Many people are just now becoming aware of the income generating potential of expired domain names and are using that knowledge to make vast sums of money on the internet. The total number of websites that are listed on internet search engines are into the millions and a quantifiable percentage of them at any given time are expired and are available to the public and that means you.

The reason that they have expired is simply because the previous owner has stopped paying the renewal fees on them, and that can be for any one of a number of reasons other than the website was not profitable. Partnership disputes, divorce, loss of interest and even death of the owner are just a smattering of the scenarios that are leading to perfectly viable domain names expiring and becoming available to be snatched up by anyone who can search them out.

It was the dot com crash that that really got the business of acquiring abandoned domain names started, because a large number of the internet businesses that went bust had viable traffic but they weren't economically viable on the business delivery end. One way of using an expired domain name if you currently own a website, is to acquire it and then direct the traffic it is generating to your own website and many times the links to the expired domain name may still be active and viable, meaning even more traffic for your website.

Of course not all expired domain names pointed to functioning websites as many of the expired domain names were created and registered by speculators who hoped to generate a profit on the resale of the name. A keyword rich expired domain name has the potential of generating income by building generic websites for the sole purpose of resale on the open market. The keyword rich domain name can be used to drive traffic to the new websites, thereby increasing their value.

Another option is to buy domain names of websites that were active as a good number of expired domain names had viable websites built on them. In these cases the owners of these websites failed to renew their registration or completely stopped operating the website all together. In many of these cases these websites had substantial traffic from links on other websites, search engine rankings and directory listings.

Still another use for expired domain names is to use them for affiliate marketing programs. The beauty of affiliate marketing programs is that they allow you to break into internet marketing without having the hassle that comes with selling any type of product. With affiliate marketing, you operate a website that promotes a given product and then directs traffic to the actual supplier of that product. You then earn a commission on any sales that are generated by the traffic that you have directed there. Affiliate marketing is a great way for someone with an entrepreneurial spirit to break into internet marketing with minimal investment, and using an expired domain gives you a good head start.

Finding quality expired domains can be a hard task, but take a look on the internet and you will find several services that can help.