Nameconnect Blog

How Does the Website Flipping Industry Work?

John Daly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:18:57 +0000

Website flipping is a growing industry. Though it is a relatively new concept on the internet, the truth is that a lot of people are making some serious money through it. In fact, website flipping has all the indications of being a winner for brokers and buyers looking to make money, so how does the flipping industry work? Read on to find out more about this industry.

The term ‘website flipping’ actually comes from the real estate industry. Flipping in real estate means that someone buys a low cost property, spends some money on renovations and repair costs and then sells it in the market for a profit. It is said to be a lot of fun coming up with house renovation ideas and seeing those ideas become reality in the end product. And the fact that the property sells at a much higher price is great. In fact, flipping real estate properties is something some people do as a profession. If you are interested in the idea but don’t have the money or energy to invest in flipping houses, doing so in an online context may be quite a good idea.

How easy is the website flipping business?

Those who tell you that website flipping is easy and has the ability to make you rich quick are probably lying. Yes, that’s right. As the industry continues to grow, so do the number of scams surrounding it. There is serious work involved. With website flipping, the costs you are going to incur are the buying costs, the price of doing up and upgrading the website to make sure it maximizes the profits and your precious time. The effort that is put in is the added value of the website which in turn will ensure that it deserves a higher selling price. The bigger the difference is between the buying cost of the website and the selling cost, the bigger your profit is going to be.

How much money does website flipping garner?

It all depends on what kind of value you are able to put in the website you have bought. Unless you are buying and selling Facebook (which we doubt you are), chances are that you will be making profits ranging from a few hundred dollars to several thousands. If you buy small websites, upgrade it and sell it, chances are you will be making a good stable second income. But if you really want to make serious money, you may need to have hired staff to help you put websites high up in order to sell them at a good profit.

Website flipping can actually be quite lucrative but you definitely need years of experience and knowledge about the industry to earn high margins. Don’t believe what some website flipping sites tell you about getting rich quick. For really profitable flipping, time and energy is something you have to invest.

How Does the Domain Name Expiration Process Work?

John Daly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:15:06 +0000

Domain name will not remain to a single person for life long. As soon as a domain name expires it gets registered to another person. Today, this simple process has taken a complex turn. All the registrants are protected by providing some grace period after the tenure is over.

Steps in domain expiration

There is a step by step procedure of getting a domain renewed. As soon as a single domain expires, it gets into the auto renewal grace period. The owner of the particular domain will be able to make the renewal of domain within the period of 30 days. The domain gets into the redemption period if the owner fails to get the old domain renewed within the stipulated time period. Thus the registrar would become the owner of the domain. The registrar can either carry on with auction sale or can retain the same for the generation of PPC revenues.

Active status

During the stage of registration, domain would have an active status. Some domains which have been blocked cannot be altered if the blocked status is not once again removed. The blocking is done by the previous owner of the domain in order to retain the name with him. No one can have a registration of the blocked domain without the permission of previous owner. As per the status of the server, domain name is visible with the parked website.

Status on hold

During this period, domain would stop functioning and the person searching the website would get the message of unavailability. This happens even if the hosting server is working really fine. An individual can easily get to the active status by not incurring any penalty in charges.

Redemption period

A second chance is provided to all the domain owners who wish to win over the previous domain once again. This is an attempt of providing the domain owner with the second chance. The service is really useful as the owner of a particular domain would be accustomed in using the previous name of the domain.

Even the customers and client would know the particular website with the same domain name. This service is not free of cost and would ask the owner to provide a sum of $100. A period of 30 days is provided to decide about the particular fact and reverting back within the particular tenure is essential.

Deletion

This is a caution for the previous owner of the domain before it gets transferred to other registrars. The status of removal will be reached to the register within the period of 5 days and from then it would not be possible to get the domain name active once again. Individual will not get back the domain name once again even if he is done with the missed payments. Now he has to wait till the time the domain get released from the second registrar who has just taken the same.

Individuals can keep the rules simple in order to avoid unnecessary penalties. There is a relaxation of getting the domain name registered for 10 years at a stretch.

How do Parked Domain Names make Money?

