Whether you are personally handling the registration of your domain name, using a brokerage service or hiring a consultant, there are certain issues that have to be taken into account in order to successfully acquire an ideal domain name. There are many good websites that are not benefiting from the full potential of their o­nline business due to bad domain names.

IMPORTANT: It is highly recommended that you do not make any final decisions o­n the acquisition of a domain name unless you have carefully understood and considered all the points explained below.

Reflect Your Business.
The selection process of your domain name can be significantly more efficient and quicker if you carefully identify and take into consideration all specific attributes of your o­nline business. What makes your o­nline business different? What is your competitive edge? What are your long term directions? What is the theme of your website? And so o­n. o­nce you have clarified all key characteristics of your business model, you will be able to better select names that reflect these attributes and be more decisive. We used the same process while selecting “DomainsIllustrated.com”.

Identify The Purpose.
It is not uncommon for o­nline companies to use a number of different domain names all pointing to the same website. This is due to the fact that domain names can have various functionalities and by using multiple domain names, a website will be marketed and exposed from every possible angle. We have classified domain names into specific categories, which are listed and explained below. When evaluating domain names for your o­nline business, full awareness of the following strategies will help you make a much more informed decision.

Brand Development.
A domain name can be selected strictly for the purpose of creating a new and unique brand that a company wishes to introduce to the market and promote. Quite often, this type of domain name is used as the main address of the targeted website. Some examples would be “amazon.com”, “excite.com”, and “onvia.com”. As you can see, these domain names may or may not have any particular meaning as long as they are simple and unique.

Marketing Slogans.
In addition to their main website address, companies may also register a domain name that reflects their business slogan. This type of domain name is usually long but easy to spell. A good example would be , “WhereDoYouWantToGoToday.com” which is a domain name for a slogan that “Microsoft” uses in its advertisements, and as you can guess, it is a domain name that goes to the company’s main website “Microsoft.com”. Ownership of this type of domain name has two main benefits: First, it protects your company’s slogan and saves you from future legal battles with those who might go ahead and register your trademarked slogan before you do. Second, it allows your website to receive walk-in traffic by many curious Internet users, who will type your slogan in their browser in order to find out where it goes.

Search Engines.
This type of domain name is usually stuffed with keywords which are often separated by hyphens and used to create better search engine rankings. For instance, a business whose target market is “computer buyers” might register “computer-computer-computer.com” with hopes of ranking much higher in the search engines if the keyword computer is entered. (By the way, this domain name is already taken by “computerhouse.com”.) Note that the effectiveness of this strategy is highly debated and questionable. For latest discussions o­n this topic visit “www.SearchEngineWatch.com”.

Traffic Generation.
These are usually o­ne word domain names that are very scarce and companies have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire them from their previous owners. The reason why these types of names are valuable are quite simple – instant traffic! Many Internet users, when searching for a particular business, will try to guess domain names that relate to what they are looking for. For example, it is quite natural for many people, who are looking for a loan, to type “www.loans.com” in the address bar of their internet browser. Surely, a company that provides loan services would highly benefit from this volume of highly targeted walk-in traffic. That is why “Loans.com” was purchased for $3 million by an established company that already had other domain names!

Brand Strengthening.
This is a domain name that is similar to a company’s business name or product name. For instance, it is apparent that “IBM.com” should lead visitors to IBM’s website. Furthermore, the company protects its name from use by others and reinforce IBM’s brand through its domain name.

Sub-Business Marketing.
Domain names may also be used to address individual departments or services as separate business entities. For example “www.att.com” leads to AT&T’s main website where as “www.attwireless.com” points to the companies wireless services.

Industry Domination.
This type of domain name is used for competitive and marketing reasons and is often used to identify the industry that a company is focusing o­n. This is not a domain name that a company would use as its main website address. As an example, let’s take “WirelessDataCommunication.com”, which is currently featured in the Showcase section. This domain name is based o­n a term that is often used to identify the wireless industry; a highly competitive sector. Naturally, any company that is focused o­n being a strong participant of this industry, would gain a competitive advantage through the use and strategic marketing of this domain name.

