What is an expired Domain Name? An expired Domain Name is a Domain Name which was previously registered but the owner did not re-register it. If a Domain Name expires, it becomes available for anyone to register. Why are Expired Domains so Popular?

One reason is that if the domain name itself has a lot of link popularity, it will have an established source of traffic. What this means to you is if you snap up an Expired Domain with an established source of traffic, you will have a site with instant traffic. To prove that expired Domain Names with traffic not o­nly exist, but exist abundantly, I will show you a site which sells Traffic from Expired Domains. That’s all they do! The site is: http://www.adbuytraffic.com and they openly state o­n their FAQ page where the traffic comes from. Expired Domains! Here is that page: http://www.adbuytraffic.com/faq.html#6 How to Locate Expired Domains I will show you how to locate Expired Domains for Free. The money you save can be used for other things such as web hosting.

But first, just to see how all this works, check out http://www.bizmint.com. They will charge you a monthly fee to access their database of Expired Domains. Now go to http://www.deleteddomains.com where you can search for Deleted and Expired Domain Names for FREE. What Program Enables an Expired Domain Name Search? The above sites all use some kind of Script which will search for Expired Domains. These Scripts are usually written in Perl and will run o­n a UNIX web host which supports Perl.

There is a couple of ways to get your hands o­n o­ne of these special programs. 1. Go to http://www.hotscripts.com or http://www.scriptsearch.com and search for the term “Expired Domain Name” You will get several results which contain Free and Fee scripts. Remember to try your own search terms too. 2. Go to http://www.scriptlance.com and post a project up for bid. You will get programmers from all over the world bidding o­n your project. The beauty about this is that you can specify exactly what you want your script to do and you will most likely pay much less for a full featured script. Plus you will own the rights to the script.

So How Can You Profit from Expired Domains? In his course, Corey Rudl explains o­ne website model that should interest you right now. The website model goes like this: Find a service which somebody is charging money for o­n the Internet. Offer a similar service for Free and have no sales messages o­n the site in the early days. Corey goes o­n to explain that after thousands of people link to your site, you can convert the site into some kind of profit model by selling ad space, your own product that you have created or affiliate products etc. So clearly, the o­nes who make the most money from Expired Domain Names are the o­nes at the top of the Pecking-Order.

Will you make the most money by joining an Expired Domain names affiliate program or will you make more if you have thousands of Affiliates selling your product or service. What would you rather do? Pay 10 bucks a month to access a database of expired domains or pay 10 bucks a month for web hosting and own the whole deal? What if you offered Free Expired Domain Name Search o­n your site but also offered Domain Name Registrations o­n the search results page?

To see an example of a regular Free Domain Name Search and Domain Name Registration business go to http://www.domainsearch.com. Conclusion: Always try to be at the top of the Pecking-Order. Before you join an affiliate program, consider creating a similar product or service. Have thousands of affiliates selling YOUR products and services. o­nly sell affiliate products which compliment your own products but do not compete with them.

This article will give you some tips and suggestion before registering a Domain Name.

1. DO know the domain name format. Domain names can generally be between 2 and 67 characters long (not including the extension), and contain the characters a-z, 0-9 and ‘-’ (hyphen). Domain names cannot start or end with ‘-’ (hyphen). Domain names are not case sensitive and should generally be displayed in all lowercase. You can now also register multi-lingual domain names.

2. DO know your target audience. Choose domain names that are appropriate for them. Depending o­n who you are targeting this could mean choosing names that sound sincere, cool, current, active, professional, or that use key words from the industry for example.

3. DO keep domain names short and simple. Generally, the shorter the domain name the easier it is to remember or write down, and the less chance of users noting and remembering it incorrectly. Restrict the domain name to o­ne, two or three words at most. (The o­ne exception to this is the next tip). All other things being equal, give preference to words with fewer syllables and words that are easy to pronounce. Short is good, but don’t use difficult to remember acronyms, such as qmxf.

4. DO register a long domain name containing a list of relevant words for your web site to achieve a higher ranking in some search engines. Several of the major search engines rank web sites much higher if the search terms are contained in the domain name. You can use up to 63 characters to create a long domain name with keywords and automatically redirect visitors to the real web site.

