What is digital real estate, and how can it brighten your future monetarily? Here’s what you should know about online assets.
When said out loud, digital real estate could sound like a superfluous idea where someone earns money through “pyramid schemes” that no one wants to hear any more of. But in reality, it’s a genuine approach towards passive income, especially for people who have technical knowledge or capital to invest in turnkey services or already established businesses.
But is digital real estate reliable and lucrative? Can anyone own digital ‘space’ and make an income off it? The short answer is Yes.
For more in-depth analysis, continue reading this article.
What is Digital Real Estate?
Real estate refers to owning property. Therefore, digital real estate means owning space on the Internet. Basically, every website and blog on the internet is a property or an asset.
Digital real estate owners sell everything from their websites to just domain names. Although not every domain is worth this amount, cars.com sold for a whopping $872 million. Meanwhile, the domain name ‘vacationrentals.com’ was bought for $35 million by HomeAway.
Typically, domains sell for anything from a hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. You get the idea, right?
Examples of Digital Real Estate
Digital real estate is not merely confined to websites, although they are the most lucrative type of online real estate. Here are some examples:
Websites
As discussed, websites can earn you money in multiple ways. Like physical real estate, you can also rent or sell your online real estate.
In this example, ‘renting’ your online real estate means taking money for someone to write a guest post on your website and placing ads. Let’s say your website is getting a hundred thousand visitors a month.
You can sell it for a good price to someone in the same niche who might want to buy an established website rather than starting from scratch.
Ecommerce Stores
Ecommerce is changing the way the world shops. That makes it among the best online real estate assets. You can build your store on Amazon, AliExpress, or similar ecommerce giants. Even better, build your own storefront, and you’ll get to keep 100% of your profits.
Smartphone Apps
Anyone with experience in app design can build their own digital real estate by creating an app. You can later sell the app to an interested party or make money off it by offering in-app purchases.
Blogs
Just like websites, blogs also sell for a lot of money, especially if you have a substantial following in a popular niche, like parenting, fashion, sports, etc.
Graham Hill, an entrepreneur, started the blog Treehugger.com in 2005. The blog focused on green living and sustainability in all aspects of life, such as home design. His blog was bought by Discovery Communications for 10 million dollars.
How New is Digital Real Estate?
Online real estate isn’t as new as some people might imagine it to be. Websites and blogs have been around for two decades now. However, online businesses came to the limelight in the past decade, raising the scope for digital real estate.
To most people, digital real estate seems a fairly newer concept because they do not understand it fully. Think of apps like Facebook and Instagram. They’re also renting us space in their digital real estate, with our user accounts being the ‘rooms’ we rent.
Should you Buy or Build?
Here’s the million-dollar question: should you buy existing real estate or build your own. Both approaches have certain pros and cons that must be weighed before making a decision.
If you decide to build a website, blog, or app yourself, you’ll have to put in a lot of effort to make it a success. However, at the end of the day, the return on investment is higher since you’ll only be paying a meager hosting fee every year.
On the other hand, buying established websites or blogs is pricier, and the return on investment is lower. But you don’t need any technical knowledge, and you can make a profit sooner.
Benefits of Owning Digital Real Estate
Here are some reasons you need to invest in online real estate as soon as possible.
Reliability
It’s no surprise that digital technology is here to stay. With the advancement of the Internet, digital real estate is only going to get more and more valuable. Therefore, it’s quite a reliable investment.
High Income Potential
Online businesses have a high income potential in a small period. Your online real estate, such as websites and phone apps, can earn you thousands if not millions of dollars once you’ve built a sufficient following.
Self-Employment
If you’re currently working a nine-to-five job, start investing in digital real estate today to earn passive income. Over time, you’ll have enough digital potential to quit your full-time job for a life of self-employment.
Let’s say you make a website, and it costs you $200. At the end of the year, if you have 10,000 views per month, you can display ads and earn more than $500 every month. That’s already a lot more than what you initially invested.
Bring in affiliate marketing, and your income potential goes above a thousand dollars every month. As your website gets bigger, you’ll have to get more expensive hosting, but the return on investment will also be higher. So, it’s always a win-win.
Low Start-Up
While physical real estate requires a high upfront investment, you can start building your digital assets with as little as $100 per year.
After that, all it takes is consistency and dedication to scale your estate, and then you can sell it for a hundred fold the price you built it for.
Conclusion
Before wrapping up, let’s take a look at some slight drawbacks of online real estate.
For one, you’ll need technical skills that need to be updated every now and then. Moreover, you have to be careful about algorithm changes on search engines since they affect the rankings of your blogs and websites.
But if you’re consistent in managing your online real estate, you can earn a stable passive income and grow your estate enough to earn a huge sum without any extensive work.
There are also done-for-you and turnkey online business opportunities for savvy investors which require minimal work. Digital real estate is something worth looking into if you are thinking long term.
