Earn Passive Income From Domains
Is it possible to earn passive income for domains? Absolutely! It isn’t rocket science but it does involve a little bit of work. Here are the simple steps:
1. Buy a cheap domain name.
2. Decide how you’re going to monetize it. Either through ads on a niche site, affiliate sales, or domain parking.
3. Get up and actually do the work.
Buying Cheap Domains
GoDaddy currently has a great promotion on .info domains. They’re currently selling for only $0.99 instead of the usual $9 dollars. That’s about 90% off the regular price, and I spent the past several days getting about 15 domains that I think I might be able to monetize in some form or the other.
People might feel more comfortable or might more easily remember .com domains, but if you’re targeting search engine traffic it probably shouldn’t matter very much. A lot of the domains have dashes in them (example Sterling-Silver-Rings.info, but again, for visitors coming from a search engine it shouldn’t matter too much.
I also got a few domains that I think are pretty cool like Discount Ipod.info, Discount Seiko Watches.info and Cheap iPod Batteries.info.A good domain name has highly relevant keywords in it. How do you find these relevant keywords? Try using a search tool like Keyword Elite. It’ll save you a ton of time in research.
The most common way of profiting from a niche site, is creating a lot of content around a keyword or an idea and putting ads around it. If you can create a lot of unique content around a topic and attract a lot of visitors, you should be able to easily monetize it through Google Adsense or Text-Link-Ads or LinkWorth.
One way I’m thinking of profiting from them is through building a niche store (BANS). I already have an account with Dreamhost and I can host unlimited domains with them without any extra cost. You either set up an Amazon store or an Ebay store and make referral income off the sales. That’s a great way to produce residual income if you can make it work.
If you’re facing problems installing the BANS software on Dreamhost, check out this guide: How To install BANS on Dreamhost.
These are both great ways to produce residual passive income from a few hours of work. It might take a few months ramp up, but they should both add to my passive income.
If you’d like to buy a revenue generating website check out my business and investment store.
Update: September 18th 2008
Looks like my ebay-affiliate stores should pull in over $500 this month! The income has been going up every single month, while the effort has almost dropped off! That’s a pretty nice residual income stream.
However, if you’re too lazy to create content, then you might want to consider domain parking.
Affiliate Sales
This is by far the most profitable strategy and also the most work! You figure out how to drive traffic to a site and how to get people to part with their money either by buying a 3rd-party product or something you’ve developed yourself. I know guys who make over $100,000 a year doing this. It isn’t exactly passive but the hourly rate is insanely high if you know what you’re doing. I know of one guy who makes the equivalent ofi $5,000 an hour from his affiliate sites.
Here’s an example of an affiliate site that sells a very interesting product. Its a system that teaches to make money selling stuff! Here’s an example of a site that sells a product they developed themsleves.
Domain Parking
Another way I’m thinking of monetizing them is through Domain Parking. Many companies offer domain parking, including Sedo, GoDaddy and even Google. However, what they usually do is just put up ad links on your site. Unless people are directly typing in the address of your site into the browser you are unlikely to see any traffic or revenue.
A better way is to use a company like Why Park? They will automatically generate content for your sites and update it on a regular basis. The resulting site with fresh content is much more likely to get indexed in the search engines and get organic traffic (that’s traffic from search engines) and thus you are more likely to actually see some revenue.
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Carnvial of Dividends & Passive Income #2 Welcome to the 2nd edition of the Carnival of Dividends and Passive Income. This time I've marked my favorite entries with little gold stars. Passive Income As usual, there are hardly any topics on Passive income, so here's one of my own on using Domain Names To Create Passive Income....... - $2,811 In Passive Income For April 2008 I was so busy in May that I completely forgot to post April's passive income summary. On the bright side, April was a been a record breaking month for me with total "passive" income amounting to $2,811.42. On the flip side, I've been so busy, I haven't been paying attention......
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A Better Way To Earn Money From Parked Domains Until recently, domainers used to park domains with nothing but ads on them. They tried to get traffic from mis-spelt URLs or people who'd directly type a URL in the location bar. There wasn't any content to attract the search engines, so unless they were paying to direct traffic to......
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April 20th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Really enjoyed this article. I’ve never tried it, but Godaddy has a domain auction system that could possibly be used to sell the domains you register and then establish. Anyway, keep up the good work!
April 21st, 2008 at 6:24 am
Thanks for the info. I have several domains that I have parked at various parking sites with mixed results. I have never tried Domain Embarking, but many of the comments by people on the NamePros.com Parking Forum seem to have several problems with Domain Embarking.
Many of their problems seem to be related to the ethics of the site’s owner.
Have you had any issues?
Lane of VeganBits.com
April 21st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Hi Lane,
thanks for bringing this to my attention. I posted there but I think its being moderated since its my first post and I put a link back to this post.
