ethan390

Hey all,

I've immersed myself with domaining for the past month, spending countless hours researching through forums and domaining blogs. In a few weeks I will start my summer vacation and want to start purchasing some domains.

My goal is to eventually earn a stable, livable income through domaining. I realize that this will take lots of time and effort, and perhaps a little luck, but am optimistic.

I should note that I'm a college student with years of website creation experience (design and programming) but limited experience with SEO, and would consider myself a quick learner.

That being said, given a limited starting budget of $1000, what domaining path/strategy would you recommend for me?

Any and all help will be appreciated!

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tinner666

Look for names that have meaning. Catchy and meaningful is good. Avoid some of the hype and use common sense.
Be careful who you deal with.

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dezinerite

I've made a mistake that many new domainers make: registering a domain that sounds really good to me, but sounds really off for everyone else.

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chovy

buy a couple of sites that will yield a profit after one year.

copper

Decide on which niche market you want.
You must like that niche and have some knowledge.
You'll endup giving up if you don't like that niche.
Buy one domain that describe your niche market.
Decide what type of income you want.
Keep at it and never give up.

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nielsencl

With your design and programming background and your nice budget you have several options that others may not have. Here is what I would consider:

1) With an idea for a "unique" site, research the perfect domain for the concept. Build the site, optimize and submit it, build content, and when it has reached a good level, sell it. If you have advertising on the site, you can be generating some income before you sell, and the proof of income will command a higher price.

2) Search for a tired old site that you can revive, or a new one that you can take to the next level. Since you have the background, you can put in some work after buying a "fixer-upper" and should be able to sell (flip) it again for a nice profit.

3) Buy domains that you know or think will increase in value. You'll need to know a lot about this or have a special edge on everyone else, like knowing what the next trends will be in some industry. This has a lot of risk, but man can it be exciting, not unlike gambling. And unlike gambling where you have nothing to show for it except for an expired comp card, if your strategy flops and you are stuck with a $250 domain that you can sell, you can always stick a blog on it and tell your sad story... :-)

4) You could research domains that contain keyword phrases that have people using them AND have high bid prices. Park the domains with a parking provider that allows you to do some non-fraud promotion, like link building, to get traffic. Optimize the domains for best results.

Really I think since you have some web background the first two should be the best options for you. Of course if you create or rehab some web sites you may be able to generate some steady income and you can just keep the sites for the long term. The one thing you will want to learn about is scored keyword research and SEO, since it will help you whatever your choice is.

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ethan390

Thanks for the tips everyone!

copper:
Yeah, it would be tedious to create new content for a niche that you are not interested in.

nielsencl:
Part of the excitement for me is researching keywords and finding a gem. For this reason and thinking about the future, I would prefer a combination of options 3), and 4) (without parking every domain). Regarding option 4), wouldn't it be more profitable to create a small, nice looking, niche site with SEO and AdSense than to just park a domain? Of course, if I have hundreds or thousands of domains, it would be difficult if not impossible to develop niche sites for all of them (without outsourcing), so a combination of parking and development seems to fit the bill. Do you see this as a feasible option?

nielsencl

Sure, but as you are thinking there is a certain amount of work involved, just in setting up the hosting account for each site. Then you have to have something for a site that is easy to set up and optimize, but also has some quality so people don't instantly hit the back button when they see the site.

But there is no reason you could not do both. Park them at first and then as you have time, put sites on them. And there is no reason you could not host a site for a while and then keep the hosting, but change the DNS back to parking for a while to see how that does.

By the way, if anyone was interested, you could use parking as a "backup" to hosting or vice-versa. Just set up hosting and parking and put what you want as your primary as the first two NS and then the second two NS. If the first goes down or is slow to respond, the traffic should go to the second. I would check with your parking provide to make sure this does not violate any of their rules, but I doubt it does.

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diegoid

Taste your domains first. Specially if you want to get domains with traffic (type-in, typos, expired).

Good Luck.

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