My Business

In addition to my “About Me” section, I thought it would be useful to offer an overview of the domaining business. I often get asked what I do for a living, yet it isn’t easy explaining the domaining world to other people in just a few words, mainly because it isn’t often the average person comes across this profession. There is much more to domaining than simply buying and selling domain names, and like any other profession, it involves a big learning curve and comes with the potential to fail. It isn’t a fast way to get rich, but it can be a lucrative business that rewards you with lots of spare time to invest in other important areas of you life.

As a domainer I have a passion for spotting potentially lucrative domain names. To me, buying a new domain name is like buying a new piece of untouched land, and just like a land investor, I have to know which pieces of land will be of the most value to other people in the future. For example, a great piece of land would be near a city center and close to transport links, and similarly, a great domain name would be one that is highly brandable or naturally attracts a high user search volume. The great thing about a domain name is, even without building a website, you can park the domain with a parking service who will generate money for you by placing PPC (pay-per-click) advertising on the page.

Believe it or not, the domain name concept is far more than just the naming of websites. Domain names were invented as a highly efficient indexing system, a way of assigning an individual identity to each website. This is already done in a technical way through an IP address, but remembering the IP addresses of all your favorite websites would be impossible, and therefore the domain name system was devised as a user-friendly way of identifying websites.

Domain names have become a valuable commodity because of their ability to rapidly boost the popularity and visibility of a product or service online. A memorable domain name can make the difference between failing to be noticed online and succeeding as a multi-million dollar website. And for this reason, memorable, topical and exact match domain names are highly sought after.

Let me give you a quick example of how you might make money from a domain name. Let’s say you took a guess back in 2005 that London would be hosting the Olympics in 2012, and you then registered LondonOlympics2012.com. This site could potentially be worth thousands of dollars, especially if the organizers wanted to buy this domain so that they could have the exact match domain for the event. So, in short, this is what I do. I seek out domains I believe will be popular tomorrow, next month, next year, or in years to come. I also look for domains that match high search volumes in Google, the reason being that Internet marketers prefer to register exact match domains because of their memorability and direct relevance to the subject of a website. It is also believed that Google favors exact match domains.

I have over 8,000 domain names in my portfolio, and while I do get the urge to build sites on some of the domains I own, I usually just leave them sitting in domain parking, which generates money from advertising clicks and sales of domain names when people are interested in buying. Some of my most valuable domains include, Alton.com, Gary.com, Juicy.net, Keyboard.com, Photograph.com, Mouse.com and Special.net.

I do have a few other projects on the go, namely CyberChina.com, which I am looking to develop with suitable partners in the near future. Then there is Lams.com, which sells custom-made photo albums, and also Tee.com and Photograph.com, both of which are in the early development stages. And of course there is this blog, Gary.com. You can see a list of my projects at http://gary.com/index.php/links/, although to be honest most of them are incomplete and need a lot of work.

My mission for 2012 is to connect with other domainers, Internet marketers and web entrepreneurs to develop some of my domains and create exciting projects with big money potential. I feel that working alone for so long has stifled my motivation a tad; I need some fresh inspiration to give me that hunger again. I am also hoping to engage other domainers and people interested in learning the domain business on this blog. Even though domaining is a popular online business, rarely does one domainer connect personally with another. So, if you’re out there, feel free to get in touch.