Here’s what I like:
1. I parked the sites and forgot about them. when I hit the minimum payout threshold, I got an email (and a couple of reminders) saying that I had to provide a tax id in order to get paid. Shows good customer service.
2. I provided the tax id and my paypal account and I got paid immediately!
3. Compared to Sedo I earn 27,500% more in 1/4the the time!
4. Those parked domains are generating a profit.
I don’t know why the owner has such a bad rep. (well I do now, i just know why his company went BK). There are many factors that cause companies to go BK. Being a conman is just one of them and is not the most common reason. Being underfunded and having poor money management skills is much more likely a reason.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I am happy to hear that Domain Embarking is working out well for you. I have several domains parked at various parking services with mixed results.
I was not implying that the owner was unscrupulous or less-than-ethical. I was merely pointing out that other people have come to this conclusion — rightly or wrongly — with our without doing much (any?) due diligence.
I agree, companies go BK for a variety of reasons. Warren Buffett tries to surround himself with upstanding, ethical people. I agree with this business philosophy.
I am happy to hear that you are being paid promptly, getting much better rates of return, and that they have good customer service (something that’s becoming a lost art in the USA of late).
Lane
April 21st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
“have good customer service (something that’s becoming a lost art in the USA of late).”
yeah, whats up with that?
I’ve had my share of unscrupulous partners too, so I’d rather deal with ethical people too.
If you do sign up with them, let me know how your experience is. (and if you sign up with someone else, let me know how that works out too)
April 24th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Wow, $0.99 – what a deal!
Best Wishes,
D4L
April 25th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
what if someone who goes through your domain encounters a problem with the ebay seller? is there any liability on your part since the sites are set up to look like they are the primary seller?
April 28th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Hi,
I really appreciate your website, it’s a really useful tool. I’m looking to get started in some of these online passive income models but I’ve never made a website before.
I bought a few domains from godaddy and embarked them, I’m waiting to see what happens. Does godaddy include some minimal hosting or will this not work unless I can find a host? If so, how do I coordinate the hosting with the godaddy registration?
Thanks and good fortune!
Ted
April 28th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Ted,
the hosting happens at Domain Embarking. Tell GoDaddy to point the nameservers to domain embarking’s nameservers.
once this changes occurs, you will host at Domain Embarking
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 am
[...] article was on the living off dividends blog and it got me thinking that maybe domain embarking was something I wanted to try. The key points [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I’ve tried Sedo and NameDrive and didn’t really have any luck. I signed up for Domain Embarking through your affiliate link and I’m going to give it a shot. Let’s see if I can bring us both some fortune.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:19 am
According to what I’ve seen so far (I’ve only rec’d 1 quarterly payment so far), I’ve made enough to pay for the cost of carrying the domains – thats a lot more than with Sedo!
Since there’s been a few affiliate signups, I’m hoping next quarter will be a lot better.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I had problems with BANS and dreamhost. It gave me all sorts of errors. I setup a reseller account with hostgator and have never had a problem since.
Have about 15 BANS sites up since April, have made $198 gross since. Looking to make more once I get some time freed up.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I faced similar problems, but I just couldn’t give up – I managed to fix everything and created a how-to guide.
How I install BANS on Dreamhost.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:34 am
Hey There,
I saw your article and thought I would try it out. Like you said it took all of ten minutes to set up. And let me tell you about customer service, I paid the $5 to get set up thinking it was required, and did most of the set up myself.
I recieved an e-mail from Addison, the head guy there, advising me that the set up I had done looked good, and he couldn’t take my money. I got a refund notice from paypal that same day, I think that says alot about how he runs his business. Now I just need some traffic and I should bet set.
Love you sight by the way, alot of great ideas.
Thanks,
Jon
November 18th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Thanks for the additional insights on BANS. When they first came out, I wanted to wait and see what became of them. I am now a believer and look forward to building out sites on the multiple domains I own.
I have also checked out Domain Embarking.
~ Anthony
November 19th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Just wondering, how many sites did you initially register and then set up with the service? Trying to get an idea of profit per month / per site. Thanks in advance!
November 19th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Henry,
I have about 12 sites, but only 6 of them produce consistently. Except for 1, all the others have at least produced enough income to pay for the registration fees! The one that isn’t producing is one that I haven’t promoted because it’s in a super-competitive niche and I decided to not even bother. I’m going for low-hanging fruit.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Quick question, when you say promoting do you mean writing articles that link to the site and publishing them on article directories?
November 26th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
yes.
I also create a lot of low quality backlinks using BMD
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:07 am
this has been a great informative website and i appreciate your insights have you decided to write a new article on domain embarking i have one website up has not made anything also have a parked domain with google still nothing,, just waiting to see how they work since only been parked for a month..
March 11th, 2009 at 5:24 am
Great post! I’m always interested in “passive” income. I’ve never tried domain parking so this was all new to me. I have seen a few bloggers talk about their BANS experiences, but they all seem to be a bit secretive about any detail.
Thanks!