How much can you realistically make from domaining?

[keroppi_gims]

I am considering flipping (and perhaps developing) domains. From my experience so far, flipping domains seems time consuming. It takes a few days just to do the transfer itself.

So, I'd like to ask you how much you can realistically earn from domaining per month? Secondly, how much time do you put into it each month to earn the amount you earn? I am interested in hearing from people who have experience in this.

 

[randomo]

As a high-volume domain flipper, here's what I can tell you:

• Yes, it's time-consuming.
• Transfers aren't usually a problem, though, as the vast majority of sales are direct "pushes" into the buyer's registrar account.
• As the domain market cooled and many values dropped (accompanying the global economic troubles), flipping became a lot harder and less lucrative. Sort of like how a lot of people became stock "day traders" during the big stock market runup, but you don't hear about anyone doing that now.
• My advice: better to try profiting from a few high-quality names than a lot of OK ones.

Good luck!

P.S. The very best domainers make a lot of money, but for most of us, it just supplements other income & isn't enough to buy that Lamborghini.

P.P.S. Development is probably a better way to make $ through domaining, but I'm not an expert at it, so I hope others will add their thoughts here.

 

[kev]

I am considering flipping (and perhaps developing) domains. From my experience so far, flipping domains seems time consuming. It takes a few days just to do the transfer itself.

So, I'd like to ask you how much you can realistically earn from domaining per month? Secondly, how much time do you put into it each month to earn the amount you earn? I am interested in hearing from people who have experience in this.

It depends how hard you work and whether you can spot an opportunity.
I primarily invest in cctlds and Ive started to do a bit of development to try and supplement my sale earnings since there has been a drop in potential buyers.

Im a uni student so domaining provides enough for me to finance my studies and never really needing to worry about money. But Ive hard to work pretty hard for it.

Good luck!

 

[dtagr]

First off, I have only been doing doing this since January, so the months of January through the middle of May don't count. I believe I have now learned enough to be successful in that short time. I am much more selective in my domain purchases
now.
I've had no luck flipping whatsoever. It may be the quality of my names or my sales ability or both.

What I do now is semi-develop keyword strong domains into mini-sites. I now have 3 that make $1+ a day. So if I can do 3 - I can do 100, and if I can do a hundred then I can do 1000. I consider that good money.

I work full time so realistically I'm lucky to get 8-12 hours in per week, and that includes learning by reading the forums and my favourite blogs.

I believe that I can get to 100+ sites within the year and quit my day job.

 

[-REECE-]

Having money certainly makes it easier -- you can flip more expensive domains (or larger amounts of domains) making more profit on each. Parking domains -- better keyword domains are going to bring in more parking revenue. Development -- being able to hire someone to develop you a nice looking website, help out with the SEO, buy links, etc will make it easier to make a popular website.

 

[networkmsia]

How much can you realistically make from domaining?

Lets see,
you can buy candy.com for 100k, then and sell it for 3 million!!!!
so... sky high is the limit..

 

[WordWalker]

Food for Thought

This is a great question. Based on a previous thread I posted: Information No Domainer Should Be Without , it looks to me like longtail domains may be on par with the vending route business (ie., snacks, candy, laundry, etc.) back in the day when retirees would often supplement their pension income with vending routes that would provide nickels, dimes and quarters multiplied by machines per location and again by number of locations.

Today, instead of selling snacks, we're selling information.

The Math

(estimate for avg. developed site income over time)

1,000 domains
@$10 income per domain/month

$10,000/month

$120,000/ year total income.

Even if I'm off by 50%, that's still some serious cabbage.

Maybe nobody's talking much about it, but IMHO, this would explain exactly why the parked page community is in panic mode. This isn't about just supplementing income, this is big money.

As a rule, I don't park any of my domains because I don't believe it furthers the industry, and it certainly does nothing for the site visitor. Even so, from time to time, when I receive an offer on a domain name, I will park it at Sedo and give the potential buyer an opportunity to push it to auction. I've had parked pages that produced $50/month doing nothing (4Tub.com was the last one of these I sold), so I know $10/month is not blue sky thinking.

It seems to me scaling-up is a way to potentially generate a respectable income and spread your risk to boot.

