Domain Owl

Domain name careers can scare off some of the newbie domainers because they sense  a ton of hard money has to funnel into those bursting domain portfolios. Those domain names took time to buy and resources to amass. Many domainers started small. And some concentrated  effort has been done buying and selling names  instead of developing core competencies in domain services.

But getting in on the ground floor of a career with website developers and name owners is the most available free occupation opportunity and career education online. Here are some ways to earn money in the domain space without ever owning a domain name. The domain world is one where the ramp up to any point in the compass to profit starts on its own tilt.

1. Template Maker

For every open source application or freeware website type, each website owner or blogger wants a custom look for their template. The template is the group of files that organizes and projects the two dimensional look of the site. Because the application is open source, every like programmer will have a site that looks exactly the same. Templates can work on standard or custom designs and releases.

The scope of freedom to create a template is limitless. Downloads can be conveyed from a portal website free, fees charged for bulk access, custom design purchased, or donation-request vended basis. The designer can decide how much they want to charge for each. Sometimes a design is a feature a domain owner will invest more money in to make the site experience better.

2. Content Writer

Minisites and content articles are the development manna in answer to a domainer’s prayers. A college student, retired person, senior citizen or housewife could make 5 templates a day for a minisite and rework the keywords later. A minisite is an HTML file with areas of text added in. The density of repetition of certain key words serves search engine result dynamics, or SEO.

Article writers can earn page view money at Associated Content, Triond and other websites. Sites like Helium encourage a social network approach to writing earnings. Constant-Content orders work from selected writers. No college degree or topic restraints are resent. Writers can speak to the topics they are most qualified to author on or research new material and publish it.

3. Graphics Designer

Along with a logo and banner, most new websites will want avatars or iconic symbols to enhance their visual website brand in color. Devising a background image or set of icons for a website can be a creative outlet for many people just starting out in website illustration. Often a standard size for each application type has the same specifications, which allows for uniform fit in graphic design for websites.

Introduction to graphic design can be self taught. Online courses and college training classes are available now. Many free and basis graphics programs are available for download online. Resizing and recoloring many types of the same images in a class or category can provide some webmasters with choices when laying out their site.

4. Link Building

Link Building and site url promotion is one of the fastest developing careers online. Cementing search engine relevance of a site by planting posts with link backs and track backs all over the Internet takes time and skill. Knowing which highly SEO rated web directories can help a site get boosted to its highest optimized result is a knowledge few can claim. Doing this quickly for best results makes an online professional shine.

5. Site Marketing Guru

Organizing all of the above services from start to finish for a domain name is a business in and of itself. Writing press releases, finding new members, signing up for affiliates and publicizing the website for a given domain name is a full time job just for one name. And many domain name portfolio owners need to get active marketing for multiple domain names they want to promote.

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The world of online marketing and domain promotion operates with dollar signs in its crosshairs. Taking profit online is a guilt-free occupation. If responsible webmasters don’t position their sites and groom their online research for clicks and related revenue opportunities, the money can’t flow. But the tools to realize cash revenue can be unwieldy for domain name owners.

Digital goods can be electronically conveyed and charged for, and pathways to these thin margins of income can be loaded onto any site that takes the webmaster’s fancy, in any order they choose. But not every site has got its act together yet. Defining an image, offering a service, honing a brand, or establishing a foothold on a market niche takes work in the Internet world.

But the opportunity to partner with another webmaster, provide online profiles for clients and their websites or domain names, and/or consult with broker, auction or resale estimates for their names is everywhere on the domain forums and auction sites. These are some of the most basic and primary marketing and promotion services any domainer looks for.

1. Location Data Mining

The market for location data is expected to reach nearly $13 billion by 2014. ISP providers and Google can package your personal data and release it by court order or corporate policy. Geomapping and zip code data can provide a saleable database for future resale. Adding records via blog posts and article entries with associated table data relating to cities and zip codes can have value.

Online users have a research use for those types of data which makes any database containing it saleable. Building a database with sushi restaurants indexed by zip code, constructing an art and craft supply website with link urls to the major craft fairs and supply stores online, and focusing on building a nice database for a selected user niche for certain website’s services all have a value. Data mine for a target niche, and vend the data online.

2. Affiliate Revenues

With strategic and aggressive content composition effort built around a related domain name , a profitable website starts to take shape. When page ranking projects a competitive start value to ad placement, affiliate ads cane start racking up fees for clicks. But building a qualifying website that can deliver clicks and traffic to justify the hosting costs remains a task.

3. Sponsor Promotions

Individual and direct marketing sponsorships take work to negotiate and coordinate, but they can be well worth the trouble. Direct sponsorship ads have the benefit of being custom crafted with original graphics. But the hidden value of original executed sponsorship ads is the novelty value they will have, versus the ‘already seen that” presence so many affiliate ads languish in.