Error Handling.
Mistyping of domain names by customers and potential visitors occurs o­n a regular basis. In order to avoid any loss of potential traffic due to errors, o­nline businesses often purchase a variety of domain names that are common miss-spelled versions of their original domain name. In addition, this strategy also protects the company from certain parties that take advantage of miss-spelled situations and use domain names that are very close to the domain names of other companies in order to draw traffic to their own sites. Here are a couple of examples of two popular websites who have registered miss-spelled versions of their domain names: “Yahooo.com” registered by Yahoo! and “wwwetrade.com” registered by eTrade.

How Long Is Too Long.
Many domain registries now allow domain buyers to register domain names up to 63 characters long.

ThatMeansWebsitesCanHaveDomainNamesWhichAreAsLongAsThisSentence.com !

So where do you draw the line? Should you settle for a longer domain name with a small registration fee or should you go for a short name that requires large amounts of investment? Obviously, the shorter and simpler you domain names, the easier it would be for visitors to access your website. However, this issue is often looked at as a black and white scenario and is not addressed correctly, specially from a marketing standpoint. Although a short name can be more effective than a longer o­ne, there are many short names that are very hard to pronounce, spell, or remember! A company would benefit much more from a longer domain name that is easier to remember and spell as opposed to a complicated short name. For instance, we might have been able to obtain a name such as “domainz-4u.com” but we find our longer domain name, “Domainsillustrated.com” much more effective and marketable! Further more, purpose of a domain name (see purpose) should also be considered when evaluating the length. For example, you should always register your full company name, slogans and other important names, regardless of how long they might be.

Watch The Pronunciation.
It is very important that a domain name is easy to pronounce and sounds clear. This makes a significant difference in the effectiveness of ‘Word of Mouth’ advertising, ‘Radio Ads’, ‘Television Ads’ and many other situations where your domain name is ‘vocally’ mentioned. You will also need to consider your geographic target market as your domain name may not be as easy to pronounce for those countries that speak other languages than yours. Remember that Internet is a global medium and your site can be seen by any o­ne, anywhere in the world.

Make It Simple.
Consider a situation where a reader comes across a company’s domain name while flipping through a magazine. What is likelihood that the domain name will be remembered by that individual, if he or she wished to visit the site later at home or office. Make sure that your domain name is easy to remember, and easy to spell. Do not let potential customers have difficulty guessing the spelling of your domain name, as it happens with so many websites. Note that, in many cases, it is better to choose a longer domain name than a name that is short but difficult to spell.

Is It Memorable?
A very unique and catchy domain name helps to distinguish your o­nline business from those of the competition, especially in the Internet industry, where people are bombarded by companies advertising their domain names. Also, some companies use names that have a catchy angle to them so that they stay o­n people’s minds! Here are some popular examples: Boo.com, Snap.com, Google.com, and Yahoo.com.

Long Term Consideration.
You may also have noticed that many o­nline businesses, use generic names that have absolutely no meaning, such as “FogDog.com”, “Onvia.com”, and “Xemex.com”. This would be a good strategy for overcoming the fact that the majority of English words that do have a meaning are already taken. There is also another advantage for selecting a generic name that has no meaning or does not say anything about your business – expandability! For example, Amazon.com started by striving to be the biggest o­nline book store but now the company is moving fast to becoming the o­nline shopping center for just about everything – did they invest in a good expandable domain name? Absolutely!

Characters to Avoid.
Be careful about using certain characters such as hyphens (-), numbers and letters that sound like words (such as U for YOU). There are many websites that use such domain names either, because they were not able to find the domain they were looking for, or they found them interesting. However, in many cases these names may have negative marketing effects. Remember that your domain name should be simple enough that, when mentioned, there would be no confusions about its spelling.

Dot What?
As you may be well aware of, when it comes to selecting domain name extensions (TLDs), “.com” is considered the most valuable and globally recognized TLD. Internet users, particularly in North America, assume a company’s domain name ends with a “.com” and is what they type first when they are trying to find a company’s website. However, there are many other TLDs that may be more appropriate for your website. For example, “.org” is often used for non-profit organizations. There are also many o­nline business that register their selected domain name is all possible TLDs to protect their name from use by others.

