Welcome to Domain Investing: Bite Size Bets “How to Cash in Big Time placing small bets for domain Investing." From this guide you will soon learn how to find great domain names without spending hours brain storming ideas, How to buy a domain name for pennies on the dollar,
Seven options to sell your domain And the best places to sell your domain for a quick sale, plus more.
It is my earnest desire that this guide will become your road map to success buying and selling domain names.
Let’s get started…
Domains Where to Start
I have heard it time and time again, “Where Should I Start?” Whether it be from new affiliate marketers, product creators, someone wanting to get started selling on eCommerce sites, or a laborer on a construction site, I always hear this same question asked.
This may not be your question, just in case let me answer it here and now, (who knows, you might be surprised by my answer.
Start right where you are. Yup, that’s my answer.
Let me explain…
It doesn’t matter if you know anything at all, or you have purchased a product or two about buying and selling domain names, and decided you wanted to get into this to make some money.
You start right where you are.
I have been buying and selling domains at the time of this writing for about six months. I have sold only two domains as an affiliate marketer and I have one that I own for sale right now. I have learned a lot and that is what I am going to share with you in this post.
You Start Where You are, with the knowledge you already have and keep an open mind. This business isn’t for everyone, and if you learn that it isn’t for you then you haven’t spent that much in order to learn that lesson. It is better to find out now than a year from now after you have spent a ton of money and time that you can’t get back.
Let' jump into the second step here...
How to Buy a Domain Name with instant backlinks and traffic
You may or may not have purchased a domain name before. Today, you are going to discover how to buy a domain name that you can sell for 5, 10, or even 20 times more than you have paid for it. That is if you do it the right way and choose great domain names.
The first thing you need to do is find a
niche that you are interested in. The niche should be pretty broad like "Remote Controlled Toys" or "Bitcoin investing" or "Shoe's and Apparel."Or it could be Internet Marketing, Make money online. If this is the niche you choose check out our
Low cost high profit internet marketing domains here.
Instead of running to Godaddy or Namecheap, I want you to go to Expired Domains dot net for this step.
If you expand the image above (click on it,) look where the red arrow is pointing just type in your niche. In my example I used shoes as my niche. Yes, I know the box is empty in the example but let's just pretend okay?
Okay, our niche is shoes and if you look at the image above you will see a column at the far right that there are a lot of domains available with our niche in the green. Look down until you see
$20 in red. That domain is "Shoes.Land" which is a pretty good domain name. It is easy to say, easy to spell and easy to remember. The person that owns the domain is selling it for $20 on Godaddy.
You may not want that domain name or you think you can think of a better one. That's fine but when starting out as an affiliate and our niche is shoes you want to find a domain that has traffic. Let's test out Shoes.land and see if they ever had a site on it or not.
Let's go over to my favorite Public Domain site archive.org and see if they ever used it for a site.
And it looks as if it did. On August 9th 2018
In order to see if they had a site just click on the date below like so.
This is what you should see.
Of course from Archive.org you see that there is nothing on the page. At least the owner of the domain had sense to have archive archive it. The reason it doesn't show up is because it is on Godaddy and for some reason the image and content doesn't show.
But at Godaddy you see this...
We have learned that this domain was purchased in August 09, of 2018. At the time of this writing it is one year and three months old. The reason I am spending so much time on this domain is because it is one word before the TLD dot Land. So if you wanted a domain that you could brand this is a good domain but not the best which would be a dot com or dot net.
Next let's check to see if they have any backlinks to it. Go to neil patel dot com and click tools on the header and backlinks.
As you can see there are no backlinks to this domain. Pretty much shoes.land even though it is a good domain there is no potential traffic coming to it. But the price is only $20 and dot land TLDs start at $19.99 on Godaddy.
I did find a one word domain name with a CO Tld. it was shoes dot co here is what I found.
On Archive the website was a domain for sale. But on Neil Patel site I found...
ShoesDotCO actually had 8 backlinks and two referring websites.The two referring sites are dot gov and a dot edu domains. This is really good for a first try. For seo purposes those two refering domain mentioned are coveted. It will actually work for you as you build out the website like I will show you in a moment.
What is a TLD?
A TLD stand for
Top Level Domain. It is the letters that come after the dot. In this case
"Shoes.co" Dot co being the country code for Columbia
. But is available for the world to use. You need to watch out for country code TLD extensions because not all are available for people outside of a country to purchase. Click the dotco image above to see TLD's by country.