John Daly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:11:53 +0000

It is possible to create a steady income stream by starting a domain parking business. You do not need to spend a lot of time and energy to run such a business. Most people do not take the headache of creating or maintaining websites in such cases.

Parked domains make money through advertising.

If you own some domains, you can go ahead and place some advertisement banners on them. The next time visitors arrive on these parked domains, ads will be displayed to them. If you are not publishing content on a website or using a domain in any manner, there is no harm in having it parked. Instead of renewing domains for several dollars year after year, it makes sense to park all such domains without sacrificing a lot of your time or energy.

Park your small collection of domains or take it up as a serious business!

While some people utilize previously purchased domains for this purpose, others take up domain parking as a full-time business. A busy person does not need to allot any time or resources to parked domains. A serious domain parking business should always start with serious keyword research. Most domain parking experts and domain investors use Wordtracker or Overture Keyword Tool for researching keywords. It is advisable to buy a new keyword-centric domain for parking purposes only when it has a minimum of 1500 search queries per month. Also, there should be at least one million listings for the given keyword on the Google Search Engine Results Page or SERPS. If you research well, you can find some highly profitable domain names in terms of traffic volumes.

Domain parking is often a part of domains investment strategy.

Anyone interested in making short or long term domains investment should not ignore the option of making active income through domain parking. In fact, a large number of businessmen in the online marketplace take up domains investment very seriously. While some people own over a dozen potentially profitable domains that they can sell later, others buy hundreds of domains on a given niche to charge a high fee from buyers at a later date. By the time your domains attain a great market value, you can manage to earn enough to pay for their parking and purchase costs through ad banners. It is no doubt a great option for everyone in the online marketplace.

A person dedicatedly running a domain parking business can generate multiple income streams. It is possible to display customized pages on various parked domains without getting yourself into any technical or managerial details. Domain parking companies will do it all for you. They will manage all such pages and ads through their software systems. Just make sure you go ahead with the right domain parking services because popular search engines like Google have started penalizing low quality domains.

How do affiliate companies work and make money?

John Daly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:09:19 +0000

If you are thinking about making money on the internet, there is no doubt you have come across something called ‘affiliate programs’. Affiliate companies work on affiliate programs to make money. In fact, a lot of people are making quite a substantial amount of money through affiliate programs. There is a chance that you are not aware of what exactly affiliate programs are or how they work or even how to make money through them. This article will help you know everything you ever need to know about the topic.

What are affiliates?

The manufacturer, distributor or creator of a product or service is the one who pays the ‘affiliate’ a commission when he redirects a potential buyer to the product and thereby makes a sale. Of course all products do not have to be tangible; they can very well be a virtual one, like a certain service or even an e-book. Most vendors look for affiliates to sell their products on the internet.

How does an affiliate make money?

All that has to be done is to promote the product of the vendor and get one’s visitors to buy them. The vendor will pay a commission for every sale made because he does not have to spend any extra money on advertising or marketing and makes the sale through you. So don’t be surprised if you get a commission as high as 75%. As days go by and you continue selling more and more products for a particular vendor, you may even be given bonuses for the good work you have performed. The best way to promote products on the internet is by incorporating links inside your site’s content. You can opt for banner ads in your website or you can only include the product’s name and your own affiliate link in your blog post.

How to find a good vendor?

The internet is filled with a lot of affiliate ‘marketplaces’, as they are called. If you can find any affiliate sites on your own, go to any of these marketplaces and you will be greeted by lots of affiliate programs. You can be an affiliate of one or several such programs.

How to choose the right affiliate program?

There are many affiliate programs to choose from. But the trick is to choose one that suits you. How? Well, choosing an affiliate company which is close to your website or field/interest/content is a good idea. This means that you choose an affiliate based on the content you already have on your website. Most affiliate marketplace websites have good searching options which let you choose a program that is of interest to you. The second way to choose the right affiliate program is to find one which you like and create content that suits it. If you don’t know what to write, a good idea would be to get ideas from the affiliate website itself.

With time and effort invested, you will be making money through affiliate companies in no time at all.