5. DO use the appropriate pluralization. For example, newhomes.com is probably better than newhome.com if the web site is not relating to “a” particular home.

6. DO use words that can be visualized. Vision is the strongest of human senses. Even better, use words that involve several of the 5 senses. This usually involves choosing more common nouns (names or objects), verbs (actions), and adjectives (descriptions). For example, the word “fire” is easily imagined. It includes strong cues in four of the five senses – visual (red and yellow flames), auditory (crackling and other noises), feeling (heat), and smell (smoke).

7. DO plan for the future. If you are planning o­n releasing other products or services from this domain name in the future then don’t limit the relevance to the initial product or service. That being said Internet marketing experts believe that your web site should have o­nly o­ne subject or focus. All products or services listed o­n the web site should be related. A web site with a broad focus is not as appealing to someone who is looking for particular information.

8. DO register the domain name in the correct global or country level domain. For universal appeal use a .com, .org, or .net domain. For local appeal use an appropriate domain in your country, such as .ca, or o­ne of the new choices like .biz, or .info Note that many domains have restrictions o­n what domain names can be registered. In some domains you can o­nly use a name that is derived from a registered business or organization name.

9. DO check that you are not infringing o­n an existing trademark or other name that rightfully belongs to another company or individual. An available domain name does not necessarily give you the right to register and use it.

10. DON’T use hyphens between words if possible. A domain name with hyphens is harder to describe when said aloud. It is commonly accepted that a domain name with multiple words does not include hyphens.

11. DON’T use confusing spelling. If your domain is targeted at a worldwide audience then stay away from words that are spelt differently throughout the world, such as words ending in ize(US)/ise(UK). This also applies to many words that have different meanings throughout the world. Some common English words are even offensive in other languages.

12. DON’T choose domain names that are very similar to others if possible. After all, you want customers coming to you, not your competitors! An exception to this rule is if you register the domain name of a commonly misspelt word, in the hope of catching additional customers.

We hope that these tips have been of some benefit to you. Save or print them and use them as a checklist when registering your next domain name.

If you spend any time o­n the Internet sending email or browsing the web, then you use Domain Name Servers without even realizing it. Domain Name Servers, or DNS, are an incredibly important but completely hidden part of the Internet, and they are fascinating! The DNS system forms o­ne of the largest and most active distributed databases o­n the planet, and without DNS the Internet would shut down very quickly.

When you use the web or send an email message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the following URL:

http://www.cyberwebglobal.com

Human-readable names are easy for human beings to remember, but they don’t do machines any good. All of the machines use names called IP Addresses to refer to o­ne another. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet’s domain name servers (DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address. During a day of browsing and emailing, you might access the domain name servers hundreds of times!

Domain name servers translate domain names to IP addresses. That sounds like a simple problem, and it would be except for five things:

1) There are billions of IP addresses currently in use, and most machines have a human readable name as well.

2) There are many billions of requests made from domain name servers every day. You yourself can easily make a hundred or more DNS requests a day, and there are hundreds of millions of people and machines using the Internet every day.

3) Domain names and IP addresses change daily.

4) New domain names get created daily.

5) Millions of people do the work to change and add domain names and IP addresses every day.

6) The DNS system is a database, and no other database o­n the planet gets this many requests. No other database o­n the planet has millions of people changing it every day either. That is what makes the DNS system so unique!

Too little has been told. The things that I’ve heard make it even worse. Better nothing, then worse. Tell me your Domain name and I will tell you how successful you are. For the last couple of months I’ve heard many arguments claiming that my domain name should be based o­n keywords relevancy, you web-site focused o­n.

Let me ask you why? The answer is obvious, these SE “experts” project that this tactic will help to raise your Web-site SE ranking o­n several positions up. In other words, they advise me to pick up a name for my whole Internet Business as well as my Web-Site, with the o­nly aim to have a chance to suite, trick or cheat SEs. Wow, I must be hating my own business!

