[METHOD] Making a living from weird domain names

Started by doomain, 03-31-2023, 17:13:02

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doomainTopic starter

I want to share the method that made me money online for the first time more than 10 years ago. Although many things have changed, it could still work today.

What are IDNs?

IDN stands for Internationalized Domain Names, which can mean hyphenated (á, é, etc) or special (Chinese, Korean, etc) characters. Not many people know, but actually these kind of domains exist for a long time now, but they are not very popular. Using Punycode, host names containing Unicode characters are transcoded to a subset of ASCII consisting of letters, digits, and hyphens. For example, München (German name for Munich) is encoded as Mnchen-3ya.

How to find and register IDNs

You can find and register IDN domains just like regular domains. Most domain registrars accept IDNs for many domain extensions. Although to search for available IDNs, many times you will have to insert the punycode. The best thing about IDNs is that they are like the Wild West of domaining, at least it was like that 10 years ago. Usually the price for these domains is also the same.

What kind of domains I registered

At one time I had a portfolio of more than 300 hyphenated domains in many categories. Basically every kind of electronic and home appliance you can think of, I had as a domain. (For example microwave oven but in the local version.)

You can register and earn from IDNs even if you don't speak the language! Once I went through the Swedish dictionary to find possible words I could register as Swedish IDNs. My Swedish portfolio was about 70 domains, and although I only sold a few, it was still worth it.

How to sell IDN domains

If you're not new to domaining, you know that selling your full portfolio is almost impossible, but you can still earn well selling only some of the domains. I sold maybe 20 or 30 of these names, and I could earn a good living for a full year. About half of the time, buyers contacted me directly, so that was an easy sell. I sold the rest through cold emails, contacting companies who could be interested in one specific domain.

How much can you earn?

Well, that depends a lot. My average sales price was $300, that was 10 years ago in a relatively small country. My record was when I sold 3 domains in one day for $1300 in total! I guess for more popular extensions you could earn much more for selling IDNs.

Now to you

I hope you enjoyed the method and if you decide to use it, good luck! Did you have or sell IDN domains? What was your experience? Do you have questions! Share in the comments!