Most people think that making money online involves selling a product or service via a website. But there’s another way to make money 24/7 from anywhere in the world, even while you’re working your day job. It’s called “domaining,” and it’s a legitimate, highly effective internet-based investment strategy.
To understand how this money-making strategy works, let’s first define what a domain actually is.
A domain is the proper name for a web address. It doesn’t refer to the content; instead, it refers to the name. When you think of AlexMandossian.com, you may think of all of the blog posts I’ve shared over the years. But the domain itself is simply the name, AlexMandossian.com.
In their excellent free e-book, “Domaining 101,” the domain trading and monetization experts at Protrada make the important distinction that there is a key difference between domain names and URLs. Each page on your web site has a URL. http://www.alexmandossian.com/category/virtual-book-tours/ is a URL. So is http://www.alexmandossian.com/2007/02/. But the domain name remains the same – AlexMandossian.com.
So what does this have to do with making money online? In a nutshell, domaining is the practice of buying promising and popular domains, monetizing them, and then selling or “flipping” them for a profit, just as you would do when trading on the stock market.
Of course, just like when trading stock, not every domain will be profitable. Protrada identifies three reasons that domains become profitable:
- Something about the domain name itself is desirable. These are often short, generic terms, such as sex.com (which sold for $13 million), fund.com (which sold for just shy of $10 million), or toys.com (which sold for $5.1 million).
- You take the time to make the domain profitable. For example, you might develop a domain into a must-read blog or develop a web store that sells a variety of products.
- The domain capitalizes on a trend. Think about what’s happened in the past few years with tablets and mobile marketing. Domain names related to these trends may not have been valuable a few years ago, but they are now.
You can earn money by buying a domain and creating a website around it, just like what I teach you to do at the Ultimate Internet Boot Camp. Or you can buy the domain with the intent of re-selling it, just like real estate investors buy properties with the intent of re-selling them for a profit.
While some domains have sold for multiple millions of dollars, they are the exception. But if you do it correctly, it’s possible to make thousands or hundred of thousands of dollars from a properly managed domain portfolio. The key word is portfolio. Getting lucky with one or two big domain sales is rare; it’s far better and more predictable to approach domaining as a business model.
So how big of an industry is this really? Protrada notes that there are 48 million domains registered each year. A mind-boggling 36 million of them expire each year – and these are all domains that you can snatch up for your own domain portfolio.
I believe in the potential and value of domaining — so much, in fact, that I’m declaring July to be domaining month here on my blog. All of my posts will be on the art and science of domain trading a.k.a. “domaining.” Check back each Tuesday and Thursday for more information … and be sure to download your copy of Protrada’s “Domaining 101” e-book here.
Have you leveraged domaining as a business model? Please chime in and share about your experience!
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