How I Turned $50 Into A Few Thousand By Doing Nothing

By Arthur Cundy

This is something that I am excited to talk about. It’s something that I wished that I got into much earlier in life because it can be very lucrative. (I do plan to write a post about the things that I wish I started while in college.)

So what am I talking about? I am talking about the passive income method of domain name sales. This is where  you own a web domain (www.example.com) and you sell it someone else. This is not completely passive but it doesn’t take much effort to sell a domain if you have a good one.

Around the end of May a gentleman emailed me saying that he was interested in purchasing one of my domains. I did a quick Google search for his name and found out that this guy was the real deal who sold some of the biggest domain names in history. We started exchanging some emails.

The domain is a .com with 2 words and no hyphens. So it looked something like www.firstsecond.com. One thing you must know that in domain name sales a domain name is worth what someone is willing to pay. There are lots of factors to make a domain name more valuable to a buyer. I will save most of it for another post but here are some things to think about if you are considering selling or even registering a domain name.

• Are the domain name’s keywords getting searched for?
• Are there paying advertisers appearing for the exact match search?
• Are there websites or products related to my domain’s keywords?
• Would someone want to build a website using the domain?
• Are similar names being used as fully developed websites?
• Do the words make sense, look and sound good spoken?
• Is there a better option available for this type of name?

So after negotiating back and forth over email we agreed on a price for the domain name. He put the money in Escrow. I transferred the domain then he released the money from escrow and it went directly into my checking account. Part of this process what done while I was vacationing in South Africa.

Now keep in mind; I registered the domain name in 2007 and I didn’t do anything to it. I didn’t build a website for it. I didn’t building links or traffic to it. No logo, No trademark. I just bought it. Domains go for about $10 and I owned it for 5 years so owning this domain cost me roughly $50. And I just sold it for a couple thousand dollars which more than covers my trip to South Africa.

I can’t guarantee that this will happen to you. Most of the time someone will not email you because they did their research and found you to buy your domain name. Normally, you need to seek out potential buyers and have all your ducks in a row to really cash in.

I am planning to sell a few other domains in the coming months and I will let you know how it goes.

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• 04Aug2011
• 2
• See more in Feature, Other Internet & Online Business Computers and Internet