How do I transfer my website to another owner?

John Daly — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:17:41 +0000

There may be many reasons for you to want to sell your website. If you are confused about how to transfer your website to its new owner, this article will be of help to you. Here are step by step instructions on what to do.

- It is important that you know your buyer, at least some information about him. Your buyer’s domain name registrar is important. In case the domain name registrar is the same as yours, you can save some money in the process. Otherwise, you may have to shell out $8 to $10 for transferring the domain name of your website to a new owner.

- The name of his hosting service is also important. This is important because in case you face any trouble during the transferring process, you can very well contact their customer support for help.

- Transferring the data that is present in your website to its new owner is the next step in the process. The first thing that gets transferred is your data and the last thing is the DNS records. It is recommended that the site that is being sold is not set up as a primary domain. There are many reasons for that. You will have difficulty in transferring your site if this happens

- Before starting the transfer of your file, it is important for you to backup your data. There are many back up services of websites available. Use one which produces the smallest database sizes.

- Next, install your hosting platform on the new web host. You can do it as a sort of a clean installation or you may copy all the files, whatever you prefer. A clean install is however highly recommended as with copying the files there may be a certain problem and you will find it difficult to find the root cause of it. In a clean installation, you will find the root cause of the problem then and there.

- After the installation and configuration is done, the content folder has to be copied and pasted from the old host to the new host. Now all the content and settings have been transferred well and fully.

- The next step to transfer your website to a new owner would be to change the DNS servers. All you have to do for this would be to go to your domain name register and change the DNS server data.

- The next step is to wait for quite a few hours to let the DNS propagate. After this process gets complete, there is every chance that your website will be visible on the new server.

- No matter which web host you use, the process of transferring one’s website to a new owner remains almost the same. The basics will remain the same.

With a little tech savvy and patience, there is no reason why selling and transferring your website to someone and thereby making a good profit should not be a wonderful occupation for you.

The matrix and variables to selling my website on the Internet

John Daly — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:13:36 +0000

There are many ways to earn money online, selling one’s website is one of the more profitable ones. Selling a popular website can be a great financial decision as it may involve literally millions of dollars. If you want to know how to sell your website, this article is definitely a must-read.

Understand what your website’s long term value is before you sell it. This is very important. The average sale price of a popular and successful website is about 6 to 10 times its monthly earnings. So if a website earns several thousands of dollars each month, this may feel like a fair settlement. But that is nothing compared to the value assigned to the business. For instance, Facebook is valued at an unbelievable over $50 billion. But does this mean that it earns that much every month? Of course not. It is the long term value of Facebook. So you need to understand what your website’s long term value is, instead of the short term one.

When you sell your website, it is important that you know your audience. Different sales tactics have to be used for different audiences. This is because people react differently to different products. Usually people consider product revenue information and data as the most important. An independent investor planning to invest in a successful website may only be interested in the long term profits the website can bring him.

A good idea is to look at websites who have sold for massive prices and try to learn sales lessons. What way was the website presented for sale? What sales pitch was used and what information was given out? Learning from other people is wonderful.

Optimize your website before putting it on sale. It is sad when websites and blogs don’t have even basic advertising or conversion testing which makes it impossible for them to reach their true value. Unless you have worked on profit optimization of your website, putting it on the market is a mistake. As a seller, it is a huge mistake when you put on a website on the market without maximizing its profit.

There are lots of auction sites to sell your website on but only a few of them are truly good. Flippa.com is the most popular one. It is a good idea to put your site on a good auction site even if it costs you a fee. Chances are, you are going to be able to sell it for a good price.

In an auction it is important to highlight whatever good is about your site. Have statistics made available for potential bidders about how many unique visitors your site gets, where you main traffic comes from, etc. Have real information made available and you will make a good profit on your website.

Does GoDaddy do domain acquisitions and how does it work?

