Cash flow is one of the biggest concerns for domain investors. Frankly, it is a primary concern of any business and critical to long-term success.

We are going to skip discussing parking since it is the first thing domainers do and  the overwhelming majority of the time it does not work.

1. Develop Your Best Domains

Choose your best domains for full-scale development. Some of the most successful domainers are ones that have hand-picked few domains that they are passionate about and developed them into lucrative online properties.

Create engaging Web properties by focusing on content. Monetize with PPC advertising and/or sales of product(s). Don’t mass develop. This results in low quality sites that are impossible to manage. Build only the number of sites that you can reasonably manage yourself or afford to outsource the management. Keep adding content and improving the sites. Even if you spend on average one hour a week per site, this can go a long way to increasing traffic and revenue if done correctly. We will discuss development in more detail in the near future.

2. Use the Rest of Your Domains to Promote Your Developed Properties

If you have domains related to your developed properties then redirect those domains to your websites. If a domain is a perfect match for a specific page then redirect to that page. For example, if your developed site is a general site on fishing and there is a page or section dedicated to fly fishing, and you have domains with fly fishing in the name, redirect those domains to the section dealing with fly fishing.

Create landing pages for the rest of your domains and include ads pointing to your developed properties. DMP Shops are excellent for that because they provide tools to build landing pages with custom advertising. You can point all your undeveloped domains in bulk to a single landing page URL and then control all your domains’ landers from the DMP app control panel.

3. Use Good Judgement At Renewal Time

This point is one of the hardest things to learn especially for novice domain investors. On the way to increasing or generating cash flow you need to reduce cash bleed. Keep more money in your pocket to redirect it into areas that will have more impact on cash flow (like content). The primary way is to let go of or drop domains that are not performing and have little to no chance of performing in the future. How do you identify these?

If you have domains that you registered years ago for some wonderful idea you had but never got around to it and probably never will and those names never received a single offer, have zero traffic, and would not make a good business name, then it is time to let them go. Domains with dashes in them (unless a very hot keyword) are other candidates for dropping. Domains that don’t make any sense to anyone are another obvious choice. Ask a trusted friend or business partner for their opinion.

4. Include Liquid Domains in Your Portfolio

Liquid domains are domains that can be sold very quickly because they are in demand by other investors. Liquid domains include coms that are 3-4 letters, 3 characters, 3-4 numbers, or a popular dictionary word. Some country code (ccTLDs) or .net domains with the same criteria are also sought after, especially in some English-speaking, western European and  Asian countries’ ccTLDs. Other liquid domains include 2 or 1 character names in almost any extension if that extension has a reasonable renewal cost.

Use the money you save from allowing bad domains to drop to invest in liquid domains. Make sure you study the pricing of these domains so that you do not overspend and pay end-user, or close to, price.

5. Treat Domaining Like a Business Not a Hobby

This ties into the last 2 points. If you treat your domain portfolio like a comic book or a movie collection then you will almost definitely not make any money from domaining. You need to treat domaining like a real business, even if it’s part-time. It would definitely be an advantage to acquire some knowledge on starting and running a small business, if you haven’t already.

You will need to regularly take a cold hard look at your domain portfolio and weed out the bad names and ensure the best names are properly advertised. Don’t think of yourself as a domainer but as a business naming expert. New companies looking for a brand name, existing companies looking to brand a new product, or companies looking to corner a market, are in constant need of matching and category killer domain names. This is where you come in.

As a brand expert, you must create a professional domain marketplace brand for yourself. Learn where the end-users for your domains meet online and offline, and become part of their community. Create professional business cards for your domain marketplace as well as other collateral. Be bold in promoting your domain marketplace, especially offline (online requires more discretion and finesse).

Domain Market Pro allows you to create a brand for your domain marketplace. You are able to launch a professional domain shop with ease in a matter of minutes. Add your domains in bulk and utilize the integrated stock library to make your domains really stand out.

6. Be Patient And Consistent

Many new domainers start by registering many domains very quickly and then when renewal comes around they find they haven’t sold any names and can’t afford to renew all names. They let drop their domains and either quit altogether or keep domaining at a loss.

Be patient. It takes time to build a solid portfolio. Don’t play the guessing game. Rather than register 20 domains at $9, buy 1 solid domain for $180 on the aftermarket or more. Build your portfolio over time. Patience is also required when you don’t see the results from your developed sites that you want.

Be consistent. Make sure you keep progressing, even if that is in baby steps. Try to learn something new every day. Study the sales data that’s public. Add content to your developed sites and to your DMP Shop.

7. Know Your Market(s)

This is one of the best advantages you may have over other domainers. Rather than follow trend ‘du jour’ or hype, stick to market(s) you are familiar will. This is especially true when hand registering domains.

8. Ensure That ALL Your Domains Resolve

One of the most common mistakes domainers make is not having all of their domains resolve. A domain that does not resolve cannot contribute to your revenue. This is a no-brainer. A domain that does not resolve either points to the registrar’s default landing page or 404 error page or simply nothing (server cannot be located). A domain that resolves points either to a “For Sale” (or monetized) landing page or sales page, or redirects to one of your developed sites.

With Domain Market Pro, you can easily ensure all your domains resolve by pointing your domains in bulk to your dmpshop.com/landing/ URL (replace dmpshop.com with your shop’s domain name).

9. Utilize All Venues for Selling

Leverage large domain marketplaces to list your domains and get these marketplaces to send traffic to your portfolio and landing pages.