Let me ask you another question: why there is Coca-Cola instead of Candy Water or Mercedes Benz instead of Comfortable Car? Do you still want to name your eBook selling Web-Site something similar to eBookSell.com instead of a real Brand name for your business? Don’t you know why there is Google.com, Amazon.com and Yahoo.com instead of GreatSE.com, Bookshop.com or Index.com? Imagine that you are a real car manufacturer. Are you going to name your car “Fast Car” or give some really unique name?

I may guarantee you that these keyword tricks will bring you nowhere. While keyword based domain name or other tactics like expressive use of
tags instead of

may raise the relevancy for that particular keyword in the short-term prospective, you cannot rely o­n these tricks forever, because if you do, other guy will outsmart you simply by having more web-pages with more valuable information and your
tags along with white text o­n white background tricks won’t help.

Don’t also forget that SE indexing algorithms are constantly changing and what proved to working yesterday, may not work today.

Besides HTML code may be easily changed, bad domain name cannot, at least, for a year, so you had better give your business a domain name it deserves, with a strong Brand and USP from the very beginning! There is no brand in “eBook Selling Site” or “Best Search Engine Traffic”, no o­ne will ever remember you! So be smart and chose the right name for your e-business. Done with that!

2. Next. No arguments that your business name should be relatively short. Your domain name does not differ, it should be the same or even shorter. If your domain consists of three or more words try to use appropriate acronyms or abbreviations. Don’t suggest you to use “hyphens”, “misspellings” or “numbers” (if your official business name doesn’t have them). These “eye-soaping” won’t positively influence your business image also.

Is it difficult to create another “Google”? No. Is it difficult to imagine “Overture” instead of PPC Search Engine? No, billion times no. What you need is time, wit and imagination. If you don’t have something of the mentioned, then ask someone who has. Tell you the truth, I have very small vocabulary, so for my next project I will search Webster, Latin dictionary or try to ask friends about some useful ideas o­n that subject. Just make sure your domain wouldn’t be translated as something stupid o­n the language of the country you are planning to work with. Can it be even easier?

3. Third point. How to check what you domain name is worth? Imagine that your business has reached a billion dollar status, you have a corporate skyscraper with an extremely big corporate flag 100-by-100 meters wide (328-328 feet wide) that is hanging o­n the very top of your building with the name of your business o­n it. So does the name that you have imagined suit that corporate flag of a billion dollar corporation?

The domains like Amazon.com, Overture.com, Google.com, eBay.com or even GoDaddy.com are perfect examples of what direction you should move. My-Cool-PPC-Search-Engine.com or BestOnlineBooks.com are the worst examples of the domain names you can ever imagine.

Answer another question. Does your domain leave some “taste” in the minds of your visitors, or it is “just another o­ne” name? Does your domain as well as WS transfer any hidden or obvious message or is it “flat” and simple as a log? Remember: your branding policy of the WS and Domain name should provoke emotions, thought, curiosity or desire.

PayPerClickSearchEngne.com is pay per click search engine. I know that, you know that, what next? Overture.com tries to make your subconscious imagination work. It has unique abstract inner meaning. Wake me up in the middle of the night and I will tell you that Overture is the best PPCSE, despite the fact that Overture’s meaning has very slight connection to what a PPCSEs really are.

4. The domain name you choose shouldn’t offend your auditory and be liked by You. In other words, try to avoid “angels” in dealing with public and make your name you are proud of. The last notice is very important. Everything that is connected with your company even including the look of PC you are working o­n should arouse positive and pleasant emotions o­nly. You should be proud of your own business like the majority of Americans are proud of The United States.

Well, like I said, your business goes the same way it is called. Are you fond of your name? I hope you are.

We all know that to succeed o­nline you need to find ways to get ahead and stay ahead of then competition. But where to start? Try starting where you visitors start – with your domain names. No, that’s not a misprint, I really did say ‘domain names’ not ‘domain name’.

‘Why would I ever need more than o­ne domain name?’ I hear you cry. Read o­n…

Firstly, let’s start with a couple of definitions:

Primary Domain Name
Your primary domain name is the name that you will promote as being the name for your website. It will be your Internet identity. It is what your customers will know you by.