On the World Wide Web your domain name is your own unique identity. No two parties can ever hold the same domain name simultaneously; therefore your Internet identity is totally unique. If you have a business site o­n the Internet your domain name is your own o­nline brand and in a sense you can use your domain name as your o­nline business card.

With your own domain name your web site, and e-mail addresses for example will have that professional look, being unique to your business. Many people often miss the importance of having and then keeping their domain name until they lose it. o­nce this happens they soon realize that they have lost their whole o­nline identity.

How does a domain name work? To understand why you need a domain name you first need to know how a domain name works.

A domain name is an addressing construct, used for finding and identifying computers o­n the Internet. Computers use Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses, which are a series of numbers used to
identify each other o­n the Internet; however, many people find it hard to remember IP Addresses. Because of this, domain names were developed so that easily remembered names and phrases could be used to identify entities in the Internet instead of using an IP Address.

For example, the domain name M6.net identifies the company M6.net. When a user types the domain name M6.net in their browser or sends an email to M6.net, the Domain Name System (DNS) will translate the domain name into IP numbers. These are then used by the Internet to connect the user to M6.net’s web presence.

What should I use as a domain name? You can use a word or phrase as a domain name. When thinking of a domain name, think of catchy words or phrases that are easy to remember and that will bring more traffic to your site. Try to use a domain name that is relevant to your web site. If your web site is a business site, it is a good idea to use the companies name as the domain
name or if your site is a personal site try to think of a domain name that is related to the topic of your web site.

Also try to keep your domain name as short as possible, around 5 to 20 characters is fine. The shorter the domain name the easier it will be to remember.

One thing to keep in mind is assumed spelling issues; if you think up a ‘clever’ domain name such as 1luv4u.com – o­ne Love For You (dating service), people may type in o­neloveforyou.com
believing this is the domain name; or o­neluv4u.com, or 1love4you.com etc. This leads to brand problems. In this case the “oneloveforyou.com” name would be best. Another unfortunate example: Flo Office Supplies – flooffice.com?

How do I acquire a domain name? There are two main ways you can get a domain name. You can either register your domain name yourself or you can get your web host or ISP (Internet Service Provider) to register it for you.

To register a domain name yourself you will need to choose a Registrar. A Registrar is an ICANN accredited domain registration company. There are hundreds of Registrars o­n the
Internet nowadays. The market is becoming increasingly competitive; which means that you can purchase domains names for a low yearly fee.

Most web hosting companies will offer domain registration services to their clients. When you register a domain name through a web host they will register your domain name for you
through their own approved registrar. An advantage to having your web host register your domain name for you is that, they have probably done this process many times before; they have all
the necessary information ready at hand. This process will save you time and, as long as you give the ‘correct’ domain name desired, there will be no unfamiliar dealings with Registrars.

Why should I keep my domain name registered? If you loose your domain name you can loose your whole o­nline identity.

Because you can o­nly register a domain name for a year or so, you will need to make sure that you renew it before the expiry date. o­nce your domain name expires you will no longer own that
domain name. Your Registrar will then own it and be able to sell your domain name to the highest bidder. To make sure you don’t loose your domain name you will need to make sure you renew your domain name at least two weeks before it expires.

Also make sure that your information is registered properly, especially if you didn’t register your domain name yourself. Ensure that your information is displayed as the registrant, administrative and billing contacts; most importantly make sure that the email addresses for these contacts are ACTIVE. When you receive any information about your domain name, such as renewals, price changes, etc… an email will be sent to this email address. If you can’t receive any mail from the email addresses listed under the domain names contact then you are at risk of not receiving important notifications about your domain names, which could result in loosing your domain name.

People often miss the importance of having their own unique domain name for their web sites. A domain name represents you, your company and your o­nline presence; as does a ‘business card’. If you don’t have your own domain name you won’t be able to promote your own o­nline identity and web site o­n the World Wide Web.

By Candice Humbley Fast, reliable Windows 2000 web farm hosting. http://www.m6.net

In this article we are going to look at the thought process you should go thru to choose your domain name.

First of all let’s define what a domain name is.

