 Ever wonder how to buy and sell expired domain names for a profit? Well, we're talking about it today on The Journey. Hey everyone, I'm Neely and I have a special guest today, Joe from GoDaddy. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. Hi, how's it going? I've been working in GoDaddy's aftermarket for more than 10 years, having a lot of fun helping people buy and sell domains. Right on. And we're talking about how to buy and sell expired domain names today. So let's just jump right into it. So first question, how does a domain name get to that expired status? Well, you stop paying for it. That's the easy answer, right? Once you buy a domain name, you're actually just able to get it for a certain number of years. It depends on the name. Most is about 10 years is the most you can do it for. So when that time comes up that you've, you know, paid for, at the end of that, you get a chance to renew it. And if you don't renew it, then it's going to expire. Okay, so I can't just buy a domain name indefinitely after it's essentially keep renewing my lease? Yeah, that's exact. That's a great example. It is kind of like a lease. You have to keep paying for it. If you don't, then you're going to lose the rights to the name. All right. If I'm watching a domain name I wanted to buy and I see it's about to expire, do I get it right then and there? What does that process really look like? It depends on what the TLD is. So if it's a COM or if it's a COUK or an EU might have different timeframes. But by and large, it's about 30 days that you have as a grace period for most domain names when they expire for you to be able to renew it. So you forgot, you know, your credit card expired, whatever the case may be, you still have a grace period. After that grace period is over, then that name is going to be up for grabs for other people to purchase. Got it. So that's good, especially for most of the domain owners, our everyday entrepreneurs, they have their own domain names. If life happens and you forget to renew it, you at least have that grace period. But don't go any further because after that, then it's open to the public for anyone to buy? Yeah, pretty much. What's going to happen after that grace period is over in almost all cases is that name is going to wind up in an auction somewhere. Be it at Go-Day auctions or other third-party companies like Namejet. When those names expire, the registrars will send them to another auction site and then they're up for grabs for people to buy. Talk us through a little bit about once that domain hits that auction, what the process looks like. If I saw a domain name, I wanted, how can I go about actually acquiring it? Well, the best thing to do is to get to that auction house. So you can try and find out which name goes to which auction house. The two big ones that you want to look at are Go-Daddy auctions and Namejet. Those are pretty much where most of the names are going to wind up. And that's going to give you the first chance in line to get that name. So when a name expires, there's going to be other people that are interested in that name, especially if it has value. So if it has value to you, it's a good chance it has value to somebody else. You want to be first in line. The place to do that is the auction houses. After that, if nobody buys them, then they'll expire back and go to the registry where people can have a chance to get a back order on the name. And that's kind of like in basketball, they throw the ball up in the air and it's a jump ball and people try and grab it. Whoever grabs the name first gets that back order. Okay. It's kind of like Ticketmaster too. If you've ever tried to get tickets for a really popular concert and you're first, you click the button and then it puts you in some random line and it'll process through. It's the same thing with the back order. There's hundreds of different companies out there that may be trying to grab the name at the same time and you have one chance or a couple chances, depending on where you go, to grab that name. That's the back order process which comes after the expired name auction. So you want to be in front of that. You want to be at the auctions if you really want the name so it doesn't wind up there and you have a much better chance. If you win the auction, you wind up with the name. Now with the domain auctions, I mean, if I were to go buy a normal domain, it's somewhere from like $10 to $20 typically. Is that about the price range for those auctions or what's a typical price I can expect to kind of pay? Sure. Go to a starts its auctions at anywhere from $10 to $12 for the expired names and NameJet starts at $69. So that's going to be the baseline price that you're going to have to pay depending on how popular it is. The price can go up from there, but that's going to be the least amount that you have to pay. With the people that buy end up buying these domain names on the auctions, do they typically just try to flip them and sell them again or are these people that actually want the domain names for their business or their brand? There's a lot of mix of who buys the names. We have a lot of investors that come to the auction that are looking to get these names at a wholesale price. They expire saying, hey, if I can get this name for $12 or $70 and I know that it has value, I can resell that later on. But there's also a lot of end users that'll come. There's companies that are interested in names that maybe they weren't able to reach the person who owned the name for whatever reason and they can never buy the name directly from them. So they're watching it carefully when it expires or they just figure, we should watch out. There's companies like CSC that watch for corporate names and they say, oh, this would be a really great benefit for Coca-Cola. So let me get drink.com because that expired and I really want to buy that for my customer and let them know. So you don't have to wait for the name to actually expire. One way to do that is to use a back order. We have a back order and one thing that that does besides just try and catch the name after it goes through the auction is it includes a monitor and it'll tell you when there's changes on the who is, which is a public