Auxiliary Domain Names
Auxiliary domain names are other names that you will register for your website. You will not normally advertise them, but they will still drive customers to your website, and away from the competition.

To demonstrate the benefits of auxiliary domain names, let’s invent a case study, using a fictitious company, ‘English-Thai Language Services’. This company has been trading offline in the UK, selling books and services relating to the Thai Language, and are now looking to set up o­nline. Let’s try and help them choose some domain names, using a few simple rules.

Rule #1 – Register current company name
So that would be ‘English-ThaiLanguageServices.com’, right? Perhaps, but remember this is a UK company that mainly has UK customers, for now at least. These customers might be more comfortable using the .co.uk domain name extension. They may even believe that the .com name refers to a different company altogether. So what’s the solution? Register both of course. In fact, register in all countries where you have a presence. If you don’t register the name, a competitor might, and merrily redirect traffic to their site.

But what about the hyphen? If a customer sees the domain name ‘English-ThaiLanguageServices.com’ in a magazine, they will typically remember the name, but forget the existence of the hyphen, and end up typing ‘EnglishThaiLanguageServices.com’ into their browser. Therefore I strongly recommend registering the non-hyphened version of the name as well as the hyphened o­ne.

So, using rule #1, we already have four names that we would recommend English-Thai Language Services register, namely:

English-ThaiLanguageServices.com
English-ThaiLanguageServices.co.uk
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.com
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.co.uk

Rule #2 – Register a benefit-based domain & use it as the primary domain name
OK, so you’ve got your company name(s) registered, but unless you are a large corporation, I wouldn’t recommend using it as your main Internet identity. Why not? Because o­n the Internet, you need to reach out to new customers, customers who have never heard of your company, customers who are being offered services from around the world.

If there are thirty Thai language companies listed o­n Yahoo!(TM), how do you stand out from the crowd? Simple, you incorporate a ‘benefit’ into your domain name.

It’s well know amongst marketing experts that people don’t buy products, they buy benefits. So instead of being listed as ‘AnotherThaiLanguageCompany.com’, you choose a domain name that offers a benefit to the customer, a reason why they should click o­n your link.

A great example of a benefit-based domain for this particular company would be ‘FluentThai.com’, since you are offering the customer the benefit of becoming fluent in the Thai language.

So using rule #2, English-Thai Language Services would register ‘FluentThai.com’.

Rule #3 – Register a generic domain name & use it as an auxiliary domain name
If you can get hold of a generic domain name for your business sector, you have a great marketing edge. Generic domain names produce a regular flow of potential customers to you site without you having to spend a dollar o­n marketing.

A recent case illustrates the point beautifully. The publishers of a computer game starring Brazilian soccer start Ronaldo have offered 150,000 US Dollars to the owner of the domain name Ronaldo.com. The publisher was quoted as saying “Anyone searching for information o­n Ronaldo, whether it is about the forthcoming PlayStation game or any other related merchandise, is automatically going to www.ronaldo.com. If we don’t secure the name in the next two weeks, we are going to have to spend considerably more o­n Internet advertising than we would have if we had owned www.ronaldo.com.

For our fictitious company, the generic domain name would be ‘ThaiLanguage.com’, since anybody interested in the Thai language will try typing ‘ThaiLanguage’ into their browsers before reverting to the lottery that can be the search engines.

So using rule #3, English-Thai Language Services would register ‘ThaiLanguage.com’.

The complete list of names that I would recommend registering for our fictitious language company is:

English-ThaiLanguageServices.com
English-ThaiLanguageServices.co.uk
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.com
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.co.uk
FluentThai.com (Primary Domain Name)
ThaiLanguage.com

Depending o­n circumstances, there are other rules that can come into play. For instance, some popular English language words are spelt differently around the English-speaking world. For instance, Jewelry (US) vs. Jewellery (UK). If you have an international business, you’ll need to register the different spellings.

Of course some of these domain names might already have been registered, and English-Thai Language Services might need to look at purchasing the names in the resale market rather than registering them, but that’s the subject of a different article entirely….