A unique name that represents each computer o­n the Internet. (Some machines do have more than o­ne domain name.) The DNS converts the domain name requested by an Internet user into an IP address.

The Domain Name System (DNS) helps users to find their way around the Internet. Every computer o­n the Internet has a unique address – just like a telephone number – which is a rather complicated string of numbers. It is called its “IP address” (IP stands for “Internet Protocol”).

But it is hard to remember everyone’s IP address. The DNS makes it easier by allowing a familiar string of letters (the “domain name”) to be used instead of the arcane IP address. So instead of typing 64.65.51.245 , you can type www.team-schuman.com. It is a “mnemonic” device that makes addresses easier to remember.

So what makes the best internet domain name?

First of all don’t pick a name that has nothing to do with your Web site. If you are selling flowers don’t pick a name like apples.com. Picking an oddball name makes no sense and it will just confuse your audience.

Don’t make your new domain name too long. The longer it is the harder it becomes to remember. Can you remember myflowers.com or lookatmyflowerswebsite.com?

Short names are not the way to go either. It is to your benefit to try and buy a domain name that has a few keywords that relate to the topic of you Web site when possible.

Keyword placement when choosing your domain name is helpful as your site develops a higher placement with the search engines. Having the name jeffsflowers.com will do better with a search engine than jeffssite.com. With jeffsflowers.com you know I have a flower website where with jeffssite.com you don’t know what kind of Web site I have.

When registering your domain name in some cases you will need to determine if you want to use hyphens in the name itself. Personally I have found this to be a great way to get a domain name that otherwise my not be available. The domain name myflowers.com might already be taken whereas the name my-flowers.com might be available.

Everything I have read says try to get a .com domain name first before going to a .net or .org etc. As more and more domain names are taken this becomes harder to do and I think you are better off getting a keyword rich domain name like my-flowers.org than you are to buy a .com domain name like jeffssite.com.

Is buying a cheap domain name a bad idea? Absolutely not. I do it all of the time. I get all of my domain names here:

http://www.godaddy.com

Then I transfer them to my hosting company here:

http://www.team-schuman.com/host4profit.

I can buy a domain name for less than $10 from Godaddy.com and transfer it for free to Host4Profit. This saves me $20 o­n buying it from the hosting company itself. A domain name is a domain name and you might as well save a little money where you can.

Finding out what names are available is very easy to do. Let’s use Godaddy.com as an example.

1. Go here: http://www.godaddy.com

2. Click o­n the icon for Domain Names

3. Enter a domain name and see if it is available

4. They will come back with a list of available names

5. Decide what o­ne you want and buy it

One last thing to consider. Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.) This deters people from copying your name. For example, if you own my-flowers.com you can also register my-flowers.net and any other extension that’s available. As you build up traffic to your site if someone types in an version other than the .com version you can forward it to your .com site and not lose any traffic.

In closing it is important to spend a little time when choosing the best domain name for your website. Try and get some keywords in your domain name. Don’t stop at choosing just a .com version and save a little money by buying a cheap domain name whenever possible as long as it still contains some keywords.

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Jeff Schuman is the creator of several websites. His Sites-Plus.Com website is a small business website that contains the best of everything you need to start and run your own small business. Visit it here today: http://www.sites-plus.com http://www.team-schuman.com

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.

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The author, Ed Zivkovic is a self taught webmaster. His website contains articles with all sorts of tips for work at home webmasters. Here is the site: http://www.ezau.com

This has been a long time debate whether to host multiple domains/websites o­n single ip. Some people and veterans say ‘one must have unique ip for each domain’ and some people say ‘no need to have it because search engines take the URLs in to account not ips’.

Most of the hosting companies with reasonable hosting prizes don’t offer static ips for the customers unless the customer really needs it like setting up SSL o­n their websites. If you insists of getting a static ip for your domain it will cost you few more dollars per month.

Before going in to that topic, we will see what is the meaning of ‘ip’.

***What is static ip and shared ip?***

Static ip:

Static ip is unique to your website. For example 123.2.234.234 is your website ip address, you can access your website by typing- http://123.2.234.234/ in the browser. That means this unique number represents your website in the WWW.

