Earning from Domain Names

There are a number of ways to make money from domain names, one of the key methods is purchasing domain names that can become valuable to certain businesses or brand names.  For want of a better word a form of investment. 

If you have purchased a domain name like www.google.com at the very beginning of the search engines life how much would it be worth now?  At this stage of the dot com scene its not as easy as before, but none the less there are still lots of potential way to make money!

There are many gTLDs and ccTLDs still available.  What is a gTLD or a ccTLD you ask?  Domain names are a combination of words and a dot, the last name after the dot is called the top-level-domain or TLD.  A clear example of this is www.sample.com, the .com is the TLD.   These are divided into two groups,  ccTLD which are country dependent, ie, www.sample.co.uk , the ccTLD is uk for the United Kingdom or jp for Japan.  The second group is gTLD, the ‘g’ meaning generic, ie www.sample.com.

It is always the case the gTLD’s are a string of more than two letters and that ccTLD’s are just two.  There are approximately 240 of ccTLD’s and dependent on the two letter iso 3166-1 country codes although there are a few exceptions to the rule.

In 1985 seven gTLD’s created.

• ARPA -- (see below)
• COM -- commercial
• EDU -- educational establishments (primarily U.S.)
• GOV -- U.S. government
• NET -- network infrastructure
• ORG -- non-profit organizations
• MIL -- U.S. military

This progressed in 1988 to

• INT -- international organizations established by treatyAnd then in 2000
• AERO -- air transport industry
• BIZ -- businesses
• COOP -- cooperatives
• INFO -- information (unrestricted use) MUSEUM -- museums
• NAME -- individuals
• PRO – professions

So there are numerous possibilities to identify and sell specific domain names. 

There are forums and discussion groups who go through the possibilities of what would be a good domain so hunt through these forums for pearls of wisdom. 

Key forums include DNForums, SEDO and Afternics, domain names are discussed and you are able to see how they are bought and sold.

To research your potential domain purchases you can look into wordtracking software which will be able to direct you to the highest ranking keywords being processed on the internet.  Then once you have identified where the traffic is heading think about alternatives and combinations of these keywords and start searching for cheap domain names and then find a place to sell them.

Another alternative which will be mentioned further on is the option of setting up you own site to sell and research domain names. 

Please read the article concerning Domain flipping scams.