It's 3 p.m. on a Thursday and two college dropouts from Ft. Lauderdale are shooting pool and making money at the same time.
Jason Brietstein and David Shiffman are friends and business partners. Their business is buying, selling and sometimes developing websites.
"I didn't have a business card for ten years," Brietstein said, "because I didn't know what to put on it."
It is hard to explain, but he and Shiffman basically treat the Internet like a virtual real estate market. And they're not alone. There's a whole group of people who do this locally called the South Florida Domainers.
For Shiffman, it all started in college when he'd flip websites to make a quick buck.
"I'd sit on the couch with my roommates and they'd talk about needing to make money and looking for jobs," said Shiffman, "and I'd sit there making money while watching TV."
One of his first successes was www.jefff.com. He made a couple thousand selling that one. But why would someone want Jeff with 3 F's? Shiffman says it was a guy named Jeff who thought that was the next best thing to jeff.com (which was already taken).
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Shiffman really hit it big on www.thebrunomovie.com. He bought that web address about a year before the film with the same name hit theaters.
"At the peak, we had about 60,000 visitors a day," Shiffman said.
Domainers are always looking for the next big thing. And the beauty of this job is that they can do it from anywhere with internet access. So they could be chilling at the pool and if an idea pops into their heads, they just go on their smartphone and check a site that sells domains like GoDaddy.com. If the site is available, it costs about $10.
Typos of popular websites can also be profitable. For instance, Shiffman's friend registered www.oogle.com. So everytime someone types Google without the G, they arrive at his website. Shiffman says oogle.com gets 20,000 visitors a day. His friend didn't sell that one, but he does make money by leasing the space to adult sites.
Another way to profit is called domain parking. That's where you keep the website and sell ads on it. For instance, Brietstein owns www.ijumprope.com.
"I don't jump rope at all," he said.
But it doesn't matter, because he makes money on it, everytime someone clicks.
Of course, Brietstein and Shiffman have had plenty of misses over the years, but it's a lot like the stock market. Timing is important, and as long as you get more right than wrong, you end up ahead.
Follow Adam Kuperstein on Twitter at @akuperstein.
