Domain Name Flipping: Easy Profit?
November 7, 2008
What on earth is domain flipping?
In a nutshell, it’s the classic “buy cheap” “sell dear” salesman trick but applied to domain names. As with near enough anything in the world - with the possible exception of property at the moment - it’s possible to double or triple your money or even lots more.
It all sounds really simple - and quite often, it’s so easy you likely won’t believe it can be done.
Domain flipping can be done in several ways.
The simplest way is to buy a domain name that you think is likely to be valuable and sell it on, without doing anything to it. This works a treat if you can get into the mind of potential buyers before you snap up a domain name, this may be all that you need to do. This works even better for those typos we all make when we tap in a domain name by hand even with modern browsers and auto-complete (if you always spell “New York” as “New Tork” because you’re in a hurry for example) keep a note of your typos and think about buying the name if you think others will type as hurriedly as you.
Consider predictable future events that will be valuable but hasn’t been noticed yet. Moveable events like the Olympics for instance where there’ll be hundreds of sites all getting big traffic in the run up to the event and for a few short days when it’s actually taking place.
But most domain flippers take another steo and increase value by adding some content to their domain. Face up to it, not too many people can find that one special domain that’s instantly worth thousands of dollars. Instead, you’ll need extra goodies to give your buyer more reasons to buy the domain names you’ve got on offer. Anything from selling a batch of related names through to actually building the content and Google Page Rank of the sites you’re developing.
Which means that the domain flipping market can be a mixture of short term “buy and sell” deals, medium term where you build a bit of traffic and turning a decent profit when you sell on the site and longer term deals where your wallet looks set to explode at the size of the potential check.
You can find out how you can easily get into the domain flipping business here.