Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Make Money Online by Buying and Selling Domain Names
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There are many ways you can make money online, one way which you may not have considered, but where big money is possible, is by buying and selling domain names.
The idea is simple, you buy a domain name e.g. ZitBusters.com, you list it for sale, at the industry auction sites such as Sedo or Afternic (or possibly even eBay) someone offers you a vast amount of money for it and you sell it. Well, that’s the idea, the reality is somewhat more prosaic.
To sell the domain names you buy, you will probably need to actively market them i.e. find the e-mail addresses of people that you think may be interested in your name and fire off an e-mail. If you’re lucky or the name you have is an obviously excellent name then you will get an answer saying something along the lines of “How much do you want for your name?”, which is when negotiations begin.
So what is an ‘excellent domain name’. Generally, they are dot coms (dot coms are worth around ten times as much as dot nets) and they are generic e.g. shoes.com, beer.com, business.com.
How much are generic dot coms worth? Well, the highest sale so far in 2008 is Fund.com which sold for the tidy sum of $9.9 million, Invest.com came in at number 5 and sold for $1.015 million, NewlyWeds.com on the other hand was number 53 and sold for $130,000. Sales are reported every week over at DNJournal.com where you can also see a list of the highest selling names of the year.
You may have seen the iReport channel on CNN. Where did they get the name iReport from? They bought it from self-styled ‘Domain King’ Rick Schwartz for $750,000. Rick Schwartz is one of the most successful and well-known of the domainers in the domain name industry. Other big names to look for are Kevin Ham, who has a portfolio of domain names worth around $300 million, Frank Schilling, Sahar, Rick Latona, Yun Ye who sold his portfolio of domain names for $164 million and many more. All these guys have interesting tales of how they got to be where they are by simply buying domain names, hanging on to them for a while then selling them on for a profit.
So what sort of names should you buy? As mentioned above, generic names are the best but of course most of the dot coms are already gone. So if you want a good generic name you may have to buy it off the person who already owns it. Alternatively you can wade through long lists of names that are dropping (i.e. not being renewed) at places like TDNam and Snapnames. Or of course you can try and discover a gem that no-one else has registered (very difficult as all dictionary word dot coms were registered long ago).
A word of warning, some registrars are unscrupulous and if they see you have looked for a name but not registered it, they will then ‘reserve’ it for you, by which they really mean block it and sell it to you for an inflated price. Do a search on network solution front running. Godaddy are the biggest for registering domains and they seem to be OK, but if you do find a good name that isn’t registered you would be well-advised to register it quickly as there are very few secrets on the Internet. The price for registering a dot com is around $10, but do a search for ‘discount codes’ and you will probably find coupons that will give you a 20% discount. If you use the code 199TEST with Godaddy you should be able to register a domain name for 99 cents, but it only works once. Bear in mind also that there is a 5 day ‘grace period’ and if you change your mind registrars will often cancel your domain name and refund the fee if you ask nicely.
More words of warning, steer clear of trademarked names i.e. stuff like Google, Microsoft, Armani etc... you will only cause yourself a lot of trouble.
While waiting for your names to sell you can either develop the name into a blog or a site or you can ‘park’ them . Parking them is a simple way of creating a page with some ads. on which may or may not bring in some money while you wait to sell your domain. You need to sign up with a ‘parking’ company. The easiest one to sign up with is Namedrive. In an interesting development Google has decided to set up its own parking service. This after previously criticizing parking companies as offering no value and being of no use etc.... Now that Google has set up its own parked pages it appears that parking domain names is cool. Go figure. (From what I hear though, most domainers are not recommending Google’s parked service due to the many complications involved.)
For more information about the whole domain name business you can visit forums like NamePros. To see what sort of prices domain names have been selling for check out DNSalePrice.
This is only an introduction to domain name trading but it gives the basic ideas. There are people who have made millions from domains, and in my opinion successful domainers make lots of money but it does take a lot of work, particularly if you are just starting out.
