Flippa Blog « Kickstart Your Website Flipping Project with an Aged Domain

Choose a Niche

Glancing at the Flippa tag reports page, “hosting” is a popular niche for buyers on Flippa, so let’s start by searching for “hosting” related domains. After I’ve opened Domain Samurai and setup a new project, I enter my keyword “hosting” into the seed keyword box on the domains tab and click the Find Domains button, then I select the Aged Domains tab to view the results.

Domain Analysis (free version)

Let’s take a look at CheapestDomainHosting.com. I’m interested in this domain because it’s a keyword domain (something someone would type into Google) which can help with search engine rankings for that particular search phrase.

While the free version of DomainFace only provides PageRank details, upgrading to the paid version (see below) provides extensive data.

Domain Analysis (paid version)

The paid version of DomainFace provides plenty of useful data to help analyze the domain’s age and credentials. For the particular domain I’m assessing, I can see amongst other things:

• The domain is 7 years old
• It’s been indexed by Yahoo and Bing
• It has 2 backlinks in Yahoo and 5 in Bing

Before I decide if I’m going to buy this domain, I’ll do a little due diligence to make sure I know what I’m buying.

Due Diligence: Wayback Machine

The first thing to do is check the Internet Archives Wayback Machine to see what sort of past the domain’s had. You wouldn’t want to buy an aged domain that’s previously hosted adult content, for example! The Wayback Machine shows there’s been some content on the site in 2004/05 and further investigation suggests it was a fairly “thin” site with little content and few pages.

Due Diligence: Keyword Research

Next I’m going to use Google’s Keyword tool to check how many searches the keyword “cheapest domain hosting” receives per month. Although 1,300 phrase match searches per month is nothing to write home about, for the sake of the exercise, let’s push on.

Bidding on the Domain

DomainFace tracks domains listed for sale on Sedo, SnapNames, Pool, NameJet, Flippa and GoDaddy so your bidding experience is going to differ depending on the provider. In this case NameJet is taking care of the bidding – which is where I enter my bid.

Building a Website Around Your Aged Domain

Assuming I win the auction, the next step is to build a website on my new aged domain. An important consideration when building a new website where once-upon-a-time an old one lived is to try to add all the page URLs that previously existed (or at least 301 redirect them to new pages).

To discover most of the pages that lived on the domain try using the Yahoo’s Site Explorer – if the site hasn’t disappeared from Yahoo’s index you’ll be able to see all the old URLs. The other option is to use the Wayback Machine.

Note: Do not copy any old content you find on the Wayback Machine. The previous owner has implicit copyright over this content.

What’s Next?

Once built, you should try to hold on to the website for a couple of months and build up a history of traffic and, ideally, revenue. Should you decide to sell your website – on Flippa of course! – you’ll achieve a much better result if you can provide historical statistics. When selling your site, make sure you explain in your listing how you purchased the domain – most buyers will do their due diligence and find out that the domain’s had more than one owner anyway – so be transparent from the beginning.

You can Download the Free version of Domain Samurai (aff) and start discovering aged domains. But be careful, it’s extremely addictive!

Learn More about Aged Domains

This post discusses how to find aged domains but doesn’t cover what aged domains to buy. While domain Samurai provide some great learning resources, you might also like to check out the following:

• The 5 Minute Expired Domain Buying Checklist
• Buying Expired Domains: What’s the Best Strategy?
• Expired domains, trash or treasure?