I just thought I’d like to let my readers know that we’ve decided that the front page should be more crisp and user-friendly. We’ve decided to add “<!–more–>” code onto all of the long posts, to make your viewing experience much smoother, as well as reducing load times dramatically. Hopefully people are happy about this new, crisp look! For tomorrow, we have two posts ready that we’re really happy with, so make sure you check back. Thanks!

I would just like to let our readers know that I took some action after Matthew wrote Should I Buy Typo Domains. The action I took was to actually buy one, wouldn’t I be a hypocrite if I didn’t? Now I spent about an hour looking for good ones. I obviously started with Google, went down to Facebook, over to Myspace, past Digg, through JohnChow, and eventually landed on ShoeMoney. I was being creative here, first thinking about whether users would be experimenting with his domain and possibly typing in something like ShoeCash instead of ShoeMoney (yes, ShoeCash is available if you want it). But then I went back to the basics, and when I do this I always delete the last letter. Why, you ask? Because that is the most common mistake made by people typing into their browsers. Therefore, I landed on the domain ShoeMone.com which I just bought today. Now the reason why I bought this domain was because ShoeMoney.com is actually a well visited site with over 17,000 RSS subscribers, pretty impressive I know. I don’t exactly expect millions of people to be forwarded to my site right away, but I expect to get a few here and there over time. Hopefully, I will be able to eventually sell this to some typosquatting buyer for around $200-$500, depending on its success. The key to being successful here is patience. This decision that I made right on the spot might have been a stupid, but the that I only spent $8.41 and I did for a great reason.

Side Notes

ShoeMone.com is currently being used a redirector to this blog. If anyone is interested in buying this domain, I will at the moment let it go very cheaply, due to the fact that I have no idea as to how effective it will be.

Recently, I’ve been browsing a few sites and many people ask a similar question; should I buy “typo” domains, or not?

Section I: Introduction

For the few of you unfamiliar with the phrase “typo domain,” it is an abbreviation for a typographical error, for example spelling “copmuter” instead of “computer.” Therefore, a “typo domain” is a domain name that will be visited via somebody making a typing error, such as “www.goolge.com” (which is actually, smartly, registered to google).

When your trying to make a profit from domaining, it is extremely important to know what brings in the money. There are many different factors that persuade buyers to purchase a certain domain name. These include relativeness/keyword similarity to their business or what it specializes in, resell value is higher then what your listing it for, and a bunch of others that go on and on. The main thing to keep in mind however is that the domaining business is really random, and it is very hard to predict what will sell.

Made-Up Words

It has been countlessly said that creativity is the key to success, well in the domaining business that is only partly true. On one side, it does take creativity to find and search for a domain that will sell. However it really matters what your definition of creativity is. The kind that I am talking about, is making up words that are similar to what the purpose of the domain should be. For instance, if all of the good poker domain names with the .COM extension are gone, you could make one up such as Pokerono.

Hello! I’ve recently acquired to relatively valuable domain names.

I am pretty happy about my decisions and although I am not aware of how much I will be able to sell these for at Sedo.com, I am very optimistic.

The following are the two domains that I have recently purchased, and what I am going to try to sell them for:

Rater.tv - $1,250

WorldFunction.com - $3,000

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If you would like to know some of my prior domain purchases, they are listed below:

SadTube.com (similiar to YouTube, I’m thinking of letting this go cheaply)

******.us (WhoIs Guard does not work for .US domains, and I would like to leave my location private)

ShiftCredit.com (It was purchased by David, and was his first domaining experiment)

CodersGrail.com (I saw something similar to this sell for $500, so I thought I would give it a try)

Advice

I would suggest experimenting with buying different domain names. It is like an investment, but a very cheap one that can offer and incredibly high return. A domain usually costs around $9 depending on the registrar, even a 12 year old can get into it.

There are many domain extensions available in todays market. Whether is is by country, or other unique names, it seems that new ones come out every year. But if you’re actively engaged in the domain market, you know that normal .COM’s are the most valuable.

Why?

Now this is very a good question. What is it about the extension .COM that makes it so special, that sets it apart?

1. The abbreviation (COM) stands for commercial. Most sites these days focus on making money and/or selling a product.

2. One of the oldest top level domains (TLDs), established back in January 1985.

3. Widely used; the internet audience is most familiar with this domain extension.

4. It is expected; when people have heard of a certain company on the radio, television, or another source of communication, they expect to be able to type in that name in their browser, add .COM at the end, and be directed to the site they were intending to find.

5. The majority of .COM extension domain names are gone. To have a good would mean one of either four things: you’ve had it for a while, you’ve payed a hefty price to get it, you got it when it dropped, you got extremely lucky and found one that wasn’t already taken. There is a large demand for good .COM names and therefore they sell for a lot. You could sort of say that its like a diamond, it’s rare and therefore valuable.

Stay tuned, I’ll have a post soon on value in other domain name extensions.

This is the question that everyone wants to know, or at least anyone trying to make a quick profit off of domains. In a previous post titled Why do people buy domains?, I covered that you either buy domains to sell for profit or establish into sites. I said that if your doing it for profit, the majority of the good domains are registered. In this post I’m going to cover how you get those valuable domains.

What Are Dropped Domains?

Anyone who has ever bought a domain knows that when they buy it, they have bought it for a fixed amount of time (usually 1 year). When that time expires, a few things happen. Either the owner renews it right away, or a whole procedure takes place. The following is how it happens:

I put the names into www.Random.org/lists. It seems that we have found a winner.

To recap, the prize was the domain name: ChatGreyhounds.com

Congratulation, FADI DIAB!

Please note that if not responded to within one day, it will automatically be given to the next person on the list.

I am giving away the domain name: ChatGreyhounds.com

It is registered with GoDaddy and has a free push.

To enter, simply write a comment on this post saying something you like about this blog.

A winner will randomly be chosen on February 25th. May the best commenter win!

There are many reasons why people buy domain names. It is however for the most part split into two sections, and both of them can make you money (if that is what you’re looking for). The first is for personal or company use on a website, while the second is for domain resell or parking.

Website

Now there are plenty of ways to make money off of a website. You can create a one of a kind site that draws people and therefore by putting ads on it you can make large profits. The other option is to develop a site (ads or not) that becomes extremely popular and then sell it as a package of the content, the domain, and the network of users.

You can also just use it as a personal way to express yourself or your interests if it isn’t profit that your looking for, but just a way to spend your extra time.