About three or four years ago, I started buying domain names for investment purposes. I have tried to limit my purchases to .com names as they are still the most valuable of any of the top-level domains. I have a few .net and .org domains and one or two of the other top-levels, but unless it really has a catchy name or has a website already developed for it, I stick to the .com names.

Most of the domains I own were names I thought of myself and registered if I found them available. I have purchased perhaps a dozen domain names on Ebay that were originally registered by someone else. Currently I own about 150 domain names and believe that many of them are very good and potentially valuable names. I have never had any of my names appraised, but based on what I have seen other similar names sell for on Ebay (http://www.ebay.com) or Great Domains (http://www.greatdomains.com), I think most of them would bring a good price.

I have only sold five domain names since I started buying them. I got between $30 and $50 for four of them and the last one I sold (http://www.impulselogic.com) brought $750. Not bad for a $6.95 investment.

One of the most important things I did early on was to obtain an enom (http://www.enom.com) reseller account. This allowed me to purchase domains at $6.95 each per year. The account also provided a means of organizing my domains and keeping track of when they are about to expire. I also have a reseller account with GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com) and a few others, but my enom account is my primary reseller account and I eventually transfer domains I have at other registrars over to my enom account just before they are about to renew. I find that I can keep better track of them when they are all in one place.

Until next time,
Barry