I see so many people that register domains that are basically worthless. Maybe these should be called fools gold. Everything from three word combos with hyphens to bizarre misspellings that no surfer would ever type in let alone remember.

There is no question, the domain game has gone mainstream. Everyone from the hardcore experienced developer to the fresh newbie, is in search of valuable nuggets.

Just like when searching for real gold you might get lucky and a very good domain falls into your lap with little effort. But for the most part it takes a great amount of knowledge and hard work to find domains that are truly worthwhile.

When looking at a domain and trying to decide if it has value ask yourself two important questions.

1) Does this domain have a good chance of getting type ins.

2) Is this domain brandable. Somewhat short, easy to remember, and meaningful.

If either of the answers to these questions is yes, register it. If you don’t its o­nly a matter of time before someone else does. If the answer to both is no, is there any reason to register it?

Now that you know the criteria, how do you go about finding them. What it really comes down to is having a solid knowledge of keyword analysis. Which can be summed up as understanding what keywords and phrases have value and are meaningful. Here is an exercise you can try.

Pick a subject matter. Then think of every keyword and phrase you can that relates to it. Go through them and come up with as many meaningful combos as you can. Then to see how sought after these combos.

Here is an example of the whole process. Lets say the broad subject is dating. Some keywords would be relationships, advice, date, personals, and of course dating. I can then think of combinations such as relationship,help, cyber,dating, california,personals. Then using Alta Vista and the Goto tool I can plug in these combos and get an idea of how popular they are. Using all the data at hand and common sense and logic, a decision can be made if the domain is worth registering.

Then repeat this process over and over and over again using as many subjects as you can and keep drilling down deeper until you find some good o­nes. Every time I have used these techniques I have always come away with some worthwhile domains.

Another technique is what I call “futuristic domains”. This involves using foresight and looking at current trends to try and predict what keywords will be really hot in a year or two but aren’t right now. If you can register domains in an untapped area that eventually becomes popular, you could have an enormous return o­n your investment. Some of these may never pan out, but at less than 20 dollars it is certainly worth the risk.

There is gold in them hills and its just a matter of finding it. Those who proclaim loudly that there is no good .Com’s available just don’t get it and probably never will.

Every professional business should be keeping up with the demands and needs of its customers, if it is to survive. o­ne of the essential tools of any business these days is to have a professional web site. This begins with choosing and registering a domain name that will clearly identify and brand your business o­nline for many years to come, so you need to choose wisely.

How to choose a domain name

1. If you want your web site to have an added advantage in the search engines, think of a domain name that includes keywords visitors would search for in the main search engines.

2. Make a list of all the possible names that would suit your business (i.e. isitebuild.com contains resources for building your own web site or getting o­ne built). Use www.nameboy.com for researching domain names. NameBoy will generate domain names based o­n the keywords you enter. If the dotcom name you want is not available, create a longer name that describes your business or use names that include hyphens (i.e. ihost-websites.com)

3. If possible, keep your domain name short so it is easy to spell and easy to remember. Take into account someone may remember the name but forget there is a hyphen in it – you then miss out o­n those potential customers.

4. If the dotcom name is not available, try the other new abbreviations such as .BIZ .US,.INFO, .TV. These are not as popular as .COM, however you may get closer to the name you want.

How to register a domain name

1. Any company that sells domain names must be registered and accredited with iCann – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (http://www.icann.org). You can get a domain name for under $10 from Godaddy.com. Read carefully what’s o­n their site as you go through the registration process. It’s easy to inadvertently sign up for other services you don’t need.

For a current list of companies that are accredited as registrars by iCann, visit Internic (www.internic.com).

2. Register your domain name in your own name, not someone else’s. Sometimes your host may do this for you. This could cause you problems in the future, should you decide to transfer
your domain to another hosting company.

3. Renewal – you have had your site o­n the Web for a year, sales are pouring in when suddenly, your site disappears – it won’t show up anymore! What happened? Well, you forgot to renew your domain name. Hopefully this will never happen to you!

When you sign up for a new domain name, make sure your domain name registrar will send a reminder when your domain name is about to expire.

4. When asked about DNS server (domain name system) or Name Server information, insert your Primary Name Server and Secondary Name Server information – ask your future Web Hosting service for this information, if you don’t have it handy.

What is the DNS system?

It is the computer action of changing domain names into numeric Internet protocol (IP) numbers which enables computers to locate web sites and e-mail.

If you haven’t chosen a Web Host, then park your domain name with your domain name registrar (this is a temporary location to store your domain until you are ready to have it hosted).

How to transfer a domain name.

There may be several reasons why you would want to transfer:

-Renewing Domain Names
There is a good chance that you could save money o­n domain name renewals by transferring them to a different registrar. Check out the prices from different registrars at NewRegistrars.com.

Before renewing a domain name, make sure you know which registrar the domain name is actually registered with. WhoIsQuery.com is the o­nly WhoIs known that handles
the CORE registrars as well as the ICANN o­nes.

-You parked your domain name and have now found a Web Host to upload your site to.

-You are not happy with the service or are paying too much for your current web host and want to switch to another.

1. If you are transferring your domain name to another web host, download (copy) all files to your computer from your old host. Sometimes files may be stored o­n your host but not o­n your
computer, so doing this will ensure you downloaded the whole site.

Keep a copy of your files o­n the old host, while you transfer to another host, so you won’t experience any downtime of your web site.

2. Open a new hosting account.

3. Change the DNS (domain name system) or Name Server information o­n the current domain name to the new hosting company name servers. You can find this information by going to the domain name registrar (the place where you registered your domain name).

Your domain will take some time (24-72 hours) to propagate over the Internet, before it appears o­n the new hosting company servers.

4. Upload all files to the new host.

5. Amend and test your web site. Check that all files have been uploaded from your computer and that your web site appears exactly as it did before.

6. Cancel the previous hosting account when you are satisfied with the transfer of your domain name to the new host.

A Great Tip for registering several domain names. Since domain names are so cheap these days (they used to cost $35/year), you can afford to own several domains. Each domain can have its own web site. Most small sites use less than 5MB of hosting space, so you could
host several sites for a small price.

What are the benefits of doing this?

Linking each of these web sites together and submitting them to the search engines will increase your sites search engine rankings. It will also broaden the places visitors can access your business.

Generating a continuous traffic flow leads to more sales. You have now implemented and solved o­ne of your crucial marketing strategies.

A question in internet marketing often comes up regarding the use of hyphens in a domain name. Here are a few considerations when planning your sight.

When being interviewed for a local radio show, invariably the host will entertain questions from the listening audience. Most of the time, the host will plug your book, your product, your event or your cause. Many times a website or url is associated with this. Spouting off a long url will annoy hosts and producers everywhere not to mention scrambling audiences trying to record what you are saying. If you have a hyphenated url make sure you are clear as to the hyphen being included and don’t make the url too long. Bill Clinton hyphen my life. Com (www.billclinton-mylife.com) is short enough that the hyphen can be used, can be emphasized with no traffic risk occurring.

Using the above example, it is also wise to reverse the wording before and after the hyphen. Listeners, readers and browsers think what they want in the order that they want. In the example above, www.billclinton-mylife.com might be remembered by your reader as www.mylife-billclinton.com . When purchasing domain names it is wise to purchase both just to assure your targeted traffic.

People make up urls when searching the internet. Stream of consciousness enters the browsers mind. In other words they they type what they are thinking at the time. If a browser is looking for The Davinci Code book they may make up their own url for searching purposes and type in www.thedavinci-code.com . In this case they inserted a hyphen after what they think a main phrase is regarding the searched subject. While this type of traffic is low compared to the primary url without the hyphens, the hyphens assures the capture of intended traffic. With the cost of domain names today, buying variations of your domain is considered inexpensive “traffic insurance”.

Url’s without hyphens do look more professional. Hyphens are typically ok in certain contexts but when you start stringing them out with more than three words or three phrases it can get cumbersome. And we all know the attention span of an internet browser. Hyphenated domain names work with targeted key word campaigns and search engine spiders. If that is the purpose of the sight or domain then the hyphens are fine. If your marketing intention is to create a brand, a remembered domain name, top of mind awareness with the domain then hyphenless domains work best.

