Everybody can relate to making quick cash. But is “Domaining” the way to go?
All theories provided in this article are from my 3 years of domain selling and reselling and are completely based on my own experiences and some facts.
When you are in pursuit of making easy and fast money, buying and selling domains is the last thing you should think about doing. Sure there are domains that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars, but what are the odds of landing a domain like that? that is unless you got into the domain business in the early 90’s. Well, I will answer that question by saying that your chances of landing a good deal (for reselling purposes) or maybe even grabbing a very valuable domain has worst odds than winning the lottery. This doesn’t mean you should go and spend all your money on lottery in hopes of winning the jackpot. With all the bad odds I would still say that buying a mediocre domain is a smarter investment than buying a lottery ticket, however, don’t get your hopes up on selling that domain the next day or even the next year.
What you should know:
1 - Most domain buyers are resellers, and most of the people who buy from resellers are also resellers. This cycle keeps happening until a sufficient profit cannot be made from reselling any longer. However, what is really important in this aspect is that domains “age” just like websites causes more and better search results in major search engines such as Google or Yahoo which turns out to increase your domain value because it increases in traffic, page rank or even revenue. So basically domains are in a sense similar to real estate and can be resold for more at a future time because it always gains value.
2 - Domains do earn revenue. Internet being the single largest store on this planet has hundreds of millions of people everyday searching for something which eventually turns out to be one of your domains and they click on a sponsored result on your page earning you money. So based on this, like I said earlier, I would rather buy a domain name than a lottery ticket any day.
Example: a domain I bought a few months back was getting barely 20 unique visitors per month. Yesterday it very strangely gained a new link which brought the traffic up to 600 visitors per day and about $30 USD in revenue every day. Unfortunately, the domain lost that link as strangely as it gained it and now is back to its former traffic. What you should understand from this example is that this domain will eventually sell but now it made enough money for itself to cover for 5 years of re-registering.
So making easy money online by selling or reselling domains is a myth. It is like firing a gun up vertically blind folded and hitting a bird. In fact, this market is so saturated that it makes it one of the hardest to survive in, never mind making a huge sum of cash.
What else should you know?
Well, as I said before, domains, just like content rich websites do age. And they do gain traffic, page rank and revenue over time. This is especially true if you use content parking services such as Whypark. I do not use Whypark and I have heard some bad things and good things about it, however I am certain that it is better than regular parking. It is better because:
1- You get all the ad sense money without getting a cut such as 50% for what you earn on your own domain. Most parking service companies do cut at least 30% off your profit.
2- Your domain becomes content rich with <H1>, <H2> and <H3> tags and a good clean outlay.
3- Your domain gets more results in search engines because it becomes content rich.
So coming back to the point, you should only buy domains if you are investing. They will probably sell if they have any kind of quality, they just won’t sell quick.
What else – else should you know?
Using a service like Whypark is the easiest way to get your domains better ranked. And it certainly increases the chances of a sale in the future. However, if you really take the time and develop your domain names, they become way more valuable and they will get a million times more attention from buyers when it is time to sell.
I began to develop my sitting domain names a year ago and they certainly do get more attention because they earn revenue from selling links, ad sense and the content sold on the websites.
Good thing about developing domains is that you don’t have to spend a fortune doing it. Although simple knowledge in programming and designing is required, free ware systems such as Word Press makes it very easy for users to create blogs. And free plug ins for these kinds of systems enable you to add interest attracting parts to your website such as “Downloads” and “Tools.”
So, the decision is yours to make. I am a believer of developing domain names and sell them when ever I wish to rather than desperately waiting for a buyer to show up for an inactive domain.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:15 am
thanks mate….the whole domain buying business some how befuddled me….makes sense now….
maybe its time i start buying domain names myself and then i can maybe hope to make some moolah
the point bout lottery ticket vs domain name buying was quite a good analogy…
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:09 am
Thank you for your comment Anuj, I am very glad I could help. I was just trying to point out a fact that domain business is one of the hardest to survive in rather than what people think it is.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Nice write-up?
I have been having inconsitency with EPC with parked domains (even high qlty domains). .13 down to .03 EPC within a week.
Was/Am seriously considering WhyPark
Came across this:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Choo.....;id=191696
But if I am not mistaken it is written by the CEO of WhyPark Craig Rowe but with no disclosure of this fact. If true this is unethical and I would want not want to do biz with such a company.
Having a hard time finding independent user evaluations of WhyPark? Would really appreciate hearing both sides, especially given money upfront requirement. Semi can you relay your first or 2nd hand expriences or point me to links where those experiences can be read. thx - b
August 28th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Nice write-up! (not a question)
August 28th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Sure Brett,
I am not recalling where I read both sides (this was when I was doing research on whypark) but I can tell you exactly or at least as close as it can be reenacted. If you want the exact links you are going to do some research yourself on Google with keywords such as “Is Whypark worth it?” Usually going to domain forums such as Namepros.com, Dnscoop.com and other Domain discussion forums are the best ways to get neutral perspectives on these kinds of services.
So what have I heard?
1- I have heard that Whypark increased revenue by double or more the amount earned via regular parking. I have also heard stories that it only increased a slight bit, however it did pay for itself within a short period of time.
My opinion on this: I can agree with this 99.99% in my mind because of the fact that Whypark does give you better search engine results within time, it also helps your domains age with quality. So it would only make sense to me that your revenue would only increase. Furthermore, since there is no percentage taken off your revenue by a middle company, you would also earn more money hence making your revenue 30% to 50% more.
2- I have heard that whypark was a good investment. However, the person also replied back to me with saying, he will not buy Whypark again, and spend another $100 on 100 domains for the only fact that he was new to it and he really didn’t see a significant increase in revenue.
My opinion on this: I can’t judge this person for not supporting Whypark because he just recently started and I would think that it would take at least a few months before you would start seeing the effects of Whypark on your revenue increase since if would take time for search engines to index your pages and give you better keyword rankings.
3- I have heard from friends that it was a waste of money.However this came from people that were serious domain investors and knew keyword optimization very well. You have to realize that Whypark is made for people who are not well with keyword optimization as well as people who do not have time to develop an opportunity for the domain name to become a website.
My opinion on this: Whypark does indeed save you time, however, if you are a serious domain investor, you are most likely to choose a regular parking service and optimize your keywords yourself until you reach a summit point for that particular domain. This skill takes years to develop and I can only assume it would take more years to apply to your domains. In other words, you would always have to be on top of your (checking world wide statistics, where your traffic comes from, what keywords people use when they find you, etc…) domains like it is a full time job.
I am a serious domainer, however not as serious as some of the geniuses out there. I would pick Whypark for the overcoming positive opportunity it brings you (time saving.)
So if you are a person like me who domain on the side walk rather than the high way, I would suggest investing $100 and giving it a try, if you want to wait a few months I will let you know my personal experience with whypark as I will be purchasing it by next week.
Hope this helps,
Sincerely,
Semih Gorgulu.
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I have to agree with semih Gorgulu as I am a whypark user myself and I find it brings real income and pagerank (I checked through ALEXA) however it took almost 1 months just to get indexed and another 1 months to get all your pages indexed (I have about 200+ pages) but as soon as you get fully indexed your pages start to appear on the google’s , Yahoo’s , MSN’s SERPs although some pages will not always showed on 1st page.