How to Make Money Online for Beginners
This past year I have been fortunate to rank a number of blogs on top of Google's search listings and the result has been a steady stream of income from Google Adsense, selling Advertising space and Lead Generation. This is passive income that is generated daily regardless of how much I post and is not dependent on social media or social marketing. My interest online is to make money with the least amount of effort required. My methods are widely used by Internet Marketers and almost completely unknown to Bloggers. In fact, the prevalence of social blogging has obfuscated what was once widely known - that search traffic is steady, it converts into sales or clicks and it can be grown almost exponentially by simply targeting more and more keywords.
The advent of social marketing has produced bloggers by the millions, each one chasing a dream of large readerships in hopes of generating buckets of income. Each one almost completely ignorant of search traffic or the benefits of high placement in the serp's. The irony is that social traffic is much harder to get on a consistent basis, consists mostly of other bloggers, doesn't convert into buyers and requires a huge time commitment. Worst of all it generates no income until you are able to achieve "authority" status in your niche and are pulling in thousands of visitors a day. Even then your revenue consists almost entirely of advertising fees generated by selling space to other bloggers trying to monetize your traffic. They find out soon enough that your traffic doesn't convert either - how many of you buy or click on the ads pasted on the A-List sites? The A-List is fortunate that there is no shortage of new advertisers willing to fork over large sums in order to replace former advertisers who learned that social traffic doesn't convert. In most cases the A-List is paid to promote sign-up programs - more social media networks for the most part. An endless circle...
The fact that there can only be a limited number of A-List sites or authorities in any one niche is lost to the masses who believe they have what it takes to reach the top. Everyone, it seems, believes they have the right stuff. I have seen a lot of bloggers rise quickly - develop a decent readership, some good PR and just as quickly lose interest in their blog in spite of thousands of RSS subscribers. Why? They don't make enough money to cover the time commitment required to keep the blog fresh in the readers mind.
The alternative to social blogging is of course SEO or Search Engine Optimization. In truth this can and should be applied even if you choose to chase social traffic. I don't chase social traffic at all but because of my high serp rankings I find that social bloggers find me anyway. I mention this simply to point out that those of you hoping to gain fame and recognition for your work can achieve it by dominating the top rankings in the serp's and save yourself the countless hours of work needed to make a name for yourself in the social arenas.
As 2008 draws to a close I have given a lot of thought to how Google will tweak its algorithm over the coming year. Without getting long winded it doesn't take a lot of imagination to assess Google's predicament; the search engine has to have a means by which to rank sites based on keyword relevancy - the easy part and it has to have a means for deciding which relevant site should rank at the top of the serp's - the hard part.
How would you do it?
Would you rank sites based on their RSS subscribers?
Would you rank sites based on their Page Rank?
Would you rank sites based on their social links and traffic?
Would you rank sites based on their Alexa Rank? Their Compete rank?
Would you rank sites based on the fame of the site?
If you would entertain any of these ideas then your ranking system would lead to a useless search engine. All these methods are easily gamed or have no relevancy for the vast majority of niches. How would sites related to "Oil Filters" be ranked if Google used RSS subscribers as a basis for ranking?
Google's predicament is that it has to have a system that works for all keywords and not just those that apply to social niches. Many a social A-Lister has preached that Google will use social media in its rankings - a belief that I find laughable. Google has been eliminating metrics that can be easily gamed - not adding them to the mix.
Ultimately the only system that works well but is not perfectly fair is to rank sites based on incoming links. Yes this can be gamed as well but for the vast majority of niches this is still the best measure of a site's authority.
Rather than find a new system Google has methodically tweaked its system to degrade or dismiss links of poor quality and give greater weight to links that are deemed high quality.
Almost all social links - Do-follow comments, Bookmarks, Digg, Stumbleupon etc are considered low quality and while they may be registered by G they will not gain you top ranking in a competitive niche. They will work fine in an un-competitive niche but even then a single link from a quality source will outrank all your low quality links.
Google's algorithm will reward you well if you follow my recommendations outlined below.
