The Basics of Domain Name Flipping for Profit

The URL of any website is called its Domain Name. Flipping is the art of buying something cheaply and then selling it quickly for a profit. Buy it and flip it - simple! The difficult part is figuring out how to pick a domain name among the millions of available names. Here are the three biggest factors in picking a Domain Name to flip: Demand for the name, the Extension, and Pricing.

Desire for a specific Domain Name is crucial. The best names have keywords in them that people are looking for. This is why Domains like Buy.com, pets.com, bestbuy.com, and shoes.com are worth so much. These Domains are short and describe exactly what you are getting from their domain. Of course, it looks like all the good Domain Names have already been taken. Wrong! New domains are being registered every day.

What you need to do is figure out what topics or keywords people are searching for and integrate those words into your domain name. So, when your Domain has a keyword in it that people are searching for, it makes sense that people will naturally be attracted to that url. Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool are free and can help you figure out what the latest hot topics are. You can look through your own search history and see what YOU have been searching for. If you searched for it, chances are that others are making the same searches too.

Once you have about ten keywords or topics that you think might make a good domain name, now is when we search to see if the domain is already taken, and if so, what we can do about it. For example, I just went to bluehost - you can use your favorite registration company of course - and looked up murphybed, because I want to start a site on murphy beds. Murphybed.com is taken. Bluehost - and many other registrars make suggestions for alternate names - so bluehost suggested a bunch of different names with murphybed in them such as: murphybeddesign, HotMurphyBed, AllMurphyBed, MurphyBedGroup, topmurphybed and so on. The list of names can get large and complicated fast, so I like to put them in a spreadsheet, along with my rating of the name, the domain extension, and cost.

In addition to the Domain Name itself, the extension of the Domain is critical. I know a lot of people who won't purchase anything that doesn't have a.com extension, but there are many extensions available, including.net,.info,.org,.biz, and so on. There are no restrictions on those extensions, so you can use a.org even if you aren't an organization. I like to stick with the top 3 -.com,.net, and.org. The best one is.com.

The pricing of a domain for sale is variable and completely up to the seller. Typically the.coms have a higher value, but any website that has an easy to read domain name, with a major extension can get traffic, and therefore have value.

So now that you have a domain name registered, it's time to make some money on it! Put it up for auction on a site like eBay.com. I looked today and there were 71 pages of domain names for sale. Another option would be a specialty auction site like sedo.com which bills itself as the World's Largest Domain Marketplace. Put your Domains up for sale and keep track of what sells and how much it sells for. You will find that there are some keyword modifiers that you can add to most any topic that makes it worth a lot more.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes!

Jack Flanders Loves to cook.
His Favorite recipes include: puttanesca, smoked salmon torte, and jambalaya

Check out my website at: thewealthtutor.com