Domain flipping tycoons of the 21st century

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Not many people that are not in tune with the business ways of the Internet are familiar with what domain flipping is and how people have managed to make so much money from it. These people who are called flippers or domainers have made a big impact online and have literally earned millions of dollars. And a lot of the big names really say that it isn’t much in the way of hard work, and that the idea is more important than anything else.

Domain names have been a big money business for a long time, since the mid-90s probably. When you own a popular domain that is visited very frequently, either purposely, by mistake, or just from random searches, you stand the chance of making a lot of money from advertising as long as the visits to your site remain high. People who are fully invested in this business make a living off of it, and some of the domain flipping tycoons of the world make millions even.

So what is the basic idea behind domain flipping? What is it that these people do that allows them to make so much money, and as they claim, with little effort at all? The main philosophy you encounter in this business is the same philosophy that has been a part of the business game for a long time. It is one that is very popular on Wall Street, and it translates to the Internet as well in this day and age. This is the concept of buying low and selling high. So it is much like the stock market, only you are not dealing with shares, but instead, with domains – site names.

You can sort of look as if you are buying a run down house that nobody wants for very cheap and then fixing it up and selling it for a profit. That is sort of what domain flipping is all about. Of course, domain flipping is a much simpler task and it doesn’t involve as many third parties as house flipping would, but still, essentially, you are trying to buy something that is cheap and find a way to make it worth a lot more and then finding someone who is willing to pay a larger some of money to take the domain off of your hands.

And after many years and many people successfully living off this type of business plan, it has proven to be a viable business and profession, but some online scheme that tries to convince people that they can all get rich quick. If done properly, domain flipping actually works.

The domain flipping game is much more complex now than it was in the early days of the Internet. Back in the day, someone would, for example, buy the domain name of a pop singer that was unknown at the time, and then hope that this person would become a huge celebrity, after which the representation of this person would then offer to buy the domain name from them for a substantial amount of money. Legislation put an end to this for the most part, when copyrights got involved in the entire process.

It was time for these domain flippers of old to get more creative and to thing of new schemes that would work for them in this day and age. The popularity of search engines really opened up a door for these people to become relevant again. The url name become a brand, and it did not have to specifically state what the site was about anymore, because now with keywords and things of that nature, a person could find what he or she is looking for on the web without that content that he or she is searching for having to specifically ingrained into the domain name.

Domain flippers rely on what is called type-in traffic, which is valuable because it is internet property that is not commonly visible. For example, if you are looking for ice cream, most people will type in ice cream into their Google search and a list of different sites will come out. But people who type in Icecream.com in their search will only get that site. This site is very valuable for advertisers because it is a bit like an undiscovered and untarnished piece of land on the Internet.

Domain flippers look for such domains and buy them up in hopes of getting approached by advertisers. There are many different ways to go about this business. Some domain flippers buy up every domain they can think of that hasn’t been bought already, while others have a more methodical approach in deciding what would be the best domains to buy and then eventually flip for a big profit.

One of the most important aspects of domain flipping is being able to understand how much a domain is worth. A good way to try and find that out is to use Google’s Keyword Tool in order to see what the demand is on the internet for websites that are related to your domain name. Page rank is also another telling sign of the worth of a site, so check out some of the bigger sites that are related to the topic of your domain and see how they are ranked by Google.

So who are these people? Who are the domain flipping tycoons of our era and what are their stories? Let’s take a look at some of the big names in the game of domain flipping. Not only that, but we will also look at what they are doing in order to stand out in the crowd, and what special attributes they have that separate them from the thousands, if not millions, of people trying to do the same exact thing on the Internet. Everyone is looking to make a quick buck in the online industries, these are the people who have been able to do it successfully by combining domain flipping and their creative prowess for expand beyond that and into new technological territories as well.

Francois Carrillo

Considered the current king of domain flipping, Carrillo is a French born businessman who actually owns Domaining.com, which is a community that discusses all things related to domain flipping and is a great resource for anyone looking to get into the business.

