Domaining

 For the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to be precise. Domaining is the act of buying and selling expired domains, newly registered domains or existing domain names to interested clients while domain business is all that is involved in doing so including sourcing for funds, registering, looking for buyers and selling same. It is also known as domain flipping.

In case you dare to ask if domaining is a profitable venture or not; the answer is simple; yes, it is.

How To Register A Domain.

If you are in Nigeria, it is simple. You can approach a web hosting company such as Whogohost.com and do business. In doing so, you search for, register and set to make a sale with your domain.

Pricing
A single .com domain can cost up to N4500 and above depending on how the foreign exchange rate turns out to be. .com.ng goes for about N1200 while .NG itself costs somewhere around N9500.

While we are at it, there are other domain extensions such as .net, .site, .top, .io, .name.ng, .co.uk, .uk, .co.ke, .Africa, .in, .org and .tk to mention but a few but the one you want to make use of depends on your choice.

How To Make Payments.
When you buy domains from Whogohost, the company would give you several options for making payment such as having to make payment online through Verve card, Master Card or Payooneer.

. Flutterwave or subscription
. Direct Bank Deposit in which they will provide their Nigerian bank account details for you to walk into the bank and pay over the counter. They do not accept airtime. 

Apart from Whogohost, there are other domain registrars such as 1&1, domainking.NG, namecheap, Godaddy and namesilo.

Where To Sell.
After you have bought your domain and have had it activated, the next thing that might come into your mind is where to place your domain for potential buyers to see. The truth is that you cannot sell a domain through Whogohost or any of its agents. You can only register a domain or subscribe for web hosting services but not to worry. There are several other domain market places such as Dan.com, Epik or Afternic where you can sell them. Just go over to those websites and check how things work. You can as well seek the services of a domain broker to help you sell same. Stay away from troubles and remember that other websites such as brandbucket.com and ebay.com exist.

OTHERS
Expired Domains.
Expired domains are domains which got dropped because the original owners do not want to register them (or forgot to). So, they are up for grabs for anyone who cares to register them again.

For example, if I have a domain called call.com and after one year, I am not able to extend its validity, another person can re-register it after it has expired. 

The major reservoir of expired domains on the internet is www.expireddomains.net. You can check things up for yourself because going deep into it is above the scope of this tutorial as it is known that dealing with expired domains is a broad topic on its own. Some of the things you should know about expired domains is that people buy them because they have been existing for long and some of them have established fan base while on the other hand, some of them were used for spamming before they expired. So, be wise.

How To Charge.
Most Domainers charge their domain names in dollar. So, it would do you well to know what is best for each domain and charge it. For example, something like nairaland.com.ng sold for 3000 us dollars sometime ago on one of those market places.

.COM, .NG OR .COM.NG?
At times, .NG domains are necessary when you want to spell a word such as stro.ng, stri.ng or listeni.ng and you know, it is short and memorable.

.Com.Ng is also doing well so long as the domain you choose is creative and also has value. Like I said, something like nairaland.com.ng sold for 3000 us dollars sometime ago and it is not a total waste of efforts.

.COM is seen as the king of the internet because that is the extension that most website names take. E.g facebook.com, AliExpress.com, blogger.com and Ovenbakedlands.com but that notwithstanding, there are other extensions such as .company and .blog