Leasing a domain name?

[eljefe]

Hey,

Just out of curiosity..does anyone have any experienc on leasing a domainname, or maybe even a sub domain name?

Thanks.

 

[interestedenough]

I have a domain name which is leased at $1000 per year with the option to buy for $19K. I used Mon iker for this. I didn't like Leasethis.com because at the moment they really weren't ready, they didn't do a lease per se, but kind of a website inside a frame (which would have been terrible for the buyer side in terms of SEO, etc); Leasethis did send me a horribly looking contract that I of course didn't sign because it would had meant more trouble than any money I would had done from my domain.

Leasethis's frame within the page ( a no no for me): http://www.leasethis.com/index.php?cmd=Page_Preview

Leasing is a good option if you have a domain name you don't really want to sell, and the other party doesn't have the money it would take for you to give it up. In my case, I am leasing the domain name with the option to buy for 4 years. If the other party can't get the startup up and running, then they can return the name at any time, and they would have actually developed some traffic for me and not spent their valuable resources on the name. If they are successful at their venture, then they should have the resources to buy the name from me, and they can do this within the contract period.

 

[gazzip]

I think it will only ever work if the names have decent type in traffic simply because not many people will actually risk building a site/business on a name they don't own.

Most the names listed on LeaseThis don't look like they would get any traffic.

why pay $29.95 per month for Alltheluxuryproperty_c*m ?? - you would be better off spending the money on adsense.


Property_c*m (also listed) is a different ballgame, it brings something worthwhile to the table, all you have to do is point it to your current property website to get new customers - even then it would depend on what the monthly lease fee was compared to the amount & income those extra visitors produced.

Leasing a domain with no/minimal traffic does'nt seem like a good idea to me.

Lease to own does

JMO

.

 

[mhdoc]

not many people will actually risk building a site/business on a name they don't own.

That is certainly true today and may be for quite some time. However, consider a commercial tenant who leases space in a new shopping mall. All they get is the four walls; the tenant pays for building out the interior to meet their needs. Tenants pay Common Area Maintenance (CAM) and are tied into inflation adjusted increases. Their rents are often a percentage of their income.

The biggest difference I see between Real estate and domains is that commercial real estate developments have a finite life determined by the demographics of the population around them. In 20-30 years it will be time to move to the next hot area. Some domains will follow the same pattern, but some should last forever

Interesting times

 

[Seabass]

I started doing leases in 1999, using contracts, and I have never had a problem. I just go to the top three bidders of the category the domain relates to at either Google or Yahoo and ask them if they would like to either lease the domain entirely or lease the traffic (a redirect). I call it a "Lease", either way, b/c when you say redirect they don't understand and then...... blah, blah, blah. Lease is a word folks understand.

So, I give them two options and I actually have ended up with way more redirect deals this way..... and what is SO cool about redirects is the way I set it up I get either a 100% click rate or a 80% + click rate, depending how I set it up. You can make much more than with "parking".

Option #1 - 100% Click Rate : Meaning you send 100% of the traffic, minus bots, to their site or a mirror site they create so they can track the clicks/conversions. I use this method if I am not worried about being flagged by the search engines and losing any indexing you may have or want to acquire. Usually I use lesser value/quality domains for option #1.

Option #2 - 80%+ Click Rate: Meaning you send 100% of the traffic to a simple blank, white page with only one link on it, being the domain you and the customer are talking about. My experience is that most of the time you CTR will be over 90% when only one link is on the page. I use this method when I don't want to be flagged and penalized by any search engines, thereby being deindexed and losing surfers/cash if I take the domain back. If you have search engine positions and have a premium domain I recommend option #2 to keep up the value.

I use my own computers to count the redirects, which is the key, but maybe there is a service these days that will count redirects and remove the bots? I don't know. Anyone?

If this service is available at a reasonable fee, where the redirect is not too slow moving, then domainers could make more money this way. I wonder if anyone has explored this yet? It's kinda' a offshoot business idea to something like LeaseThis .

If the customer wants to do a "strict lease", where they take total control of the domain, except ownership, then I usually make the stakes fairly high to make sure they are serious, otherwise I don't feel like messing with it, and if the payments are not high enough they may not be taking it serious enough either and won't put forth the effort to make the domain more valuable, and then less likely to be purchased when the option to buy comes due. I made this mistake early on a couple of times.

A lot of redirect deals can turn to strict lease deals after time also. Putting these deals together is really fairly easy.

And, if you set the click amount high enough the rewards can be tremendous b/c remember you are cutting out Yahoo/Google or LeaseThis, etc.... and it's only you and the advertiser dealing with the "Pie".

Its' funny, but most folks will never execute a buy option. They keep leasing the domain.... its unreal. I think it is usually b/c they are struggling with branding concepts and they don't quite know what to do if they buy the domain - redirect, new brand, etc.... they just get confused.