In my recent article Bad Economy vs. Online Income I talked a little bit about how the world’s economy has been taking a hit in recent times. Many people are looking for ways they can make money online, or ways they can improve the online income they already make.

One of the ways I’ve supplemented my online income has always been reselling domain names. I’ve literally bought and sold many hundreds of domain names over the past years. Many people think that this market has been played out and there’s no way to make a good income reselling domain names, but that can’t be farther from the truth!

The average retail markup for items you purchase in a store vary widely depending on the industry. Groceries, for example, usually have a markup rate of less than 10%. When I was a manager at Wal-Mart in 1998 while in high school, I used to do all the secret “comp shopping”- going to Target, K-Mart, etc. and “secretly” scan all of their items with a hidden barcode reader then run reports on the prices they sell their items for vs. our prices for the same item. The average markup for items in the store (this store did not sell groceries at the time) was somewhere in the 4-16% rate.

Domain Names

Markup domains by a minimum of 100%

Now, let’s take a look at domain names. Prices range from about $20 all the way down to $0.99/year for a .info domain. Using this Godaddy coupon, you can register a .com for $7.49/year. It takes all of about 5 minutes to complete the checkout process and legally own a domain name.

The absolute lowest markup rate I put on a domain name is 100%! Think about it- if you buy a domain name for $8/year and sell it to someone else for just $16, you just doubled your money! If I can buy a .com for $8 and sell it for $32 (which is not very hard to do), I just QUADRUPLED my investment! Multiply this by 100 domain names and you can see how fast it can add up. You can start off small by buying .info domains for just 99 cents per year and flipping them for $3, tripling your investment overnight.

True, finding the next “million dollar” domain name may never happen, but finding a ton of decent, easy to sell domain names is not all that difficult. Here are some pointers to get you started:

• .com’s are generally the most valuable
• Try to keep it 1-2 words
• Avoid dashes and numbers
• NEVER use a copyrighted term (ie. google, microsoft) in the name

The longer you’re in the business, the better you’ll be at spotting valuable unregistered domain names. If you were to come across an uncut diamond, you may not know what you have, yet a skilled jeweler may be able to spot its value at first glance. Likewise, once you get in the business and have a few good and bad experiences under your belt, you’ll have no trouble finding and selling decent domain names.

I can’t count how many times I’ve bought up a domain name in the morning and later that day sold the same domain for $50. In just a few hours, I made about $40 after all taxes and Paypal fees. If you do this with 10 domains a day, that’s $400 a day!

With so many people scrambling to supplement their income, buying and selling (flipping) domain names remains a great way to make some quick money. I expounded on all of this information in my 52 page article Flip Sites and Get Rich.

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About John Robinson