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Hi all! In this article, we’ll look at what making money on domains is, how much you can earn from it, and what the threshold for entering this business is.
Of all easy ways making money on the Internet making money on domains is the easiest and fastest in terms of profitability. It includes buying and selling domain names. Nowadays it's enough a large number of people who earn good money on the Internet from these transactions.
About the importance and cost of domain names
You don't need too much technical knowledge and skills to register a good domain, just a little originality and good imagination to create a unique name for a domain that is not yet on the Internet. In addition, such a domain should not only have an original name, but also be popular among users.
Before the process of creating a domain, you need to conduct marketing research on the Internet and find out what and how popular it is now. After directly creating the domain, you need to put it up for sale on the Internet market.
Selling and buying domain names is one of the most successful solutions for making money on the Internet, which is equivalent to real estate transactions - investing in future profits. It will be surprising to you that a real good domain will cost the same as an apartment.
Why are domains profitable?
Domain spaces and territories on the Internet are comparable to plots of land that are put up for sale piece by piece. Domains in each territory have the same property as land plots - every day they decrease in number. Naturally, new zones and areas are being created, but domain names in old territories have a much higher cost.
For example, in the.com zone several years ago there were absolutely no free domains that had four-letter combinations in their names. Having such a .com domain was a so-called advantage, and their price on the secondary market went up a lot.
In general, in any case, if today you register a domain with a more or less beautiful and harmonious name, then tomorrow it will become more expensive. Let's consider the main reasons for such events:
- if the given domain territory has run out free place to register new domains;
- it is no longer possible to create the same domain in this zone;
- More senior domains receive more loyalty;
- if there was at least one site under your domain, then, in any case, its traffic will not be zero, and thus you can roughly calculate its profitability with the participation of parking (domain parking) or placing contextual advertising;
- if under the roof of a domain there is a site or project with an already established target audience, then the cost of such a domain increases significantly.
Many people are mistaken that only the most beautiful and most harmonious domain names are sold. But that's not true. There have been numerous cases when domains with names like ************.com were sold - not the shortest option, and generally difficult to pronounce.
The most active Internet users almost always register several domains, often this number reaches several dozen. They act on the principle of “maybe it will come in handy,” and in the end they turn out to be right. Domains can be contributed to an affiliate business as an investment, a contribution, they can be given to friends and acquaintances as a gift, new projects can be opened on their platform, and they also sell well.
Even if the cost of one domain per year is about 10-15 dollars, and you have 20 such domains, then over 10 years you spend 3,000 dollars on maintaining them. If parking is properly placed on all of them, then in this case the income will already exceed the costs by an order of magnitude.
And if you are going to sell one of them for at least a few thousand dollars, then your super income will cover all the expenses, and you won’t have to do anything special.
Why are domains being bought up?
As you all already understand, websites and domains are one of the most popular products that are bought and sold without much effort. Some owners get rid of things they don’t need – unsuccessful projects, while other webmasters buy them back and make a profit from them.
But there are cases when a user bought a domain, created a small semblance of a website on it and conveniently forgot it due to his daily affairs, or decided to return to the unfinished business a little later. In this case, the domain registration may expire. But it will not disappear immediately and you will not be able to register it again.
The process of fading and disappearance of a domain name is labor-intensive and includes several stages, each subsequent one more complicated than the previous one.
First, the domain name parking step starts. Files are deleted from the domain. As a result, it turns out that all resources that are located on this domain cease to operate, and parking pages appear in their place. Thus, this whole picture appears before us as an ordinary catalog of links.
In the situation with forgotten or abandoned domains, there is the concept of “registration deferment”, which lasts 40 days. This occurs if the domain is not renewed before the end of its validity period. All the time during these 40 days the domain is on the commercial parking page. This page is temporary and shows the status of the domain name, namely that it has already expired. And all kinds of resources or messages that should relate to this domain cease to function.
