by Sara Williams

Created on: April 29, 2009

One hot new trend in making money online is called "domain flipping." If this sounds suspiciously like "house flipping," then be assured that your suspicions are correct! Perhaps there won't be fifty basic cable shows on people who do domain flipping, complete with husband-wife hissy fits and renovation projects gone wrong, but it's definitely worth paying attention to domain flipping.

How does one go about domain flipping? It's pretty simple, at least in theory. Buy a domain that has a decent word or name in it but, as far as you can tell, is not being used to its maximum potential. This may include parked domains that owners don't have time or patience to develop and are not making money being parked, truly crummy websites that are wasting a perfectly awesome domain, or those sites that have apparently been all forgotten about. Then again, many people are listing their domain names on directories, Internet forums, and the like. Some are listed quite high, but many are only twice the price of a freshly registered domain - about $15-$20. Start out with these to get a feel for the business, then move up.

Now domain flipping may sound easy, but it is no "get rich quick" scheme. This is real work. The concept is simple, but there are a few things you need to know. You must have a handle on SEO, or search engine optimization. Why? Well, the person you are buying the domain from likely didn't bother or had no clue how to do it themselves, and if you don't either, there's no point in buying the domain. It just won't ever get the traffic you need for a profitable resale. Also, understand what kinds of domains are more likely to get traffic. Which domains do you tend to type into your browser's URL bar? I bet they aren't super long, difficult to spell, or contain multiple dashes. All these you will want to steer clear of. Niches are good to know, and it wouldn't hurt to get comfy using Google's Adwords keyword research tool. Furthermore, keep abreast of all the latest information and word-of-mouth by hanging around in forums, adding a couple of blogs to your roll, or any other form of online socializing that you normally do. Just do it, and that'll help.

How do you resell domains? Once you have gotten lots of traffic to the domain (above what it originally got, if any), then you can try selling it back into the market. That's the same premise as with flipping houses, basically: take something of potential value, raise the value, and then sell it for a profit. You can sell domains in a variety of ways, either by advertising them on a website, posting in forums, going to a website that allows domain selling, or even selling on eBay. Just be sure to do the research and know how much you're worth.

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