So far you have discovered how to buy a domain name, research a domain for backlinks and possibly natural traffic already coming to it. Which free sites that I use to for quick research in order to uncover a lot of possibilities for your potential niche domain name.
Once you find your domain name go back to Neil Patel and type your domain back into the search. Use the Keyword and content feature of the site to uncover more content idea's for the next step.
Check out our Portfolio of Low Cost, High Profit Domain Names That You Can Get Now, Set Up and Profit From For Years To Come!
Build For Profit
You’ve seen the cable shows of people buying real estate and then later flipping it for a profit, right? Well this is the same idea, except here you’re buying virtual real estate – Domain names-web businesses – which you flip for a profit.
Actually, there are three ways to do this:
1. Build the sites and flip them immediately. This is where you (or your freelancer) create a site around a popular niche. You might load the site with content. You might even create a product to go with the site. Then you’d sell it immediately. Because the site doesn’t have any assets (like traffic), you won’t get a high price. But since you can build these sites or outsource them quickly, you can make money based on sheer volume.
2. Build the sites and flip them later. Here you hold onto your domain investment for awhile, with the intention of building the assets for this site so that it’s more valuable. This includes doing things like:
- Building traffic to the site.
- Building backlinks.
- Getting the site in Google for important keywords.
- Building a mailing list.
- Showing evidence of profit.
- Creating supporting assets, like a secondary blog, a network of related sites, and/or social media pages associated with the site.
3. Buy the web businesses and flip them. Here you search for websites for sale, especially those that you feel are under-performing. You can then tweak them to make them more valuable, such as by:
Ô Driving more traffic to the site.
Ô Creating a sales funnel (e.g., creating multiple products to sell to customers).
Ô Building a mailing list.
Ô Tweaking the content, especially the sales copy, to create a higher conversion rate.
Ô Improving the monetization methods. For example, if a blog is using AdSense to make money, you might add affiliate offers into the mix to see if you can make the blog more profitable.
One note…
Instead of going into this business yourself, another option is to buy into a partnership. You and your partner can split the costs, work, and profits as you see fit.
Now let me share with you three examples so you can see the profit potential of this domain Investment strategy:
Example #1: You buy a domain name for $10 and secure hosting for
$10 for the first month. You then hire someone to design a site ($100) and create a product ($100). Total investment is $220. You then sell the site for $300. You don’t quite double your money, but you can do this over and over again every week – and it’s hands free.
Example #2: You create the same site as in Example 1 for $220. Except this time you hold onto it for two months while you start building traffic and making sales. You sell it for $600, which nearly triples your investment.
Example #3: You buy an under-monetized site for $300. You hold it for two or three months while building traffic and sales. You sell it for $1000, which triples your investment.
So let me give you an overview of how to get started with this Domain Investing strategy…
Step 1: Find Out What’s Selling
As you’re quickly discovering, one of the keys to a sound domain investing strategy is to find out what’s ALREADY selling in the market, and then just offer the buyers more of the same. So in this case, you need to do your market research to see what kinds of web businesses are in-demand.
The #1 place for you to do this research is on www.flippa.com. That’s because this site is one of the biggest and most well-known auction sites that caters exclusively to people who want to buy and sell websites. And since you’re going to list YOUR “for sale” web businesses on this site, this is a good place to do your market research.
What you want to do is keep an eye on the “Just Sold” section of the site at https://flippa.com/just-sold. You’re looking to uncover popular sites, based not only on high ending prices, but also evidence that other similar sites tend to sell well, too.
Tip: Do note that established, profitable businesses in any niche are going to almost always sell well. If you’re looking to sell established businesses, then you just need to work on proving that your site is indeed profitable.
Otherwise, if you’re going to only build minimal assets for a site, such as backlinks and minimal traffic, then you’ll want to make sure the site is a popular site in a popular niche, as described below. In other words, if the site isn’t already profitable, then you need to show your buyers that it has the potential to be profitable since it’s a professional site in an in-demand niche.
Specifically, look for:
Ô Certain types of sites that are popular. Here I mean the overall monetization model and structure of the site.
Example: Is it an AdSense site? Lead-generating site? Blog? Is it a site selling its own product? Does the site make money selling advertising space? Is it an auction site? Does it sell a service? And so on.
