I’ve shared with you guys many times that my background is in real estate investing and flipping houses.  That experience immediately allowed me to make an easy transition into domaining, because the basic principles are the same – you buy something and quickly sell it to someone else (flip) or you buy something, fix it up first and then sell it for a profit hopefully.

I personally have bought domain names and just quickly flipped them to someone else without doing any site work. I’ve also bought domain names, created or redid the sites and then turned around and sold them.  This is an awesome strategy when you just need to make a little money quickly. If you do create/fix the website, you can keep the site, hold it for a while, but make a passive income off of it in the meantime.  Many of you know this already, so why do I bring these strategies up?  Because there are many newcomers to domaining that have no clue what to do or how to get started and I firmly believe that we need to help one another in order to continue the growth of the domaining industry.  Not only that, but I also believe there are individuals in this industry who have been domaining a while, but might need a refresher course on current techniques available to help them grow their domaining business.

No matter where you fall in those categories, I believe I have a great resource to help you;  Morgan Linton’s 2^nd edition of “Domain Flipping.”  My favorite thing about this book is that he’s not trying to sell you a “get rich quick” scheme. Morgan is teaching you techniques to develop a thriving business that can help you make a consistent income with domain names. I always preach to you all that I consider domaining to be a business and I urge you to look at it that way as well.  Morgan’s book helps you do just that.

In fact, I whole heartedly believe in this book’s information so much so that if we sell at least 10 of them, Morgan and I have agreed to do a live video chat session together where you guys can speak with us.

I believe his book considerably shortens the learning curve you’d have otherwise in this industry.  Here are just a few of the topics he discusses:

• Create loyal customers and turn your Flip into a business
• How to monetize your Flipped sites and generate passive income every month
• How to save money registering, renewing, and transferring domain names
• Where to sell your domain

He discusses so much more than that, but the list gives you a small idea of what to expect.  These are techniques he himself has practiced and has garnered success from.  Why not learn what to do from someone who practices everything he preaches.

The book cost $49.95 and comes with a two month, money back guarantee.  If you don’t like it, you can simply return it for a full refund within the two month period.  Fifty dollars is a small short term investment into something that can bring you hundreds and even thousands of dollars long term.

Don’t forget, if we sell 10 copies, Morgan and I will do a live video chat session together where you guys can speak with us and ask us questions. If for some reason we sell less than 10 copies I will personally offer some type of coaching through instant messenger, email or phone.

But wait, there’s more! Remember Viral Sign Up, the software application I created to grow email lists with the help of Twitter? I’ll throw in a copy of that for free, a $39 value.

Buy the ebook and send me an email with the receipt. In order to be eligible for the bonuses you must purchase your copy through the links on this page. Then, make sure to check your email on October 23rd. That is when I will send out the notice for the video chat session.

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The following article is a guest post by my friend and fellow domain blogger Morgan Linton. Morgan is the publisher of Domainvestors.tv as well as author of Domain Flipping available at DNFlipping.com.

If you are just getting started in the Domaining world then you’ve probably gone on the famous Domain Name Buying Spree. This is where you get very excited about the potential of buying and selling domain names so you go out and buy as many domains as you can. Every night you sit at your computer with a wild grin on your face as you register domains that will soon make you millions.

Now here’s the problem. Soon you realize it’s time to sell some domains so you waltz over to a listing service and post your domains for sale. A few weeks go by and nobody is bidding on your domains so you head over to a domaining forum. Now people on the forum are telling you that your domains are worth the Reg Fee or less.

This is where panic and anger set in. Many new Domainers will lash-out at the industry saying that they got in too late and all the good domains are already taken. What they don’t take-into account is that maybe they were just a bit overly-excited (nothing wrong with it, we’ve all been there) when they went on their initial buying spree.

Well I’m here to teach you three simple ways to take control of your domain portfolio. So if you’ve got the domaining blues follow the steps below and you’ll get the bounce back in your step before you know it!

1) Stop Buying Domains
Stop buying domains right now. Chances are you’ve been buying domains like it’s going out of style without generating any revenue – it’s time to put the focus on “making” not “spending”.

