http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/making-money-from-domains.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/making-money-from-domains.html Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Most of the domains which are a word or phrase are already taken. To get a domain that means something you need to think latterly, think ahead and register a domain name before anyone else thinks of it. For example, in the boating world there were yachts, then super yachts, and perhaps now mega yachts - so if you can think of what the next term will be, then it may be worth your while registering the domain and waiting for a few years until the term becomes widely used. If you get it right then you may well be the owner of a domain name worth a lot of money.

The other way of making money with domains is to get a domain name that already has a lot of visitors, and then monetizing the domain - normally through advertising. This can be a lucrative business for those with the knowledge of how to find well visited domains and I will now try to explain how these domains come about, and how you can find them.

It is important to realize the distinction between a domain name, and a website. A good analogy is to think of the domain name like a telephone number, and the website as a company. When you call the telephone number you get to talk to someone at the company, which is similar to when you enter a domain in an internet browser you get to see the underlying website.

Imagine a sales company starts up, promotes its telephone number, and then at a later date the company ceases to trade. People will still be calling the telephone number even though there will be no one to answer it. If you were in competition with the original company, it could prove lucrative to have their old telephone number redirected to your company.

Domains and websites work in a similar way. A domain name gets registered, a website gets built, and then the domain/website is promoted all over the internet, sometimes with thousands of links pointing to it, which results in thousands of visitors. But a domain name can only be registered for a set period of time and at the end of this period the owner can chose to renew the registration. However, domains don't always get renewed, so the domain becomes available again to be registered by anyone else.

These domains are called expiring domains (or expired after they become available to register again). If you can find an expiring domain that has been well promoted then you will have the opportunity of registering that domain, and making money from it. So the trick is to find these valuable domains. You need to find domains which are about to become available again, and then figure out how many links are pointing at each domain - in general the more links pointing at a domain, the more visitors a domain, and hence website, is going to get. This can be a lot of work, but there are websites that can provide you with this information. One such website is DomDat.com which not only provides you with the linking information, but also lots of other data, and can also send you regular emails listing expiring domains that match your criteria.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/expired-domains-and-your-new-website.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/expired-domains-and-your-new-website.html Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500
A domain is the name you use for a website, eg google.com , whereas the website is what people see - the pages, graphics etc. When someone types in a domain into their internet browser, they are taken to the related website. Domains are registered through registrars, and a domain is registered for a specific period of time. Before the end of this period the domain may be renewed, and so the registration of the domain may continue indefinitely.

But if a domain doesn't get renewed then it becomes available again for anyone to register it once again. A domain such as this is called an expired domain, or expired domain name. The original website may still exist somewhere on a computer, but if you try to visit an expired domain you will get an error - the domain no longer takes users to the underlying website.

The benefits of using an expired domain name become obvious when you consider that the previous owner may have done a lot of promotional work.

For example, someone may have come up with the idea of building a website to sell widgets. They will have registered a domain name, built a website, and then promoted it all over the internet. There may be thousands of other websites linking to his widget website, and his website may have got lots of visitors.

When it becomes time to renew the domain, the owner of the widget website may decide not to continue, for any number of reasons, and the domain expires. Once the domain expires and becomes available again for registration, anyone can then register the domain and direct the visitors to their own website - instant visitors!

There are many people who register expired domains and then direct visitors to that domain to a website full of adverts, in the hope that a visitor will click on an advert and hence the website makes money. This can prove to be a very lucrative business practice.

If you are about to set up a website, you too can take advantage of these visitors. The trick is to find a domain about to expire that has been well promoted and was previously similar to the website you are about to create. For example, if the previous domain was about bridal wear and you are setting up a website about fishing, you may get visitors, but they will not be interested in what you have to offer. It is important to match up the expired domain with your new website venture.

So the two most important considerations when looking for an expired domain are - how many visitors does it get (which can be related to the number of links pointing at it - the more links, the more visitors), and what was the previous underlying website about.

Now you can see how an expired domain could benefit your new website, how do you go about finding one? There are several services on the internet that can provide the relevant information. One such website is DomDat.com that lists upcoming expired domains and the relevant information for each one. This can be a good place to start researching expired and expiring domains.

