Bloggings of a Domain Flipper

New Domain Investment Company - LintonInvestments.com

I'm happy to announce that after almost an entire year of planning, building-up the portfolio, and filing all the documents, Linton Investments is up and running. As my portfolio has grown over time I decided it was time to start turning my investments into a business.

As I've said before - I've created some custom parking pages to help monetize my investments and it's exciting to watch it grow (take a look at GeneticsNow.net for an example). This year Linton Investments will focus on some great potential long-term investments with .cc, .ws, .in, and other TLD's as well as continuing to grow the .com's -particularly hot two-word .com's. I've spent some time separating my portfolio into short and long-term investments to make sure that I don't sell a name until I think it's ripe.

As the year goes on I plan to incorporate my book, audio course, and other learning materials to allow Linton Investments to branch-out and also provide educational resources for those new to domaining and domain flipping.

So I've finally taken this to the next level. 2008 here we come! You can check-out the new website as well as current public portfolio at www.lintoninvestments.com.

Hope you are all having a great start to the new year- it's going to be an exciting one!

DNJournal - State of the Industry 2008

There is a must-read article on DNJournal right now, "The State of the Industry January 2008: Our Panel of Domain Experts Analyze What Happened in 2007 and Share Their Forecasts for 2008". Many of the top domainers share their thoughts on 2008 and reflect on 2007.

Robert Alfano, president of DomainCapital.com confirmed the great returns you can see from building a simple website vs. parking your domain. I've discussed this concept a lot and think this is a crucial concept for new domainers to understand. The basic idea is that in creating your own site you get to keep 100% of the ad revenue rather than splitting the commission with a parking service. Making your own site with some great targeted Google Ads can greatly improve the monetization of your domain. Alfano said:

"PPC and domain development are the other two legs of the domain monetization stool and we are going to look at both of those. Let's start with development since that has become something of a buzzword over the past year and is becoming the focus point for more and more owners of top quality domains. Developing a successful website is hard work but the payoff can be a hundred times greater than the returns from PPC or aftermarket sales."

[Read Full Article on DNJournal.com]

Don't forget to check-out my new book and free audio course! www.dnflipping.com

Improving your Google Adsense Performance

As many of you know - I'm a big fan of creating simple pages with Google Adsense ads on them rather than parking my domain. The reason for this is that I get full control of the site, and most importantly 100% of the revenue. When parking a domain you're splitting the revenue with your parking service.

So, you have taken the time to design your own custom page chocked-full of great Adsense units...how can you improve your click-through? Google has a great tag that can be inserted into any page to indicate what section of the page you would like to inspire your Google Ads. This is done by using the following tags:

<!- -google_ad_section_start- ->

Your site text explaining what your site is about - full of your best keywords.

<!- -google_ad_section_end- ->

This will help you gain a lot more control in targeting your ads - and more targeted ads means more clicks! This is a great trick to know and must-use feature for anyone creating their own custom domain parking pages.

Best TLD's for Investing Long-Term

As a domain flipper as well as domain investor I oftentimes try to break-up my domains into two categories - short and long term investments. Just like stocks I think that different TLD's represent different time-windows for investing. Currently I'm placing my bets on .mobi, .net, .info, .cc, and .ws as good TLD's for long-term investments. These are TLD's that I don't think will really reach their full potential until 2-3 years from now.

In a domain market with more and more new TLD's though there's bound to be some critical mass where new TLD's stop becoming good investments. I'd be interested to hear what you think? Are .cc and .ws the sleeper TLD's of 2010? Will .mobi ever really take-off or will phones with full-featured browsers render this TLD obsolete? It's an interesting time in the domaining industry and as an investor it's always important to speculate. You won't be right all the time...but the few times you are right make it worth it.

To see some of my domains feel free to check-out my domain investment company Linton Investments.

Also - if you like the blog - you'll love my free ecourse

New .cc purchases

I buy a variety of domains but have recently have been interested in .cc and .ws names. These are not good for quick flips but I think will make great long-term investments. For all of my flips I  use .com's and the occasional .mobi. 