4. Domain Marketing for Resale

Many domain names are purchased for the sole goal of resale for profit. The portfolio of a domainer is rife with opportunities for strategic resale. The pricing and email campaign to market the domain, or the purposeful listing of the domain name at auction is the bottom line. But identifying likely domain name buyers from IP addresses and reference urls can also be likely.

5. Online Domain Name Promotion Services

Promoting a domain name, spreading links online, submitting urls and writing content are all ways to realize dollar value for efforts online. Take a visit to get Listed.org and scope a local business or your own firm. Missing a few entries or a zero result? Null presence on search engines is a bad sign. Just suggesting key information and basic facts can make visitors to a given website much happier.

Software for link and article submission and link building is only one way to make money online. Listing domain site abstracts and communicating a site’s main idea takes work. Making the site effective and optimizing traffic, SEO and hosting resources is a saleable job. Evaluate what skills you are good at and build a reportoire of online clients and sales. Tweaking blogs and delivering graphics are in-demand services webmaster need.

6. Brand/Service Creation and Promotion

Learning how to build Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube presences is an art. These setups can take time and effort not every webmaster has.   There is always one slice of the brand promotion pie a webmaster is loathe to execute on his own.  Once done effectively, the process or cluster of promotion tools can be enabled for others. Anything that saves time is of value to domainers, including auction droplist analysis and data collection.

Once a domainer can demonstrate to a webmaster they can imitate a result or deliver a product, they are in business. Writing a search code script, inventing a new animation, offering an online widget, anything the webmaster can do to provide a solution can work. Building a database of local business that will print a page of material for a flash drive or businesses with free babysitting  could be a Twitter superstar of tomorrow. If you build it, they will come.

Webmasters and domain owners can leverage an online or realtime user base, traffic volume, or demographic of site users to get clients or exercise site publicizing activities. Whatever “problem” one webmaster has, there are likely thousands standing behind them in line to solve it.

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When I say I am a domainer people often look puzzled.Some people get it, some people don’t. Domaining  as a career has several tasks and responsibilities associated with it and a description of them should clear the way towards better understanding of what domainers do. Domaining is a career that reflects the time and effort an individual puts into it.

Advertising and promotion, website planning and organization, artistic choices and site architecture are all the responsibilities of a domainer. Special online tools and products are available to assist domainers launch their own websites or collect their domain portfolios in one manageable place. But individual people can design their own strategy for doing business with domain names online.

The next question is: “What does a domainer do?” Domainers decide for themselves their daily agenda ad how to divide their labor pie into web enhancement activities. A domainer can specialize in buying names, selling names, reselling or promoting names for domainer clients, vending products or services to enhance websites,

Domainers do whatever they think right to promote and grow their domains. They stay abreast of new domain name sales and developments. Domainers are the first true career  spawned by the Internet. Domaining is an equal opportunity profession. Understanding of its general practices can happen at the individual’s ability to grasp concepts and learn good domaining habits.

Domaining has yet to be a full fledged curriculum in the university system, but it is a career many people share without formal training.  Savvy research skills and a quick eye to a domain value aid whomever sees it and acts. Good communication skills are needed, as is a comfort level with emerging technology. Access to a fairly high speed connection is also preferable.

Domainers harvest new domain name opportunities, and renew domain names they own. They refer email bids to owners if they are not the owner and provide broker services to other domain owners seeking sales or purchase. They appraise the domain values of other domain name owners. They perform legal services on behalf f their domain and website like protecting against stolen content and even hijacked or pirated domains.

A great deal of information must be digested to understand all the working of the elements of making money trading domains online. Some domainers specialize in some types of website manufacturing, domain name brokering, programming specializations, graphics, photography, and other domain services. Domaining has developed its own universe of user communities for every type of online application and website making tool.

Domaining is upheld by search engines, user traffic on the information superhighway, and ad revenues form website ads. Internet users looking for news, information, data and pictures drive the demand for fresh websites and new domain names to host them. Online websites built to furnish domain information for a supplied domain name (or names) assist in these business estimations for long and short term profit via resale.

In a trying economy like the current one, many professionals in fields requiring education credentials are looking for revenue streams outside their current employment. Those with independence and a mind that isn’t closed to new enterprises and nontraditional ideas might find great success in the international world of domain name investment and reselling.

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I was discussing the recent headlines regarding Google and typo names and for me the dominant term was PPC and typo, for him the dominant phrase was “$500 million”. That’s a planet full of money Google is raking in. What are they doing with it, exactly?

Typo traffic used to be a sideline for domain namers. Typos were names that sound like big names and popular online destinations. Domainers took a risk buying the names because you never knew when the dreaded C & D letter might arrive. But the sites would accrue traffic because humans have a tendency to misspell when working the address bar.

But $500 million is a lot of money to be changing hands without some whistles being blown. if the big money in domains has putatively transferred to an all-typo model, then get crackin’ regging those typos. Hand reg, main reg with your hosting company, or buy the typo from another domainer. See if typo domain markets are your domaining bag.

Kick the tires on a typo today and see what happens.

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