Surely you can’t make tens of thousands if not 6 figures with only a limited budget of say $1k?

Well I firmly believe that you can, each and every person reading this post has the potential to do it within the next few years, no question, if you have $1000 and time it can be achieved and it is exactly what I will be doing myself, if that sounds incredible then the fact that I am also about to tell you how to do it should also seem pretty incredible!

When I sold ledlightbulbs for £10k that was a good domain sale, I didn’t sell ledbulbs.co.uk for £30k as that domain has so much value being ranked at the top of a market that has yet to peak, so rightly or wrongly, I will wait.

I firmly believe that having a domain rank for it’s name if it is a prime generic that describes a popular sought after service or product can add huge value to a domain, take an example like cruises.co.uk which was bought in 2006 for £95k, it now ranks no.1 for the term ‘cruises’ in the UK and was sold for £560,000 – that’s quite a bit of business in what is a very fast growing sector. Most people believe the new owner can get that outlay back pretty quickly.

I bought camerabag.co.uk for £250 a few months ago and now ranked I am considering selling it for £1000-£2000 with offers on the table which again has shown me that getting ranked and putting the domain in the shop window helps find buyers and adds huge value.

Getting a domain to rank for it’s name can be a challenge if competitive but certainly doable, especially with all the freely available SEO advice around on blogs and forums so for most reading this ranking the domain for it’s name should be achievable.

So if you bought cruises.co.uk and you ranked it therefore ‘putting it in the shop window’ and at the same time generating traffic, income and interest then you would be well on your way to making large amounts of money, SEO/organic rankings still have wrongly voodoo qualities where if you don’t know how it’s done it looks like a special art, magic! Once ranked you have the domain right in front of the market that you dominate and right in front of those that may have the money to buy such a premium domain, thus increasing value and chances of an end sale.

Now let’s say you build a mini site and then rank cruises.co.uk you start to get enquiries, from the ridiculous offers of £200 to some more serious offers in high 5/ low 6 figures until eventually the right person matches your valuation and you do a deal at £560,000 job done!

But wait, there is just one problem! You don’t have £95,000 to buy the domain in the first instance!

That is where you have to separate yourself from the crowd, what if you went to the owner of cruises.co.uk in 2006 who wanted £95k and said to them that you could work on the domain for free and increase the value of their prime domain so much that they could give you a 25% share in the domain and when it sold they would still be better off than selling it now, if you managed to do that in this example rather than getting £95k the owner could eventually have had £420,000 and you could have had £120,000.

That is all purely hypothetical but the idea is good, finding the right domain, person and meeting certain criteria is the hard part, there are a few things you would need .

• To find and target an extremely strong domain name worth £10k+ today
• The domain having some history and ranking, albeit rank poorly for it’s word/name/product saving you the sandbox and a possible 2 year wait to rank well.
• The ability to convince the owner of the domain of your credentials and ability to do a good job
• A domain owner with vision
• A good contract

I am negotiating a contract whereby I take over 50% ownership of a .com domain that I will work on to rank and eventually sell thus giving the existing domain owner a better payout than he could get just selling the domain right now, he has agreed and he is now taking legal advice on getting a contract made up that will satisfy both of us. It’s guesswork but I would say the domain is worth around $30,000-$50,000 in an emerging market and would have the potential to be somewhere in 6 figures if a few years time, having it ranked No.1 and generating traffic will help us get the sale that will realise the original owners foresight in reg’ing it back in 1996. I did offer $5000 at the start but it was clear the owner of this domain was not interested in a quick bit of cash.

It helps that I can quote lots of rankings and domains that I have already to build his confidence in my ability, I am also at the very early stages of doing the same with a .co.uk, the owner is seriously considering my offer which would be more like a 20% share to myself but would have the potential to earn me £100,000 if ranked and sold later on in the next couple of years, of course neither of these may come to fruition as no contracts are signed and negotiations are taking a while, but hey, at least I am trying and all I have to lose is my time, huge rewards for little risk – the fact I have one YES and one ‘I will seriously consider it’ makes me think this has legs, I have to admit that I have only offered to do this on 2 domains so far and both are interested, I did choose my targets well though to maximise my chances, the .co.uk has been for sale for quite a few years and the owner wants high 6 figures which I think one day he will get but it would happen a lot sooner with my help.

The biggest hurdle seems to be a contract but it’s not entirely new, shared ownership of assets is commonplace so I am sure within the next couple of months I will have one of these done and will have immediately taken part ownership in a prime generic that I otherwise would struggle to afford.