‘Domain Name‘ simply describes an Internet address, a web site address if you like, such as http://www.mysite.com, and millions more besides. There’s no doubt about it, domain names are big money, but the heady days of the Dot Com Boom are way behind us now and few people rush to pay millions of pounds for virtually anything ending .com But it’s still a hugely profitable business concept and one anyone can master. The business can also fetch very high prices on eBay. Even domain names selling at just a hundred dollars or so, over a number of sales, can attract good cumulative profits.

So what it wasn’t you who made $8 million for business.com, $5.1 for AsSeenOnTv.com, or £2.9 million for wine.com ….. you could very easily have been the one who paid less than $10 for speeddate.com and sold it on eBay last month for £6995.00 (over $13,000)

Some eBayers specialise in domain names costing very little to list in their shop and still list thousands of pounds, even millions, as their opening bid.

Making money is easy, but getting really fabulous prices for domain names is more down to luck than good business, but there are ways to make luck smile more favourably on you, as you will soon discover.

INTRODUCTION TO SELLING DOMAIN NAMES ON EBAY

* Names are usually listed under Computing > Services > Domain Names and less often under ‘Business, Office & Industrial > Businesses for Sale > Internet Businesses/Websites’. You will often find people adding bonus items, to induce more and bigger bids, such as web sites and hosting or even complete Internet businesses, and these might sometimes be listed on eBay under ‘Business, Office & Industrial’.

* Some really exciting and profitable names are listed on eBay every day, like speeddate.com mentioned earlier and, currently unsold, [http://www.lowesinstallations.com] and homedepotdelivery.com Surnames, like Lowes, represent a good bet, there’s bound to be someone, somewhere, called Lowes, who does installations. So you will often see surnames offered and snapped up quickly on eBay.

* For every clever combination of letters, there’s the odd individual trying to repeat history with something he or she thinks closely resembles a past auction record breaking domain name. But does [http://www.6usiness.com] really make you wish you had $8,000,000 to offer just because http://www.business.com fetched 8 million dollars? I don’t think so.

* So be realistic, avoid daft combinations, unless someone really has money to throw away to buy your name, you’ll only waste money.

* Acronyms are gaining popularity with still millions of letter combinations to choose from. An acronym is a series of letters where each letter represents the initial of words in a particular phrase. So taxi firm Travel In Style might bid for TIS.com, bookmaker Bet With Confidence might like BWC.com, and so on. It’s a good idea to choose acronyms based on actual business models, such ashscb.com that recently fetched £5000 on eBay.co.uk. The seller suggested ‘hill side to cloud base’ makes a great name for a paragliding business and doubtless someone else agreed. But what can you make out of ffq.com that has just gone for $4900.00.

* Actual names and single words also fetch high prices (like zillionaire.com worth $3650), though whether http://www.bradley.com actually will fetch £1,000,000 I really don’t know. As I type, indulgency.com is currently offered at £12 starting price and no offers, locals.com – very nice – remains unsold at $500,000.

* Short names are usually preferable to long domains, especially as acronyms. Imagine matching qygzvyuuu.com up with someone prepared to pay thousands of dollars, against abc.com (no I don’t think it’s for sale, it’s just an example).

* New fads and important events can also fetch handsome rewards when applied to domain names. As news comes in that bird flu has hit the UK I decided to check for suitable domain names. Birdflu.com or .anything for that matter, is that available? No chance, already gone. What about Bird-flu.com, or .biz, .whatever? No, sorry, beaten to it again. What about a longer name for what will surely be a rash of products coming onto the market to help us steer clear of bird flu, what do you think of bird-flu-resources.com? Yes, that is still available. Or rather it was, I just bought it to test my theories about selling domain names on eBay.

* Look at expired domain names which often have ready made traffic which can attract higher bids than previously unregistered names. Really high traffic sites do fall into disuse, though infrequently, and they can be worth much more for traffic potential than actual letter combination.

ADD VALUE TO YOUR DOMAINS AND INCREASE THEIR VALUE ON EBAY

* Offer free hosting or parking or even a complete web page to begin attracting traffic and links while the new buyer determines what to do with his new domain name.

Avril Harper is a business writer and eBay PowerSeller who has produced several guides to making money from eBay, including MAKE MONEY TEARING UP OLD BOOKS AND MAGAZINES AND SELLING THEM ON EBAY which you can read about at:http://www.magstoriches.com 103 POWERSELLER TIPS can be downloaded with other freely distributable reports and eBooks at http://www.avrilharper.com