How to raise money to buy a Domain Name: Financing your way to a Premium Domain Name in the AfterMarket

Many domainers believe that buying in the aftermarket, as opposed to registering yourself, will save you time and yield more money (i.e. buying from auctions or from other domainers). However, investing in domain names is not necessarily cheap, if you were to get a premium .COM domain name it would cost you thousands to millions of dollars. So how can we finance our way to getting ourselves a premium domain name? Here are some of the ways Domainers do to raise cash:

Personal money

– Savings, friends and families –

Money coming from your own savings account or from friends and families. This is usually the case for most domainers as it usually doesn’t have interest rates. However, it’s not all advantages, as it could potentially put you in a a very bad debt or even lose your relationships with friends and families that you’ve borrowed from.

Loans

– To borrow or not to borrow… –

 

There’s 2 types of loans that is possible, one is the short term loans or the long term loans. Short term loans are loans that are raised against your source of earning money (i.e. salary, credit cards, etc.). It’s usually a small amount (as interest rates are high) and might not allow you to acquire more expensive premium domain names. While Long term loans can raise you a larger amount but is raised against larger assets, such as your house, cars etc.. The disadvantage is that if you were not able to pay the loan, then the assets would be confiscated.

Rent / Lease

– Rent / Lease or Own? –

Most of the domainers own at least some good generic domain names that is gaining good traffic. Renting / Leasing it out to other domainers or website developers / companies would be a good source of income. Disadvantage is that you won’t be able to touch your domain names as long as the rent / lease is still effective. So if there’s a good offer for someone to buy your domain name and the rent is for 1 year, the opportunity is gone.

Pawn

– Digital PawnShop —

Pawning your domain names is also another way of raising money for your domain names.  DigiPawn allows people to pawn their (current) domain names (and could get a higher value with trademarks, website, etc.). The interest rates are very high, around 15% of the value every month, but what’s great is that the domain name owner’s website is still running and could still earn from Pay-Per-Click campaigns or affiliate marketing. But if you’re unable to pay then your domain name becomes the property of the pawnshop.

Partners

Partnering with a other domain name investors, would allow you to pool your money together and purchase yourselves a good premium domain name. However, complications as to the registration (one registrant per domain name) and to profit sharing could arise.

Stock Market

– Wall St. = Fusu.com in Domain Names –

There’s a website (Fusu.com) that was setup to be the domain name stock market, this is where domainers could raise cash in exchange for shares. Domainers could sell, at maximum, 45% of their shares to other investors. The owner of the Domain is bound to follow the rules of the investors and must get the approval of the investors before making a decision.

Investors

– Work with Investors –

If your domain names are really at a high premiums and money cannot be easily raised, then DomainCapital might be able to help. $5000 loans and below doesn’t need approval, but for $5000 and up, approval must be made by their company. In exchange, they place their name in the technical contact in the domain name’s registry.