domaining
Domaining, the process of purchasing domain names with the hope of profiting from them used to be an extremely popular way to make money on the Internet. These days, it’s still done and people still make good money at it, but it’s much, much harder to do. Here’s what you need to know:
Trademark Domains
There was a time when people could register trademarks and then wait expectantly for the owner of the trademark to come by and offer to buy up the domain. These days, doing so is not really an option because the common way to handle this is instead to threaten the person with a lawsuit and to file a complaint with ICANN, the company that managed domains on the Internet.
In effect, this has crippled the world of domaining and made it a much less lucrative option for making money online. So much so that these days, even when someone wants to create a website which contains a trademark in order to draw traffic from people looking for that site, it’s not advised because there is a worry about being sued and losing the domain.
Common Words
Another popular thing that is less popular today is to grab common words that people may search for, such as “makemoney” or loseweight.” While combinations with these terms are still available (for example, makemoneysellingstuffonline.com was available at the time of this writing), they tend to be very unwieldy (like the example above) meaning that it’s hard to squat on a newly registered domain and make money with it.
How to Do It Today
Okay, for those who still want to try doing this, there are ways to make money from domaining, but most require more creativity and or spending more money at the outset.
Buy Old Domains
In essence, since currently available domains with good names are hard to find, many people are making money from domaining by buying older domains. The idea here is that you buy up an old domain name, either from the owner on a site like Flippa.com or from sites where the domain is about to be available because it’s expiring (Go Daddy has a list of such domains).
These domains can then be resold, again on Flippa and other sites of that nature for a profit. The catch is that you have to be creative about finding domains which may be valuable and you’ll have to shell out more money for a good domain name. It’s also often a good idea to set up a basic website on the domain you purchase with some PLR content in order to make the domain more appealing to potential buyers.
Trends
Another popular way to make money from domaining which still works, but is very competitive and risky is to buy domains based on trends. You could check out Google Trends and look for things people are searching for. Then, if you spot something brewing you grab a domain for it quick before anyone else has a chance to do so.
For example, a year or two ago, grabbing KateandWilliamWedding.com might have been a good idea. Again however, in order to make good money from a domain like this, it’s best to set up an actual site which can then be flipped on a site like Flippa.