The internet has taken over the world of business. It has changed how we make stuff, it has changed how customers buy stuff and it has changed pretty much everything in between. While just ten years ago you were “ahead of the game” when you made a website for your business, it is now entirely essential.
But there is more you and/or your business could be doing to help make money on the internet: investing in digital real estate. It might sound a bit funny; real estate is something we usually associate with land, but when you think about it, the name makes a lot of sense. Buying a website is kind of like buying a piece of digital land, and to buy or sell a website, people often higher brokers to help them determine the value of the business or to find the best deal.
Here are some reasons why you should be jumping on the digital real estate bandwagon.
There’s lots of money to be made
We’ve already alluded to this a bit, but it is worth mentioning again that there is a lot of money to be made in digital real estate. However, when talking about the buying and selling digital real estate, it’s important not to get confused with the buying and selling of domain names. While some of them are supposedly worth millions, the vast majority of them are not.
Instead, remember you are not investing in just the name, but rather in the business. And this is why this stuff can be so valuable. If you can find an online business poised to grow in the future, you stand to make a lot of money, as it will inevitably be worth more than what you paid for it just a few years down the road.
It’s easier to grow than to build
Building off this last point, investing is digital real estate is a great move because it allows you to build upon already existing businesses. Competition in the world of the internet is fierce, and it can be really hard to break into it from scratch. This is particularly true when talking about search engine optimization (SEO).
As we know, one of the major factors in determining where your website ranks in search results is backlinks and referring domains. Buying a website that already has a strong profile gets you into the game much further along than if you started from the beginning.
It will just be your job to figure out how to grow the business and to make it more valuable so that you can sell it for a profit down the road. Obviously, this is easier said than done, but it is much easier than trying to start from nothing.
Hands-off operations
If you do your homework and find a good online business to buy, it should be a relatively hands-off operation. This doesn’t mean you won’t have to do any work—not if you want it to grow and become more valuable than when you bought it. Rather, it means systems should be in place for you so that you can more easily exploit potential growth areas.
The business is already built, so that part is out of the way. There will also already be people in place who are familiar with the way things work, so you can rely on them to be the ones to carry out the day-to-day activities that will help make the business grow.
You can do it over and over again
Because there are literally millions of online businesses out there, you can count on being able to do this for a long time. And unlike traditional real estate investing, or the buying and selling of brick and mortar businesses, you aren’t going to be held back by physical constraints. You don’t need to know the local market or be familiar with which locations are more or less valuable in a particular area.
Instead, you need to know about the niche into which you are entering. You need to understand what the competition is like and what are the opportunities you can exploit for further growth. This isn’t easy, but it isn’t as limiting as in other markets. It is certainly possible to build a long-lasting and profitable career in the buying and selling of digital real estate.
Flexible lifestyle
The last reason why you should invest in digital real estate has very little to do with money. Buying websites and doing business in the online world unhinges you from traditional work norms. You could finally have that flexible, work-from-home job you’ve always wanted, or you could pick up and travel, working as you move around. This is one of the main reasons so many people are looking to the web for their work, and investing in digital real estate is a fantastic way to do so profitably.
As you can see, there are loads of reasons why you should be investing in digital real estate. We’ve discussed five here, but we could easily talk about more. Take some time to do your homework, make smart decisions and before you know it you will be enjoying all the benefits a digital career has to offer.
Author: Jock Purtle.