I've reevealuated my domain strategy in the past few weeks as a result of what I'm learning, and this is the direction I'm moving in. The challenge will be in getting sites up, but once up and running, it's like the vending route business without having to go on a physical cash run every week.

By the way, I've got a TOP 100 list going here at Namepros that's generated some serious laughter, please take a look and have a laugh or contribute a slogan if you feel creatively inspred to do so. Thanks!

 

[-REECE-]

I honestly think it may be easiest to make 5-10 sites earning $1000-$2000 per month -- hard to make much more than that off a site unless you know what you're doing, plus usually much more time consuming. Some of the domain bloggers are making $1000+ per month off of I'd imagine no more than 30 minutes per day of work (1 small blog post). The nice thing about bigger sites versus minisites is that the more content you fill your blog with, the more free visitors you're going to get (search engines, links, social bookmarks, etc), so you can work less and less hard each month to maintain that same income level.

 

[ThreeD]

I honestly think it may be easiest to make 5-10 sites earning $1000-$2000 per month

I agree with you Reece. Even though we have close to 1000 domains by now, we don't flip'em and we don't park them. Some are 100% developed domains that give us great income, others are forwarded to our developed domains.

It's all about patience and quality content! Stick to it and you will see results :tu:

 

[keroppi_gims]

Yes, of course people talk about buying a website such as candy.com for 100k and selling for 3m, and 1,000 domains@$10 income per domain/month, but are these figures possible to someone quite new at it?

I mean, do you earn these figures right now?

What about the time spent each month to obtain it?

I honestly think it may be easiest to make 5-10 sites earning $1000-$2000 per month

- do other people agree with this?

 

[mntor]

Yes, of course people talk about buying a website such as candy.com for 100k and selling for 3m, and 1,000 domains@$10 income per domain/month, but are these figures possible to someone quite new at it?

I mean, do you earn these figures right now?

What about the time spent each month to obtain it?

- do other people agree with this?

There is no free lunch imho. You have to work hard and smart for making money no matter whether it is domaining or developing. :tu:

How much you can make is based on many factors like
a. How much time you can invest
b. How much money you can invest
c. How long are you willing to wait to start making money
etc

 

[ecalc]

... I've had parked pages that produced $50/month doing nothing (4Tub.com was the last one of these I sold), so I know $10/month is not blue sky thinking.

That's an interesting example. Created 5-sep-2007, no productive backlinks, insignificant keyword search, sold at Sedo 17-apr-2009. I'm shocked that it earned $50/mo parked. Can you comment on the traffic or your decision to sell for 20 months rev? Thanks!

 

[WordWalker]

That's an interesting example. Created 5-sep-2007, no productive backlinks, insignificant keyword search, sold at Sedo 17-apr-2009. I'm shocked that it earned $50/mo parked. Can you comment on the traffic or your decision to sell for 20 months rev? Thanks!

This is one of those situations where I received interest on a domain that wasn't parked and for which I had no stats . So I parked it at Sedo with a $1,000 reserve and invited the other party to make an offer. Several weeks later, a $1,000 offer came in, and I pushed it to auction as I indicated I would. In the meantime, I was not at all focused on the stats. This was, after all, the only domain I had parked (I have zero parked today).

Only after the sale did I realize this domain had potential.

 

[copper]

I rarely do quick flip.
Most of my domain incomes are from enduser sales.
Most of those sales are in $x,xxx ranges.
Most of them are NOT new domains (less than year old).
So, I guess domains are like wines, sort of.

 

[dtagr]

While I think that 5-10 websites making $1000-$2000 a month is definitely achievable, the starting point is surely getting one or two hundred to make $1 a day. I think one needs a pool of names that have reached a certain earnings threshold before risking the full on development costs to bring in more revenue.

Consider a newb like me who didn't know anything 6 mnths ago (still doesn't it can be argued). With a budget of $3000 which was spent hand regging absolutely crappy names and then shelling $40-$250 on "professional" mini-site development, making 1k or2k a month this year is pretty difficult. I'm on course for $1k to $2k this year which is obviously a "learning" loss.

