Want to find another means of earning without shedding too much cash? Digital Real Estate may just be your answer.
Whoever said everything is going paperless must have had a bigger picture in mind. Because in this age, it’s not just about shifting from books to e-books, or notepads to laptops—just about everything you can think of has maneuvered and is being engineered to go digital.
Which is why even property does not have to be tangible. It’s possible to be the sole owner of something digital, and have this specific property increase in value or be sold. This very practice has labeled itself as digital real estate.
Quite similar to owning a home, digital real estate lets you own a specific property. With it are rights and possible profits you can gain in the future.
The only difference is that it’s completely virtual and non-tangible. These refer to websites, or even domains.
But how exactly does one invest in digital real estate? Is it really as simple as a click? Here are a few tips to get you started if you’re a neophyte in the arena:
[1] You Don’t Have to Be a Tech Expert to Create Digital Value. Before anything else, it’s important to debunk the notion that in order to properly create potential profit in digital real estate, one must be an expert in the field.
Being an expert is not a necessity. There are different ways to create turnaround profit with a few steps. One of the easiest and most popular ways to do so is by buying domains.
Just about every business is going digital and prepping their own websites, just as websites and online magazines are gaining popularity, more and more organizations are purchasing domains.
If you’re in luck, you could search and create domains out of typical keywords that would normally be easy-to-grab. These could include tourism, fashion, news, etc.
By searching for these keywords and the availability of the domain, you could easily grab unpurchased domains and resell them to an interested buyer in the future.
[2] Develop and Resell a Website. If you do have the patience and skill to develop a website, you could resell and gain more profit when you’re able to add more value and prep it. It doesn’t take much to get yourself started.
You can first register or purchase a domain if you’d like. There are websites dedicated to website hosting and domain searches too such as GoDaddy. There are also different tools to help prep a site without having to be an expert on coding.
WordPress or wix.com for example make designing and prepping websites a lot smoother for beginners. Plug-ins are also another great way to add more value to the site so that a future buyer can have more features to it without having to do all the work.
[3] Monetize Your Content. If you have a website, but you’re not planning to resell it anytime soon, then ad placements are a great way to get the ball rolling. Monetizing content is one of the most popular methods of earning in digital real estate.
Ads are a no-fail way to add to your earnings. You can create and segregate ad spaces in your websites and entertain interested brands. You can also look into Google AdSense or AdSpark in order to see what kind of ads you can have on your site and the rates that you can charge for these ads.
If your website has enough traffic and you’re not quite content with ads, there’s another way to earn—Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing mostly occurs when a brand believes that a certain website or even online personality has enough following to promote and advertise their brand on the specific platform. What’s nice about affiliate marketing is that it isn’t limited to websites.
Affiliate marketing can also occur on highly followed social platforms on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
However, rates for these will depend not just on the specific online personality, but brands and companies usually also ask for engagement rates to see if the pricing of a sponsorship is worth it. This is a common practice for online influencers and is usually one of their main means of earning.
[4] Cross-promote on All Online Assets. The beauty about the interweb is that just about every platform is interrelated. In order to maximize traffic or get people visiting your digital assets, it’s important to make sure that each one is linked and is easily accessible.
Remember that more traffic may possibly give your digital property more value, so you want to make sure that the traffic is consistently high.
In order to do so, you can easily cross-promote. You may share your website on different social media platforms: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This also goes hand-in-hand with owning a YouTube channel.
If you happen to own both, you may embed your YouTube videos to your website, and have a link to your website in your videos’ description box. Also remember to have ready-to-click icons on your website or blog that can take your readers to your different platforms so they always stay within the circle of your digital assets.
It may take a bit of researching, but digital real estate is one of the most sought-after business these days. A mere individual can easily invest and grow digital property without necessarily have to shed a deposit. Since just about every business is going digital, why not try finding opportunity there too?
Loren Dimaano writes insightful personal finance and investment articles for Lamudi Philippines.
