Earn Passive Income From Domains
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 Arts-Antiques-Artifacts.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 Buy Cheap Paintball Guns.info.
Domain Parking
One of the ways I’m thinking of monetizing them is through Domain Parking. I’m currently registered with Domain Embarking, a company that offers a free and much better solution to parking than Sedo or GoDaddy. You use their name servers to resolve your domains, provide them with a several choice keywords and they’ll automatically create a 10-12 page website for you, complete with relevant content and ads. Within a short time, you get page rank, back links, and if you’re lucky some targeted traffic too.
A look at one of my sites, Cosmetic Forums.com which was “embarked” less than a year ago shows that it has a page rank of 2, 36 indexed pages on Google, 264 backlinks on Yahoo!, and it ranks on the first page of Google.com for the search term “rhinoplasty frisco”. Thats pretty impressive for about 1 minute worth of work!
You earn revenue from Adsense running on your sites. They also run cafe press and different affiliate programs that generate income. Depending on how many sites you have with them, you are given what’s called Premium Shares. While the Adsense revenue is based on your site’s income, the affiliate income is shared equally across all Premium Shares. So even if you don’t earn any money from Adsense, once a quarter you should make some money from your Premium Shares. Every year you should make enough money to enough pay for the registration fees for the domain! And with 99 cent domains from GoDaddy, you’re almost guaranteed to make a profit!
My earnings until mid-April have totalled about $62 dollars. This includes some adsense income, the quarterly Premium Share distribution and some referral income as well. Based on this, I’m confident I’ll make atleast a $250 profit at the end of the year from all my domains. While it may not seem like a lot, one of my friends sold his kingofvegas.com site for $8,000 a year ago. He owns several hundred domains and if parked them properly, it could be pretty substantial.
Another 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.
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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.