Synopsis
Businesses will pay to to bring customers to them, this is know as being an affiliate. By making use of people misspelling the store's domain name, you can make money without having to do any advertising at all.
When they type the wrong name to get to a store, you automatically redirect them to the correct name. They continue shopping as normal, and you get commission on every item they buy.
Step 1 - Find your advertiser
You need an advertiser who has a good affiliate program and doesn't mind you registering domains related to their domain name. Check their terms and conditions to find this out.
You can usually find information about affiliate schemes on any store website. Look at the links at the very bottom of the page for one labelled 'Affiliates' or similar.
Don't join up just yet - there still may not be a free domain to use this trick with. Instead make a list of all your candidates and go through the next step for each one.
Step 2 - Check whether a similar domain name is free
What you are looking for are common typing mistakes. People might misspell the word 'the' as 'teh' for example or hit a key next to another one. They can type a similar name by accident or leave part of it out. 'noneycrafter.com' moneycrager.com' 'monkeycrafter.com' and 'moneycraft.com' have all been typed by people attempting to reach this website. People will also type a wrong top level domain name - changing a .com for a .net, .co.uk, .fr or anything else. All of these people typing the wrong word are free income to you.
Use the box at 123 Reg to quickly check if a domain name is free, you can register it here too.
Once you've found a domain name that is a common misspelling of the advertisers domain name, register it. You can now go back and sign up for the affiliate program as well.
Step 3 - Link the site to your affiliate account
Finally the easy part - you don't even need a website.
When you sign up for the affiliate scheme you will be given an address to link to, which look something like:
"http://www.youradvertisersname.com/?affilate=something"
but can vary massively from advertiser to advertiser. What you need to do is to set up your domain name so that it sends people straight to your affiliate link. You can do this using the 'redirect' feature which will be on your control panel for the domain name you registered. You can also use the following code on a website if your domain name comes with one:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=REFRESH CONTENT="1;URL=YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-HERE">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
</BODY>
</HTML>
This will automatically redirect the user to the main store page - they will never know that they have been redirected from an affiliate, or even that they type in the wrong word!
Once they arrive at the store they will shop as normal. You will get a percentage of the sales the store makes from that customer.
Conclusion
Unless you are lucky you won't make many hundreds per year through one of these, but so long as you get more in per year than you paid for the domain name then you are making money. These sites need no tending as they are fully automated, they don't even need advertising. The best way to make money through these is to do more than one at once.
