I actually started over a year ago writing a book on trying to treat buying and selling vacant land as a commodity. I was using eBay for my research and ended up buying over 150 properties solely using eBay. Of course Real Estate crashed since then, LOL! But while I was doing my research I stumbled across "virtual real estate", or domains on eBay. I was so intrigued by it I jumped into the business with both feet on November, 2007. I have never stopped. Of course I branched out to many sites beyond eBay. I started out with investing in domains, especially focusing on 4L coms and 3L coms, but soon realized that I was putting too much money holding those domains and not being able to use any cash flow from it. I did get lucky and sold a couple of $XX,XXX 4L's to end users and several less than that, but it's a tough way to make a living when you have over $500K sitting there doing nothing.
As I continued to work in my main line of work (as an independent systems architect for Fortune 500 companies), that fed me revenue to explore domaining at a much deeper level. I started researching traffic domains, especially in the area of expired domains. After several months I finally mastered the craft of locating the right domains to bring ongoing revenue. I’m achieving a good $XXX,XXX annual revenue solely from parking which will allow me to quit my day job (which required constant travel and 70+ hour workweeks). And no, I’m not the $3,000 daily domainer, LOL!
I have since been in the process of writing a 250 page extensive book on how to tap into traffic domains, not directed toward domainers, but to non-techie people in the world. I really felt this process could be "dumbed down" and applied to anyone, as long as they knew how to surf the web. By the way, the book is called “Millions Forever”.
More importantly, I am in the process of developing a traffic engine with recommendations for the 50,000 drops that occur every day by applying 15 business rules. This site is really geared toward non-users. The site will have many other features, but I’m not here to plug anything.
My world domination goal (ha ha) is to bring global awareness of domains by targeting non-techie people – retirees, housewives, college students, etc.. I don’t want to give competitors an edge on how we’re doing that, but it’s going well ☺
Sorry, I am not trying to sell you anything; just wanted to let you know that domaining can be a great way to make a living. Where else can you still make money in this global economy?
I am so glad that I decided not to continue to follow the pack of investing in real estate, but to be among those that are at the front of the pack with monetizing expired domains (which I believe is the second wave to riches after the Frank Schillings, Rick Latonas and Yung Ye’s of the world, or in other words, the Domain Gods!).
Great thread by the way!