My friend and business mentor is a fairly well-known "domainer"...he hand regged a few names in the 90's and has dropped a few thousand bucks every now and then to get a name he thought sounded good...well, I know he makes a decent amount of $ parking the names, but I never know how much until yesterday....
He showed me his Parked account.....he was at $600 yesterday when we checked it late at night....he showed me the results from the past few days and the lowest day was mid 400's....
It averages out to about $500 per DAY and it's ALL TYPE IN TRAFFIC. He does zero, zero, zero marketing of the names.....
If I was only born 10 years sooner so I could have hand-regged a few names!
I think there are many people who make this much or more per day. Now it is all about having the upfront cash to purchase these names and less about the insight which is what it took awhile ago.
You and me both buddy. I like to take a pragmatic view about the present and look for the future technologies that I can invest in now. Parking is nice, but it's a more of a big players market if you don't already have great names.
WolfMother - what type of things are you investing in? Names that can be turned into automated businesses (Like the chocolate.com guys) or buying names for re-sale? And speaking of resale....my friend has been offered 10x yearly revenue for a few names (so we're talking about 1m cash), but isn't sure if he should cash out or keep collecting the checks....will ppc keep growing or will there be a ppc bubble?
I generally look for domains that make $10 a month or more. I make money after about a year but in the mean time, I'm constantly getting backlinks so that I get more than just type in traffic.
Focus on domains that are more affordable. Go for domains that make AT LEAST enough to cover its registration fee (standard registration) per month. This will help you build a solid portfolio. Generally, you can get these domains for less than 3 years revenue, and usually no more than 2 if you look hard enough. My domain, apple-pie.com, pulls $1 a day minimum and $4 on a good day. I paid $135 for it. At its current rate, at the very least I've doubled my money this year.
That is a very interesting question. Right now i'm sure a lot of parkers feel that the ppc bubble is happening but the names themselves, given that they are solid, will rise in value. Parking services are now allowing a certain transparency(100% rev. share) between the advertiser's investment and the cpc return so they can stay in business against innovators like Bodis. I hope that this trend continues because no one likes to get screwed by the middleman.
I always like to look at the bigger picture of the internet and see which services will be centered around it in the future for investment. This includes but is not limited to mobile applications, television(.TV), and a more integrated and natural way of communicating with everyone we know. I still have my bodis, adsense, ebay, and affiliate accounts but I want to think that sooner than later I can create services that will ultimately be a contribution and not just reaping the benefits of a certain technology.
