It’s a sad fact, but many people start an online business and then abandon it when they’re aren’t making as much money as they thought they should be (of course there may be many other reasons why they stopped working on their online business, but getting frustrated and giving up is a common scenario). For this reason people don’t always renew their domain names when they expire, these expired domains can actually be money in the bank to the savvy internet marketer.
The biggest advantage is that many of these expired domain names actually have a website that is ranked high in the search engines and has a nice steady stream of traffic. Buying a site that has a high rank and that already gets traffic will make it so much easier for you to make money since you don’t have to invest the time to start from scratch. No matter what some of the more unethical ‘gurus’ online may try to tell you, it takes time to get your website to the point where it is getting enough traffic to be profitable.
Allowing a site to ‘age’ can help the traffic a lot as the search engines tend to like older sites more. It also allows for there to be a lot of backlinks into the site, and again, building these links is time consuming so if you can benefit from someone else who has done the work for you, you can be that much further ahead.
Another great advantage is you might be able to pick up a gem, though it’s rare, in a market that has become saturated and it’s difficult to find a good domain name. This expired domain may be just the thing but you will most likely be paying a premium for it.
That brings me to another point, while there are many places online where you can buy domains that have expired you do have to be careful to not get caught up in the moment and overpay for a site. You should be willing to spend time to do your due diligence and make sure that the domain you are interested in is actually worth the amount of money that is being charged for it.
Some of the things you should check out are the number of back links to the site, what the page rank is and how long the site has been active. Some unscrupulous people will try to make a killing on a site that is no longer in it’s heyday and not getting the traffic it once did. They will show you old stats that are no longer accurate as a way to trick you into paying more than the domain is actually worth.
If you know what you are doing and are willing to invest the time to adequately research any given site to make sure it’s still profitable, than buying expired domains can be an amazing way to get a turnkey site up and running (and making money) for you. Someone else has already done a lot of the work, now you get to reap the rewards. Have fun!