Before setting up a new website it is worth doing some research into expired domains to give you a helping hand towards creating a successful website.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/how-to-keep-expired-domain-links.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/how-to-keep-expired-domain-links.html Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600
There are several checks you should do before purchasing an expiring domain, to avoid losing all the value after you have purchased your expired domain.

One of the main reasons that an expiring domain can look attractive is the number of backlinks, but a word of warning - sometimes search engines can treat one domain exactly the same as another - same ranking, same backlinks, same everything. This can come about as a website based on a domain name can have several other domains pointing to this same website. For example, domain.com could be the main domain name, but domain.net may also be pointing at the same website. Depending on how the domains have been set up, some search engines will treat domain.net exactly the same as domain.com.

One way of finding the number of backlinks to a domain is by doing a search on a search engine using the word "link" followed by a colon and then the URL of the domain, eg link:http://www.domain.com

Using our example, if you were to check domain.net and found it had thousands of backlinks and soon to expire, then you may be tempted to purchase the domain name the second it expired. Once purchased you would then go about setting up a website on your new domain expecting the visitors to be pouring in. At this point, domain.net no longer points to domain.com and so any affiliation to domain.com stops. The search engines will no longer treat domain.net the same as domain.com, but will now treat it on its own merits. This normally results on zero backlinks and no ranking. You will have lost all the benefits you hoped to gain from the domain name and need to start promoting your new website from scratch.

To avoid this from happening, after you have done your link search on a search engine you should then visit several of the websites that are listed as linking to your domain and check the links are actually there. You will find that in a surprising high number of cases the links you expect to find are simply missing from these webpages. If this is the case with your chosen domain, then I would suggest ignoring this domain name and finding another.

I have conducted several experiments on expired domains. If the backlinks were real and existed prior to the domain expiring, then in most cases the domain would retain its original ranking. If the backlinks were fake then within a few weeks of obtaining the expired domain all rankings were lost.

There are several services on the internet that can provide data on expiring domains, and some of these include checking to see if search engine rankings are real or fake. One such service is DomDat.com that provides extensive data on thousands of expiring domains found each day.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/using-expired-domain-names-to-generate-income.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/using-expired-domain-names-to-generate-income.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600
The reason that they have expired is simply because the previous owner has stopped paying the renewal fees on them, and that can be for any one of a number of reasons other than the website was not profitable. Partnership disputes, divorce, loss of interest and even death of the owner are just a smattering of the scenarios that are leading to perfectly viable domain names expiring and becoming available to be snatched up by anyone who can search them out.

It was the dot com crash that that really got the business of acquiring abandoned domain names started, because a large number of the internet businesses that went bust had viable traffic but they weren't economically viable on the business delivery end. One way of using an expired domain name if you currently own a website, is to acquire it and then direct the traffic it is generating to your own website and many times the links to the expired domain name may still be active and viable, meaning even more traffic for your website.

Of course not all expired domain names pointed to functioning websites as many of the expired domain names were created and registered by speculators who hoped to generate a profit on the resale of the name. A keyword rich expired domain name has the potential of generating income by building generic websites for the sole purpose of resale on the open market. The keyword rich domain name can be used to drive traffic to the new websites, thereby increasing their value.

Another option is to buy domain names of websites that were active as a good number of expired domain names had viable websites built on them. In these cases the owners of these websites failed to renew their registration or completely stopped operating the website all together. In many of these cases these websites had substantial traffic from links on other websites, search engine rankings and directory listings.

Still another use for expired domain names is to use them for affiliate marketing programs. The beauty of affiliate marketing programs is that they allow you to break into internet marketing without having the hassle that comes with selling any type of product. With affiliate marketing, you operate a website that promotes a given product and then directs traffic to the actual supplier of that product. You then earn a commission on any sales that are generated by the traffic that you have directed there. Affiliate marketing is a great way for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit to break into internet marketing with minimal investment, and using an expired domain gives you a good head start.