4 Steps to Google Dominance
Keyword Research
Forget Quality Content (No such thing to a machine) - use Relevant Content.
On Page Keyword Optimization
Develop 1 way Inbound Links to your site.
Target the most popular keywords in your niche, add relevant content, use your main keyword in your URL, Blog Title, Page and Post titles and then spend the rest of your time developing quality inbound links.
I have said this many times - quality inbound links are the single most important aspect for ranking well in Google.
The 5 Measurements of Inbound Links
The Quantity of inbound links.
- This is least important but effective for low competition keywords.
The Title keywords on the page linking to you.
The Anchor Text used in the link pointing to you.
- You will only rank for the terms others use in their links pointing at your site. This is crucial for gaining top ranking.
The Relevance of the content on the page linking to you.
- The site with the most keyword anchored links coming from relevant content posts/pages will outrank all others.
The Quality of the inbound link.
- The best link you can possibly get is a PR10 link using your main keyword in the anchor coming from within a post relevant to your keyword. The further from this optimum the less quality the link. A few of these quality links will easily have you outranking sites with 1000's of lesser quality links.
I have not talked about Domain Age or the popular SEO blathering regarding keyword density, blog platforms, site design, posting frequency or any of the other "tips" spouted at length by all the so-called experts online. The reason is simple - it is all window dressing in the greater scheme of things and ultimately unimportant when it comes to serp domination.
The simple truth is that I can rank any site on top of the serp's with the right backlinks and provided the site has legit content (but only because it may get a human review - I could do it with spam if I only had to dupe the machine). How much content or how well it is written is insignificant for ranking purposes.
If you just have to chase social media then do yourself a favor - as you get yourself known ask your friends and readers to use your keywords when they link to you. Do you know how many times I have heard a social blogger tell me that social media is great because it gets them PR and backlinks. When I check they have hundreds of links using their name in the anchor. Yup - they rank really well for a term no one searches for. What a waste and yet the links could be so beneficial. As for PR - just remember this - your own PR has no bearing on your ranking. It's the PR of the sites linking to you that effects your ranking and only if they use your keywords.
Making Money Online is not complicated. Rank on top of the serp's for as many keywords as you can. Add Adsense. Collect money. Rinse and repeat.
It really does work and I hope many of you will achieve the same success as I have over the coming year.
The advent of social marketing has produced bloggers by the millions, each one chasing a dream of large readerships in hopes of generating buckets of income. Each one almost completely ignorant of search traffic or the benefits of high placement in the serp's. The irony is that social traffic is much harder to get on a consistent basis, consists mostly of other bloggers, doesn't convert into buyers and requires a huge time commitment. Worst of all it generates no income until you are able to achieve "authority" status in your niche and are pulling in thousands of visitors a day. Even then your revenue consists almost entirely of advertising fees generated by selling space to other bloggers trying to monetize your traffic. They find out soon enough that your traffic doesn't convert either - how many of you buy or click on the ads pasted on the A-List sites? The A-List is fortunate that there is no shortage of new advertisers willing to fork over large sums in order to replace former advertisers who learned that social traffic doesn't convert. In most cases the A-List is paid to promote sign-up programs - more social media networks for the most part. An endless circle...
The fact that there can only be a limited number of A-List sites or authorities in any one niche is lost to the masses who believe they have what it takes to reach the top. Everyone, it seems, believes they have the right stuff. I have seen a lot of bloggers rise quickly - develop a decent readership, some good PR and just as quickly lose interest in their blog in spite of thousands of RSS subscribers. Why? They don't make enough money to cover the time commitment required to keep the blog fresh in the readers mind.
The alternative to social blogging is of course SEO or Search Engine Optimization. In truth this can and should be applied even if you choose to chase social traffic. I don't chase social traffic at all but because of my high serp rankings I find that social bloggers find me anyway. I mention this simply to point out that those of you hoping to gain fame and recognition for your work can achieve it by dominating the top rankings in the serp's and save yourself the countless hours of work needed to make a name for yourself in the social arenas.