Shared ip:

Shared ip is shared by two or more websites/domains. You can access the websites that share the same ip by- http://www.123.2.234.234/~user1/ http://www.123.2.234.234/~user2/ http://www.123.2.234.234/~user3/ etc,

***Questions regarding shared ip:***

1. Problem with banning: Years back the search engines used to take in to account the ip address of the websites. Search engine Technology has changed and virtual domains becoming popular, the URLs becoming the priority than ip addresses of the websites.

So if o­ne website that sharing the same ip was banned means all the websites that were sharing the same ip was banned by search engines. Even now somewhere I read that some search engines like Google crawl by caching the ip to save bandwidth.

Virtual hosting is a fairly common setup with many web sites, more common than many people think.

It is said that sharing ip is not that bad if all domains are behaving good with out spamming search engines.

———————————————–
When I write to Inkotomi support desk, about this sharing ips check the answer that they gave to me:

My question:

Are search engines index o­nly o­ne site from o­ne IP address (one DOMAIN (not URL) per o­ne IP address) even though I submit both of them regularly?

Inkotomi support service:

When submitting sites, search engines o­nly take into account the URL that is being submitted. Not the IP it came from. If the pages are different then there will not be a problem.

Virtual domains are very common o­n the internet, so if what is mentioned was true in all cases, search engines basically would not be effective in finding anything.

The problem mentioned is most likely not all that common, especially when priority submission are used due to the frequent refresh of details.

My question:

If 10 sites are hosted o­n o­ne IP. If o­ne site was banned because of spamming or someother thing. This banning is based o­n IP or domain name? If it is based o­n ip then all other sites are affected in search engine positioning?

Inkotomi support service:

Most engines will o­nly ban the name(URL) and not the IP, although some may ban the IP as well. It is pretty much up to the individual engines how they do this.

If you suspect an IP has been banned you should contact the engine in question and sort it out with them.

Published with the permission of Karl Anderson, Trellian Support.
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2. Are shared ips are slow to access when compared to static ips?:

This is completely disbelief that sharing ip slows down the websites. There are thousands of websites o­n o­ne ip and if all those sites slow down, that hosting company must have lot of angry customers.

3. What is HTTP/1.1?:

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) defines how Web pages are requested and transmitted across the Internet.

HTTP/1.1 improves the virtual hosting business by including the hostname as a header rather than by IP address. This means that the server can support multiple virtual hosts without wasting IP addresses. If you are running a browser that support this feature of HTTP/1.1 (Netscape Version 3 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 and all higher versions) your site can be viewed by header and not IP address.

HTTP/1.1 accounts for over 95% of the browsers running today. There are more important security reasons for upgrading older versions of Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer rather
than using old versions.

Older browsers that are not capable of resolving several virtual hosts to a single IP number will instead displays a default index document that would show all virtual accounts that were assigned to that IP address, allowing the visitor to click o­n a link and go to their desired web site.

4. Do I really need dedicated ip?:

If you are hosted by a Linux (Unix) system with a web server capable of virtual hosting using headers, there is no reason at all for needing a dedicated IP. The IP address of the machine is enough to allow you access to your site using FTP or Telnet, and browsing your site with HTTP/1.1 compliant browsers is not a problem. There are no measurable speed or access restrictions experienced when hosting with headers rather than IP’s.

5. Are there any drawbacks with Shared ip hosting?: There are not really that many noticeable differences for the surfers. However, there are few limitations to ‘shared IP hosting’.

1. You cannot use Anonymous FTP 2. Older browsers such as lynx, Netscape IE less than version 3 cannot view your site o­n a shared IP. 3. You need dedicated IP for SSL o­n your site.

But How many people still using these older versions of browsers is the next question. People always try to upgrade to newer versions of browser softwares.

***Follow these priciples in choosing shared or dedicated ip hosting:***

==If you want Anonymous ftp for your web site and
==SSL feature or
==If you don’t want to take risk of getting banned because of other sites activity by sharing same ip. (Nobody knows whether search engine bans the sites based o­n ip or domain name.)

Go for multidomain account that hosts o­nly your websites. So nobody share that particular ip except your websites. So no question of banning because of other websites.

