DomainInvesting.com

For the past few years, my primary source of revenue has been domain sales. Lately, with domain sales lower for me in the last 10 months or so, I have turned to development to generate revenue. I’ve been building out websites, testing ways to monetize websites and domain names, and selling advertising space on my blog and my developed websites.

Although the “easy money” (if you could call it that) is no longer coming in via domain sales, I think this will turn out to be my most successful year. Sure, it was fun working less and enjoying life more last year and the prior year. However, it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as doing what I am doing right now. I’ve used this past year as an opportunity to learn about web development, marketing, sales, social media, and a whole bunch of other things I hadn’t paid much attention to without a true need to do so.

Just about anyone can sell a good domain name if the price is right. The challenge is to be able to increase the value of your domain assets during difficult times. The most obvious way to do that is to increase revenue and traffic, and that is done with development (unless a big company names a product/service after your domain name and decides to pay you a bundle – much like winning the lottery, this happens infrequently).

If you are just getting involved with domain names, I hate to say it, but the easy money isn’t here right now. I do think we are still in the very early stage of this business and domain values haven’t peaked, but I caution anyone who is coming in here to make a quick buck. You need to have a longer term strategy carved out before you spend money aimlessly. Back in April of 2008, I posted my 5 year plan, which is always evolving depending on what deals come up, but I always do what I can to stay on track.

If you are just coming in to the domain industry, I recommend that you create some goals and write down how you will achieve them. The low hanging fruit isn’t really there to be picked any more, but there are plenty of ways to become financially independent from this business, but you need to stay focused.