I think Reece that knowing what you know now it should be achievable for you, but it would take a rare newb to to pull that off in year #1. But I do believe that it can be achieved with 1 or 2 years experience and a modest budget ($3k-$5k) and a LOT of sweat.

To sum up, I believe it is relatively simple (but not easy) to make a decent full-time living in the range of $60k+ within 2-3 yrs. If i'm wrong, stay tuned for my bulk sale.:hehe:

 

[vietguy3o3]

How many of you guys here are domaining full time?

 

[copper]

How many of you guys here are domaining full time?

That's all I do since mid 2008.

 

[notlikeyou]

It depends how hard you work and whether you can spot an opportunity.

Sums it up right there.

 

[wussadotcom]

I am considering flipping (and perhaps developing) domains. From my experience so far, flipping domains seems time consuming. It takes a few days just to do the transfer itself.

So, I'd like to ask you how much you can realistically earn from domaining per month? Secondly, how much time do you put into it each month to earn the amount you earn? I am interested in hearing from people who have experience in this.

I am more to developing rather than parking or keeping it waiting for the right enduser. IMHO thats the best way even for a domainer as it helps to to have an extra ranking or traffic when attracting endusers. Normal developers and domainers make around mid $xxxx IMHO.

 

[Jaco]

It's like poker.
Some people do it and make a ton while most do it and actually lose money.
I don't know precisely what the skillset is that makes for a successful domainer, but configural reasoning seems to be a biggie.

 

[Keral_Patel]

Atleast a million before you die and if you keep doing it in consistent basis.

 

[DomainTalker]

You get odd (happy) surprises, too...

I hand-regged a .com domain when I was a newbie, that today, I wouldn't consider...But, the thing has made $20-$25, parked, EVERY month since the day I regged it over 2 years ago...!!


...Now, if only every hand reg did even that...!!

.

 

[SeanPreston]

This is a great question. Based on a previous thread I posted: Information No Domainer Should Be Without , it looks to me like longtail domains may be on par with the vending route business (ie., snacks, candy, laundry, etc.) back in the day when retirees would often supplement their pension income with vending routes that would provide nickels, dimes and quarters multiplied by machines per location and again by number of locations.

Today, instead of selling snacks, we're selling information.

The Math

(estimate for avg. developed site income over time)

1,000 domains
@$10 income per domain/month

$10,000/month

$120,000/ year total income.

Even if I'm off by 50%, that's still some serious cabbage.

Maybe nobody's talking much about it, but IMHO, this would explain exactly why the parked page community is in panic mode. This isn't about just supplementing income, this is big money.

As a rule, I don't park any of my domains because I don't believe it furthers the industry, and it certainly does nothing for the site visitor. Even so, from time to time, when I receive an offer on a domain name, I will park it at Sedo and give the potential buyer an opportunity to push it to auction. I've had parked pages that produced $50/month doing nothing (4Tub.com was the last one of these I sold), so I know $10/month is not blue sky thinking.

It seems to me scaling-up is a way to potentially generate a respectable income and spread your risk to boot.

I've reevealuated my domain strategy in the past few weeks as a result of what I'm learning, and this is the direction I'm moving in. The challenge will be in getting sites up, but once up and running, it's like the vending route business without having to go on a physical cash run every week.

By the way, I've got a TOP 100 list going here at Namepros that's generated some serious laughter, please take a look and have a laugh or contribute a slogan if you feel creatively inspred to do so. Thanks!

wow, nice post man. I have never thought about it like that.

Sean

 

[sankalpsingh]

I honestly think it may be easiest to make 5-10 sites earning $1000-$2000 per month -- hard to make much more than that off a site unless you know what you're doing, plus usually much more time consuming. Some of the domain bloggers are making $1000+ per month off of I'd imagine no more than 30 minutes per day of work (1 small blog post). The nice thing about bigger sites versus minisites is that the more content you fill your blog with, the more free visitors you're going to get (search engines, links, social bookmarks, etc), so you can work less and less hard each month to maintain that same income level.

Thanks for Sharing :great: ,I am preponing the Development of my Blog after reading your post.

 

[edenCC]

I've lost about $2/day since middle 2008 :hehe: