The price of .com domains has skyrocketed, as have the number of domain leasing opportunities.

Much like physical real estate, domain names, especially .com domains, have become quite expensive and will likely increase exponentially in years to come.

From small start-ups to mom-and-pop shops to national chains to global conglomerates, the one commonality all can agree on is the need for a premium domain name to generate greater customer growth and revenue for their business.

With more and more businesses being started by entrepreneurs or those involuntarily forced to, the need for a short, memorable, and search-friendly .com domain name is in great demand. At the same time, those mentioned attributes of a .com domain name are in short supply.

Many short, memorable, and search-friendly .com domain names are accounted for and have been for quite some time.

Business owners starting in business or looking to take their start-up to the next level will pay more than a pretty penny to secure ownership in such domain names.

Knowing that a premium .com domain name may be out of your grasp or price range, leasing a domain name instead of buying it is becoming a less expensive, popular, and simple way of starting or taking an online business to the next level.

Why do premium domain names cost so much?  What is the difference between a premium domain name versus a domain name?

Domain names are quite powerful entities in the world of the internet.  In fact, they can make or break a business when an owner allows the domain name to expire.

If the owners fail to pay the domain name renewal fees, then the domains become the property of the domain registrar.

You may know this or have already experienced this costly lesson.

Nevertheless, expired domain names become available to the general public once again if no one purchases the domains in a public auction.

Expired domain names sometimes become the property of domain investors, known as domainers, or sometimes trademarked expired domain names end up in the hands of unethical cybersquatters.

However, no matter who owns a given domain name, there is a different class of domain names on the market known as premium domain names.

Typically, premium domain names were registered in the early to late 1990s.  Some of these domains are actively developed.  Others are parked, and a small percentage simply doesn’t resolve to a web page.

In most cases, many of these valuable domains are redirected while others are parked in hopes that someone would come along and want to purchase the domain name for their business.

Exact match domains have been known to hold great value in terms of boosting search engine rankings even after the latest EMD update.

However, most exact-match domains have also been registered for many years, making the availability of exact-match domains very scarce and expensive when one is capable of purchasing exact-match domains.

The scarcity and expensiveness of exact-match domains have led businesses to start leasing exact-match domains that they are not able to purchase outright due to the owner not wanting to sell.

There are a variety of domain leasing options and services when considering leasing exact-match domain names.

Most domain leasing services are designed to lease industry-specific, generic, or exact-match domains that help your website rank on the first and second pages across all major search engines.