It is one of those sites that doesn’t really on its own content, but rather sponges off other blogs and sites that deal with this material, making it a place where all related sites converge. He gets tens of thousands of visitors to the site daily and the domain continues to pick up speed as the news of his success spreads, because, of course, everyone wants to learn from the best.

His money comes from the very lucrative ad business, selling his ad and banner space for a pretty pen, and of course, advertisers are willing to pay, because they are guaranteed clicks with so many people viewing the site daily. There is also ad space sold in his bulletins and newsletters which reaches all of the people who do not have time to read the site every day – yet another way he makes a lot of money.

Ron Josephs

Josephs has similar ideas in the business and he owns the GreatDomains.com site. Josephs has a very impressive portfolio in the domain flipping world and has been in the game since the 90s. The way he interacts with Carrillo is that he advertises his own site on Carillo’s Domaining.com, stating that he gets much of his sales just from doing that.

Ron is one of those people that tends to buy in bulk and then wait to sell to the perfect buyer who will give him the most money for his domain. He currently has more than one thousand domains that are considered cheap, which is under $25,000 in worth, but has some seriously expensive ones in his back pocket as well.

Jeff Bennett

Bennett is known most for his original company Namemedia, which had an inventory of almost a million domain names on the market, but has now become a leader in the new Internet movement known as collaborative consumption through his new site Swap.com. Collaborative consumption is sharing ideas on the Internet – it is a business model based on borrowing and lending.Swap is currently the largest barter site on the entire net. He is still in the domain flipping game heavily though, not only with running NameMedia but also teaching young wanna-be domain flippers how to go about it through TechStars as well.

Adam Matuzich

This is one busy guy and Matuzich seems to have an inexhaustible pool of inspiration and energy for new projects and different creative money-making ideas. He is the lead consultant of his two companies, World Wide Media and TheDomains.com, where he is developing and managing more than 70,000 domain names, but he has also launched himself head first into the business of designing and developing iPhone apps as well.

His iPhone apps tend to focus on the hottest and most popular movies and television shows out, which some of his most popular ones dealing with the Guido-loving hit series Jersey Shore.

Adam says that his business philosophy is to always ask yourself why not instead of why, adding that most of his ideas come from just thinking about random stuff and that it is important to not have any regrets and to not feel like anything you do is a waste of time.

Warren Royal

This domain flipping tycoon is actually know most for working on and perfecting one great site – Bobbleheads.com, which has become huge, to the point in which the site imports special order and rare items and even has bobbleheads made on order in the likenesses of random celebrities, politicians, and other famous people. He was actually the one who bought Bobbleheads.com, not the one who sold a domain name. But he turned that $30,000 dollar domain into a business of millions of dollars. Don’t think he doesn’t have an impressive flipping portfolio though, because he does. Royal’s Digimedia owns huge advertising type-in search sites such as Recipes.com, Chairs.com, FantastFootball.com and Deocrations.com. Royal uses Digimedia has his source of capital for investing and working on his more creative projects, mainly Bobbleheads, which has grown to be a remarkable business.

Colin Pape

Pape is a guy that had a bright idea, saw that it could be expanded almost endlessly, and just ran with it. He decided that he needed one word to rule them all, if you will, and that word, ended up being ‘shop.’ it is pretty ingenious. This name could be tacked onto anything and create a viable domain name for any kind of retailer from any part of the world. And that is exactly what Pape did. ShopAtlanta, ShopBoston, and over 8,000 other city and town names are in his portfolio.

Brian Deiner

Brian is by far the youngest domain flipping tycoon today and is only 18 years old. He is better known as Teen Domainer, which has become a strong brand for him. He is also influencing many young people to look into domaining and to get involved in the business behind it.

He started domaining when he was in sixth grade and had zero income to start with as capital. He is a case that proves that you do not need a lot of money to succeed in this business, just a keen eye for opportunity, some creativity and hard work. He is currently applying for colleges and is very interested in the Asian market, hoping to take his business to the content where all of the jobs are these days in this recessive economy.