The credit crunch may be hitting hard but it can have a positive effect in that businesses work harder to secure their dominance of a niche and are open to new ideas.
I have talked before about domain leasing and having some good domains ranked being my preference and for some of those I have been using aeiou.com which at $250 for a mini site isn’t cheap, I have 3 sites done now by aeiou.com and 2 more in production, all 3 rank which raises their profile and makes them more desirable.
Just agreed a deal on a domain to lease it out for 3 years at £100 per month with an option to buy it written in for £30,000, even with spending $250 on the minisite it means that after 2 months I’ll be paid back completely and at the end of the lease agreement I’ll be £3400 up with the possibility of an end sale of £30,000 or the lease could get renewed. As per my last lease I added to option to raise the rent a maximum of 50% and first refusal to renew to protect the lessee.
It’s a great deal for both parties and again shows that there is a demand for this if it’s done right, it’s slow progress though, this is my 3rd lease and again it took me sending out quite a few emails to make contact, it’s not easy and not for those that lose interest quickly.
2 of my lease deals have options to buy in them so at present the state of play is:
£675 per month in lease income (with £37,000 in options to buy written in)
Talking of leasing I decided yesterday to get my head down and start working on lease cars, it’s my second voyage into using WordPress and I think this site is looking good, it was a very productive Sunday but entering the 600 car models is proving really boring which I’m meant to be doing today and tomorrow, kind of looking for any excuse to take a break .. still better get back to it……. “I’m a one man band”
Hi Scot,
Will you earn more on leasing than adsense.
That’s a lot of job to write about car models.If you are doing alone. And will they(long tails) rank well.
regards
BR
Yes actual car leases that complete will pay me from £200 to £600 each so Adsense will likely be removed in the end.
Out source man, out source
I know, my own worst enemy, I’ll have it done by tomorrow.
Great job though. I thought you had a team that helps in managing the posts for you, as it is a lot of work.
I meant, will you earn more money leasing a domain to adsense.
Regarding unique content for so many car models. Will you have so much motivation to keep up the quality of the content.
£200- £600 is good, 600 models * £3(per page content) = £1800
Sorry, yes I do - it gives an increased income and a stable one.
The domain that you just leased out, how long have you been working on it? Was it ranked for the terms you wanted before you leased it out?
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The domain leased out is 2 months old, I didn’t do anything to it I paid $250 for a minisite and that’s it, it ranks for it’s keyword domain name.
That’s incredible! How did you find someone to buy so quickly? I now have a few sites ready to lease out, but buyers aren’t as hot and heavy and yours seem to be
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Once it was ranked I sent lots of emails, for this domain it took around 30 emails and one hot lead which worked out, I’ve got domains ready that I just can’t find anyone for,so it’s a case of getting my email to someone with the right mindset.
Hi Scott
Congratulations on the domain lease.
With your car lease site where are you sourcing your photographs from? Are you paying for them from image companies to ensure you won’t have any copyright issues with them?
Regards
Cat
I intend to get press packs directly from the manufacturers.
Can’t you automate that car model job?
It only needs to be done once Peter - if it was on going I would get it automated so in this instance I don’t mind investing a few hours to get it together.
So do you just pass this info over to a car leasing company(ies) automatically or do you just manually email it over?
Also - which wordpress theme did you use I like it
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It gets emailed to the company that processes the leads and I get a copy so just needs time setting it up and after that it’ll be sweet. The theme is one of Brian’s at RevolutionTheme.com but he’s pulled the old themes now and updated newer one’s - I managed to get a discounted copy by emailing nicely
If you wanted some car model data for future use, you can buy this kind of data:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=9621474
Super nice Lease Cars site. What WP theme are you using for that? Is it a free or a bought theme?
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It was purchased for about $40 from revolutiontheme.com
Sorry, Scott I saw that you had already answered that after I hit the “Add comment” button
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Hey, Scott my brother was in the leasing business and he still has his site which he’s turned into a wordpress blog about 6 months ago. He gets loads of enquiries but I’m not sure how many actually convert.
