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What is a domain name? Well most of you probably know, it’s usually a name followed by an extension such as “.com”, “.net” or “.org”. There are now over a hundred different extensions available for domain names. Almost every country has their own extension, such as “.ca” for Canada or “.us” for the United States. An example of a domain name is “JoeMidway.com”.

Domains are an integral part of how the Internet works. You might think that’s obvious but it’s an integral part of the Internet because of how they work. A domain name is basically just a name and that’s what makes the Internet easy. The Internet relies on numbers to function…Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to be specific. Domain names are easy ways for humans to remember IP addresses. On the Internet, Domain Name System (DNS) servers convert domain names into IP addresses so that way you can access the websites you want to visit.

Anyone can own domain names! Yes, that is correct, you too can own a domain name…or even a bunch! Unfortunately they’re not free but they’re not bad either. You can find them on average for about $10 a year from most companies (for your regular “.com” name). The prices are great compared to a few years ago when they were about $100 a year. If you had one domain name, maybe that wasn’t so bad…but today that could get you 10 domains! Owning a domain name gives you certain rights for the name but not all rights. For instance, when you pay for your domain, you own it for a year (or however long you’ve paid for), but if you don’t pay after that first year, well then it’s no longer your’s and usually goes back into the pool of available domains or maybe to an auction site run by your registrar (the company that registered the domain name for you originally).

Think of domain names as real estate. You can buy and resell domain names. Sometimes they go up in value, sometimes they go down. You can build websites on your domain name, lease it out to ad agencies or even leave your domain “lot” empty.

I currently own a few hundred domain names. I won’t go into the details as to how I came up with all of the names (the original ones) as there are a ton of sites out there to help you with that (or your imagination). I also bought some from resellers if the name was taken by someone else already.

I make a lot of my online income from my domain names. Some of it comes from parking my sites and some of it comes from reselling the domains after maturity. Parking a domain is basically pointing all of my domain names to a company and in return they post ads on my site. I make money off of the advertising space. When you have a domain that does well with advertising (parking), it easily pays for itself over and over again within that year to pay for your $10 registration fee. Depending on the site, you can make $5 a week or more (that’s an example from one of my sites). It might not seem like much, but multiply $5 by 52 weeks in a year and you have about $250 a year for something that cost you $10 a year to run. Not bad at all, I say! I park most of my websites at NameDrive.com. NameDrive is a great website that allows you to keep statistics on all of your domains for almost anything and everything you can think of. Another great feature of NameDrive is that they allow you to customize your parked sites and the payouts from advertising partners is very good. Payments are always on time, and if you have any International Domain Names (IDNs), you can park them there as well. Most other parking services don’t allow IDNs because their systems can’t currently support them.

I’ve been investing, parking and reselling domain names for over two years now. People said it was late in the game when I started but people are still entering today and making a ton of cash. I’ve also made a lot of money from reselling domain names. Like real estate, there’s good and bad stuff out there. I look for the under-valued good stuff and resell it.

I learned most of what I know from DNForum. It’s a great site to discuss domain names. It’s also where I buy or sell a lot of my domain names. Basically it’s a huge forum that is everything to do with domain names. They have topics on everything from buying or selling, to parking or registration services. They also have great deals with different companies on services for websites…such as creating content, or creating traffic for you. I should mention that DNForum is not a free site. You can get a trial account, which I highly recommend so you can check it out. You don’t have to give them a credit card or any info for a trial account. Basically you can upgrade your trial account at any time you choose to a couple upgraded memberships. The only difference is that the upgraded accounts have access to a lot more features. I’ve never paid to join another site except DNForum because usually I think that I can find that information out for free, but I didn’t think I could with domain information. DNForum is the leading domain discussion board on the Internet and it is filled with people from the industry that you can’t find anywhere else. Not only that, but DNForum gives you a ton of free domain tools to use once you’re a member. They definitely give you your money’s worth so you don’t just feel you’re buying access to read extra posts. Anyhow I can talk on and on about domains and DNForum but you can check it out yourself with their free trial account.

Well, that about sums up the basics on domain names and the industry. If you want to know more, I suggest you check out DNForum for more discussions. Or, if you have any questions for me, feel free to ask away! Good luck on your new ventures!

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