The owner is notified of such a situation through an informative letter to the personal email under which the bottom domain name is registered. It states that he still has one last chance to renew his domain, and he must take advantage of it within 40 days. Otherwise, after this period has expired, the domain will be deleted from the database.
In such cases, experienced users organize a hunt for this kind of forgotten thing.
They are convinced that a domain at this level is the most profitable and will bring much more profit than they will spend on purchasing and promoting it. One of the main indicators of the site is the TIC - thematic citation index. Yandex assigns this indicator and it consists of the following components:
- number of external links to this site;
- proximity of sites on the subject that link to it;
- authority, quality and reputation of these sites.
Everything is proportional here: the more links on the topic, the higher the TIC will be.
TIC is used to determine “its place in the sun” - the place where the site is located in Yandex or in its catalog. It is also the main characteristic and indicative elements in determining the economic profitability and potential in the future and authority in the present among the Russian-speaking population of the Internet. On Russian link exchanges, the price of a trade item is directly proportional to the number of TICs: the more there are, the higher the cost of the link will be. You can increase the TIC on your own or buy an already available domain with your own TIC.
The advantages of purchasing a domain with a TIC are the following:
- you have the opportunity to quickly monetize the site from the very beginning of the domain’s existence;
- even if the TIC is only 10, this number can be called a threshold, after which increasing this indicator on your own will not be so difficult and much faster;
- Having this indicator allows you to take part in affiliate programs, exchange links and participate in the link trading system;
- if you have a good TIC, then advertisers will come to you with orders to place their information on the page of your newly created project;
- Also, the presence of a TIC frees you from the need to promote a site from scratch and increase this indicator, since in some areas the expansion process is quite expensive, since there is a lot of competition and high prices for links.
Many people believe that buying a domain is tantamount to speculation. Repurchase or resale of a domain name is like blackmail - bought at a wholesale price, sold at a price higher than the retail price. But even such frauds are beneficial to both parties to the purchase and sale.
But, despite the significant advantages of purchasing a vacant domain, it is necessary to take into account the presence of pitfalls:
- there is a need to maintain the TIC at the level at which this indicator was when purchasing the domain name;
- the main thing is not to fall into the hands of scammers and not get a “glued” TIC;
- After transferring the domain, the previous owner will stop paying for the links that he used to build up the TIC and the new owner may be left with nothing.
How much can you earn from domains?
There are several ways to use domains to make money, and one of them is parking. If you have several domains and not all of them are used and functioning to their full potential, then it is better to give preference to parking rather than leaving the domain idle. This way, you can at least pay for its constant expenses without much effort: registration, renewal, hosting, and if you’re lucky, you can also receive a small additional income.
But not all domains will the best option for parking. There are several ideal types of domain names for successful parking:
- domain names must consist of keywords;
- should be the names of generally accepted and frequently used phrases;
- should be similar to the erroneous (typographical) name of known network resources.
Income from domain parking directly depends on the number of visitors. But in in this case You shouldn’t pay attention only to regular traffic, you can also take into account the number of domains.
Now let’s calculate the income from parking: statistics show that for 1000 unique user transitions, a domain owner can earn about $10. As we can see, the income is completely insignificant, but it’s better than nothing at all.
Domain owners can also replenish their wallets a little (and in many cases, make them rich) due to the mistakes of Internet users.
They may spell the name incorrectly. search engine such as Google or Yandex, they may forget to put a period after www, they may make a mistake with the name of even the most famous Microsoft company. Domain owners take advantage of this incredible traffic and earn pretty decent money, since the cost of such domains can range from $15,000 to several million dollars.
If until recently you made money only from advertising, then most likely your income was equal to several dollars with a successfully created domain. But if you are seriously thinking about selling a domain name, then everything proportionally depends on its consonance and customer needs.
