Title: Author: David Underhill aka Barefoottech Article: Copyright 2008 by BareFootTech

As more people and companies than ever are investing in domain names, it has become evident that not all of these names will realise their full income earning potential. As a Domain reseller and investor with a reasonable sized portfolio ,I have often been asked the best way to make money from these investment domains. The following are the most common ways to create an income stream or maximize resale value.

• Park the name with a parking service
  These places pay a percentage of the advertising revenue derived from ads placed on a page displayed when someone visits your domain. Also most of these parking services also offer a sales listing service to enable easy resale marketing of your domain.
• Make your own park page
  Similar to the above ,only you create your own small Website with ads and get 100% of the revenue. This however will not be as profitable because the parking services get a much greater traffic flow.
• Develop a small, but content rich minisite
  These small minisites are usually filled with articles and contextual ads from Adsense. Also often called AdsenseSites
• Develop a full featured web-site
  Selling services or products and also have some ads and paid links.This can be either selling your own products or as an affiliate for an existing online website.

Factors that increase value

At any of the above stages of development and Value adding,you can make money by reselling the Domain/Site for an increased value above the purchase price. The following is some of the variables determining a fair resale price.

• Keywords & brandability of the name
  i.e. Become-rich.org is Keyword rich and is valued higher than CrappyNames.com
• Amount of Visitor Traffic
  Simple equation More visitors = More Income = Greater Value
• Return from site
  (Income for Ads,Sales or Paid Links) . Higher Income earned ,Higher value for the site
• Current Demand for similiar names
  If a particular type of name is hot property ,all the similar names increase in value because of the demand.
• Current Search Engine Ranking
  If the Name is Not listed by the major search engines or is on page 346 than value is low, conversely if it is listed on the first page of the listings than value will be higher.
• Number of Sites linking to your site
  Related to Traffic and S.E.Ranking , More links = more traffic + higher rankings
• How keen is the buyer for name
  Buyer may want the name for a specific purpose and will pay a premium to ensure they get it.

Ways to Lose money on Domains

• Register a trademarked name
  like "P*yP*lFees.com" because of the Legal hassles. Most High profile companies can afford an expensive legal battle ,can you?
• Pay too much for Domain Name
  Just because ReallyGreat.com sold for $Big-bucks , doesn't mean paying $bigBucks for any old name will mean reselling it for an even higher price.
• Get scammed by Email and other types of fraud
  Domain investors attract more than their fair share of Scammers A common one is an email claiming to be someone wishing to buy your name ,all you have to do is use their preferred Appraisal service to confirm the offered price. It is just a ruse to get you to pay an inflated price for this appraisal.

About the author: David J Underhill aka BareFootTech is an Australian based domain name reseller and MiniSite developer.