For my portfolio I like to keep a range of TLD's which I think represent short as well as long-term investments. While .cc, .ws, .in, etc. have not gained much popularity I think the simplicity of particularly .cc (typing two cc's rather than the letter "c" followed by "o" followed by "m") will make them quite popular in the future. See below for my recent purchases...I think these are probably 2-3 years away from being ready to sell, like a good wine, these TLD's are better with age.

ForexInvestor.cc (ForexInvestor.com sold for $14,706 on Sedo)
MVL.cc (good LLL.cc)
myfinances.cc
mygenetics.cc
genome.cc (great one-word .cc)
genetictesting.cc

Hope you are all having a great start to the new year!

Don't forget to sign-up for my Free Audio Course

New Domain Flipping Book Released for 2008!

I am proud to announce that my new E-Book - "Domain Flipping: How to Profit from the Domain Name Boom" is now available from www.dnflipping.com.

I spent the second-half of 2007 writing this book and am very excited to have it available for 2008. The book will help anyone learn how to flip a domain from start to finish. You don't have to be a computer expert or have any domain-selling experience to read the book. Instead the book was designed with those new to the domain industry looking to profit from domain flipping.

If you are unsure about buying the book you can always download my free 7-part audio course that will walk you through the basics of domain flipping. If you are satisfied with this you can then make the decision to buy the book and begin to grow your business.

Hope you all enjoy the book - I have spent many a late night working on it and hope my efforts can help those new to domaining get off to a good start! I just wish there was a book like mine out when I started flipping! I could have saved a lot of time learning from my own mistakes.

You can sign-up for the Free Audio Course or buy the book from www.dnflipping.com. 

Buying Expired Names: Work Smarter not Harder

I've always liked the idea of working smarter rather than harder. When it comes to Domain Flipping there are a lot of things that can quickly become a big time-sync. One of these is of course finding great names to flip. So how can you save yourself some time and work smarter not harder?

Rather than searching through long lists of expired domains I set email alerts with the domain expiry services that I use. This has saved me an amazing amount of time as I no longer have to log-onto a website and search through thousands of names just to narrow it down to those that I like. I'm very interested in 7-9 character domains so I have NameJet send me an update everyday of which 7-9 character domains are expiring. I'm also very interested in what other people are backordering to look for trends and continue to understand the market better. Once a day NameJet also sends me a list of the most active backorders.

The idea here is simple, but powerful, and will free-up your time to spend on more important things like building a great flipped site! Don't spend your time bouncing from website to website looking for the exact type of name you like. Instead - let them do the work for you and work smarter, not harder.

Domain Flipping Defined

I've always noticed that there is no one definition for domain flipping - the word means different things to different people. Currently I find there are three main fields of thought when it comes to domain flipping. There's no right or wrong here, just different approaches.

Domain Flipping Definition #1:
Buy a domain name and immediately put it up for sale. Recently a domain flipper discussed the sale of 1,700 domains in 2007 on Namepros [READ THREAD]. These flips are easy because they require no work outside of purchasing the name. The downside is they oftentimes only represent sales in the $xx or $xxx category.

Domain Flipping Definition #2:
Buy a domain name and start a legitimate business that can then be sold with the name as a business. This involves actually building a business around each domain you purchase. If done right can certainly generate high sales as you are selling much more than a name. Can be time-consuming and expensive but those who are good at it make great money.

Domain Flipping Definition #3:
Buy a domain, develop a custom website for the domain with actual content that visitors would find useful and Google Adsense or similar advertising. List the website in all major search engines and sometimes use PPC advertising services to monetize the domain before it is sold.

I'd like to point-out that there are of course other definitions of domain flipping as well as variations of the three listed above. I feel that these are the three core definitions that are used right now.

I myself use Definition #3 as I've had a lot of web design and site optimization experience. I find it rewarding to build a great website, monetize it, and watch it greatly increase the value of my investment.

What kind of domain flipper are you?