Making Money - Online Business Opportunity

I first heard about this guy in the SEO Philippines forum when he posted a screenshot of his $7,000/mo domain parking earnings back in February 2007. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes but soon enough I came to accept the fact that Rostum did it. We had a chance to meet personally in one of the SEO Philippines’ Isulong contests and there he shared as much stuff as he can share about the domaining business.

But who is Rostum? I had the chance to chat with him last night and the chat turned out into a short and informal interview. Here’s a summary of our discussion.

Asked how he earns a living, he simply replied with “fulltime online business, wala ako offline business”. (fulltime online business, I don’t have any offline business). He married his wife last 1998 and currently has one kid. During those days, he was basically jobless, with no source of income whatsoever. The need to provide the needs of his family gave him enough reason to try his luck online back in 1999. He eventually got to earn an average of $55/mo - not much (in fact that’s way below what he needs) - but it’s a start.

Rostum’s Learning Process

Knowing that money can be made online, he decided to learn Photoshop and started selling static and animated banners on namepros.com. It was in 2001 when he learned about the domaining business. “nabasa ko kasi yun $8million sale ng business.com. doon ako nag start mag speculate na baka makakita ako ng domain na puwede ko ibenta pero wala akong pang register ng domain (walang pera).” (I read about the $8million sale of business.com. It was then that I started to speculate that I might find a domain that I could sell but I didn’t have money to register a domain).

Excited by the possibilities, he decided to earn some NP$ (Namepros Dollar) by posting stuff and selling his services on namepros.com. Soon enough he was able to buy the domain e-softwares.com which he was able to sell in 5 days for 10 times the original price. He started getting serious in domaining sometime around 2003 and eventually saw that he can make even more in domain parking in 2004.

“Mas malaki kasi kita ng ‘traffic domains’ kesa mag speculate ng sale.” (Traffic domains earn more compared to simply speculating a sale). “Traffic domains are usually sold at least 3-5 years parking revenue”, he said.

Into Serious Domaining

Rostum gained more experience with each passing day and along with his experience, he also started to gain a more regular stream of dollars. Each time he made a sale, he re-registers expiring domain names that he thinks are of good value. He waits for expiring domains to drop at 3:00am Philippine time and manually registers the domains which he thinks has traffic from old links and bookmarks. He re-registers each for $6.95 and re-sells them based on parking revenue.

That means that if the domain earns $10/mo in domain parking then he can sell it at 3-5 years parking revenue which is about $360-$600. To make it easier for him to sell the domains, he provides screenshots of at least 3 months domain parking traffic statistics. His biggest sale so far was friendsterlayouts.com which he sold for $20,000 back in 2005 - that’s more or less 1 Million Pesos! Knowing he can make even more, he chose to spend 90% of the sale on new domains and kept only 10% for himself. Now that’s entrepreneurship!

The Domain Parking Revenue

What blew my mind off was not his $20,000 sale of friendsterlayouts.com but his $16,000/mo income from domain parking which is basically buying domains and parking them for ads. Money is earned on pay-per-click basis.

But can one really make such a huge income from domain parking? At first I thought that he had thousands of domain names to make such an income but I was wrong. Before I tell you how many domain names he currently maintains, let me show you first the screenshot that he emailed me of his most recent earnings:

Click to Enlarge

The screenshot clearly shows his total earnings for July 2008 and August 2008 averaging at $16k a month as well as his daily income from September 1 to September 15, 2008 which is now at $8,000! Yep, this guy is making more than half a million pesos a month. How many domains does he have? 3,000 2,000 1,000 500 220! He did use to have over 1,000 domains before but he eventually dropped the low earners as well as those that might cause trademark issues and just kept his best earners.

The guy makes so much in domain parking that he got an offer of $1M for his domain portfolio - an offer that he declined saying that he’d rather keep his domains and pass it over to his son.

More Quality Family Time

The best part of all this according to Rostum is that he is now able to spend as much time as he wants with his family. Gone are the days when he had to work day and night just to provide for the needs of his family. Gone are the days when the landlord comes knocking and shouting at his door because he wasn’t able to pay for the month’s rent.

Rostum now owns his own house and lot, living a life that most Filipino people can only dream of, and yet work only for 1 to 2 hours a day. In fact he can even choose not to work for a month and he’d still be earning.

It was his family that pushed him to his success and now it’s his family that’s benefiting from it.

Rostum’s Advise to Newbies

According to Rostum, domaining is pretty much like real estate. You buy property which you think you can eventually sell at a higher price. Think BIG he said and never surrender no matter what. He recommends aspiring domainer to go and check out namepros.com forum for domainers mainly because it is the biggest domainer forum and the people there are of great help specially for starters.

For domain parking services, Rostum recommends the following because of their ontime payments and great support.

1. Parked.com
2. Fabulous.com
3. Domainsponsor.com

Newbies however may find it hard to get approved on this websites, so he further recommends the following:

1. Namedrive.com
2. Sedo.com

And for alternatives to traditional parking:

1. Whypark.com
2. Domainembarking.com

Lastly, domainers forum and resources:

1. Namepros.com
2. DNforum.com
3. Domainstate.com
4. DNjournal.com

In Conclusion…

After our two-hour chat on Yahoo and amidst all the amazing amounts that Rostum revealed, I still felt that this humble Filipino remains just that - humble. It just shows that “rags-to-riches” stories still happen and one doesn’t need to win the lottery to achieve it. All that’s needed is the will to achieve what you dream for and the strength to do what needs to be done.

Rostum, you’re an encouragement to all Filipinos worldwide!

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