This is one of the hardest ways to make money on the web. You’re at least five years too late for this party and if you don’t have incredibly deep pockets you haven’t got a chance.

You’re probably right. My AIM contact did say it’s getting really hard to get new names because of rising prices. And most people have their domains set to auto-renewal so back ordering them is worthless now.

However, this doesn’t mean there is still no room left. There are still some deals out there. Like everything else, you just have to keep your eyes open.

Holf F*k that’ all I have to say. Another good article. I remember about 5 years ago working at a startup in Van and there was a kid who new nothing about we stuff who cobbled up domains because he read in Time magazine that the web might be big… he was house hunting while I was trying to make enough for student loan payments/rent.

I have a question who do you guys register with? I usually go with my webhost(dreamhost) which is around $10/year. Anything cheaper?

I use GoDaddy.com $8.95 a year. Yahoo offers domains for $1.99 for the 1st year, then $9.95 after that.

Wow, I bet that Yun Ye dude is at some island right now, smoking his cigar and watching his 100 or so hotties roll naked in the sand.

If I only knew then what I knew now, 5 years ago I used to have over 100 domains, all with some sort of site on them. I let most of them go because they weren’t paying their way.

I kept a handful of them, which have been making some pocket money from parking, and I sold what I thought was an average one for $1000 earlier in the year.

The sad thing is though that people can’t get a domain name that relates to their business anymore. I know, I tried a couple weeks ago to get one for a project I was thinking about and roughly 90% of the domain names that were remotely related to what I wanted to do were taken by one of these guys. The other 10%? taken by legitimate sites.

I’m all for making money, even serious money, but this seems like cyber squatting.

I’m paying for about $8.20 (After CAN) at namesecure.com
i think it’s pretty good. no confusing adverts whenever i buy it.

hey Robert, I share the same experience with ya. Was thinking of a very good domain for my online biz. but darn, gettting a domain name can be so hard!

sigh.

Funny I had just recently read an article about this guy. His system for grabbing up new/forgotten urls was amazing. My question is: Where did he raise the initial capital to do what he did?

I had the same problem with my company, the .com was taken by some random, plain text site with a download link on it, no idea. I just took the .net, still works for me!

Wow! If only I knew about this stuff way back then

Mo’ money, mo’ problems, bros!

There are still plenty of opportunities to make money with domain names.

Every day, hundreds of quality, commerce friendly domain names become available to investors who know what to look for and how to find them.

Expired domains with traffic are just one of many different methods to make money within the domain industry.

This week Moniker is hosting a live domain auction at the Traffic Conference and expects to sell 5 million dollars worth of domain names in 1 day.

It’s not too late, far from it.

[...] more… [...]

I can’t believe it. I read every article on this site about money and have come to the conclusion that the saying “a fool and his money part every day” is true in your case.

Sure, in some instances this can make tons of money. Just like some of your other schemes. But they are full of incomplete & incorrent analysis, and they too often hinge things working out in a way that’s not damn likely. Otherwise everyone would be doing it.

Know why your “make millions of dollar” strategies never really work, John? It’s because if they were true, real and consistent, everyone would flock to them, therefore driving down the profitability and resulting in some minor and marginal profit. This article inadvertently makes the point.

You can get domain names on the cheap at GoDaddy - just search Google for some discount coupons so you can save a few more dollars…

Wow! If only I knew about this stuff way back then –mark

It’s always like that isn’t it? I think a better way to think is… what is going to be the next hit?

Yun Ye is definitely every domainers idol. If what I read is correct, he wrote the first version of a ‘drop catcher’ in the mid 90’s. What those do is snatch up domains that are not renewed on time. Then, the rest is history.

I own about 300 domains which I park or develop. I have close to 270 of them parked between two services and about 30 developed, just to provide fresh content. I must admit though, I have sold a couple to end users that paid for each of those domain purchases about 3 times over. It is definitely worthwhile to get into.

This guy has gobbled up all of the generic domain look alikes. He uses them for pay per click campaigns and organic search listings. Wonder if it will fly.

Netfirms is great as well, but their hosting is horrible.
Domains are $5

About cheap domains: I use 1and1, six bucks a year, and private registration is included in that cost.

hey mark, it isn’t too late…
there’s always the next youtube, the next google, the next plentyoffish.

money is just an idea.

I hate the way you say “domainer” it like trying to sprinkle sugar over cowdung to make it look like a chocolate cake. domain squatter would be a more appropriate word. And its one of the dirtiest business on the internet. no wonder the jerk never showed his face people would have sued his ass off. So why am I sounding so negative. Its because I faced a similar situation where some jerk registered a domain and I had to get legal help to get it back.