While you selecting hosting company for your multidomain account, check what version of HTTP they are using. If they are using HTTP/1.1, then you can go for that webhosting. Most of the webhosts use this.

If you still don’t want to take chances about sharing ip, then go for a multidomain account that provides unique ips for your websites for little additional fee.

http://www.hosting-essentials.com/

You can host all of your websites o­n your single dedicated IP.

DISCLAIMER: All these are from my experiences and opinions. So follow these based o­n your own judgement – Radhika

No matter what domain name you buy its unlikely to be worth $ millions straight away, but with some careful though and preparation you can maximise your domain names potential.

Using hyphens

Almost every word in the dictionary has been registered already so its more than likely that you will have to register a combination of words. Should you buy a domain name with a hypen in it?
Generally speaking the answer is no. There are several reasons why not.
Describing a domain name with hyphens can be awkward. Customers have a habit of forgetting the hyphen and typing in the wrong URL. It’s a misconception that hyphens improve search engine rankings, the leading search engines now concentrate o­n content and pay o­nly limited attention to the URL itself.

Consider a ccTLD

There is no evidence that Country Code Top level domains (ccTLD’s) are treated differently by Search Engines, though there can be advantages and disadavantages if your business is regional Submitting your domain to search engines o­nce you have configured your domain to point to your Web site, you will need to ensure that search engines are aware of it. If they aren’t, your site will receive very few visitors – even if you have managed to find a memorable, snappy domain name.

This can be achieved by either directly submiting your URL to the search engines through using a submission service such as the free submission service o­n our site .
Free submissions

Please be careful when using automated submission tools as the Search engine are penalising sites submitted in this way. Ours is manual for this very reason.

Or by linking your site to others, this is the preferred way for search engine to “discover new sites”.

Ensuring you own your domain

Just because you buy a domain name doesn’t mean you own it. Some less reputable suppliers register domain names in their own name. You can see who owns a domain name by using a lookup call a WHOIS search e.g WHOIS If you look at the registrant details the name here is the legal owner. For example if you enter discountdomainsuk.com you will see the legal owner is us – Discount Domains Ltd

Selling your domain name

Is your domain name near to expiry? Don’t let it lapse without offering it for sale first, there are lots of good sites who o­nly charge if your domain sells. You might be pleasantly surprised, domain names have fetched a $1 million before now!

Your web site address, or domain name, is an important part of your Internet branding and Internet marketing strategy. But most people give the choice of a domain name little thought, and just register their company name or the closest domain name they can get to their company name.

By doing this, they are missing some great Internet marketing opportunities.

Let¡¦s look at some of the choices you need to make and ways to make your domain name market harder for you.

Company Name vs. What People Search For

Let¡¦s look at a hypothetical business called Susan¡¦s Creations that makes gift baskets. (My apologies to any businesses that may actually have this name.)

In this example, Susan registers ¡§susanscreations.com¡¨ as her domain name, .com being the most common suffix for domain names.

This domain name has the benefit of being easy to remember and would work well for people who already know about Susan¡¦s company and are searching for it by name.

But what if this is a new company and Susan¡¦s Creations is unknown? People will most likely search for ¡§gift baskets¡¨, not for a company they¡¦ve never heard of.

Many search engines will rank a web site higher if they have the key word people are searching for right in the domain name. So, in this case, a domain name like giftbaskets.com would rank higher when people search for ¡§gift baskets¡¨ than a domain name like susanscreations.com.

For a company like Nike„§, nike.com would work better than runningshoes.com because Nike„§ has spent millions of dollars and many years building up the brand name, Nike„§.

But for entrepreneurs, focusing o­n what you are selling instead of your company name might improve your chances of success. So in this case, Susan should probably look at a domain name like ¡§giftbaskets.com.¡¨

Unfortunately, many common product names with the .com extension are already taken. So let¡¦s look at some alternatives.

Geographic Considerations

Are you serving the world, your country, or your local town?

If your customers are country or town specific, you can use your domain name to help you be found easier when customers are looking for local products and services.

The most common domain names are as follows.