I’d be interested to see how this goes out as he’s had a few offers for the domain but all below £3k. It would be interesting to see if leasing is an option for him.
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I’m assuming the leased domains have a relatively high PR/number of inbound links? Is there much demand for leasing domains? Personally, I can’t see the value especially if you’re just starting out. Then again, I’m just a massvice cynic!
Glad to see you using WP, lots of cool plugins to make life so easy.
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No they don’t but they do rank for good product terms and that’s what makes them attractive to end users, not necessarily that competitive though so no need for massive link campaigns.
That is a really good deal for both parties I would say.
Once you lease the domain, do you have anything else to do with it? For example, do you offer domain management, or consultancy on keeping it ranked? Or do you just hand it over and let them get on with it?
Nope that’s the attraction, up front effort but once leased it money for nothing. Once leased out I concentrate on other things.
Domain leasing is all well and good, but as Scott has highlighted by the number of emails he sent, you have to do a lot of legwork to get anywhere. That said though, nothing worthwhile is easy.
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Hi Scott,
Do you add conditions that will stop the domain losing its rankings?
Or once its leased do you leave complete control to the new site?
Great lease btw!! Congrats!
I update the name servers and pass complete control, so no guarantees of rankings etc, it’s a domain lease, so it helps if the lessee has some knowledge of what they are doing.
HI Scott,
Great article.
What merchants provide leasisng car affiliate programmes, I did a crawl through a couple and not seen any car leasing affiliate schemes?
cheers
kevin
I had the same trouble - I haven’t found anyone public affiliates so I started emailing directly to companies to see if I could pass on leads and get paid on completions.
Scott, How open where these companies to having direct leads?
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Wasn’t bad actually Dan, in this economy perhaps many are glad of new options and ideas so welcome any possible extra business.
Well, in fairness, what company would refuse extra business. Perhaps the amount of kickback from the lead suggests how keen they are for the extra business.
Daniel Harrison’s last blog post..How do you measure success?
Scott, are you now sourcing domains purely for leasing then, and developing them with this in mind, or do you think leasing will only suit certain markets?
Yeah it’s always been my intention, I started around 12 months ago, some domains need longer to settle into Google but I have quite a few I feel are lease-able that I am working on.
Cheers Scott, I’ll stop pestering you now ;o)
Great idea it seems. Leasing it instead of selling it, more money is to be made and a greater price can be negotiaited with buyers because they already have their site running on that domain.
Your lease cars site is coming along nicely since I was first directed to it a few months ago. Can’t wait to see it move up the SERPS and I look forward to hearing more about its progress!
That’s an interesting variation on the normal buy-develop-sell strategy. Great food for thought, thanks Scott
Cheers, Jon
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Hi Scott
Nice looking site! How long did it take you to set the whole thing up, including tweaking WordPress etc.? Are we talking days or weeks?
Cheers
Thanks, it took a couple of days to populate but putting the site with theme and plugins was all done in one day so under a week from scratch.
Hi again Scott, I ask because I’m doing a similar site for a mate. I can do the graphics etc. and Brian Gardner’s new free themes are similar to yours, but what about researching images, content, etc. I see you use Parkers but wouldn’t you just be able to use the content (images and/or text) from the company who pays you for the leads?
Thanks mate and wow, 1 day is pretty fast. Well done!
I can do the graphics etc. and Brian Gardner’s new free themes are similar to yours, but what about researching images, content, etc.
The monthly payments are 30%-60% lower than any purchase loan extending over the same time period. Since the monthly payments are low, one can use new brands of cars, every 2-4 years. If the lease terms coincide with the warranty period of the car then any damage would be automatically taken care of without worrying the lessee. There is no need to pay sales tax for the entire value of the car but for the usage value only. There is no concern over selling an used car since at the expiry of the contract it required to return the car to the leasing company.