Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Ever typed in a domain name cold turkey wondering where it will lead to? I have and supposedly thousands upon thousands of people do it everyday. When you’ve type in one of these common everyday used words you have probably ended up at some site resembling a normal search results page like that from Google or Yahoo. What you might not know is that all the links on those pages are paid advertisers going through a central advertising agency. The type of traffic these websites make money from is mainly type-in traffic like I just explained.

Like real estate domain state is all about location. A good type-in domain name can be like having a pizza joint on the main road through a college campus. That company could make the worst pizza around but they still manage to make some money by offering the service at the right location. Words like candy and cellphones can have huge amounts of traffic and be listed on page 3000 of Google. Having a huge network of links is also a bit like having a good location. Getting your links on high traffic sites can be difficult but if you do, just driving traffic to your site can be enough to make a few dollars a day on those that click through your ads. These ads are usually provided by hosting services like Sedo.com or Google’s DomainPark. They get all they advertisers, set up your page, and all you do is forward the domain to them. End of Month, Receive Check.

The more difficult way to increase the value of your domain name but having the most potential to earn income is to build a content rich site. Once you have people visiting through search engines you can add some ads here and there or use affiliate linking to generate click-through income. This last group would be more like your sky rise apartments, hotels, health clubs, or malls. The more revenue you can generate from providing one of these services the more the property is worth.

Ultimately you can keep your domain names and or content rich sites to earn a passive income stream. Or you can get in the market of buying and selling domain state just like a real estate developer would buy and sell properties. This is just what a growing number of people are doing. There are some out there who have domain portfolios which include over 300,000 domains names, with countless others having several thousand. (If you can’t find what you’re looking for at Netfirms or GoDaddy chances are one of these people has what you’re looking for. Sure they’ll part with it. For a price.) In an article published in Business 2.0 about domainers and specifically one domainer with a portfolio of 101 names. One of these was cellphones.com. A simple site parked not fancy graphics or content, just ads. It generated at the time $1300 a day average. His portfolio was purchased for $3.6 million. Yes, 3.6 million dollars. If the site keeps up, which undoubtedly it will, the purchasing company will be able to break even on just that site along in 8 years. Try that on 3.6 million dollar home, hotel, or mall property.

I currently own 15 domain names and am trying to grow my portfolio weekly. I am also developing some of the sites, this one included, while keeping track of any type in traffic should I plan to sell off the domains later. Most I will try and develop with content or services as I see this to be the most profitable long term passive income stream. I can reinvest whatever I make in other ventures as they arise. I will keep you posted as to my progress and any publishing of the sites I may do. One I will have up by the end of the month.

There are still many domain names out there and many more to come. Take for instance avian flu. Not even on the map before this year. Whoever snatched that domain name up is probably making a pretty penny as you read this article. As new words are developed so will follow type-in traffic. Don’t forget the developing of content rich or service providing sites that will make a name for themselves and become standard everyday lingo. Look at how well blogs such as Gizmodo and Engadget are doing.

Who knew what a google was before Google came along?

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