Many times it doesn’t matter what a domain name is if you are promoting it with links, and offline promotion. If I have o­n the back of my business card, visit www.billclinton-mylife.com then someone who is interested in Clinton’s autobiography will literally read my card and type the name into a browser because I suggested it to them. This is with or without the hyphens. If I printed o­n the back of my card, visit www.hyphen-hyphen-hyphen.com then if there was interested this suggestion would guide the browser. As these directed domains show up in offline marketing pieces and promotion, hyphens don’t matter.

When it comes to underscores, many times the general public will interpret them as hyphens. Since hyphenated domain names are becoming more and more common that is the general notion of the average browser. Underscores also can get lost when a url or domain is underlined as many hyperlink commands do in word processor software programs.

The general rule of thumb is to not use hyphens between words if possible. A domain name with hyphens is harder to describe when said aloud as in our radio commercial. It is commonly accepted that a domain name with multiple words does not include hyphens. But there are exceptions to the rule. With some popular domain names not being available, sometimes a hyphenated url will be and will be used.

Another reason to use hyphenated domain names is when two words joined together like in a domain name could imply or even state a different meaning or unintentional phrases. The following is an example: www.basketballshopping.com could be read as basketball shopping or basketballs hopping, two completely different thoughts and contexts. Avoid confusing phrases altogether or use hyphens to separate the words.

It all boils down to what your purpose is with your domain name, website and how you will market it to those interested. Interested parties like to be marketed to and told where to look; uninterested parties will ignore your domain with or without hyphens.

A domain name is placed in Redemption Period status when a registrar requests the deletion of a name that is not within the Add Grace Period.

Redemption Period:

A name that is in redemption period status will not be included in the zone file. A registrar can not modify or purge a name in redemption period status. The o­nly action a registrar can take o­n a name in redemption period is to request that it be restored.

Any other registrar requests to modify or otherwise update the domain will be rejected. Unless restored, the domain will be held in redemption period status for a specified number of calendar days. The current length of this Redemption Period is thirty calendar days.

For someone interested in registering previously registered – but now expiring domains: the domain will always go into redemption period status before it is released to be re-registered. It will remain in redemption period status for 30 days at which time it will then move to Pending Delete status.

If a domain is renewed by the original registrant during the redemption period status, the domain will NOT go to Pending Delete status.

What is the Domain Redemption Period?

The Redemption Period is a Domain Registry Period of up to 30 days that occurs when a domain name is deleted after having expired or unrenowned. Instead of just getting deleted and returning to the pool of domain names available for registration, the existing registry keeps a hold o­n the domain name in a technically called as redemption period. During this 30-day Redemption Period, the original domain registrant (owner of the domain) is allowed to retrieve the domain name from deletion by contacting their Registrar. This process costs an additional fee.

This extra 30-day Period – Redemption Period – extends the time available to renew expired domain names by 30 days. However, all names that enter the Redemption Period are removed from the zone files in the global DNS; as a result, any Web site or email services associated with the domain name gone into Redemption Period will stop working and would appear offline.

Pending Delete Phase

In addition, after the 30-day Redemption Period there is a 5-day Pending Delete Phase. When a domain is in Pending Delete Phase, no o­ne is allowed to renew the domain and it cannot be yet registered because it’s still not returned to the public domain pool. After the 5-day Pending Delete Phase the Registry will release the domain name back into the public pool of available domain names enabling fresh registration.

Renew domain before redemption phase

It is strongly recommended that you renew your domain registration o­n time before the domain name is placed in redemption lock because o­nce its placed in redemption, the zone files of such domain gets automatically removed from the Domain Name Service and associated website and email etc services will cease to work.

Once you have a website up and running, you may want to launch other websites. The default way to do it is to register new domain names and open new hosting accounts. However, opening new hosting accounts can be expensive, especially if you still have plenty of free space and bandwidth available in your original account. Fortunately, it is possible to share the web space and bandwidth of your original account among different sites.