2) Let Your Crappy Domains Drop
To get a quick analysis of your portfolio plug your domains into Estibot and drop whatever domains come back as $0 unless you really have a vision for them.

3) Focus
Now focus on making your best three domain names the best that they can be. What are your best names? You can pick them yourself with a little help from the Google Adwords Keyword tool – try picking the three names with the highest search volume and strong advertiser competition. Turn these domains into mini-sites, full-scale sites, blogs, whatever you think is best but start getting some traffic and revenue coming to these domains.

Hopefully you are feeling less stressed already! It’s not hard to take charge of your domain portfolio but it is easy to become overwhelmed with too many domains. So follow these steps below and before you know it you’ll have three domains with revenue that you can either sell or keep for the passive income. Rinse and repeat and you’ve got the beginnings of a business!

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Last month I wrote is PayPal safe for domain name transactions. The short answer is no. Not to take anything away from PayPal, they are a great company and one that I use every day. Unfortunately they just don’t have the protections in place for intangible property transactions. As I wrote in my previous article intangible property is something you own but not a physical substance. Because it’s not a physical substance it creates a problem for delivery confirmation.

This is nothing new and something most domainers already know. But for the few of you out their that don’t, Escrow.com is the solution. Escrow.com reduces the potential risk of fraud by acting as a trusted third party that collects, holds and disburses funds according to Buyer and Seller instructions. Escrow services are provided by a  licensed and regulated escrow company.

Let me say this one sentence again, a trusted third party that collects, holds and disburses funds according to Buyer and Seller instructions.

How much does this service cost?

Here you can see the fee schedule below. One great feature of their service is fees can be paid by the buyer, seller or split between both. To find out exact costs Escrow.com has an easy to use fee calculator.

A couple fun facts about Escrow.com:

• Holds a $4,000,000 bond
• Audited monthly by an outside firm
• Recommended by eBay for transactions over $500 – link
• In business since 1999

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I think the biggest misconception with auction services is that domain names will sell for top dollar with zero work from the owners. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Because of this, Bido asked me to do a video last week with some marketing tips to help their clients promote the auctions.

I want to share this video with everyone because this holds true not only for Bido, but all auction services.

After watching this you’re probably asking yourself, why can’t I just sell directly to an end user with these tips? The answer to that question is that you can sell directly to an end user, but you will not always see the same results an auction can provide. Using an auction service gives you two things. First, your buyer will feel more comfortable transferring money to an impartial third party. Secondly, an auction creates a frenzy. People by nature hate losing. An auction pins bidders up against each other. By using an auction site, you’re given a little bit of an edge.

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61 of the 76 top domain sales reported over one million dollars are single word names. This says a lot right off the bat. Out of millions of domain names registered only 76 have been reported to sell over one million dollars. You actually have a better chance of being struck by lightning (576,000 to 1) than selling a domain name for one million dollars plus.

Quite honestly, the odds are stacked against us even more. The pioneers of our industry like Rick Schwartz and Kevin Ham, have been struck by lightning several times. Every time they get struck one of us looses a chance. Of course there are two sides to every coin and with this example if it weren’t for those sales there would be no chance for us at all to begin with.

To own a one word category killer at this point is nearly impossible. I say “nearly”, but not impossible. What would it take to get your hands on a domain name of this magnitude? Money and lots of it. The most recent example is Candy.com which Rick purchased for $300,000 (ballpark) a few years ago. This year Rick sold the domain name for $3million dollars plus incentives. I hear the following a lot, “I wish I registered domains ten years ago”. Of course that would be the ideal situation is to acquire the premium one word names, but as Rick’s example has shown us it’s not the only way.

Owning such a domain name is only a part of the equation. It takes a lot of balls and big ones at that. Why? Imagine the amount of offers received for a name like Candy.com. Rick has said himself that he has received countless amounts of offers. Really, 99.9% of domain investors would have taken a million dollars for Candy.com and still been extremely happy.

In closing, choose wisely and invest in category killer domain names if you want a chance at the big sale.

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