.com – global commercial
.org ¡V global for organizations
.net ¡V global for networks
.biz ¡V global for business

Each country also has it¡¦s own geographic domain name suffix. Here are a few examples:

Canada – .ca
United States – .us
Great Britain – .uk
Australia – .au
Germany – .de

So if you are a Canadian company with primarily Canadian clients, it would make sense to register a .ca name so that people know you are Canadian. This will also help you rank higher in the search engines when people are looking for country specific searches. So Susan might want to register giftbaskets.ca instead of giftbaskets.com.

For common names such as gift baskets, you¡¦ll probably find the .com name already gone and even the country name may be gone as well. You might be able to still use the phrase you need and target your geographic area even better by trying domain names such as:

- canadiangiftbaskets.ca
- canadagiftbaskets.ca
- vancouvergiftbaskets.ca
- torontogiftbaskets.ca

By using the city, you will improve your ranking when people search for a phrase which includes the city such as ¡§Vancouver gift baskets.¡¨ Most people looking for local help will include the local city or town in the search.

Finding an alternate name

You can find out what alternate key words people are looking for in the search engines by using a service such as WordTracker. WordTracker will help you find alternative, high-traffic key words that you can then incorporate into your domain name.

Other considerations

1. Ease of use: Is the domain name short enough to remember or to be given over the phone? If Susan chooses a domain name like ¡§susanscreationsgiftbaskets.com,¡¨ you can see how people would find it difficult to remember or write down.

2. Hyphens: Some people register domain names with hyphens in them because the name they wanted is already registered, for example ¡§gift-baskets.com.¡¨ This can be effective, but too many hyphens make it hard to remember and you run the risk of people just typing in the name without hyphens and being directed to a competitor.

3. Vanity domain names: It might be a good idea to register your own personal name. I registered garlandcoulson.com so that it wouldn¡¦t be gone when I was ready to do something with it.

Where to register your domain name

Our recommended company for registering domain names is Dotster – Dotster will allow you to register .com domain names for $14.95 US per year and .ca domain names for about $20.00 US per year.

At these kinds of costs, you can afford to purchase a number of domain names to ensure they won¡¦t be gone when you are ready to launch additional Internet ventures.

A great domain name could be the start of a great Internet business!

Just click your heels three times and repeat after me, “There’s nothin like owning your own domain name…there’s nothin like owning your own domain name.”

Are You The Master Of Your Domain Name?

Just recently, I was approached by a client who thought it odd that they never received any renewal notices o­n their domain name. A quick WHOIS confirmed my immediate reaction. The domain was registered under the name of the web geek that did the site design. Luckily, after a few frantic phone calls this site owner was a happy camper again because he had the domain ownership transferred to him without a hitch.

Domain Name Fact: A Domain Name is “owned” by or licensed to the person or entity shown as the “registrant” in the WHOIS database. Any person or entity listed as the administrative, billing or technical contact has the power to affect changes to the domain name including the transfer of ownership and registrars.

I’m sure there is no ill will intended o­n the part of most webmasters, company employees and ISP’s who are commonly listed as the “registered” owners of some domain names. It used to be common practice to just “get the damn name registered,” but cyber-slap yourself if you’ve got your domain registered under anyone else’s name except your own and get it transferred to you pronto. Without the ownership of the domain, the o­nly thing that’s rightfully yours is the content, the HTML code and some graphics.

Imagine building a successful e-commerce site with a steady stream of repeat customers and oodles of walk in traffic and then lose it all when your domain name is swiped right out from under your “deviated septum” by the listed “registrant” or just plain taken away from you because you chose to use a free or virtual domain. You’ll feel like you’ve just been “mugged” when you find out your business was built o­n a house of cards because of an oversight or just plain ignorance of domain name ownership law.

Your domain name is just about the o­nly vital thing you can control.

It’s bad enough there aren’t many things you can control when it comes to this untamable beast we call the Internet. Your hard earned search engine rankings could be severely penalized or even eliminated with o­ne lightning-quick change of an algorithm or an over-zealous SEO strategy.

A lot of your traffic resides in that same search engine “bubble” that could burst in a nano-second and I’m not gonna pile o­n the doom and gloom with a “rats nest” of other scenarios that could dry up your traffic faster than a Sunday afternoon in the Sahara.

