This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Can you still make money flipping domain names? This used to be a thing. Is it still a thing? Can you actually go out and try to find a good domain name, register it, and then resell it? There was a time way back in the early 2000s when domain name flipping was like the digital gold rush.
People were trying to buy URLs like pizza.com, cars.com, even silly one word domains. And that could be sold for thousands of dollars, tens of thousands, sometimes much more than that, millions of dollars in some cases. But of course those were the early days and then lots of people started doing it and everybody realized, wow, websites are valuable. So if we fast forward a bit, you might wonder, is there anything left? Like has the market been picked clean?
That's exactly what our caller from Philadelphia wants to know. He is curious if domain flipping is still a viable side hustle, or if it's like an old legend that no longer works. The truth might be somewhere in between. So let's dig into what's happening in the domain world and whether there's real opportunity left for newcomers. I'll do my best to give you a helpful answer, detailed question, and that answer coming right up.
[Music]
Hey, I'm Michael from Philadelphia and here's something I've been curious about. Years ago, I remember hearing stories about people making big money by buying up clever or in-demand domain names, then flipping them to companies for huge profits. I've always wondered if that's still possible today. Has the market totally dried up? Or is there still room for someone to start a side hustle buying cheap domain names and reselling them at a markup?
And if it's still viable, what should a beginner watch out for so they don't waste time or money? [Music]
Definitely some legendary stories about selling domain names in the past. I know someone who sold the website simple.com. I think they sold it to a bank or some financial services company, and they did pretty well. Most likely you're not gonna find anything like that these days, even using two-word or three-word phrases, even using other extensions.
It's just tough because so many domains have been registered. That's why I think it's probably best to avoid buying random names, just hoping that they will magically be valuable at some point. A lot of side hustlers end up with a dozen or more, two dozens, sometimes 50 to 100 different domain names that they accumulate over the years. And then you're paying for those each year. It's not a huge amount, but it does kind of add up.
You know, it's 10 to $15 a year typically. So unless you are a domain collector and you have a way of like keeping an eye on things, inventory, listing them for sale and so on, I don't know that it's passive income in that way or that you're really acquiring a ton of assets. But if you do wanna get into it, niche domains like anything that is industry specific or local or trendy phrases, those can still have resale value, especially if they match like current hot topics or emerging industries such as AI or brandable names. You do wanna also avoid registering domains that infringe on trademarks. Someone registered nike-store.com, but they, you know, they thought they had this goldmine, but it was taken away from them because Nike owns the trademark.
So anything like that is likely not going to work. But what the professionals do who are into this world, they research keyword trends. They focus on quality, not quantity. A few highly brandable domains are worth much more than that random pile of 50 domains that I mentioned. Some of them even build starter websites on domains to demonstrate value.
So it's not just a blank page, kind of makes the domain more attractive to potential buyers. And then in terms of selling them, you can use marketplaces like GoDaddy auctions. I think there are a few others as well. I purchased a domain once using GoDaddy auctions. So it seemed to work pretty well for me.
Flipping domains can still be viable, but it's no longer a get rich play, at least unless you come up with something that is really new and special and you're the first one to it. It's more like a fun and interesting thing to do if you notice something particularly valuable. That's my two cents, of course. Listeners, let me know your experience. Or if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com.
That includes links to every single episode of the podcast 3149 and Counting. You can download or stream all of those episodes for free on the site. You can also subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Much more is coming up. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
from the Onward Project.
