ResellRightsBlowout.com

You can sell them. You can also not sell them. Why would you keep them? If they were high traffic generators, and you are already running other websites or online marketing programs, you can make more money by keeping some domains.

Redirect the traffic to existing websites

This strategy always works. If you are aware of a dropped domain name which had medium to substantial web traffic, you may be able to use it to your advantage simply by putting up a “redirect,” making people who go to that address arrive at another of your choosing…not bad, especially if you are in or plan to be in a business much like the prior domain owner. If the audience is not relevant, this makes less sense (unless you are running traffic-related links or other programs, in which case all traffic may be good traffic).

You can link one, or hundreds, of expired domains to your web site(s)!

Marketing affiliate programs

A similar strategy is to link expired domains directly to your affiliate page, if you have one. This isn’t too different from redirecting to your own site, but if you’re thinking of traffic-building programs, you should definitely be aware of affiliate marketing, which is one of the easiest passive-income earning strategies on the Web today.

Affiliate marketing is simply creating a place for people to buy someone else’s products or services “through you” in exchange for which you get a commission. Amazon.com is one of the biggest affiliate marketers in the world. Here’s an example.

You buy up a bunch of expired domains about snakes, like reallyscarysnakes.com, biguglysnakes.com, rattlesnakesusa.com, etc. You then set up a simple one-page website (which can be called anything) and on this page you feature the top 20 book titles at Amazon on the topic of snakes. Each time someone goes to one of those old URLs, they then come to your site, see all the books on snakes, and every time they buy one, Amazon sends you money. Easy!

The possibilities are endless but like the website strategy though perhaps more so this would also work only if you link your affiliate to a relevant expired domain or domains.

If your strategy remains selling the names, let’s take a look at how to do it!

After domain acquisition, if you are not planning on using them as described above, your final goal should be selling each name – ideally at a big profit!

You may sell an expired domain name immediately after buying, or you may wait for some time before selling it. Either way you want to have some sense of the price range you might expect for it when you do sell.

The best way to figure out what a good selling price would be, do some research on other expired domain names. This information is available easily from the auction sites themselves, and we have some examples below. Internet research will tell you what prices similar domain names were sold for, and after what period.

Let’s consider some approaches to selling a domain name. The simplest method is to make a website and list all the domain names you have. You can then provide your contact information on the site itself so that prospective buyers can contact you. However, this method requires extensive marketing on your part or you’ll never get the relevant audience to see what you have. Simply listing the domain names on your website wouldn’t help, unless you have a very popular website already and believe your for-sale domains would be of interest to the people already coming to the site.

A better method for selling expired domain names is an auction site. These include general auction sites like eBay (ask for our report on making money with eBay for a lot more information) and specialized auction sites for domains only.

Good auction sites do the marketing for you – they attract considerable targeted prospective buyers, and these people want to buy domains or they wouldn’t be there. You don’t have to worry about making and managing a webpage to list your domain names. And most importantly you can monitor and control the price at which you would like to sell the domain names easily, from anywhere.

eBay and AfterNic

There are literally hundreds of auction sites on the Internet with different varieties of auction types and rules. For the purpose of this guide we recommend beginners try to sell domain names using eBay, as it is the largest and the most popular auction site on the Internet today.

The most significant domains-only auction site is afternic.com.

Both eBay and afternic have similar functionality including reserve pricing, and buy it now pricing. Those familiar with eBay will find afternic an easy transition although there are some differences. Afternic makes it easier to cancel bids or auctions, the contract requirements are less, and the auctions may be quite long in duration. Ebay offers much greater exposure but to a much less specialized audience, and shorter auctions. Take a look at both and see what you like better.

For the regular domain broker afternic.com also offers appraisal services for only $19.99 to members who are unable to assess the value of the domain name. This is helpful in setting a price, if you don’t know where to start.

There are other places to sell your domains, but we recommend starting with eBay, afternic, or both.

Domain names can be a lucrative business, whether an add-on traffic booster to your existing Internet strategy or a stand-alone operation of buying expiring names then reselling them at a profit.

Like the classic board games of chess or Othello, dealing in domain names “takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.” The market is in continual flux which means there is always opportunity but that opportunity may be hard to precisely predict.

As long as you get more than you miss, buy and manage your domains wisely, use the ones you can for your own sites and sell the rest for a profit at auction, you’ll find a small amount of time and money invested in domain names can be one of the highest returning Internet investments around.

Good luck and we’ll see you at the auction!