Finding quality expired domains can be a hard task, but take a look on the internet and you will find several services that can help. One such service is DomDat.com - it lists the expiring and expired domains, along with the relevant data to help you pinpoint the domain names that you are looking for.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/website-promotion-the-easy-way.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/website-promotion-the-easy-way.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Many websites come and go. Some of these websites have been heavily promoted, and their underlying domains carry on receiving lots of visitors even after the websites have gone and the domains expired. There are estimates showing that millions of visitors every day land on expired domains, and it is these visitors which could be visiting your new website.

Expired domains come about as a domain name has a limited life - a domain is registered for a fixed period, normally one or two years. If the domain isn't renewed after this time then it will expire and become available for other people to register once again. The owners of many of these domains have spent a lot of time and money promoting these domains in order to get lots of visitors every day.

You may find it odd that a website receiving visitors gets abandoned and left to expire. There are many reasons why websites are left to expire - a change of life by the owner, or it was a project they tried and got bored with, or they simply didn't realise how many visitors they were getting, or… The list goes on. The question shouldn't be why has the domain expired, but how many visitors does it receive and is it suitable for my chosen website topic?

Before you start your new website, you want to carefully consider your domain name. You could keep trying different domains with the registrars to see which ones are available, but most of the good domain names are already taken. If you do happen to find a domain name you like, and its available, then you will still need to plan ahead and look into website promotion. Without that you will find it hard to attract visitors.

But what if you could find a domain that has already been promoted in the past, and is about to become available. Surely that is an option considering very seriously. You could be receiving traffic from the moment you put your website up on the internet. Of course you will want to promote your new website, but using a domain that has already been promoted could give you a good head start.

The trick is to find a domain appropriate for your website idea, that receives lots of visitors, and is about to expire. A tall order, but there are services out there that can help. Once such website is DomDat.com that lists expiring domains along with their relevant data such as search engine rankings, the number of inbound links specified by several of the top search engines, and information regarding the previous content of the associated website.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/get-in-on-the-expired-domain-name-market.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/get-in-on-the-expired-domain-name-market.html Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500
You may be asking yourself how an active domain that is generating business can be simply abandoned by someone but the fact is that it happens every day for any number of reasons. People change courses in their lives and simply let things go all the time, which can lead to their domain names becoming abandoned.

There are also those people that try to get rich quick who create, promote and discard domains on a regular basis. Due to the fact that many of these domains have been heavily promoted prior to being abandoned, many times they have regular traffic that which can prove lucrative if you were to place a website on that domain, or alternatively the traffic can be redirected to other websites. You may not get rich quick, but you can achieve a steady income. Overtime you could build up an impressive portfolio of domains that provide a very large income.

For affiliate marketers, these expired domain names can be a gold mine for generating traffic to their websites. Affiliate marketing is a great way for someone who has the gift of an entrepreneurial spirit to break into the internet business world. The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don't have the hassle of filling orders or acquiring inventory. An affiliate marketing website only needs to attracts visitors and then direct them to other websites that are selling the actual product. After a sale is made, the owner of the originating website is paid a percentage of the sale. So you can see how valuable expired domains can be in providing the traffic for affiliate marketers.

It is important to point out that there are many expired domains that were never promoted, and won't receive any visitors. It can be a hard, time consuming challenge to find an expired domain that will provide you with visitors - you need a list of domains, then you need to find out when the domains will expire (or maybe they have expired already), then discover how good the domain may be. To discover how valuable the domain might be to you, you need to discover such things as the topic of the original website on the domain, how many links point at the domain, how search engines rank the domain, etc.

A website that provides all this data, such as DomDat.com , could prove a valuable asset in your search for expired domains.

Some corporations have been making money for years by having a large number of domains that direct visitors to their business website. Some of these companies specialize in buying expiring domains which can then result in thousands of visitors each and every day to their websites. If they can do it, why not you?

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/many-uses-for-expired-domain-names.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/many-uses-for-expired-domain-names.html Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500
There are many reasons why a person would establish a domain name and also create a website, promote it and then have to let it go. Partnership disagreements, declining business, business refocusing in another direction and the list goes on and on. With regards to these expired domain names one mans trash is truly another mans treasure, because what may have seemed like small potatoes to a well established and highly successful internet entrepreneur might in fact turn out to be a small treasure to someone like yourself.

