Domain names that you don’t renew eventually get deleted for someone else to register. There are people who wait for the second these domain names expire and snap them up. Sometimes these are people who want to use the domain for their website. But most of the expired domains are registered by domain investors, aka “domainers”.
What’s Domain Investing?
Domain investors buy domain names today with the hope that someone will want to buy the name in the future. They are somewhat like real estate investors; they buy virtual homes or land and hope that the price appreciates.
Investors acquire domain names in several ways. They might
buy them from existing owners,
register domains that aren’t yet registered,
or buy expired domain names.
Buying expired domains is one of the most common ways to acquire high-quality domain names as an investment.
The Expired Domain Market
Millions of domain names expire every month. There are several services that help domain investors get domain names the moment they are released, including NameJet and DropCatch. These sites are called drop-catching services.
With so many domains dropping each day, investors need to know which domains are becoming available and need a way to separate the good ones from the bad ones.
What Makes a Good Expired Domain Name?
If someone buys a domain name in order to eventually sell it, then they want to make sure that people will be interested in buying the domain name. There are many factors to consider to figure out the likelihood that someone will want to acquire the domain name in the future:
The same name is registered in multiple extensions – Great minds think alike. If many different businesses or people register the same domain in extensions like .net, .org and .biz, that means there’s demand for the domain. In fact, one of the owners of the other extensions might want to buy the matching domain in a different extension.
The domain contains dictionary words – Since most companies start a domain search using a keyword, domain investors seek domain names with dictionary words in them. Some even look for domains containing certain “hot” keywords such as ‘crypto’.
It doesn’t contain hyphens – Hyphens are usually a no-no for domain names, so excluding domains with hyphens from an expired domain search can whittle down the list.
The keywords have search traffic – Domain names that match common search terms are often in high demand. Various tools show Google search volume (and even how much people pay to advertise on Google) for the keywords in each domain name.
The domain is old – The age of a domain name in and of itself does not make a domain name to be more valuable. But most of the best domain names were registered early. Screening expired domains to exclude ones that were registered in the past year or two eliminates a lot of low-quality domain names.
The domain is short – All things considered, people want shorter domain names. Many domain investors limit their search to names that aren’t too long, either in terms of the number of words in the domain or the number of characters.
Dip Your Toe into Expired Domains
Have an eye on a domain name that is expiring soon? Want to try your hand at domain investing? Take a look at Zname.com to familiarize yourself with the market and start grabbing expiring domain names. And once you’ve found them, register your domains with Zname!