Feb 28 2009
9 Ideas For Your Dormant Domains
Just a few days ago, I conducted a poll to see how many domains you owned that were just laying dormant. That is, domains you purchased but simply were not doing anything with. So far, the results point to most people having between 1-5 dormant domains just laying around. I have a few domains myself that I don’t want to pay for anymore but instead of letting them go gracefully, here are a few ideas for putting those domains to good use.
- Use As A Prize – Hold a contest and use your domains as prizes. Domain transfers are usually a painless process
- Flip Them – Domain Flipping is the process of buying a domain or website, fixing it up and selling it for a profit. So if you have a somewhat good domain name, slap on a CMS, add some relevant content for a niche and then try to sell the site.
- Auction It Off – Domain registrars such as GoDaddy have an entire auctioning system for auctioning off domains. Let the domain go to the bidder with the highest amount.
- Outright Sell It – If you know a friend who could use a domain name or if its relevant to their niche, offer to sell it to them for a discount price. This is how I obtained a domain which so far, I’ve put to good use.
- Redirect Them – Instead of having the domains publish a parking page from the registrar, configure the domain to redirect to another domain of your choosing.
- Park And Monetize – Create your own HTML parking page with your own advertising on it such as AdSense and monetize the domain.
- Aggregator – You can use plugins such as FeedWordPress which will update your blog through RSS Feeds essentially creating an autoblog or an aggregator. However, this method requires caution as you certainly don’t want to be looked upon as a splogger.
- Just Keep The Domain And Do Nothing – If you can afford to keep paying the registration fee, you can always keep the domain in safekeeping until an idea hits you in the face
- Lifestreaming – Almost the same as creating an autoblog but this time, the content that you aggregate onto the site is yours. You can aggregate your Twitter account, Facebook, or anything that has an RSS feed into this site to create a one stop shop of your activity on the web.
Domain Auctioning/Selling Services:
Moniker
Sedo
GoDaddy Auction House
Bido
SitePoint Marketplace
Webhosting Talk Advertising Forum
Conclusion:
The ideas and list of resources doesn’t have to end here. Add your thoughts and ideas to the comments below. I’m particularly interested in hearing about your experience in selling domains through any one of the services I mentioned above.




