Many of these domain names have websites that have been heavily promoted and have substantial traffic that you can redirect to other internet ventures that you currently have going. For the affiliate marketer traffic means money, because most have an established formula that dictates that a certain percentage of visitors are going to end up being buyers.

Therefore more visitors directly translates into more revenue. There are websites that cater exclusively to the person who is interested in acquiring expired domain names. One site that provides useful information is DomDat.com. It is highly recommended that you visit them to learn more about the topic before you run right out and start buying up random expired domain names.

As a general rule, the majority of passive revenue generated by an acquired domain name would come from advertising in the form of advertising clicks. For this reason you will want to give close consideration to the domains ratings in the top search engines and also the amount of links that it has.

Also, you may want to consider building a website that is based on the domain name and while this can seem labor intensive, with practice and the proper information, it is well within the grasp of even the novice entrepreneur on the net.

Of course if you have a website you are then going to have to host it but don't let that stop you, because there are many cheap website hosting services on the net and in fact there are even free hosting services but they do have some catches that you must make yourself aware of.

Still another source of revenue that can be generated from a website is by the selling of links to third party websites, but your website must be of a high enough caliber to do this. The sooner you get started having your website designed and created, the sooner you can begin to see results come to fruition.

The U.S. economy is expected to make a turn around just as it always has and for you to be able to maximize on it when it happens you must have your website up and going and have done some promotional work on it. Expired domain names are a great way to get a leg up with regards to your internet venture.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/rewarding-expired-domains.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/rewarding-expired-domains.html Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Broadly speaking, the life cycle of an expired domain has been:

1 - the domain is registered
2 - a website is built on the domain
3 - the domain is promoted
4 - the domain receives visitors
5 - the domain is not re-registered and the domain expires

Once the domain expires, visitors will still arrive at the domain, only to see that there is no website there any longer. These visitors could be visiting your website.

A lot of effort goes into building a website. And as any web site owner will tell you, getting visitors to your site is a long hard struggle. But if you can register a domain that already receives visitors, this gives you valuable a head start.

Finding one of these visited expired domains can be tricky, and then actually registering them before anyone else manages to can be even harder. There are several websites that specialize in grabbing these domains on your behalf, and some list the domains that are about to expire in the next few days. You can go through this list of domains, and find any with names that seem relevant to your chosen topic.

With this shortened list of domains, you can then conduct research into each domain. The most important thing to check is to see how many backlinks they have - ie how many websites link to each domain. On many search engines, using the phrase "link:" (note the colon) before the full domain URL will return the number of links pointing at a given domain. For example, type in something like link:http://www.domain.com (note that in most cases you shouldn't use any spaces). In general, the more backlinks there are, the more visitors the domain will receive.

There are several other checks that can be carried out on a domain, but finding the number of backlinks is generally the most important.

Once you have found a domain you like, you then need to register it the moment it becomes available - before anyone else does. I would strongly recommend using one of the many websites that offer this service - they have the know-how and beating them to the registration could be a hard task. Also, some of these services have exclusive rights to re-register the domain before anyone else so it may not be possible to grab the domain by yourself.

Your next step should be to check out the different services, and see if any of them have exclusivity on your chosen domain. If none of them do, then chose the services you like the look of and get them all to chase the domain on your behalf. Most of these services will only charge you if they manage to get the domain on your behalf.

You may need to go through this process several times before you successfully register an expired domain that matches your criteria. As you can imagine this may take up a lot of your time.

I can recommend using another service in this field - there are several website out there that can carry out the legwork for you. They list the domains that are about to expire, along with the number of backlinks, and search engine rankings. The website DomDat.com also contains details on the domains previous, and which domain grabbing service has exclusivity over the domain. They are well worth taking a look at.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/what-is-an-expired-domain.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/what-is-an-expired-domain.html Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500
A good analogy is to liken a domain to a company telephone number, and a website to a company office. People can use a telephone to enter a company telephone number to call up the company and place orders, in the same way that they can use an internet browser to enter a domain to look at the company website and place orders.

