The Official Internet Marketing Sweetie Blog

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Can’t Afford to Buy That Domain? Try Leasing!

Ever wondered what it would be like to own a top level domain name, but don’t have the dough to buy it outright? LeaseThis.com claims to offer some prime top-level domains that might be too expensive to buy, but you can lease them to try them out with an option of leasing to own.

It works like this:

Find a domain name up for lease and submit your request. The domain owner can set how long the lease will last, up to 2 years. (Anything over 2 years must be approved first.)

Once approved (within 48 hours), the domain name is redirected to your site for the duration of the lease and you receive all the traffic.

The leased domain cannot be sold by the owner during your lease period, and you’re given the first option to renew.

Pricing is competitive with PPC ads on search engines like Google.

If you own a sweet domain you can even earn cash with it by leasing it through them as well. Might be worthwhile if you’ve been hoarding those undeveloped domains!

Check it out and let me know what you think if you try it.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

After checking this out, it seems like a horrible idea to me - here's why.

Say you rent a domain for 2 years and build a successful business on it. You have essentially created a ton of equity in that domain including traffic, brand, inbound links, etc. You can kiss it all goodbye. There is no way the domain owner is going to release to you. He or she is going to use the equity that you created to either sell that domain or use it themselves. And they would be dumb not to, right?

As the owner of a valuable domain, you need to consider the effects of the renter's activities on the value of your domain. What if they're a spammer, and your domain gets blacklisted from bulk email databases. Or what if they link spam 10,000 blogs and build anchor text to your domain such as "cheap viagra" or some shady online gambling offer? Once Google finds those backlinks, it's going to be difficult to later get search traffic to that domain for legitimate purposes.

Just my thoughts. It sounds good in concept, but I would never use that service - unless I was a spammer.

-dan

10:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dan, some offer an option of rent to own. Yeah, I wouldn't rent a temporary domain.

As far as a spammer leasing your domain, a risk you take, I suppose. It wouldn't prevent me from using the service, but is something to consider.

Thanks for the feeback.

9:35 PM  

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