John Daly — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:10:18 +0000

On many occasions, you won’t be able to get a domain of your choice. Domain names are getting scarce and if you are looking for a domain name in a competitive niche, chances of finding the desired one are even less. Right after you learn about unavailability of a desired domain name on GoDaddy, you can avail the much useful domain acquisition service. Domain Buy Agents of GoDaddy will make all possible efforts on your behalf to acquire the desired domain name. So the answer to the question “Does GoDaddy do domain acquisitions?” is a ‘Yes’ but there are no guarantees. If the owner of the domain registrant is in no mood to sell the domain for example, GoDaddy’s Domain Buy Agents cannot do much. There are many other issues in this case. However, the best way to acquire an unavailable domain is to avail GoDaddy’s domain acquisition service or the services of NameConnect.com. The difference? NameConnect is more personal as we do higher end acquisitions ($1,000 plus) and do not have the large influx of requests as Godaddy, this way you get more one on one time with your rep. Y

On the other hand, should you opt for GoDaddy’s professional Domain Buy Service, you are provided with a certified appraisal, NameConnect can do this over the phone whereas Godaddy will charge you. An agent will work closely with you or your company’s representative in order to acquire the desired domain name in all possible ways.

Appraisal usually takes up to 2 days to complete.

Once this process is complete, a GoDaddy Domain Buy Agents will get in touch with you soon after. An email is dropped at your primary email id. That’s when you can start your negotiations. You have to enter the desired negotiation range for the desired domain name in response to the first email from GoDaddy’s Domain Buy Agent. The agent assigned to your domain buy task can initiate work to acquire the desired domain name only after learning about your minimum and maximum price. The Domain Buy Service contract continues for a period of 30 days. During this time¸ the assigned Domain Buy Agent applies best efforts to get in touch with the domain registrant.

The assigned GoDaddy Domain Buy Agents undertakes following tasks in order to acquire the desired domain name for you:

Finding background information on the current registration of the desired domain name.
1. Whether the domain name under consideration has expired or not.
2. Whether the information about the registrant is current or not.
3. The name and contact information of the registrant.
4. Whether the domain name registration is private or public.
5. The agent also finds out if the desired domain name has been put on sale anywhere on the World Wide Web.
6. The agent checks various resources to learn whether aftermarket services are attempting to sell the domain under consideration.

Do not expect GoDaddy agents to get in touch with domain registrants directly.

Agents have to follow well-defined standard procedures in such cases. The first step in the process is to contact the proxy company. This company may or may not provide information regarding the privacy service of the desired domain name. Once an agent is successfully in contacting the registrant, s/he can start negotiations. All offers in this contact are valid for a maximum of ten days.

Does the registrar such as Godaddy, Name.com really own my domain name or do I?

John Daly — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:05:37 +0000

A large number of people wonder whether a domain name is owned by the registrant, administrator or the registrar. It is natural for any internet user or ecommerce player to ask such questions, it’s only the domain name that protects your business’s interests on the internet. Loss of the domain, for example, can be a big blow to any organization that depends on its online presence. Read on to learn some of the most important facts about domain ownership.

A domain name is registered with one of the many domain registrars on the internet. These private organizations are authorized to register domains of millions of individuals and organizations from around the globe. After you register the domain, it becomes to you until the date of expiry. In other words, you are the temporary owner of the domain until you continue to register it.

You own the domain name as long as it is registered.

At the time of registering a new domain, you are asked to provide the names of registrant and administrator. It is the registrant who has the full authority over a domain name. An administrator is the person or authority that can make required chances to domain settings and nothing more. Full rights of the domain are with the registrant. Just make sure that you re-register the domain name before its expiry date. You will receive a number of reminders on your email id about the expiry date of your domain name.

Domain registrar does not own your domain name.

If you are dissatisfied with your domain registrar company for one reason or the other, you can just transfer your domain to someone else. It does not take a very long time to do so unless you have just registered a new domain. In that case you may need to wait well over 8 weeks to transfer a registered domain name to a new registrar. Most domain registrar companies charge a fee (usually less that the cost of registering a new domain name) from the domain registrant for transferring a domain name. Since a domain registrar has no right to keep a domain registered with itself if a domain registrant thinks otherwise, it is easy to understand that it’s only the domain registrant who has the full authority in such cases.

