I’ve always enjoyed hunting for great domain names, and over the years I’ve bought quite a few SEO-focused domains.
Lately, I’ve been considering turning domain flipping into a side hustle, but I’m trying to get a realistic picture of where the market stands today.
Buying them is rather addicting... It took me a while to stop compulsive buying and now that I've been crunching data a while, I'm even more of a cherry picker than ever. Unlike some others, I do portfolio purges every 6 to 11 months to avoid stacking renewal costs on assets that didn't get any nibbles or action in the first year of testing. I only have a handful of domains I hold for long terms and comfortable with their combined overhead costs.
Side hustling is a good entry point, since it won't be your primary out of the gate and it gives you time to dip your toes back in the water a bit, after being out of the water for a while.
Definitely make sure things are consistently going smooth a while before cutting any life-line revenue streams that keep it afloat and compensate for niche market dips.
Is domain flipping still a healthy business, or is it becoming less relevant?
I’m especially interested in buying and reselling either:
- Brandable two-word domains
- SEO domains, such as exact-match keyword domains or aged domains with strong backlink profiles
Not sure about healthy, since it's addictive, but it's definitely relevant for today's online business development. As long as there is a virtual world online, there will be a need for domain names in some shape or form. The market may continue to be saturated and thinned out with new gTLD's rolling out all the time, but domains will still have a use and some form of demand.
2-word brandables are ok, not as strong (in my opinion) as 3 to 5 letter pronounceable brands or some (not all) 2-word category-killers.
Keep in mind, when ever SEO/SEM metrics are involved to try and establish value, the counterpart negative ranking data and SEO/SEM aspects will also be leveraged to devalue it. So you have to keep an eye on both sides of the data if you plan to deal with buyers that look at it to make a buying decision. Many domain investors/resellers don't look at SEO data at all and do just fine, but then, they may not be targeting end users that care about that specific data set.
Age, unfortunately, isn't a huge valuing factor without other positive metrics and variables to accompany it. Anyone can grab an aged domain cheap nobody will ever build a brand on. So, it's important to have more to pitch/negotiate with than just the age, in my opinion.
For those active in this space:
- Which marketplaces are working best right now?
- Any strategies, trends, or pitfalls worth knowing before jumping in?
Checking the
report completed domain name sales thread for recent sales reports can give you a general idea where and what domains are selling the most currently. Checking NameBio sales venues for recent sales could also give a hint as to what platforms sales are happening on.
A few pieces of reading material you may find interesting:
As for your SEO focused domains, these Ai + search articles might peak your interest:
Remember, at the end of the day, a domain name is truly only worth what a buyer and seller agree on.
What works for one may not work for another and vice versa.
