This is a Guest Post by Joel Ohman, who is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of a website with a ton of different tools for finding awesome domain names. He is a first time writer on Techie Mania and recommends that you be sure and check out the recent article titled “5 Reasons to Start Guest Blogging” and that maybe you consider submitting a guest post as well!
Domain names have often been referred to as the “online real estate” of the Internet and for good reason. Not only can having the right domain name help your online marketing efforts but given that each and every domain name is unique therefore each domain name has some measure of inherent value.
Just like there can only be one Cars.com there can also only be one Super-Cool-EZ-Online-Carz-Website.info too. We of course want to find out ways that we can pick up high quality money making domain names like the former and leave junk like the latter alone!
Unless you have deep pockets you likely won’t be making a bid for a premium domain name like a Cars.com anytime soon but that does not mean that there are not plenty of other valuable domain names that one can find. Here are 3 different strategies for finding money making domain names in 2010:
1. Use the Type In Traffic Finder
I am admittedly biased when it comes to the type in traffic finder because my business partner John and I came up with this tool when we wanted a way to find domain names that are likely to have type in traffic. If you are unfamiliar with the term “type in traffic” it is used to describe the traffic that comes from people typing a keyword or keyword + .com into their URL bar without first knowing what the site is that they are visiting. To use the earlier Cars.com example many people forgo a search engine and go to their URL bar and type in “cars” and hit enter or “cars.com” and hit enter without ever having visited the website before.
The type in traffic finder tool allows you to put in a keyword and then the tool uses real time data from Google (using the Google AdWords API) to return related keywords that are then concatenated into domain names and then checked to see if any of those domains are available to register. The tool also returns hundreds of related keyword domain names that are already registered but listed as being for sale by their owner.
Anyone who has even a bare minimum of SEO knowledge understands that having an Exact Match Domain (EMD) will help when trying to rank for a given keyword. All domains returned by the type in traffic finder tool are by definition EMD’s so you can quickly realize the value of being able to find multiple EMD’s all by entering in a seed keyword.
2. “Watch” Domain Names at Auction
One of the features that I love at almost all of the various domain name auction platforms (GoDaddy Auction, Afternic, SEDO, etc.) is the ability to watch a certain domain name and then receive an email when the domain name’s auction is about ready to expire. Early bidders that are not buy now bidders are usually not the savviest bidders so if you see a domain name that you want at auction then setting up a “watch” and attempting to snipe the domain with a bid in the last few minutes of the auction is often a smart move.
3. Manually Contact Domain Name Owners
Don’t assume that just because a certain domain name is already registered and not listed for sale anywhere that the domain name owner won’t be receptive to an offer (especially if the domain is simply parked).
“This is a very boring tip!” you might say. You might also say, “This method takes a lot of time and hard work with no guaranteed payoff!” Those two statements are both true but nonetheless if you are willing to do the hard work that your competitors might not be willing to do you might just snag that perfect money making domain name.
It is illegal to use an automated method to scrape contact information from Who Is servers so that option is off the table but one tool that I use that is very helpful for doing quick one click Who Is lookups on a domain is the Quirk SearchStatus FireFox Plugin (that has a bunch of other useful tools also).
What do YOU Think?
What are some other ways that you know of to find money making domain names?
Sathishkumar Varatharajan is an Online Marketer and a Full time blogger from Salem, India and he is one who launched this blog on June 10, 2010. After working alone on this blog for almost 7 months, he finally found a partner by the name John Rampton, an experienced Affiliate Marketer who helps him to uncover the true potential of TechieMania.
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