Hi. Has anyone rented out their domain name? I've registered several domain names, but I'm no webmaster, and was thinking about renting them out. ( Dont' really want to sell them at this point) Does this idea have any legs?

Some domain names are polical in nature and thought maybe somebody else could do a better job than me buiding web pages. My income would
be the rental fees.

Examples below (and it is not an advertisement, so don't click it if you don't want to

www.HillaryClintonStinks.com
1800create.com
thebrownssuck.com (cleveland browns)
thecowboyssuck.com (dallas)

among others...

Thanks

I have just over 250 domains names and follow the industy as much as I can. There are some sites that offer domains for rent but not very many. The only reason to rent a domain would be because it's such a good name that renting it would provide some kind of return. So if you have a domain that is getting traffic to the site that is on it, say for cell phones. You could rent it out to someone that is selling celphones and they would have great targeted traffic right away.

The problem is that how much would this be worth, and would it be worth more than you are getting with your own site that offers celphones or ads that are about celphones?

Also, if someone is serious about their business, they are not going to want to rent when they could buy.

I would look into using a "domain parking" service. These are companies that you point you domain to and they put ads on them that relate to the topic of your domain. The more traffic and ad clicks your domain gests, the more money you make.

If you just have a few domains and not much traffic, then you are not going to be making much money from this. You need to have a lot of domains and/or domains that are getting traffic and/or domain names that people often type in directly to see if there is a site there.

For your domains, I would either find something that allows you to easily put a site on them, like a Blogger.com blog, and spend some time putting posts on it. Run some ads like Google's AdSense and as your site gets found you will start making a little money.

For political domains, a forum would also be a good idea, but selling them is also not a bad idea if you can find a buyer, since many political topics don't stay popular forever...

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While rentals do exist, it is fairly uncommon. Developers generally don't want to put time and effort into building a site and traffic only to have the rental expire and the domain owner reaping the benefits of their work.

My recommendation would be to either sell the domains that you are not interested in developing or enter a joint venture with an experienced web developer/promoter. I have entered into several agreements of this nature which has allowed me to have access to some premium domains. A portion of the revenue the site generates goes back to the domain owner.

Cheers!
Chris