I like 1and1 at $5.99 - GoDaddy is nice because they have a suggestion tool which gives you different prefixes, suffixes, and synonyms.

This really is the second worst type of person on the net, right next to spammers.

I use OnlineNIC for domains which are $6.69 for com, net and org. Other tld’s varies a bit.

There’s still good money in domains but don’t look for the obvious intl. .com domains - they’re taken 99% of the time. And don’t believe you’ll be able to get a bunch of high-value domains.

Consider country specific tld’s instead. I have had decent success with grabbing deleted domains which has been used before so they have inbound links. Most often I can get like $0.50-$1 a day from those domains just by putting up a small page with a little related text and adsense. Traffic comes from either type-ins, search engines or old links.

re: people posting hate comments

you guys are nitwits if you have a “hatred” towards these type of domain owners….you have no clue what you are talking about…..most pro domainers don’t mess around with trademarks and the like.

Seems like the ones that harbor these feelings are pissed off and bitter that you never got in when you could.

And saying that your mad that these domains aren’t developed, stop being so uptight and get over it….big freakin’ deal.

I know who he is.. There are a lot of internet millionaires in vancouver. Vast majority of them are in Porn/ adware/ domains though. But all of these guys are peanuts… The real king of all these web would be Conru from aff, he makes over 1 billion a year. Largest company no one talks about. More signups per day then msypace.

Does seem like > 5 years ago would’ve been a better time to get into this.

Bah. Stupid article. What else is not new?

[...] Yes, I Am a Tyrant (or, How to Get a ShoutOut) October 26th, 2006 at 11:28 am by Tony You can now include Tyrant to “Firefox Snob” in adjectives to describe me. Why you ask? A few days ago I got a polite email from a Trae McNeely, blogmaster over at berrybusyblog.com asking if I could give him a “Shout Out”, as I have occassionally done with other blogs I have liked in the past. [...]

One important fact was left out. In order to use Google Adsence for domains, you have to have a minimum amount of, and here’s the catch, existing traffic.

Which means you have to invest out-of-pocket to buy and establish your domains. Not until you can verify the traffic can you actually qualify to use Google Adsence for domains. Ans that can be expensive.

If someone knows a work-around for this Catch-22, I’d love to know about it.

There are millions of people making money in Markus way. And how many people make money Yun Ye way?

What I mean is that opportunities for adsense earnings are much bigger.

Just another click fraud scamster dirtying up the internet. I look forward to the day google gets it’s act together and stops paying these worthless farm sites. But then again…they have no incentive to do so..

I’ve got a couple of domains that I had registered awhile back for business ventures that never went anywhere. These domains are currently sitting idle with a generic parked page from the registrar so I might put these on a host with some ads to see if anything comes of it.

I have had a few times where I got a great idea for a website and then found it parked by someone else.

The idea dies right there because I’m not going to pay $2K or more for the name… I’ll just try a different name instead.

Makes sense that the people who create “splogs” would be into getting an appropriate domain name as well. I also notice a lot of sites based on slight misspellings of known brands or companies.

[...] Nachdem wir neulich von den Adsense Huren lesen konnten, gibt es nun einen Bericht über Yun Ye, der die Adsense Huren in den Schatten stellen soll. Dabei geht John Chow auf die Frage ein, wie man mit Domains das schnelle Geld verdienen kann und das die Verbindung zwischen PPC + Domain eine wahr Goldgrube ist. Als Beispiel gibt er an, dass die Domain www.cellphones.com am Tag auf $1300 kommt und zwar allein nur durch Leute die diesen Namen mal im Adressfeld eingeben. Einziger Unterschied zu den Adsense Verdienern ist der fehlende Scan eines Schecks In Deutschland ist diese Sportart auch recht ausgeprägt und wird immer häufiger mit hässlichem Suchmaschinen-Spam gekoppelt, um den Trafficstrom anzukurbeln. Von Typ-Ins alleine wird hierzulande leider keiner reich. [via Making Money] Bookmark: [...]

Good article, John. I’m not sure if you rememeber my email to you about a month ago regarding this very topic. But I’m glad to see you decided to write about it. I’ve been contemplating doing the same on my blog.

I own several dozen domains as well; about 2/3 of those are typos, which are my best performers to date. I park my domains using sedo.com, which is free of charge. And they also feature several tools you can use to beef up your parked domain including an aftermarket sales campaign. Their fee, I believe, is 10% of the sale price or $50, whichever is greater.

The still seems to be a good market out there for this. It IS harder as you alluded to, but with a little dedication, you can find some good ones available. In just about 2 months of parking, I’ve paid for all of the domains I bought…well…just 2 months ago. I have to say, though, that about 10% of my domains are unproductive; the rest carry the load as far as traffic/revenues.

