Websites and domains are now must have assets for your investment portfolio. They are the real estate and land titles of the new money game. Find out how you can invest in and make money from websites and domains!
Make money from websites
A lot of folks don’t realise it, but website building is a massively leveraged new opportunity for longer term passive income. Websites are digital real estate. Like ‘real’ real estate, they can grow to be valuable assets, particularly the good ones. But you don’t need to be a licensed builder to make a website.
Websites are extremely powerful tools for two reasons:
- You’re leveraging an army of robots that crawl your content night and day, indexing it just so they can serve it up to anyone around the world looking for that same thing. And that’s powerful. Where else can you get labour for free?
- There is zero marginal cost to replicate your content; those robots just keep serving up your content to global audiences day after day after day. Where else can you scale globally without some serious capital?
If you think about it, websites help people get what they want. To be successful building websites, you need to find out what people want and build it for them. This simple strategy can make you a lot of money.
The best thing? Building websites along with creating content is a low capital investment! You can do it with a great idea and a hundred bucks to your name. So let’s look at how it works.
How do websites make money?
Websites can make money in a bunch of ways:
- Affiliate marketing
- Ad revenue
- eCommerce
- Sponsored posts
- Digital products
- Website renting
- Business lead generation
- Website sales
- Website maintenance
This list alone should make your eyes light up – the fat stacks of website money are out there peeps! Some of these, building websites to sell and maintaining websites for others can be quick and easy income generators. Others, like affiliate marketing, ad revenue, digital products and sponsored post depending on website traffic that can take longer to build up (12 to 24 months).
Where to start building websites
There are a few things you need for basic set up:
- a website building platform
- a website host
- website concept
- a domain name
Because of the democratisation of technology, building websites is no longer just a coder’s domain (excuse the pun..). With platforms like WordPress, Squarespace and Wix, building websites is now available to just about anyone.
We recommend WordPress for your website building platform because it gives you far more flexibility and functionality as you grow your website in the future.
Flipping websites for capital gains
As we’ve already mentioned, websites (and Apps and dApps) are the real estate of the new money game. Just like physical real estate, with some capital behind you can buy websites, cash flow them, renovate them and flip them. And you can make big money if you know what you’re doing with it.
Make money from domain names
From time to time we buy web domains. We have a portfolio of web domains that we consider digital assets. They’re investments we intend to make money from the in future. Let’s look at the basics….
What are domains?
Domains are the internet addresses you use to find a website. If a website is your piece of real estate on the internet, the domain name is like the title and tells people how to get there.
Domain names are digital assets held on a public register. There are companies that sell domain names (domain registrars), like GoDaddy (US) and FastComet (Australia). These guys act like the land titles office does for real estate – they keep a record of who owns what domains.
Because domains are considered assets worth money, you can’t buy a domain name that is already owned by someone else.
Once you buy a domain name, it remains registered to you as long as you pay the yearly registration fee to hold it. Yearly fees are pretty cheap – around $10 per domain name. If you let your domain name registration expire, the name is no longer yours and can be bought by someone else. Sheizen…
Domain names may or may not have an actual website built behind them.
How do domains make money?
Domain names can be valuable by virtue of their association with a particular topic or subject matter. If that topic or subject matter is widely searched on the internet, then the domain name may just be sought after.
You can make money by registering new domain names that are associated with popular or trending subject matter, but you have to be early in the trend.
Buying undervalued domain names from other owners is also a money making strategy. You can either hold the domain like a piece of real estate in the belief it will appreciate in value. Or you can build a website behind it and make money from the website.
Flipping domains
Buying and selling web domains over a short period of time (up to 24 months) is a legit way to make money and it’s pretty passive. Did you know there is a whole marketplace online for buying and selling domains? There are literally lists of domain market places where you can buy and sell domains.
So what does it take and how do you do it successfully?
- Futurist – to buy domain names for cheap in order to flip them, you have to get in before others do on a particular subject matter. Be an adopter or early trend watcher. If you are future focussed, you can nab a domain name for something that will be hot in the future and sell it for good dosh.
- Drop catcher – drop catchers use bots to buy up domains that people forget to extend registration on, then sell them on domain sale sites. They pick them up cheaply directly from the domain registrar and sell them on domain marketplaces. It’s literally that competitive that folks are using robots to nab digital assets that other go to sleep on!
What is a domain worth?
This is a totally subjective question; a domain is worth what someone will pay for it!
The most valuable types of domain names are:
- “.com domains” – this US domain extension is still the most valuable because US netizens are the most valuable to online marketers
- short and memorable – exact match domain names (that match popular Google searches exactly) can be pretty valuable)
- easy to spell and pronounce
- brand associated
- SEO primed – these are domains for sale with websites behind them that already have tonnes of backlinks (which can bring traffic)
A lot of the evergreen domain names using widely searched keyswords on the internet are already registered and owned. You can make money from these like you would any asset. If a domain name is available for sale and you think it will appreciate in value in future, you can buy it and hold it.
Domain valuations
The best place to start to get an idea of what a domain name is worth is GoDaddy domain valuation tool. GoDaddy values domains based on comps – the same way real estate agents value your home. Here’s a link to the GoDaddy domain valuation tool.
But not all keywords are equal in the world of digital assets and domain names. We have domains we purchased within the last 24 months that we paid $13 for and are now valued in the $1000s. But whether we could actually get this price if we put them on the market is another question.
That’s why it’s good to do some research on actual domain sales prices.
DN Journal is the best place to look up top domain sales for the year to date. Check it out and be prepared to have your eyes watered!
