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.

 

[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:

 

[DnEbook]

yes we are ony hearing about success ...... i once read at dnjournal the secret is not to make a million all at once , but rather to make one dollar a million times

Me i am in the one dollar range

 

[tkstark]

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

i started domaining at the start of 2008. figure i've lost closer to $3 a day since then.

 

[daj]

If you have money, you can make money. That's how it always goes in the name of business.
The more money you have, the more money you can make.

None of the big domainers, are finding dropped domains, or buying reg fee names to flip them for money (that's what 95% of domainers seem to be doing). The ones who are really making money are buying the best of the best and then doing some work to find companies and corporations who are highly interested in them for a higher fee, or their developing them into great websites that make good money.

 

[exponent]

I made about $30k last year. I haven't really focused on sales this year, since I'm about to graduate college and I'm more concerned with development in a rough economy than undervalued sales.

When things are peachy, SELL, SELL, SELL.

When things aren't so great, BUY AND DEVELOP.

 

[Reinbeast]

Wow, the ToS almost knocked this post out of my head. Now, where was I?

This seems like the perfect place for my first post, even though I've been reading on and off for months. The last comment relates directly to me. I'd like to congratulate you, exponent, on your success and ask if we can trade places, or if someone can send me back in time with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. Here's why.

The summer after my first year of college, all the way back in '98, I fell in love with designing websites and the possibility of registering domains, developing, and possibly selling. I started learning and doing as much as I could...and then summer was over and reality was once again thrust upon me. Since then I've barely done a thing due to time and money constraints. But just last year I was able to save some dollars, and now I have a small bit of time, and I'm slowly starting to get back into this again. Sucks that it's so long after the best names, but at least I have all the experience from everyone here to fall back on. Maybe I can do this. Hope I can, because I haven't stopped obsessing over it for more than a decade, and that's way too long a time to wait.

~Erin B.

 

[Jaco]

None of the big domainers, are finding dropped domains, or buying reg fee names to flip them for money (that's what 95% of domainers seem to be doing).

Really?

Frank Schilling lists Enom, Pool and Snapnames as "Addiction 1", "Addiction 2" and "Addiction 3" in the link section of his blog. To say that big domainers aren't involved with drops is totally (almost laughably) incorrect.

I agree that the existing registry space is pretty much dry, but drops most definitely aren't. You just have to be able to let a lot of stuff go and not get disappointed when you go weeks without securing a single name you wanted.

 

[snoop]

In my view coming into this industry with "more money" is a disadvantage. The more you start with the more your inital loss will be, and everyone loses at the start. Not having much money will focus you far quicker on a profitable strategy.

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.

If you are talking about development I am yet to hear of any individual who has developed several hundred sites making $1 a day or more. It sounds like a losing strategy to me. Development doesn't scale, focus on a handful of sites or less.

---------- Post added at 08:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:13 PM ----------

None of the big domainers, are finding dropped domains, or buying reg fee names to flip them for money (that's what 95% of domainers seem to be doing). The ones who are really making money are buying the best of the best and then doing some work to find companies and corporations who are highly interested in them for a higher fee, or their developing them into great websites that make good money.

Any examples? I think there is little accuracy in these comments myself.

 

[bmugford]

This depends on a lot of factors.

In the end it boils down to your business model and skill level.

Brad

 

[-REECE-]

That's a great point about the risk of coming in with more money Snoop. Google does appear to be getting more selective when it comes to ranking minisites that are obviously MFA. The only way I could see a large number of minisites working would be if the person really knew what they were doing in the keyword research department and focused on developing domains in very high PPC fields. I know one minisite developer who's done well for himself with insurance/law/credit related minisites. I don't think most domainers would have what it takes to do this though - SEO and keyword research to identify domains which could get profitable type-in traffic with minimal effort really isn't the forte of most domainers.

In my view coming into this industry with "more money" is a disadvantage. The more you start with the more your inital loss will be, and everyone loses at the start. Not having much money will focus you far quicker on a profitable strategy.



If you are talking about development I am yet to hear of any individual who has developed several hundred sites making $1 a day or more. It sounds like a losing strategy to me. Development doesn't scale, focus on a handful of sites or less.

---------- Post added at 08:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:13 PM ----------



Any examples? I think there is little accuracy in these comments myself.