Also, you should not focus only on the domestic market, you also need to focus on foreign buyers, because in Runet, for example, the cost of one click on advertising from your domain varies from 2.5 to 5 cents, while the cost of this figure in European countries can reach 0.1-0.2 dollars. And it turns out that the average price of a domain is 3-5 thousand dollars. So don't sell yourself short!
You can also rent out your domain. If you are sure that your domain name is popular, catchy and original, then you can receive an average of 200 euros per month for its rental. But there are cases when the domain name sounds like “ best car” from French and brings its owner 150 euros per day, the Dutch domain brings the lucky webmaster 15,000 euros per month.
Earning money from domains is not only profitable, but also belongs to the most democratic type, because even schoolchildren and retirees who have realized that the Internet is a great place to earn real money can do it.
Beginners simply cannot create a domain business. It requires some minor technical skills, plus a budget to purchase the first hundred domains, as well as a sales channel - forums where they post advertisements for searching domain names for various kinds of projects.
Each website on the Internet has its own name, which is not only its business card, but also the main one for the activities of many companies. Online stores, enterprise websites, product catalogs and many other portals, the popularity of which depends, first of all, on the domain. Let's figure out how you can make money by reselling domain names, and what kind of income will this type of activity bring?
How it works?
Let's start with the fact that in order to earn income from the resale of domain names, there is no need to know the specifics of the global network, the structure of DNS servers and many other subtleties that are needed in the field of network technologies. It is enough that a domain is an opportunity for easy access to a particular Internet resource by entering address bar a specific set of characters with zonal distribution.
The popularity and cost of domain names depends on:
domain zone (.com, .ru, .org, .net, etc.);
domain level (.ua is the second, .com.ua is the third);
simplicity of pronunciation and ease of memorization;
type of domain names (state, regional, targeted, etc.).
Government domain names (gov) are reserved by government agencies, so their purchase and resale is out of the question.
Based on the above parameters, it is worth saying that the higher cost will be for second-level domains, with a minimum number of characters, easy to remember.
The essence of making money on the resale of domain names lies precisely in the registration and further sale of convenient names, which in the future may be needed by various companies, enterprises, application developers and many others.
An example is the recent case of Apple, which acquired the iCloud.net domain, which belonged to a small Asian social network. The transaction cost was $1.5 million, but such large transactions occur very rarely.
How to make money by reselling domains?
You can resell domain names on a professional level, and there are even companies in the world that do this quite successfully. This is done in several ways:
Buy domains with good names in advance - a simple and consonant name that is well remembered can always be sold for several times more than the original cost. Of course, finding a free option will be quite difficult, but it is quite possible, since the number of domain zones is constantly expanding, and what is occupied in the.com zone may turn out to be free in .club.
Selling domains to companies and firms - look for developing enterprises in your country that do not have their own Internet resource. Register in advance all possible options that are consistent with the company name, and perhaps you will soon be contacted for repurchase. If not, you can independently inform the company that you have a suitable name for their Internet resource.
Keep an eye on busy people domain names— some organizations periodically forget to renew the domain registration period, and this good opportunity make money, although I personally think it’s mean.
Selling domains with TICs and PR are indicators of site authority. Such domains can only be sold to specialists who understand such details, that is, SEOs and webmasters. Such domains can either be developed independently or purchased, for example, abandoned sites that are indexed in search engines.
Sale of similar domains in neighboring zones. Let's imagine that there is a website mysite.ru and the site is successfully growing and developing. Web developers will sooner or later want to expand their sphere of influence and place the resource in the .com, .net and other zones. Until this moment, you need to get ahead of the owners of mysite.ru and register in neighboring zones by posting an advertisement for sale.
It is quite difficult to talk about specific amounts that can be earned. The domains themselves cost around $10, but can be sold for $100 or $1,000,000.
Where to buy domains?
The most famous domain name registrars are:
- reg.ru - Russian registrar
- internetbs.net - foreign registrar
But in fact, there are much more of them, and do not forget that there are also partners of large registrars, like 2domains.ru, whose prices are usually lower.
Where to sell domains?
On special forums like searchengines.guru (maultalk.com, webmasters.ru/forum/), on special platforms like telderi.ru.
Legal aspects
When selling domains, just like when running any business, you need to take into account many legal aspects, and there are risks here too. There are many examples when, without contact with the owner of the domain, companies sued him, winning not only “their” name, but also decent monetary compensation for the use of the trademark and many other points. Such situations occur quite often, especially when it comes to selling domains with names that are similar to the names of popular companies.
To protect yourself from litigation, you need to check in advance whether the company name is a trademark, and only then carry out registration operations. This can be done through the patent office or online services that can be found on the world wide web.
There is such a way to make money on the Internet as buying and reselling domain names. Everything is quite simple here. You register beautiful domain names in different domain zones ( .com, .ru, .org, etc.), and then sell them ten times more expensive. This topic is far from new, but I wonder if it is possible to make money on this today? And how can you make money from this in the next 5 years? We'll talk about this in this article.
Can you make great money by reselling domain names?Entrepreneurs who resell domain names are called domainers.
This business can be treated as a long-term investment in securities. You buy a block of shares and wait for many years. Some shares increase in price tenfold, while others depreciate.
Same with domains. You purchase a package of beautiful domain names and wait for many years. Some domain names will be able to be sold and made money, but others will not - this is your risk.
Costs for purchasing and renewing domain names
Unlike stocks, domain names, although inexpensive, have an important difference. To buy shares, you only need to spend money once and then wait. And you have to pay to renew each domain every year.
Buying a domain in the zone .ru costs 200-600 rubles, depending on where you buy, and renewal usually costs 600 rubles per year. If you buy domain names in large quantities, then you can buy them at huge discounts, at least 5 times cheaper than retail prices.
It's in the zone .ru. In the zone .com purchasing and renewing a domain costs about 1,000 rubles per year. In other domain zones, for example, .university purchasing and renewing domain names costs even more - 4,500 rubles per year.
Let me emphasize once again that there are huge discounts for wholesale buyers of domain names.
Cybersquatting is dirty domaining. How to make money today?
Speaking about domain name trading, one cannot fail to say at least a few words about cybersquatting.
Cybersquatting– this is the registration of domain names containing in their address the names of well-known companies, brands, trademarks, for the purpose of reselling them to companies interested in these domain names.
For example, you can register a domain name - the name of a Western brand in the zone .ru and try to sell this domain name to the company, the owner of the brand, when it decides to start operating in Russia. Of course, this is a dirty business. Not very eco-friendly)!
But that’s exactly what one of my friends did. He registered a domain in the zone .ru, which coincided with the name of a large brand in Italy. Then he wrote to this company and offered to open a joint business in Russia))). Of course, it didn't work out for him. He was refused)…
The only way to make money from cybersquatting today is if you registered a domain name before the trademark was registered.
As one of the largest hosters in Russia, TimeWeb, writes:
The purchase and registration of free domains itself is not against the law. However, after the active development of cybersquatting, American and Russian authorities began to think about how they could limit cybersquatters in their actions: the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO or WIPO) introduced the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) procedure; this is handled by the WIPO Arbitration Center, based on the Rules for a Uniform Policy on Domain Name Disputes.
The procedure is loyal to trademark owners; according to statistics, they win the majority (about 80%) of cases.
How to sell domains?
It's not enough to just buy domains and wait. Selling domains needs to be done. Look for buyers. Negotiate. Just buying and waiting, as is the case with stocks, may not work out.
I have a small personal experience in this case. I once, about 10 years ago, bought more than 100 domain names. I had them for many years and I didn't have time to sell them. I put them up for sale in one of the popular domain name stores. And, to be honest, I haven’t sold a single domain in many years. And so then I decided to get rid of them. Because I realized that I need to get serious about sales.
And you need to buy not 100, but several thousand domain names, and all of them should be cool, beautiful, interesting and promising. That is, this is quite a serious business and it needs to be dealt with. And don’t just buy 3 averagely lousy domains in the hope of a miracle.
As Andrey Kuzmichev, first deputy, said general director RU-CENTER, in an interview with seonews.ru:
It should be noted that the percentage of completed transactions from the available domains of a professional investor is, as a rule, small. The average domainer has a portfolio of 1-5 thousand domains, of which 1 to 5% are sold per year, depending on the sales strategy used.
Additionally, you should be able to afford the annual domain name renewal costs. Because to renew 1000 domain names you will need to spend from 150,000 rubles a year if you have a cheap zone .ru, and from a million rubles per year if you have expensive international domain names.
How much can you earn?
Previously, you could make a lot of money on this. See how much famous domains in the zone were sold for .com:
- Vk.com - $5,560,000;
- Hotels.com - $11,000,000;
- Porn.com - $9,500,000;
- Fb.com - $8,500,000;
- Business.com - $7,500,000.
The most expensive domains are in the zone .com, and here is the zone .ru, costs much less.
For example, the domain vodka.com was purchased by Russian Standard for $3,000,000, vodka.ru cost them “only” $50,000. Yes, for some fifty thousand dollars is “only”)!
But all this was a very long time ago. Many years ago. And domains in popular areas .com, .ru Should have bought it decades ago. Ideally in the 90s.
What about today? What promising ways are there to make money from domain names?
Today, it is promising to purchase and develop your own personal domain zone. You can register not just a domain name, but the domain name of the high level(TLD - top level domain). For example, Sony company registered a domain zone .sony.
How to register a TLD?
But not everyone can afford to register a domain zone. After all, it costs about $200,000. In addition, technical resources are needed to maintain this zone.
And even for $200,000 you may be denied registration. The registration of top-level domain zones is handled by ICANN, which reviews your application for registration and has the right to refuse you.
Once you register your zone, you can sell domain names in that zone. For example, Leaf Group acquired a domain zone .university, and now anyone can register a domain in this zone for 4,500 rubles per year.
The more domains you sell in your zone, the more you earn. According to ICANN, today in the zone .university About 7,000 domains have already been registered. Do the math for yourself. 7000 domains x 4,500 rubles = 31,500,000 rubles per year approximately received by Leaf Group for its domain zone .university. At today's exchange rate, that's about $500,000 a year. Not bad, isn't it?
At the same time, the best TLD domain zones were sold out back in 2015. Here are examples of the most popular zones:
Popular TLDs Probably, if you try, you can still find promising and beautiful domain zones. And this will most likely be promising for another 5 years, until 2024. You just need to find $200,000 to register your own zone.
More detailed information about the most popular zones is available at this link: “ “.
What if you buy domain names in the most popular new zones? Will it be possible to make money from this? Don't know…
The question arises - does it make sense to register beautiful domain names today in these new domain zones in order to make money on it in the future? It seems to me that no...
The profession of a domainer is perceived ambiguously in the general public. This is facilitated both by the very actions of some domainers, which can be called fraudulent, and by a generally low level of knowledge about the structure of the business.
However, in recent years, the market has become legal, and we decided to make a selection of the main trends and figures for those who want to figure out how much they can now earn from selling domains and whether it is possible at all.
The number of registrations in the national zone.ru, which accounts for the bulk of sites on the RuNet, is about 5 million. The period of active growth ended in 2014 - in fact, we can say that the zone has now entered the stage of maturity, like the advanced European zones.
There is an objective limitation for growth - filling the zone. Simply put, the availability for primary registration of domains with common words. In recent years, it has become more difficult to find a suitable domain (although it is still possible), so there is a prerequisite for demand for domainer services.
