How to Make Money by Branding New Domains for Sale

The word ‘brands’ conjures up this picture of something you can trust in and something that marks your status. Domain Branding is to give the domain its image of popularity. Branded domains are highly popular and always in demand. They are essentially easy to remember, can be typed in directly to be accessed and bring in more traffic.

You can earn money by selling such branded domains. It is like a paid fancy mobile number or a fancy license plate number. You got to pay 50% more for fancy numbers. Taking that as a cue, you can imagine how much branded domains might be worth.

Why is there such a craze for branded domains?

People are crazy about brand names. A brand is not just a name for advertising and boosting sales. It is a gateway to success. Brand recognition is just as important as your business itself. Brands are associated with the image of quality and trust. Hence, it is important for the buyer with a specific niche to buy a website that has a domain name that will attract more people and build trust.

Who can do this?

Anybody who is a computer savvy with interest in building and selling pre-made websites with a snazzy and catchy domain name can do this business. You also need technical knowledge with regard to setting up a website, content management, database management, e-commerce requirements, etc. Read thru Niche Weibsite Building article to learn more about website building.

What is the investment?

The investment usually goes into purchasing and paying monthly rent for the web space from a web host, hiring servers, outsourcing customer and technical support. Since you are planning to sell pre-designed websites, you might hire a web designer and pay him/her as well. If you can manage everything as a one-man show, your investment will be as low as $100.

Steps in Domain Branding

First, choose different niches like SEO, photography, web designing etc and search for competent keywords. You can use Google external keyword tool, keyword spy, etc to find the top keywords in each niche. Those keywords will be the domain names. Of those keywords, choose the ones that are easy to remember, remind you of the niche and are 5 to 6 lettered.

There is always a demand for 5 to 6 letter keywords in any business. Anything more than that is tough for people to remember. It is estimated that 48% of the people use direct typing of websites to access the website and the rest use search engines. This guarantees the fact that if a popular keyword is used as the domain name, the domain will be branded as being part of a certain niche and people will come back to the domain as it is easy to remember and type. This way you can sell the domain name for a good price.
Hence, the brand name must be a popular keyword associated with a niche, it must be spelled easily so that people cannot make any typing mistakes. Even if they do, your website should be the only suggestion given by the search engine. Else, you will lose potential traffic. Thirdly, it has to be memorable.

Now, register this domain name with .com as the top level domain name. Nothing else will fetch you a better price. The .net, .org, .biz, etc cannot meet the commercial value behind the .com TLD name.
Search for popular keywords and associated keywords in registries such as godaddy.com andVeriSign.com. Buy the domain names from them and build a website with solid features. Include good bandwidth, disk space, flexible design, email options and e-commerce options. Advertise your branded and 5 letter domain names along with sample designs for potential customers.

Advantage of offering a package along with branded domain name will enable you to earn more money. Once the domain name is sold, the content of the website can be altered as the new owner pleases. You can offer to handle the web designing part as well and earn more.

It is all easier said than done. Generic domain names are always in constant demand and hard to come by. Most .com domain names are either taken or under auction. If in auction, the prices will be rocketing the sky. Hence, you have to find different keywords that still associate with a particular niche, but are available.

For example, contentwriters.com is an associated keyword for content writing niche, but if you go to a registry and look up, this domain name might be taken or under auction. So, in such a case, you might have to improvise and stylize the domain name with prefix, suffix, using z for s (letterz), using x for cs (pix), combing two important keywords (techwriter) and using rhyming words (rightwrite).

Boosting sales

To boost sales, offer packages on discount, build credibility with customer support and personalized client care. If you want to handle only the sales part of it, you can hire and outsource the other services.

Word of caution

Domain names are considered assets and can attract legal issues. Steer clear from a domain name that is associated with popular brands. You are liable to attract a lawsuit and most probably even lose it.

Also, do not register a domain name with .net, .org, .co, etc if it is already in the .com form. This serves no purpose at all. This way, the domain name is no longer unique and has no value. Fiddling with international brand names by changing the spelling a bit or adding suffixes will too land you a hefty court case. Nike sued 66 website owners because it felt they had infringed the brand name ‘Nike’.
Branding new domain names does not give you rights to register potential brand names to sell them at higher price to the owner of
the brand name. Avoid such unscrupulous acts and you should be go to go.

Success Stories

Read how so many branding consultants have made their mark in this industry with selling branded domain names and how that has helped small businesses to help grow.

Good Luck!

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