40 Ways to Make Money Online

Domain names are the new real estate. All of the 3 letter .com’s are taken and nearly all of the 4 letter .com’s are taken.

So that leaves 5 letter .com’s. Although world economies might be hitting the rocks, don’t worry about things online – things are still booming and even if/when we do have another dot com bubble burst, get ready to pounce on expiring domain names and sites that are selling for peanuts.

You only have to look at sedo.com‘s recent sales to see how much domain names are selling for nowadays… Here’s a few of the big guns over the pasty few years

• Sex.com sold for $14m
• Porn.com sold for $9.5m
• Business.com sold for $8m

A good tool I use to ‘snipe’ expiring domains is http://freshdrop.net/

Getting anything under a 5 letter .com is virtually impossible nowadays. If you come across a decent one, snap it up ASAP. There are people who do nothing but wait around and pounce on expiring domain names, in the hope the old buyer forgot to renew it and will have to buy it back for $$$.

There are also decent domain names which simply aren’t registered.

• Powerhose.net
• Spamdealer.com
• Thorfy.com

These are just 3 domain names which I’ve come across in the past that were not registered yet. But these are what I’d call good domain names. You could profit from all of these. Hopefully some of you will. To find unregistered domain names I use a site called instantdomainsearch.com and randomly enter domains I think *might* not be taken. Persistence and patience is the name of the game here.

The first two are what are known as keyword domains. They contain real words, dictionary words put together. These are the best type as they’re more valuable when it comes to SEO. There’s also more chance that people will type them in naturally.

Thorfy.com is an example of a brandable domain name. It means nothing, but it sounds good – and that’s where the value lies. Bebo, Flickr – they mean nothing really, but they’re short, easy to remember and sound good… that’s the ‘web 2.0’ domain world we now live in.

Some of you might ask why I haven’t registered all 3 of those domains above – the answer is I want to show you guys you CAN still buy decent names and sell them. Many people think it can’t be done, those days are gone, but I’m telling you now, and as you can see above, this CAN be still done.

By the way, I use name.com to register all my domains – $8.99 for a .com, with free private whois protection thrown in. Godaddy and the rest are good, but why pay more when you can get the same for less?

If you have contacts and a reputation, why not use them? Why not approach a webmaster trying to sell a site or domain name and ask for a 10% slice of the profits, should you find a buyer for him?

Tyler Cruz did exactly that 2 years ago and netted over $23k just for his brokering services – and that was just on one domain name which he helped sell. Not bad, that’s what a lot of people earn in a year!

Lots of people don’t like selling – they don’t know how to sell or what to price things at or where to start. If you have a knack for selling and have the balls to approach sellers and buyers and contact them, then this game could be for you. You’re anonymous on the internet to an extent, so you really have no excuses – just approach people, talk to them and offer them a deal. Worst they can say is no – and even then it’s by email or IM, it’s not like you’re being shunned in front of an audience or face to face.

Just like a real estate agent, if you can master this art, you’ll always be in demand and you’ll always earn good money.