Now approximately 35% of all domains in zone.ru (about 1.5–2 million) belong to domain investors and 65% to end consumers, i.e. individuals and businesses.
Is a domain for 1 million rubles real?
The cost of buying and selling domains on the secondary market is rarely advertised. Mostly high-profile stories abroad, such as the sale of the PrivateJet.com or Hotels.com domains for amounts above $10 million, were widely spread.
Another difficulty in assessment was related to the fragmentation of the market - previously, virtually everyone sold either themselves or through one of many platforms. There was no clear leader among automated platforms that ensure complete security and transparency of the transaction for both the buyer and the seller on the Russian secondary market. This spring, a domain store appeared that supports the sale of domains from any registrars on its site.
According to our domain store, the average cost of a lot for sale is 603 thousand rubles, although there are lots for 500 rubles and tens of millions.
Different domainers use different sales strategies. Some work “on the flip side”, setting a markup of “only 3 ends”, others invest in domains for a long time, and they do not have the task of quickly selling them, dumping on the price. Plus, there are extremely expensive lots - for example, the domain b2b.ru is currently up for sale for 43.5 million rubles.
In practice, the most expensive domain sales on the RuNet were those for 10 million rubles and more, but these are isolated cases. A deal worth 1 million rubles is considered successful. For example, the domain sauna.rf was once sold for 70 thousand dollars, and les.rf for 40 thousand dollars.
From a thousand domains in the portfolio
It should be noted that the percentage of completed transactions from the available domains of a professional investor is, as a rule, small. The average domainer has a portfolio of 1-5 thousand domains, of which 1 to 5% are sold per year, depending on the sales strategy used.
November and December are good months to buy on the secondary market because this is when professionals release some of their portfolio. The wholesale cost of domain renewal is not significant, but since we are talking about thousands here, any domainer is forced to periodically optimize his portfolio, refusing to renew domains that, in his opinion, “won’t work.” Also in November, the “big drop” of domains.rf traditionally takes place.
In general, popular domains on the secondary market can be divided into several categories:
- Popular words, names of markets and services are the most important area, which accounts for the lion's share of sales
- Any short domains. An example with many Internet projects - from social networks to media projects - shows that a short domain name is still important for business.
- Surnames. Unlike domains using registered and well-known trademarks, they cannot be obtained through a court order.
- Wrong spellings of popular sites. Affiliate programs are placed on many of these domains to sell similar services.
Separately, we can highlight domains that are purposefully registered with the mention of trademarks for subsequent resale to brand owners. Now this area is not significant, at least in zone.ru, since this kind of domain disputes are separately noted in the regulations of the Coordination Center for the National Internet Domain. Considerable judicial practice has already accumulated on them, according to which the court takes the side of the copyright holder. It is worth emphasizing that we are talking not only about an exact match with the name of a registered brand, but also about those cases that are described as “confusing similarity.”
Ne.ru united
Next year it will be 10 years since the first applications for registration in the Cyrillic zone.rf were accepted. There are now 800 thousand registrations in the zone. Of course, less than in five million.ru, but quite significant. The secondary market in zone.rf is actively developing.
The latest trend is the growing popularity of new domain zones. In total, there are now more than 700 zones available for registration. Geo-referenced zones are popular, including.moscow; zones for food and entertainment establishments, like .beer, .menu, .club; e-commerce zones.store and.shop. At the same time, the secondary market in new domain zones has not yet been formed - there are still many beautiful names available in them. And if commonly used words in English are almost always taken, then among the transliterated Russian words there are still many free names. At the same time, registrars, together with domain registries, regularly hold promotions to reduce prices for the first year of registration.
In general, if we look at the trends for the coming years, it is worth noting a further increase in the number of zones and an expansion in the use of such zones. This is due both to the global policy of ICANN (the international corporation for managing domain names and IP addresses), and to the behavior of users who are gradually getting used to this kind of domains. All this creates good prospects for the development of a legal secondary market for domain names.