DaniWeb IT Discussion Community - Domain Names For Sale Business Primer

There are savvy business people all around the world who have discovered the inexpensive yet possibly very profitable business of collecting and reselling domain names.

As the developer of DomainNamesForSale-Lease.com I have learned a few things about this new business model which I shared with a prospect yesterday and I thought I would share this information with anyone looking to enter this market-place.

Think about what profitable enterprises you are involved in which you could promote through the domains you invest in, while you are waiting for the possible sale of your domains to occur.

What makes a domain name valuable?

A domain name which reflects a popular search term such as www.NevadaCorporationsForSale.com ...For Sale

or reflects a popular coined phrase - such as www.LegalAndBinding.com ...For Sale

Or a truly unique name such as www.RipOffTheIRS.com ...Also For Sale (although these names are not quite as valuable)

or reflects an existing business name such as www.WestGeorgiaNationalBank.com... (remember you can only do this with a trademarked name if you beat them to the punch and register the name before they trademark it - as the holder of this intellectual property may justifiably claim you are 'squatting' on their trademarked name and ICAAN may take your domain without compensation)...

or names which can easily be used for a site generating free machine name websites such as www.OwnersSellingCars.com which can easily turn into Alabama.OwnersSellingCars.com or Dubai.OwnersSellingCars.com.

What all of these names have in common is that they perfectly describe the market they are promoting while being excellent tools to use on the search engine as they actually match search terms used for their respective industries and because of this the name actually helps promote the website on the search engines.

A prospect gave me a couple names he was hoping to resell, they were like the following names TycoonLoans and MovingMoney. While these names appear to be worthy of investment and may seem to have great potential they do not quite make the grade in my book and can be easily replaced with domain names which are similar in nature and their only market is to individuals or organizations who have already invested in branding or marketing these names elsewhere.

The good news is, each name is only a $10 investment per year, and if you are able to use these names to serve a dual purpose until they expire or are sold you can’t lose.

The bad news is that ‘.com’ is losing its potency. An extension I would now look into is ‘.eu’ for the European Union, but which language… I believe English is still the primary business language of the world, but every European language spoken offers us a whole new market.

You do need to have a method at these websites which tells your visitors the name is for sale and for the visitor to easily send you a message that they are interested in purchasing your domain name.

At DomainsForSale-Lease.com I use the domains we have for sale to promote other ventures we are undertaking on the internet through carefully crafted links on websites which do not seem to have anything to do with the market of the “important�? ventures we are trying to promote on the search engines. (boring SEO stuff)

We now offer a reseller service and parked pages with ppc advertising at ByCrocky.com. Our internal client's site have links to our services but will not contain outside ads as we never wish to draw from the potency these sites offer our internal marketing efforts.

The client's contact form, prominently displayed throughout our websites automatically forward all inquiries to the client's attention and we do not capture e-mail addresses or any other information for any reason. (Who wants to harvest fake e-mail addresses?)

We have built a ‘domains for sale website’ at www.ByCrocky.com, and will further embellish our relationship with DomainNamesForSaleLease.com and DomainNamesForSale-Lease.com (maybe I should sell one of these), all of which will better promote the existing domains we have available for sale.

So, in closing, if you are interested in investing in domain names, build yourself a way to either monetize your operation through parked pages with advertising or build a greased chute operation to make all roads lead back to Rome... (or your existing online ventures).

We have also taken the time to build a model for the appraisal of domain names we have available for sale. Below is an example of one of these appraisals.

----Domain Value Assessment----
Assessment For: GOLDENCORAL.COM

Your domain name is potentially valuable to several different markets;

1. The restaurant chain "Golden Corral" must realize that they are missing millions of hits each year because of this popular misspelling of their name and may want to acquire the name to stop this leak.

2. There is an annual NASCAR race in Atlanta which goes by the name "Golden Coral" and thus if your prospect is interested in acquiring this name they may also be interested in other domains you hold:

3TheIntimidator.com
3TheIntimidator.info
NASCARSHistory.com

3. There is also a growing market for jewelry being produced with Golden Coral which makes the domain descriptive of their product and an excellent tool for improving their search engine performance.

Median Market Value: $8,500 - $10,000 USD
----End Assessment----

Please remember that I can not guarantee the sale of your domains at any price - but I will guarantee you can use your hobby to meet several of your online marketing objectives with a little imagination.

P.S. In September I sold Rent-A-Tent.com for $8,500.

LiveStrongAndProsper.com