The one beef I have is against those domainers that “taste” domains. Sure, it’s legal, and a way to get ahead of the game. But those “tasters” simply register a domain for a few days (I believe 5 is the maximum holding period before they aren’t charged for the domain name), measure the traffic to determine whether or not its worthwhile, and then either release or purchase the domain at that time. For example, I backordered my blog domain, derrich.com, on GoDaddy for about 19 bucks. These guys had it for 4 days paid nothing for it. I guess I just proved that the greater fool theory is in fact true. =( Either way, I think something should be done about this to keep people on their toes. This makes things too easy.

[...] I own several dozen domains. About 2/3 of those are typos (misspellings of existing websites), which are my best performers to date…performers meaning traffic-wise as well as how much revenue they generate. I park my domains using sedo.com, which is free of charge. Domain parking is simply a way to monetize your undeveloped domain name. Sedo features several tools you can use to beef up your parked domain including an aftermarket sales campaign. Their fee, I believe, is 10% of the sale price or $50, whichever is greater…but that’s if you decide to sell it. Fellow blogger, John Chow, recently posted about this practice in his blog…and how it has been successful for others. I recommend using GoDaddy.com since they have a few good tools for searching for domains, such as making suggestions based on your original search criteria. And they are among the cheapest as well. [...]

oh my god, that guy never has to work again.. and cellphones.com –> $ 1200 a month.. by doing nothing.. thats amazing to……. good lord

I can recommend new book “Virtual Real Estate”for domainers:

http://www.dnbook.biz

Funny that you blogged about this now. My company is actually in the final stages of acquiring over 3,000 domains. Yeah I know, it’s a lot. And just adding privacy status and renewal fees will be over $25k a year. But it’s well worth it, because altogether, the soon to be former owner didn’t even monetize it. He just kinda let the default godaddy page appear and let them make all of the money. I only found out about it through a trusted insider asset over at Godaddy. Will we make our money back? I sure as hell hope so! If we don’t, well, sucks for us then! Heh.

Great post nonetheless.

For those that think that this business model is not good.
Let’s do some math:
100.000 domains
Let’s say they cost 600.000$ to register.
100.000 x 6$ = 600.000$
If for each domain we earn 0,05 cent a day on average
this will be for each day 5000$
100.000 x 0,05 = 5000$
in one year 1.825.000
5000 x 365 = 1.825.000

Well in this situation you need 600.000$ to start, but you can become a registrar with this money and save a lot more on getting domains and use a lot more than 100.000 domains.

Well we already know 100,000 domain names can make more than $1.825 million. Just ask Yue Ye! He made $20 million a year with them and it only cost $1 million to run.

oh, c’mon. the “domainers” gaming the system are very few and far between, and becoming fewer daily. this has been reported in almost every techy magazine and newspaper i’ve read.

the “equation” for making money doesn’t really work. at all. a few (a FEW) guys have gotten lucky and gamed the system. this isn’t a simple “put in capital and get out profit” system.

plus, Google reports less than 1% of Adsense users, for example, make more than $50/month.

Very interesting article you have written. I currently own a few parked domains and did not know I could make a few bucks from them.

Im interested in the legality of parking domain names of misspellings (such as http://www.thinkgek.com) and on it, create an almost similar page to the original but instead of having the original content having adsense advertisement?

Is ’smart’ domaining, rather than just farming sites, better income sheeps?

[...] John Chow’s blog has a very interesting article on his blog about how to make money from domains. Needles to say that this notion was totally new to me so I thought it would be interesting to share it here with everyone.  The article describes how people known has “domainers” make money from buying domains and using them on parked pages with ads. The money comes from PPC services especially catered for parked domains like Google Adsense for Domains. A few days ago I also wrote a post about how to make money from parked domains but I think John Chow’s might be more profitable especially for those people that have many domains. Read the full article here.   [...]

Sure John,
My calculation was made to show that there’s huge profit margin in this business even with a very low income for each domain.

0.05$ can grow to 0,1$ or 0,15$ and with some good domain like cellphones.com can grow to 0,5$ for each domain.

someone can think that this is an unethical way to earn money, but for what I know it’s legal money.

I think that I will start with 6000$ to buy 1000 domains and see what happens.
I have 60 domains and most of them are not developed, I spend 600$ year to maintain, I think that I will try to diversify in this direction.

thanks for this post, as usual your blog it’s worth the time I spend everyday to read it.

Q: How do I enroll in AdSense for domains?
A: AdSense for domains is currently available to LARGE domain portfolio owners.

doh!