Ô Certain niches that are popular. Here you’re looking for sites in certain niches that almost always sell well, even if they’re new sites. Usually these sites are likely to be related to the bigger and more profitable markets, such as money and business, fitness and health, weight loss, self improvement, hobbies and so on.
If you build a popular type of site in a popular niche, AND you build assets, and, preferably show a profit, then you’re almost guaranteed to get a big return on your investment!
Tip: You can also check sites like:
Ô Sedo.com (which focuses on domain names but does have full websites).
Ô eBay.com (which tends to have “bargain basement” prices.
Ô The “Complete Websites for Sale” section of WarriorForum.com (which tends to feature new sites, not established businesses).
Step 2: Build or Buy Your Sites
Now that you know what’s already selling, your next step is to either buy or build the sites you wish to flip. Specifically:
1. Build sites. You don’t have to do this yourself. Instead, refer to Domain investment strategy #1 in this report, where you learned how to hire a freelancer. Everything you learned there applies here, except of course you’re hiring a web designer (not a product creator).
Tip: Be sure you choose a good, memorable domain name, which can add value to your site. Some buyers like EMDs, which are “exact match domains.” That means your domain name matches the exact keywords that your market is plugging into search engines. You can uncover these keywords by using a tool like WordTracker.com.
2. Buy sites. Here you’re looking for under-monetized sites – those that you know you can tweak to produce a profit. You can look for these sites on Flippa.com, of course. However, you may want to look at eBay.com, as these sites tend to be sold relatively inexpensively.
Note: Just be sure that you do your due diligence when you’re buying sites. That means that if someone presents assets to you, such as the site ranking for competitive keywords, you should verify this for yourself. And keep in mind that screenshots and other forms of “proof” can be faked, so verify where you can and only buy from reputable buyers.
Whether you’re buying or building sites, you’ll get a higher price for this piece of virtual real estate if you build its assets. See the list of assets I provided for you earlier.
Step 3:
Flip Your Business
If your site is ready to sell (preferably its making a profit), then head on over to Flippa.com and open an account. This is where you’re going to sell your site.
Here’s what you’ll need to create your ad:
- An estimate of the going price. Then you’ll know what your starting bid should be as well as the reserve price and/or “buy it now” price. You’ll need to research similar sites on Flippa.com in order to get an estimate of how much your site will go for.
- Good copywriting skills. If you don’t have these skills, and especially if you’re selling a high-priced site, you may want to go to elance.com to hire a professional copywriter. Otherwise, study the successful ads on Flippa.com to see what makes for a good, compelling auction headline and advertisement.
- A good description of your site. You need to be able to tell your prospects in just a couple sentences what niche your site is in and what your site does. In other words, how does your site make a profit?
- Your site’s assets. Here you need to create a bulleted list of all of your site’s features. This includes the following, where applicable, but this isn’t an exhaustive list:
Exact match domain, memorable domain or one around which you’ve already built brand awareness.
Site age (older sites and domains sell better).
Professional web design and graphics.
Professional copy.
A product. A mailing list. Verifiable traffic that’s already coming in (and will continue).
Ranked in the search engines.Backlinks.
Associated assets, such as social media accounts linked to the site.
Proof of profits and monetization methods.
Keep in mind that whenever possible, you’ll need to prove these assets. This proof may come in the form of screenshots, videos and access to your traffic logs.
Now you just need to list all of this information inside your auction ad. Basically, you’re giving your prospects a good reason to bid on your auction. You’re telling them why your web business would make a good site for them to invest in.
Then set your starting price (which you can determine based on researching similar auctions) and set the auction for at least seven to ten days. Just be sure to answer all questions promptly. And keep in mind that most of your bids and questions will come in the last couple days and even the last hour of your auction.
That’s all there is to it! Depending on whether you’re building or buying sites, and how long you hold them, you can double your money – maybe even triple it – using this Domain Investing strategy.
One last thing,,,
The One Page Sales Site
Even if you don't plan on creating a site around your domain name you can write a sales letter and place the domain on your hosting as a one page site. This way you can build back links, get traffic, and keeping with good web-masters increasing the value of your domain investment.
Click here for a Real world Example of the One page sales site.
This is domain investing done right.
Since domain names are under $20 a year domain investing is not a crap shoot, it's actually like little bite size bets.Soon I will write up an entire approach to the One Page Sales Site for Domain Investing
