OK
Domaining isn't developing hmmmm
Domains only have a value for type ins
OK let's travel in time
1995 Yo dude there's this thing called 'the net' you got 100, we can get COOL.com and be cool, yeah dude ok...
Hmm, so some guys got keywords .com and yeah some had type ins and well empires were made and IPO's and whatever, that's DONE AND OVER no more keyword.com's left, long gone, so the idea that a domain name has to be a type in to have value is not how a modern domain 'investor' needs to look at developing a domain portfolio
Now there are some minor traffic typo's left, like keywordGEO.com and GEOkeyword.com, but the good ones are long gone
Now many here say typo's are the only way to value a domain, ok, for minor traffic and minor money, let's face it, no one is doing new reg's with major type in's and very rarely does a real type in name of any value get sold to a speculator, if it is worth something it gets developed and or sold to end users
Now you see here a lot of lesser tier quality keywords and and other domains and while none are really potential for type-in traffic, many are definitely worth 'investing' in
My suggestions to you, since you're so late in the game as was the kind of domains frank schilling who got in almost 10 years after the getting in was good, you need to find a way to register/buy/trade domains of value to end users and either sell them or develop them and lease them
For example let's say you live in WHEREEVER
You check that location at godaddy, or a bulk registration site, ok I want
whereeverKEYWORD.com
Use your head, find out what keywords make google big money
Lawyers pay around 20 cpc for whereeverLAWYER traffic from google
So you find GEO keywords .com and if your city isn't overrun by a local domainer, you may find some 'gold' easy to develop keywords and then you have a domain 'asset' to sell or develop
If you can do web site design great, you throw up some minor content on a geo keyword and you pop google with some minor seo skills
Now you're page one for term google wants 20 or 5 or 8 or whatever cpc for
Now you call some of the people buying that keyword in your area and say YO DUDE you want organic for the keyword google is charging you 10 bucks for? I OWN whereeverKEYWORD.com
Now a bunch of other tld's can pop google, so in this method of 'investing' in domains, using minor development and seo skills, you can have out of .com's that many business persons will pay you either a lot for the domain once they see it on page one, or B. a nice monthly residual income
That all being said, I see the new wave of domain 'investors' being actively involved in mostly geo buying and registerng and then putting them on page one and finding clients
Now once you hit a few homeruns (serp's on page one for high dollar cpc) you can show that success to other local businesses and say, ok, I own your keyword too, you want me to do what I did for WHOEVER, call him I MAKE THE PHONE RING
Now you're the GOD OF SEO and DOMAINS in your market, soon have dozens of clients paying 250 to 2K a MONTH for names you bought weeks or months ago for 7 bucks
Now this is sound real life advice from someone DOING IT
Lucky for me I was in the game in 1995 and I've been in an out of the net for 15 years, I do stuff, then take breaks
Now I'm doing stuff
So my advice to a newbie
Look unless you got serious dough, the only way to grind money out of 10 buck reg fees and maybe 100 or 200 domain buys is
a. specialize in your GEO area
b. register anything with cpc over 2.00
c. start to look at lesser tld's for your area
d. learn how to make a website and learn minor seo skills
e. get a local GEOdomains.com or a GEOnetmarketing.com to market yourself
f. design some pages and put your number on the front door, when people call you say thanks for calling but the name is in developmental still, the new owner will be answering phone next week
g. get out and sell monthly residual LEASES to the people in your area who NEED THAT POSITION
If you do what I say in a short amount of time for a minor investment you own anything worth developing for SEO serp's for big buck keywords in your market
Forget about selling out of region, most end users are older and want to see a person in the flesh
In a short amount of time you are getting tons of referrals and if you're ethical like me, you turn down most of the referrals, since you know the cpa and traffic for that industry is nothing and you only have so many hours in the day so you maximize and do high value jobs and say SORRY I'm too busy for that project but Joe down the road needs to eat next week so this is his number
LOL
Bottom line, what can you get into with minor investments today?
The above is what I think you can do FROM MY EXPERIENCE
Now you can play the drop game, or the CCtld game or whatever
But, the 'need' today is every business in america needs page one, it's the new yellow pages, page one google
So based on my experience taking trash and turning it into GOLD is the above
Now if you have money to invest, good, I have a whole different scenario, pm me
But money to me starts in mid 7 figures
Under that, don't bother me (BIG SMILE)
There's a ton of major investment domains that are doing NOTHING and with minor development could dominate google for tons of high value cpc
Now some here may have .com GEMS, great, while they are not on page one NORMALLY, you may be making nice money from minor type-in traffic, I say minor due to a big type in keyword has way more traffic IF it is on page one serp's
But most type in owners of high value asset .com's are happy and LAZY, they don't want to spend money or partner with proven SEO GODS to stick page one
So they see very little income from GOLD MINES
Example insurance.com sold for 35M or so
WOW, the glory days are back
Wrong, insurance cpc keywords bang 15 to 50 a click
So car.insurance.com or auto.insurance.com are gold mines
50M plus searches for insurance a month at 15 to 50 cpc for products and geo hits
So to an insurance company 35M is cheap, since if you try to buy ppc for insurance terms nationally google says OH YEAH BUDDY, we want 2M a DAY to make you page one
Yet it's still not where it belongs the new owner is a net marketing company
Yep, a net marketing company ponied up 35M for insurance.com
This is the group
http://investor.quinstreet.com/ownership.cfm
Now why would net marketers buy insurance .com
They're like me, they know what the cpc is and how to pop anything worth popping
So now they can sell 100M+ a year to insurance companies in ads
Google wants 2M a day to make any insurance company a player in ppc for insurance
And that just puts you into top 3 left rotation, that means they have 5 to 7 companies they are trying to split up 50M monthly searches for
So if you got 2M a day you can buy page one google for insurance
If you had 35M and had info insurance.com was for sale
yeah you got a BILLION BUCK asset for NOTHING IMO
So it's 2010 and you want to know how to make money in domains
Well if it were 1998, I'd say BUY MY BOOK, LOL
Looks like Schilling did, his empire did one of my outlines for domain name investing
Only he took it to a better level
Good job frank,
Now, you got money, serious money 5M+, PM me, I can tell you of gems like insurance.com ready to be plucked
But if you did, you wouldn't be asking the question this way
So the long response above about reg fee GEO's with high value cpc keywords is my advice to a newbie
Do bulk GEO reg's in your area, hook up with a web site developer and hit page one and then RENT IT OUT
Residual Income is the key to domains and it comes with GEO keywords and minor development
Then what you want to make?
25 clients a month paying 500 average?
50 clients
100
There's 200 business categories worth developing IMHO
In each city
You can have 3 to 5 clients a category
Oh they want exclusives, OK, charge 5 times your fee
The scenario above gives you 100K to 1M income in most GEO areas
Yeah LA and NYC are not open now, but most markets are
Now if you are an SEO maven, then even LA and NYC are open for this type of domain/development twist
Sorry for such a long response but you asked the question and I answered it to the best of my abilities
Still plenty of money to make in domains
If you have serious money, yeah keywords.com are still in play
If you have little money do what I said and when you are cashing checks send me some
LOL