Friedbeef’s Tech

In one of the richest deals ever in domain reselling, www.cellphones.com was sold for USD$4.2 million in cash. The original owner paid USD$90 for the name in 1996

Why are domain names such big business?

“The secret has to do with what’s known as type-in traffic, or, in Wall Street jargon, direct navigation. Though it may seem odd in the era of powerful search engines, it turns out that millions of Internet surfers don’t use search at all. Instead, they type what they’re looking for right into the top of their Web browser.

Looking to buy candy? Type in Candy.com, a name Rick Schwartz bought in May 2002 for USD$108,000. A page filled with links to candy-related products comes up. Click on one of the ads and the advertiser pays Google, which in turn sends a share to Schwartz and the company that runs Candy.com. Some days Candy.com makes Schwartz USD$300 in profits; the site paid for itself in a year and a half. “ - via Business 2.0 CNN Money

Let me start by saying by no means am I a professional at domain speculation, but I have made a few quick investments, and have reaped some nice rewards including a recent sale of PotteryCourse.com for USD$200 (which I registered for USD$7)

I would also say that domain speculation is one of those online money making activities you can try for fun, but the risk is high, and success rate is relatively low, so don’t expect to quit your day job anytime soon.

In case you want to try your hand at this, here are a few quick tips.

1. Do the research:

You will want to get a feel of what’s selling on the market and for how much. Check out prominent domain resale and discussion sites such as DomainState & Namepros for a start. I found this this forum thread on Namepros to be particularly useful as it serves as a compilation of names members have actually sold, with their respective amounts.

2. Pick the name:

When deciding on the name you want to pick keep in mind these tips:

1. Keep the name short and simple. Use as few words as possible
2. Do not use separators in the domain name
3. Buy the generic product category names
4. Buy a .com whenever possible
5. Don’t infringe another company’s trademarks

For more details you may want to read the full article on Critical Considerations for Picking Business Domain Names.

Another way to determine how popular your domain name might be, would be to check Overture’s free keyword suggestion tool - which tracks how popular a search term is, or Google’s own search results to see if your domain contains a highly indexed (and probably highly demanded) keyword.

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