It is always a good idea to go through the Domain Registration Agreement. This agreement is usually present in the terms of service. A domain name is crucial for any online enterprise and there is no reason why you should have any doubts about its real ownership. Carefully go through the Domain Registration Agreement and find out if any clauses restrict your rights over the domain name. It is always a good idea to register domains with popular domain registrars. These companies have built a reputation for themselves by offering commendable services year after year. The best way to avoid any domain related issues is to associate to a reliable company.

The historical significance of domains and their importance in development

John Daly — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:48:50 +0000

While domains may sound like an ever-existing component of the World Wide Web to the generation of the day¸ it was indeed a great milestone achieved by researchers, engineers and internet users from all over the world. The World Wide Web we know today would have been much different or should we say ‘complex’, if domains did not exist. So what is the history of domains and how important are they?

It was in the 1960’s when computer connections were first established.

ARPANET involved the connection of several Wide Area Network’s (WAN’s) for example. The need for a system to identify various computers on the network was felt for the first time during those years. In the beginning, there were not many computers in the network operated and managed by the United States Department of Defense. As numbers grew, it became necessary to devise a mechanism for the management and regulation of domain paths in a computer network.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Agency or IANA was created during the year 1972.

The United States Defense Information Systems Agency created IANA in order to handle the task of assigning unique identification numbers to all nodes or computers on the internet. Within a year, the Internet Protocol addressing system or IP addressing system was adopted by all agencies and private bodies, and accepted as a common standard. By the end of the year 1973, Internet Protocol became a popular standard. In the next few years, the internet went through a quick expansion with the arrival of newsgroups and e-mail. These two services completely revolutionized the internet and made it useful for a large number of organizations.

As the number of computers connected to the internet grew exponentially, researches felt the need for a simple addressing system instead of the existing system that involved long and confusing IP addresses.

Technicians and researchers came up with the brilliant idea of ‘Name Server’ during the year 1984.

Now, it was not necessary to memorize long and confusing addresses or complex domain paths to various computer systems on the network. That was the beginning of the modern day domain system. Within a year, another big milestone was achieved by researchers when the DNS or Domain Name System was finally implemented. At that time¸ only 3 top domains were introduced. These domains were .com, .org and .net. All of a sudden, long and confusing Internet Protocol addresses were reduced to short and easily to remember names like Microsoft (dot) com. The commercial growth of the internet skyrocket in early 1990s.

Tim Berners-Lee and CERN made a historic contribution to the world of technology by releasing the World Wide Web we know today. It was during the same time that a commercial service provider company started managing domain registration services. While domain registration was subsidized in the beginning, it became a paid service by the end of 1995.

Significance of Offers on Unique Domain Names – Spot a Good Deal

John Daly — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:18:52 +0000

Registering for your personal domain name address is not difficult as there are many registrars online who will do so for an annual fee. Most domain name registrars will charge you about $8 for a year but you can find many that will cost you a lot less. It is up to you which registration company you choose.

If you are not sure what a domain name is, you will find your answers here. A domain name actually gives you the opportunity of having a website address that is unique on the internet. No one else will have it. For instance, if your name is Alice Woods, you may wish to have a website with the domain name of www.alicewoods.com and not something like www.alicewoods.geocities.com that will come for free. Of course, it is okay to choose a free domain registrar but that will mean that you will have a prefix or suffix attached to your website URL that has nothing to do with you. Obviously, if the name you want is already taken by someone else, you will have to choose something else.

Domain registration companies often come up with wonderful offers for people like you who want to start their own websites for whatever purpose they wish. In the beginning, there was only one such domain registrar and anyone who wanted his own website for business had to register with it. But nowadays there are literally hundreds of such registrar companies for you to choose from.

If you want to avail of a good domain registration offer for your website, a good idea would be to keep your eyes wide open every time you log on to the internet. Domain registration companies come up with discounts and offers regularly but to avail them you have to be alert all the time. The idea is to spot a good offer when you see one. A tip for you to find a great offer on domain registration names is to look for a company which offers good deals to people who want to buy more than one domain. You may not require more than one domain, but it makes sense to make use of such an offer as you can always sell domains later. So make sure that you never miss good offers on a domain!