database, kind of like a white pages for your phone number. And that tells not only who owns the name, but when it's going to expire. And if there's any changes, so the name servers change or the person who owns the name changes, that monitor will kick in and send you an email and let you know, hey, somebody else owns this name now. Maybe you can reach out to them and try and buy it instead. And when it expires, it'll tell you, hey, this name went to the auction and it'll give you a free auction credit. It'll cover your renewal cost for the domain name and give you a $10 credit on go day. If you're using a site like Namejet, you can back order any name, even if it's, you know, not going to expire soon. And it'll tell you if it's going to hit the auction that they have. So a great way to get in front of that auction line is to put a back order in either with us or Namejet and then you'll get alerted when there's changes. So you know that name's going to expire. I hear a lot about people buying up different domain names and just parking them and putting up ads on it. Can you really just talk us through what that is? Yeah, that's a great option. If you have a name like videocameras.com, you can use a parking product, they have cash parking. There's a lot of other free ones that are out there. And what it does is it will put ads on the page. So ads are served when people go to videocameras.com. If they click those ads, you get a portion of that money. The thing that's really valuable for me, if I use parking, is to see the amount of traffic that comes to that name. So you can see how many visitors come and how many people click on ads. And if you have a lot of visitors coming, even if the ads don't pay that much money, you can say, wow, this is a very popular name. Maybe I should re-look at what I want to sell this for. Now that makes sense. If it's getting a ton of traffic, it just makes it more valuable to someone that's wanting to buy it. Right. If I'm selling videocameras as a store and I own videocameras.com and I know there's a lot of traffic coming, then I can say, wow, these are all potential customers for me. So it's going to make that more valuable. I mean, great segue, because my next question is, what makes a domain name valuable? Well, there's a couple of things high level that are good to keep in mind. The shorter the name, usually the more valuable it is because it's more memorable. Passively we call it a radio test where if I say it to somebody, it's easily spelled. So there's not a lot of different various spellings. So like color, it might be spelled one way in America, another way in Great Britain. So if it's got a short, easy to spell, memorable name, that's going to add value. Usually the older the name is, the more valuable it is because other people have seen value in that name for a long time and it's been registered over time. And also if there's not a lot of confusion, like we talked about, it's a different spelling. So if you add a hyphen in a name, there's numbers in a name. You don't know if that's a spelled out number or the actual number. So less, you know, things that can confuse people, the more valuable it will be. I'm sure many people watching are really interested in possibly buying and selling domain names. So what advice do you have for them for like, how to get started and get their feet wet with this? If you're just starting out, the number one thing you can do is take it slow, right? Watch videos like this, try and learn as much as you can, buy a couple of domain names and try and sell them. See what the process is like, start calling people that you know, think that might be interested in buying this name and see what the feedback is. You know, the other thing that is really valuable is to stick with the niche that you know. So if you have a skateboard business and you're buying and selling skateboards all the time, you can go and look at domain names that are related to skateboards and figure out, you know, with pretty good accuracy, what that would do for your business. What kind of customers would it bring in? What kind of profit would it potentially bring to you? And why would it be valuable for you to either own or keep out the hands of your competitor? And from there, you can gauge a good idea of what the actual value is. So stick with something you really know. Start with those names first, try and sell them and see what the feedback is like when you list them for sale. And once you get a good feel for how that works, then you can slowly expand to other markets. I know domain investing can almost become addictive, right? I think it's funny because that's a great way to put it. It can definitely get addictive, especially after you make a sale. And you run out and you think, oh, I'm going to get a bunch more and sell them. But you have to be very careful, especially when you start out to start out slow, to really understand what names you can actually sell. You don't want to just rush out and spend a lot of money on names that you might not ever make the money back on. You don't want to lose all your money. Yeah, because I know renewals can get costly, right? More and more you add those 10, $15 adds up when you have 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. And then you haven't sold any, it gets tough. Yeah. And that's another reason why I said that you should start slow. The carrying costs of a big domain portfolio can get pricey. Even if it's only $10, $11 a domain name, if you've got a thousand domain names, that can add up. And if you invest slowly and you have, you know, five, $10,000 to invest, if you buy two or three names that are really good names that you know that would add value to your company, then next year, if you're still seeing those names and they didn't sell, it's, you know, $30 to renew instead of $10, $11,000 to renew. Well, thanks so much Joe for being on the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. And if you've got some value out of this video, make sure you smash that like button. Add a comment below if you've ever bought an expired domain. And since you're there, subscribe to this channel and ring that bell so you get these episodes first. This is the journey. I'll see you next time.