedo, godaddy, etc.

Starting the price at $15 for each name... In my first test actually buying 50 names, I sold 37 of them at an average price of $22. Which equaled to a $814 revenue.

$814 Revenue - $357 (50 names * $7.15) = $457 Profit

After my initial test I kept doing this for about three months, some months I would do really well, average sale price around $25 and selling all 50 names and make a nice $700 profit, however most of the time I make just around $400-$500 when I do it.

The ones that didn't sell I would put a site on, one article, and submit that article, and then it sold.

That is domaining for short profit.


W

How do you transfer domains to the buyer's web hosting account? That's the one thing that's really kept me from considering this and website flipping... (sorry if it sounds stupid and ignorant. )

[Todd Walker]

The Transfer process is fairly simple...

Just search google between the two registrants that you are transferring with, I use GoDaddy so the transfer there is a click of a button really...

[Pat Lovell]

Originally Posted by Todd Walker

Hey Pat,

Nice, I was literally looking at them this morning... seems pretty cool, and when i have time, I'm definitely going to look into that more.

It is good if you 'park' domains, that's one way to get more out of selling a domain too. Park it at one of the bigger domain parking services. Make some blog posts and get some backlinks to the domain(s) and let them sit for a few months.

This will give the site(s) some revenue, it may only be $1.00 a day but... that will definitely increase the value of the domain. Then Todd's formula becomes $1000+ per month or more.

Another good site for buying and selling domains is - DNForum - Domain Sales, Domain Forum, Domain Appraisals, Domain Registrars