You’ve maybe heard that there are such things as “expired domains” but you’re not sure how buying an expired domain can help you. Som what is an expired domain?
It’s easy to explain, an expired domain is a domain name that has come to the end of the time it’s been registered for and hasn’t been renewed.
There could be a number of different reasons for this - maybe the owner forgot to renew the domain, possibly their domain registrar didn’t remind them (or used an out of date email address to tell them), maybe the domain owner bought the domain intending to do something with it and then changed focus. There are hundreds of reasons that a domain has been allowed to expire.
So how can you make money from expired domains?
For a start, it’s generally considered that the older a domain name is, the more “important” it is. By its very nature, a domain name that has expired has been around for a minimum of a year, so it’s older than buying a new domain.
Secondly, if the domain has actually been used, there may be existing links to the site. It is likely to be indexed in the search engines as well.
The icing on the cake is if it actually has a Google Page Rank.
Yeah, you read that right. There are a lot of expired domain names that have a Google Page Rank and even attract traffic.
The problem is, you won’t be the only person on the planet who is hunting for expired domains. The very best expired domains are purchased the very second that they are put on the market.
So if you’re thinking of buying expired domains either for your own use or to quickly “flip” and resell to other people, you’ll need to be quick off the mark.
The best way to achieve this is to use a service that will allow you to search for domains that are soon to expire. This gives you a head start and allows you to snap up the domains you want as soon as they’re released back into the pool of available domains.
You can find one of the best services for tracking down expired domains here.