Making money from trading domain names
.com, .org or .net and how much should you pay for that new domain name?
Trading domains is where an individual or a company engages in buying or selling a domain name obviously with the intent to receive a higher price than was paid at its purchase. How do you make money from trading domains and what sort of outlay is there on it?
There are a number of free resources to help you value your domain name but, please, remember that a) they are only a 'logical' best guess of what something is worth and b) beauty is in the eye of the beholder and an object's true value at an instant in time is either what the owner would accept to part with it or what a purchaser would give to possess it depending upon who is the most enthusiastic.
Why is one domain name worth more than another? Well, there are a number of factors:
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Memorability - if your site engages in selling then you want a domain name which your customers will remember and not have to look up (and thereby be exposed to your competitors) each time they want you.
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Association with your name or company. If you are a large corporation, you want to own all the domains which contain your name.
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How high a level the domain name is - for example, .com or .net domains will sell for a lot more than a .eu or a .biz for example.
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The length of the domain name. Not quite the same as memorability - the shorter the domain the better.
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The domain name's association with a relevant keyword to the website it will be representing. Although the major search engines say that the domain name has no bearing on a site's position, it is obvious from any search that many of the first and second page results contain a keyword in their domain name.
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Whether it is an expired domain and comes complete with backlinks and Page Ranking which can be taken advantage of.
How much you pay for a domain will depend on the above factors. A new domain will cost around $25 for 2 years of registration but you can literally pay millions of dollars for domains like sex.com; a sad comment on modern society no doubt.
You will find tools to help you evaluate your proposed purchase on our marketing resources page. We will cover more ground on trading domains on our next page.
Although the halcyon years of the internet are probably over, it is still possible to make money by shrewd speculation on trading domains.
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