I’ve never been a big fan of parking domain names for money. From my experience the amount of direct traffic related to a valuable domain name would not convert well enough to make any sort of serious money unless you have thousands of domains. At a cost of about 10$ per domain for an annual registration, a site would have to make about 0.83 a month to break even (this does not include domain registration costs). At first glance you may think “That’s not much at all!” and you’d be right, but think of the scale you’d have to take it to. 500 domains would cost you $5,000 per year, and of course you’d have laggards and high-performers, but that’s a lot of ground to make up each month. You’re also operating in a highly competitive environment. There are people who have been in this game for years.
But not to worry, all is not lost, it’s still possible for domains to be a good source of passive income, but it’ll take a little more elbow grease. Let’s take a look at my own approach as well as the approach of others to make domain names a source of income for you.
- Develop a Niche Domain: To me the average unregistered domain is simply a blank canvas. Once you have it registered, you have free reign to do whatever you want with it, and this puts much of the domain’s earnings power in your hands. What I like to do is take an unexploited niche and build up a small site with some solid information and blended adsense. Search engines like content, your site visitors like content, and blended adsense means they’re likely to go there for additional content. My most successful sites have always been developed niche sites built from the ground up. Once you have a good template to work, you can put up a great looking site with good content in a very short amount of time.
- Have Someone Build it For You: If you don’t have the time or inclination to develop a site yourself, one of my favorite blogs has a suggestion of his own: let someone else build it! There are services out there like Domain Embarking that will scrape content and place it on your domain for a fee. The tradeoff here is that it takes less time and effort on your end, but increases the cost of development per niche and has less money-making potential.
- Lease it: This is a great arrangement for any domain owner, if you can manage to finagle a deal. Most customers would prefer to just buy the domain outright rather than rent it for a monthly fee, but if the domain in question is valuable enough, they may be willing to work with you. Selfmademinds championed this domain income strategy.
As you can see, there’s a number of ways you can approach the value of a domain name. If you’re a newcomer, your best bet is to read, read, and read. The more knowledge you can absorb and implement, the better off you’ll be!
My name's Frank and I'm a life long seeker of passive income and dividends. I work in Financial Services and invite you to join me in my search for the holy grail of finance: passive income. My methods tend to be unorthodox but effective. Whether it's through investing or other means, I believe in creating many sources of income to give me the flexibility to live the life I want, when I want it.
