Domain leasing sounds like a great idea- instead of paying thousands of dollars for a domain you can lease great domain names for a fraction of the price for as little as $20 dollars a month.
A new service called leasethis.com hopes to help marketers obtain the use of great keyword rich domains for a fraction of the buying price. From an inventory of 551,000 domains online and over 3.5 million domains offline
You can receive instant access and full real time URL control of the domain with leases running from 3 months to 24 months. Some domains you can lease for as little as $20
What’s the catch if any?
The below if a preview of a typical leased site. Notice the owner area at the top and the leased section in the middle. You lease the domain and control the url and the contents but not the header of the site.
This can create a few problems for a lessee- your site must integrate seamlessly with the header of the site and flow from page to page. What are the alt tags for the header image and/or URL’s embedded in the header
You can even preview an existing domain or website by inputting you URL and dimensions into the preview tool to get a feel for how your website integrates.
I think leasing has a place in the domain name world and could be quite useful in certain circumstances. Short run campaigns, holiday campaigns or seasonal events this could be a easy way to leverage a great domain name and make some $$$.
For longer term projects running more than 1-2 months you have to be under the belief that the domain name is the most critical aspect of your potential success after the design and promotion of the site itself.
If I build a site using these domains then end the lease I am not able to redirect the domain traffic and potentially lose all the indexing and seo benefits of my work. So If I don’t purchase the domain do I have to start all over?
Why wouldn’t I search for a domain or expired domain with my target keyword in the URL and build a site from there. There are lots of arguments for and against. I think leasing is a excellent option for short term projects and bad for long term projects unless you are prepared to buy the domain at the end of the lease
More problems I see, and remember this service is currently in beta and subject to change, what is the price at the end of the lease? You build a site on a domain you lease and the end of the lease how much to acquire the domain? If I lease a car I know exactly how much it will cost me at the end of the lease? I generally will make that buyout amount more at the end to lower my payments during the lease does it work the same way with domains?
either way this is something to watch and consider in building out sites for clients
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