It has been several years since the last “land grab” for great real estate domains. This means some real opportunities, whether you missed out on buying any awesome domain names, or feel you bought too many during the frenzy. Either way here are some very clever ways you can turn your current situation into profit...

Woe Is Me – I Missed Out

One of the biggest mistakes sales associates make about domain names is assuming that all the good “dot-coms” are gone. This is hardly the case because great real estate domains are coming back into the pool of availability all the time. Keep in mind that there is about a 25% annual turnover in real estate licensees every year. This equates to about 400,000 people dropping out of the business annually! A lot of these people purchase domain names that they no longer have any use for and simply allow them to expire. Here are several ways you can tap into this mother-lode of gold real estate Web addresses:

• Just Check – simply go to any domain name registrar (my favorite is GoDaddy.com) and type in your choices to see if they are currently available. You may be quite surprised as to what comes up. If one or more of the ones you wanted are not available, don’t stop there. The registrars typically allow you to see who owns them (in most cases) and when they will expire. If the expiration date is less than a year, and a bit of further research has shown that the owner is no longer in real estate (a quick Google search should be able to tell you that), then you have a chance of getting it. Now if you want to dramatically increase your chances of acquiring a soon to be expiring domain, you can “backorder” it…

• Backorder – many registrars give you the ability to backorder a domain that is currently owned by someone else. For example, GoDaddy.com charges US $18.95 to monitor the status of any domain name. When the domain name expires it goes into a grace period that can last anywhere from two weeks to one year, depending upon the registrar. After the grace period the monitoring service will attempt to register it in your name. I have used this service myself to acquire some domains I wanted rather badly.

• Expired Lists – JustDropped.com is a service that lets you peruse lists of domains that are about to be put back into the available pool of domain names. It also conveniently lets you search by keywords so you don’t have to get eyestrain looking for anything that might be valuable to your business.

• Domain Auctions – there are a lot of domain name auction sites available, too many to list here. For example, GoDaddy.com has a Domain Name Aftermarket (https://www.tdnam.com) that allows you to bid or make offers on existing domains. They are listed in categories, and as of this writing it has over 25,000 domains available in the real estate category. You will find the prices all over the map with some as low as $5.00 and others over $20,000. It is definitely worth checking out however.

• Lease It – you don’t have to purchase a domain to derive benefit from its use. There are many real estate domains that are available for leasing. Domain leasing is based upon the principle that many people simply type in the domain name for the type of product or service they are interested in. And in so doing, they are then directed to your site so you get the benefit of the extra traffic that results. For example, if you specialize in Hollywood real estate, you may find that hollywoodrealestate.com is available for lease (which it actually was until someone leased it!) So when people type in “hollywoodrealestate.com” into their Web browser address bar, they would immediately be directed to your site. Typically you pay a fixed monthly fee for this service (i.e. the lease amount) no matter how many extra visitors are driven to your site this way. Think of this as a very sophisticated form of pay-per-click, except that you pay a flat lease fee rather than a per-click cost. And the monthly fee totally depends upon the anticipated traffic generation potential of the domain being leased. LeaseThis.com is a domain name lease broker that operates this way and happens to specialize in real estate domains.
  
  LeaseThis.com goes one step further in that it will wrap an appropriately designed branded version of the leased domain name location around your site. To see an example of this just go to http://www.hollywoodrealestate.com. At the top you will see the branded domain name being leased, and underneath is the site of the company that leased it. This is a smart way to do this for several reasons:

1. Since you are only leasing the domain name and don’t own it, this approach creates a clear separation between your brand and that of the domain name. So when you are ready to terminate your lease, it does not affect the branding of your own Website. (NOTE: Never brand your site using a leased domain name, always with one you own);

2. This is a powerful listing tool. Imagine going on a listing appointment for a property in Hollywood and have the prospective seller type in “hollywoodrealestate.com” and see your site come up this way. Their perception is likely that you “own” that space

As you can see, there are no more excuses or hand wringing that you missed the “domain name gravy train”. There are all kinds of opportunities to purchase (or lease) incredible domain names. Now, what if not having enough domains is not your problem, but instead perhaps you went a little overboard during the domain name purchase frenzy days. Well, don’t worry because there are several ways to turn your hoard of domain names into a monthly cash cow…

Help! – What Am I Going To Do With All These Domains I Purchased?

Some agents went a little overboard with purchasing a ton of domain names during the “early days” of the Web. Some have a few dozen sitting idle, while others purchased literally hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of domain names. If this is the case for you, here are a couple of ways you can turn these dormant domains into lively cash each month:

• Cash Parking – some registrars, like GoDaddy.com, give you the ability to “cash park” your domains in such a way that they generate monthly revenue. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you own the domain “yourcityrealestate.com” and “yourcity” is the name of a city other than where you list and sell, so it is of no direct use to your business. You can cash park this domain through GoDaddy for US $9.99/mo. Now when someone types in “yourcityrealestate.com”, the GoDaddy servers automatically create a special page filled with links to other related sites, all of whom will pay GoDaddy for each click that is generated. And, you get to keep 80% of the pay-per-click revenue off your cash parked domain. In the examples GoDaddy gives, they estimate about $8.00/mo in net revenue to you for each domain name that is cash parked with them. Not bad —it’s enough to cover your cost of annual domain registration fees about 12 times over. Obviously, the actual amount you receive will vary widely with the attractiveness of the domain.

• Lease Them – a much greater income potential from your dormant real estate related domains is to have LeaseThis.com lease them for you. There is no charge for this and you get to keep at least 50% of the monthly lease fees generated. And, depending upon the attractiveness of the domain name, the gross monthly lease fee could range from $20/mo. to over $1,000/mo. If LeaseThis is able to lease your domain to one client that wants to use it exclusively, then your income potential is much greater (like the “hollywoodrealestate.com” example above). On the other hand, if they can’t find a lessee immediately, they simply create a very attractive cash parking page that features real estate related companies that are willing to pay for each click generated, similar to the Godaddy approach, only much more targeted. To see an example of this go to www.newyorkrealestate.com. Either way, your chances of maximizing your return on your dormant real estate domains is much higher with a company like LeaseThis brokering them for you, rather than use the cash parking services of a registrar.

There are huge possibilities for real estate related domain names, whether you are a potential user of them or holder. The main thing is to put this potential to use NOW! Every day you don’t is simply costing you money.

NOTE: Mr. Internet®, RUSSER Communications, its staff and officers receive no compensation whatsoever from any third party vendors and make no recommendations as to the suitability of the products or services mentioned in this article. Always thoroughly investigate any product or service before trying or purchasing.

Mr. Internet is the alter ego of Michael J. Russer, an internationally recognized Internet speaker, trainer, author, and strategic consultant to the real estate industry. He is dedicated to helping real estate professionals leverage their people skills into profit on the Internet. You will see his column on REALTOR® Magazine Online every month and in the magazine quarterly. Send your Internet questions to help@askmrinternet.com or you can visit his Website at http://www.russer.com

This article is reprinted in its entirety from the February 2007 issue of REALTOR® Magazine by permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved other than mentioned above. Mr. Internet® is a registered trademark and IEC™ and Ask Mr. Internet! ™ are trademarks of RUSSER Communications.