With the telephone, the company pays the telephone company. If they don't pay then their telephone gets cut off, and after a while their phone number gets reassigned.

This is similar to domain names. A company will pay to register a domain for a specific period of time - normally 1 or 2 years. The company can then pay again to renew the registration for another set period. If the company stops paying, then the domain expires and becomes available to be registered by anyone else.

Imagine you owned a company where telephone orders were an important part of your business. Now imagine one of your local competition goes out of business - your orders would jump if you could divert the telephone callers from the competitors telephone number to your own number.

This is the same with domains - if a domain expires it can be re-registered and set up so that anybody that enters the expired domain into their internet browser would automatically get re-directed to your website. The increase in visitor numbers for such a simple procedure can make researching expired domains very worthwhile, and quite possibly very lucrative.

So you can see that some expired domains can become very valuable for the relevant companies. Those domains that have a high number of visitors, and matching products, can become very sought after.

A whole new market has opened up dealing in domains. The better known part of the domain market doesn't deal so much with expired domains, but high value domains in their own right, such as business.com, or sex.com. These domains rarely become available, and when they do the prices make them out of reach for most people.

A lesser known part of the domain market deals in expired domains. If you can find a domain that's about to expire, and the domain receives lots of visitors, then you can try to re-register it. Once you have successfully registered the expired domain you will have several options - you could place adverts on that domain, or you could build a new website on that domain, or you could offer it for sale. As mentioned above, some companies may be willing to pay a lot of money for a matching domain that will complement their website.

I hope this article has helped explain the significance of expired names. If you are interested in finding out more, there are several sources of information on expiring domains on the internet. After all, the internet is based on domains. The website DomDat.com lists the important information about upcoming expiring domains, and has an alert service so you can be informed when a suitable domain is about to expire. You should take some time to look and see what's on offer - expired domains could prove to be very lucrative for you.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/uses-of-an-expired-domain.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/domains/uses-of-an-expired-domain.html Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500
To explain, expired domains come about as domains are only registered for a certain period. If the domain isn't renewed, then it will expire. Many expired domains have had a lot of time and effort spent on promoting them, so there are obvious benefits to be gained by re-registering an expired domain, such as ongoing visitor numbers.

Most passive revenue gained from an expired domain could come from advertising. It is worth noting that different adverts can pay different rates. For example, a financial services advert would normally pay more for a click-through than an advert for cooking recipes.

The more visitors your domain receives, the more clicks your adverts are likely to receive. So it is important to consider the number of links pointing to the domain, and the domains rankings in the top search engines. The more links and higher ranking, then the more visitors the domain is likely to receive.

There are websites out there that can provide this information on expiring, and expired, domains. One such website is DomDat.com . You should seriously consider using their services in order to find your quality expiring domains, as they can vastly simplify your search.

So concentrate your search for expiring domains that will receive visitors and are based on a subject that will be attractive to advertisers. Once you have found an expired domain, and registered it, you will then need to consider your options.

A quick and simple option is to sign up to a domain parking service that will show adverts and split the advertising income with you. It may be quick and simple, but it is probably not the most effective use of your domain.

Instead consider building a website based on that domain. This may seem a daunting task, but with the help of a good teach-yourself-HTML book, free website templates, and a little practice, you may surprise yourself how quickly you can put together a website. Good content, and lots of pages, can be the key to a successful website.

To have a website you need to host it. There are many cheap hosting options from around $10 per year. There are even companies that offer free hosting - but make sure that the free hosting package allows you to use your own domain name.

With your own website you are then able to show your own adverts, or sign up to services such as Google AdSense which will show adverts for you.

You can also add links from this new website to any other websites you own, thus further promoting your other websites.

Links to third party websites can also be sold. If your new website is of a high enough standard, paid-for links can provide a significant income.

Building your own website is a harder task, and may involve an outlay for the hosting, but the income you can derive should outweigh the extra costs.

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For more information about expired domains visit http://www.domdat.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>