There are a lot of people who paid $35 to register a domain name and then sold the domain name in excess of $100,000.00.

Here are a few recent examples of sold domain names:

$2,750,000.00 CreditCards.com
$ 700,000.00 Mecury.com
$ 325,000.00 Me.com
$ 460,000.00 Smoking.com
$ 300,000.00 Viajes.com (“Travel” in Spanish)

How did they do this? Forethought and some good luck.
There is money in buying and selling domain names even if the profit margin per name is not $100,000.00. There are a lot of domain names where willing buyers will pay three and four times what it costs to buy a domain name at a registration site like Domain.com.

Individuals and groups who buy domains and sell domains are often referred to as “domain name speculators.” They simply come up with a good idea and proceed to register domain names.
Speculators take several factors into account when trying to identify and buy a domain name that they can sell for a profit.

Some examples of these factors include:
1) General nature of the domain name (i.e., does the domain name mean anything to the average person or to a specific niche)

2) Avoidance of trademark issues – if a speculator buys a domain name that someone else holds a trademark for (e.g., Ford.com) there is a good chance that the holder of that trademark will not pay for the domain name but rather take legal action. The trademark holder may end up winning the name through a domain name dispute arbitration suit and you are left with nothing for your troubles.
Avoid trademarked names of companies and products. 3) Does the domain name get traffic? Domain names that get type in traffic (people typing in the exact domain name into their browser address bar) are valuable. For example if you want to buy domains you might type into your browser www.Domain.com as it is a natural place to look for domains. You have some options with what you can do with a domain name which gets type in traffic.

a) Develop a web site to capitalize on the traffic going there (e.g., On domain.com you can buy domain names)
b) You can sell the traffic a domain gets to a variety of companies which will pay you for that traffic.
c) You can also sell the domain to an individual or group that specializes in buying domain names with traffic. They then capitalize on the traffic going to that domain name.

4) Forward thinking. There are a lot of products and ideas that will not take shape for months or even years. If you register domain names today for these ideas, they could be valuable in the future.

Think of buying a domain name like buying a piece of real estate. If you buy the property in an area that is up and coming then your property becomes more valuable. The same goes for buying domain names. If you can identify and buy domains that are in an up and coming area they will become more valuable.

Once you have come up with some good domain name registration ideas it is easy to buy domains on www.Domain.com.

It is also easy to sell domain names on any of several after market sites. Sedo.com and Afternic.com are a couple of the larger aftermarket sites to sell domain names.