Making money buying expired domain names

Researching and trading expired domain names is an excellent way to make money on the internet. You need to be patient and have good research skills, but don't necessarily need to be technically minded. You will need to have a little bit of money to get started but you can reinvesti your money back into your business as your portfolio grows.

When you purchase a domain name you need to pay annual fees to keep ownership of the domain. Often companies or people lose interest in a domain and just let it expire. Many people don't realize that a domain name with incoming links and traffic is a valuable asset. This is why researching and buying expired domain names can be a profitable business.

Here are some tips for acquiring a great expired domain name.

Check the number of backlinks to the domain

Links are strongly connected to a site's ranking in a search engine. The more links, the easier it is to get higher rankings for your keywords.

In Google just do a search on: link:domainname.com where domainname.com is the domain you are interested in purchasing.

In Yahoo use the command:

linkdomain:domainname.com

Yahoo site explorer is another useful tool to check links to a domain.

Check if the site is listed in Yahoo directory

A listing in Yahoo directory costs $299 a year so you can save a lot of money if it is already listed.

Check the quality of the back links

On the internet, not all links are equal. Links from government organizations, educational institutions, large companies and links from online newspapers are what you need to look for.

Check if the site is listed in DMOZ

Again a listing in DMOZ carries a bit of weight with search engines. It can also take some time to get your site listed in DMOZ.

Check domain history

Check if there was a site previously on the domain by using archive.org Archive.org shows how a site used to look over time. If there was a good site on the domain at some point, it will be easy to start the site back up again and start getting traffic. If there was a "bad" site on the domain, like an adult site, it might pay to steer clear of the domain.

Check the PageRank of the domain

Some expired domains still have PageRank from the incoming links. PageRank is the green bar in Google's toolbar that measures the number and quality of incoming links to a site. The higher the PageRank the bettter!

Resell the domain or build a website

If you pick up a good domain and have no interest in developing a website on it, you could resell it for a profit. You could list on popular domain forums like sitepoint or dnforum. You could also try and sell it directly. For example if someone runs a site on beijingforum.com they could be interested in purchasing a similar name like shanghaiforum.com

Building a website on your newly acquired domain name is the best way to make money from it. If you pick a good name it will be easier to get rankings and traffic than if you just bought a new domain that had never been registered before.

The process of buying an expired domain name is not a straight forward process. If the domain has been put back in the pool of unregistered domains, it is just a matter of re-registering it at your favorite domain register.

If you want to put a order in to try and pick it up before anyone else, you will need to register your interest with a company like Snapnames, sedo.com, afternic.com and tdnma.com.