Using Expired Domain Names to Generate Income

Many people are just now becoming aware of the income generating potential of expired domain names and are using that knowledge to make vast sums of money on the internet. The total number of websites that are listed on internet search engines are into the millions and a quantifiable percentage of them at any given time are expired and are available to the public and that means you.

The reason that they have expired is simply because the previous owner has stopped paying the renewal fees on them, and that can be for any one of a number of reasons other than the website was not profitable. Partnership disputes, divorce, loss of interest and even death of the owner are just a smattering of the scenarios that are leading to perfectly viable domain names expiring and becoming available to be snatched up by anyone who can search them out.

It was the dot com crash that that really got the business of acquiring abandoned domain names started, because a large number of the internet businesses that went bust had viable traffic but they weren't economically viable on the business delivery end. One way of using an expired domain name if you currently own a website, is to acquire it and then direct the traffic it is generating to your own website and many times the links to the expired domain name may still be active and viable, meaning even more traffic for your website.

Of course not all expired domain names pointed to functioning websites as many of the expired domain names were created and registered by speculators who hoped to generate a profit on the resale of the name. A keyword rich expired domain name has the potential of generating income by building generic websites for the sole purpose of resale on the open market. The keyword rich domain name can be used to drive traffic to the new websites, thereby increasing their value.

Another option is to buy domain names of websites that were active as a good number of expired domain names had viable websites built on them. In these cases the owners of these websites failed to renew their registration or completely stopped operating the website all together. In many of these cases these websites had substantial traffic from links on other websites, search engine rankings and directory listings.

Still another use for expired domain names is to use them for affiliate marketing programs. The beauty of affiliate marketing programs is that they allow you to break into internet marketing without having the hassle that comes with selling any type of product. With affiliate marketing, you operate a website that promotes a given product and then directs traffic to the actual supplier of that product. You then earn a commission on any sales that are generated by the traffic that you have directed there. Affiliate marketing is a great way for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit to break into internet marketing with minimal investment, and using an expired domain gives you a good head start.

Domain Names Create a Location

In the offline world your business location has direct bearing on the success or failure of your business. The real estate adage location, location, location has been instilled into our mindset over the years with the vast majority of people understanding and believing this to be true.

The same holds true on the Internet. You must realize that your domain name is your location on the internet. It is your unique identifier that separates you from the 120 million or so websites in the world today. You promote your domain name the same way you promote your street address and telephone number for your offline business, so be wise when choosing a domain name.

Your domain name is the gateway to the internet. Without a domain name visitors will have no way of finding your website. The same is true if you choose a domain name that has no relevance to your website content, that is hard to spell or hard to remember. A good domain name is both descriptive of the website content and easy to remember.

To make a comparison to the offline business world I used to own a restaurant in an "out of the way" location. It was an awesome 3 story building constructed in 1885 with a unique architecture style copied by no other building in the area. The place had great food, service and ambiance with restaurant reviews to prove it. The problem; customers could not find us! That's a huge problem!

The solution; spend a ton of money on advertising! I had the product I just needed to get the word out to potential customers. Our location was definitely the drawback, no foot traffic and little drive-by traffic. I had to educate the marketplace about the restaurant and what we offered.

After about 2 years of heavy promoting via radio, newspapers, billboards, direct mail, networking, website and e-mail marketing we developed a loyal customer base that sustained for years to come. Even with that, I still had to spend more than average on advertising due to the location.

Now compare the restaurant scenario with domain names. The restaurant was located in an "out of the way" location so I had to spend a ridiculous amount of money on advertising to educate the marketplace. Now if I had chosen a better location my advertising costs would have been much lower and my profits higher.