You can basically do so through:

Add-On Domains
Parked Domains, and
Sub-Domains

What is an Add-On Domain?

An add-on domain is a new domain name that points to a subdirectory within your existing domain hosting account, where the website for the new domain will reside. Add-on domains must be registered domain names that you own, and that are configured to point to your web host’s servers.

From a web user perspective, an add-on domain functions just like any other domain. For example, if you already have a hosting account under www.main-domain.com, you can register and set up an add-on domain (for example: www.add-on-domain.com), so that when your visitors type “http://www.add-on-domain.com” in their browser, they will be transported to the new site.

The advantage of add-on domains is that the browser’s address bar will show “http://www.add-on-domain.com” (there will be no reference to the original domain), so the process will be totally transparent to your users. If your users navigates to another page, their browser will accordingly show “http://www.add-on-domain.com/anotherpage.html”, just like it should.

Apart from sharing web space and bandwidth with your main domain, add-on domains also get their own cgi-bin and statistics.

Many web hosts now offer to set-up add-on domains for free. This is o­nly fair, since you are not getting any more web space or bandwidth. Others, however, will charge you a modest o­ne time fee, which is not bad, especially when the cost of registering the new domain is included. Finally, some web hosts will charge you a montly fee for each add-on domain you set up. In some cases, that fee can be very close to the monthly cost of your web hosting account, to the point that it is better to just open a new hosting account for the new domain. If you plan to set up add-on domains in the future, you’re better off avoiding this kind of account.

What is a Parked Domain?

A parked domain is a domain that doesn’t have a hosting account associated to it, and that is usually enabled with URL forwarding capabilities, so that it points to an existing website. For example, let’s assume that you already run a newsletter that is hosted in a subdirectory of your domain name, as follows: “http://www.domain.com/newsletter/index.html”. You may at o­ne given point want to register a separate domain name for your newsletter, so that it is more memorable, but may not want to move its pages to a new server, open a new hosting account, or pay to establish an add-on domain. You can then register a and park a new domain for your newsletter (for example: “http://www.newsletter.com”), which will be forwarded to “http://www.domain.com/newsletter/index.html”.

You don’t need to register this new domain with the same company that hosts your website. You can register it with any domain registrar (preferrably o­ne that offers free URL forwarding) and point it to the physical location of the pages.

The difference between a parked domain and an add-on domain from a web user’s perspective is that with a parked domain the URL in the address bar will change to the physical location of the page as the page loads. For example, if you type “http://www.newsletter.com”, that domain won’t remain in the browser address bar, but will change to “http://www.domain.com/newsletter/index.html” as soon as the page is displayed.

From a webmaster’s perspective, the difference is that the parked domain won’t have its own separate statistics reported through the control panel of your hosting account.

If you are a good observer, you may have probably noticed that my newsletter domain “http://www.theinternetdigest.net” is parked and points to the physical location of my newsletter pages, which is “http://www.accordmarketing.com/tid/”.

Parked domains are also a good alternative for webmasters whose site is hosted by a free hosting service, since by using a memorable parked domain users won’t need to remember the cumbersome web addresses usually associated with free hosting accounts.

They are also widely used by members of affiliate programs, who forward the parked domain to the merchant pages, so that they don’t have to use an affiliate URL that includes their affiliate id (which turns many people off).

What is a Sub-Domain?

A subdomain, also known as a “third-level” domain, is a great way to create memorable web addresses for various sub-sites of your site. For instance, Yahoo! uses subdomains for its different services, like “mail.yahoo.com”, “music.yahoo.com”, etc. The basic syntax is: “http://subdomain.domain.com”.

Large businesses use subdomains to establish branding and focus o­n separate products or services, because a subdomain creates a separate URL and web presence, all within your same main hosting account. For example, a restaurant directory may establish sub-domains for different cities, or a school can set up subdomains for different academic programs.

It is also possible to redirect (forward) traffic from a particular subdomain to another location, either within the main site or to a different website altogether.

You should be able to set up and manage add-on domains, parked domains and subdirectories from your hosting account or domain registrar control panel. However, as we usually suggest, always consult with your web host before proceeding if you have any doubts.