As 2008 draws to a close I have given a lot of thought to how Google will tweak its algorithm over the coming year. Without getting long winded it doesn't take a lot of imagination to assess Google's predicament; the search engine has to have a means by which to rank sites based on keyword relevancy - the easy part and it has to have a means for deciding which relevant site should rank at the top of the serp's - the hard part.
How would you do it?
Would you rank sites based on their RSS subscribers?
Would you rank sites based on their Page Rank?
Would you rank sites based on their social links and traffic?
Would you rank sites based on their Alexa Rank? Their Compete rank?
Would you rank sites based on the fame of the site?
If you would entertain any of these ideas then your ranking system would lead to a useless search engine. All these methods are easily gamed or have no relevancy for the vast majority of niches. How would sites related to "Oil Filters" be ranked if Google used RSS subscribers as a basis for ranking?
Google's predicament is that it has to have a system that works for all keywords and not just those that apply to social niches. Many a social A-Lister has preached that Google will use social media in its rankings - a belief that I find laughable. Google has been eliminating metrics that can be easily gamed - not adding them to the mix.
Ultimately the only system that works well but is not perfectly fair is to rank sites based on incoming links. Yes this can be gamed as well but for the vast majority of niches this is still the best measure of a site's authority.
Rather than find a new system Google has methodically tweaked its system to degrade or dismiss links of poor quality and give greater weight to links that are deemed high quality.
Almost all social links - Do-follow comments, Bookmarks, Digg, Stumbleupon etc are considered low quality and while they may be registered by G they will not gain you top ranking in a competitive niche. They will work fine in an un-competitive niche but even then a single link from a quality source will outrank all your low quality links.
Google's algorithm will reward you well if you follow my recommendations outlined below.
4 Steps to Google Dominance
Keyword Research
Forget Quality Content (No such thing to a machine) - use Relevant Content.
On Page Keyword Optimization
Develop 1 way Inbound Links to your site.
Target the most popular keywords in your niche, add relevant content, use your main keyword in your URL, Blog Title, Page and Post titles and then spend the rest of your time developing quality inbound links.
I have said this many times - quality inbound links are the single most important aspect for ranking well in Google.
The 5 Measurements of Inbound Links
The Quantity of inbound links.
- This is least important but effective for low competition keywords.
The Title keywords on the page linking to you.
The Anchor Text used in the link pointing to you.
- You will only rank for the terms others use in their links pointing at your site. This is crucial for gaining top ranking.
The Relevance of the content on the page linking to you.
- The site with the most keyword anchored links coming from relevant content posts/pages will outrank all others.
The Quality of the inbound link.
- The best link you can possibly get is a PR10 link using your main keyword in the anchor coming from within a post relevant to your keyword. The further from this optimum the less quality the link. A few of these quality links will easily have you outranking sites with 1000's of lesser quality links.
I have not talked about Domain Age or the popular SEO blathering regarding keyword density, blog platforms, site design, posting frequency or any of the other "tips" spouted at length by all the so-called experts online. The reason is simple - it is all window dressing in the greater scheme of things and ultimately unimportant when it comes to serp domination.
The simple truth is that I can rank any site on top of the serp's with the right backlinks and provided the site has legit content (but only because it may get a human review - I could do it with spam if I only had to dupe the machine). How much content or how well it is written is insignificant for ranking purposes.
If you just have to chase social media then do yourself a favor - as you get yourself known ask your friends and readers to use your keywords when they link to you. Do you know how many times I have heard a social blogger tell me that social media is great because it gets them PR and backlinks. When I check they have hundreds of links using their name in the anchor. Yup - they rank really well for a term no one searches for. What a waste and yet the links could be so beneficial. As for PR - just remember this - your own PR has no bearing on your ranking. It's the PR of the sites linking to you that effects your ranking and only if they use your keywords.
Making Money Online is not complicated. Rank on top of the serp's for as many keywords as you can. Add Adsense. Collect money. Rinse and repeat.
It really does work and I hope many of you will achieve the same success as I have over the coming year.
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