Unless you are in the active business of buying and selling domain names, you will never realize how profitable this online industry is.To the outsiders (non-Internet marketers), they may be appalled at the fact that a domain name can cost millions of dollars.I remember that when pizza.com was sold at buy old domains and the international media ran the headlines about it, that was the time I started doing research on buying and selling domain names.My study started in online discussions. There are forum sites solely dedicated to discussing domain names. I’ve joined three of the most popular domain-focused forums. My interest in buying and selling domains was bolstered when I read more stories of people who had actually made money in this business but with little investment.If you want to try your luck on the domain business, I suggest you hang around active domain-focused forum sites, and in three months you will learn a lot from the experts free of cost.As a start, you could invest 10 dollars for one domain name. A domain would cost at least $10 for an annual registration.Let’s say you’ve been an owner of a particular domain name for five years and one day you decided to sell it. If the keyword (short and memorable) of that domain name would attract serious buyers in an auction, you could earn as much as $500 to $2,000 from the sale. Although a whooping sale does not happen all the time, your domain purchase, in an internet-driven perspective, is actually a better investment rather than have your money sleep in the bank and gain little interest after a year.Even if you fail to sell your domain this year or next year, it is not a financial lose at all. As your domain gets older and older, its search engine optimization (SEO) value becomes greater.According to SEO experts, an old domain name (provided there is a well-developed website on it) can rank higher in search engine result pages than a newer one. Take note that is only one of the factors in search ranking. Nevertheless, an old domain is like wine which tastes better as it ages.You are in a win-win situation when you own a domain name. If you could sell it at a profitable price, congratulations.