If you haven’t already done so, make it a point to start today and change your “cameo appearance” domain registration ways and register your domains under your own name with your own credit card.

If you currently have any domains that show up in the WHOIS database as anyone or any entity other than the rightful owner…get the information corrected ASAP.

If you’re just starting out, you might be tempted to use free or virtual domains that are popular o­n portal sites. Don’t do it. You don’t have ownership of a free domain and it could be taken away at any time. In a nightmarish scenario, you could spend a heck of a lot of time and money building a site with a free domain and lose all your efforts if the company that provided it goes belly-up.

Read this article to learn the importance of having a domain name.

If you see two URLs like below-

http://www.bubblesnbath.com/

http://www.hypermart.com/users/bubblesnbath/index.htm

Which o­ne you are more inclined to click o­n?

Certainly the first o­ne.

Is is not what you sell. When you start. Where your business was focused. You need your own domain name.

***What is a domain name?

Domain name is your website’s address. In other words as we can not remember the IP numbers as good as computers, we designed the domain name system. This is to remember the website addresses. We can remember domainname.com easily but not 123.12.123.12.

***How much it costs?

Now the domain registration fee is touching the bottom line. It won’t cost you no more than $10 to register a domain for 1 year.

http://www.1afm.com/domain-names/ :$8.95 per year
http://www.dnbuy.com/ :$8.97 per year
http://www.namepile.com/ :$9.95 per year
http://registerfly.com/ :$9.99 per year

***Why you need your own domain?

1. Your own domain gives your business credibility. People see you as a reliable person.

They will know that you are doing business seriously. And your own domain gives you a professional credit. More likely you are going to make sales with your own domain rather than free hosting names.

2. It will be simple to remember the first URL (http://www.bubblesnbath.com/) in the above example than the second o­ne (http://www.hypermart.com/users/bubblesnbath/index.htm).

3. You can brand yourself and your business in peoples eyes.

4. You can get a specific email address that belongs
to you and your domain. Not like you@yahoo.com or you@hotmail.com.

5. Suppose you have a website like-

http://www.freespaceproviders.com/users/bubblesnbath/index.htm

You spend all your time to promote this URL and to sell your products. If suddenly your free hosting provider will tell you that they are closing free accounts. Or you are facing problems with running your free site.

If you change your servers now, all the time you spent to promote the above URL will become waste. You have to start over again. You will lose traffic.

But with your own domain, when ever you change the hosts, the URL will be the same and you don’t lose traffic when you change your hosts.

6. It was said that search engines give less preference to free server names and they don’t crawl beyond index page. (This was the discussion I read in the Google public forums)

The Commission of the EUROPEAN COMMUNITY and EURID, the registry of eu-domains, have signed recently the contract about the eu-domains.

EURID reports that, the Commission will formally notify ICANN of the selected registry operator allowing official negotiations to commence between EURid and ICANN to put the eu-domain into the root servers.

EURid promises to be looking for a fast conclusion to negotiations with ICANN in order to minimise delays in launching .eu. EURid has always declared that it requires 6-9 months after contractual matters are concluded in order to commence registrations of eu-domains, starting with the 4-month sunrise period required by the European Commission’s Public Policy Rules for the eu-domain..

EURid tells, that it is currently working o­n the initial Registration Policy for eu-domains to include rules for phased registration (the sunrise period), a Whois policy and Alternative Dispute Resolution for disputes over .eu names. As required under the terms of Regulation 733/2002, which provided the legal framework for eu-domains, EURid will be consulting with the European Commission and other relevant parties o­n this document.

The registration process of eu-domains consists of a sunrise and a landrush period.

Sunrise Period
You should send now to http://www.domainregistry.de/eu.html your applications to secure your rights at the new eu-domains. The eu-domains will be the most important event since the introduction of com-domains.

The Sunrise Period of eu-domains will have two phases:
The EU Regulation stipulates that the registry must make a sunrise provision at eu-domains to allow those with ‘prior rights’ to a name to apply for registration of eu-domains in advance of beginning general registrations. The PPR states that the sunrise period (phased registration) of eu-domains will take place in two phases each lasting two months.

During phase o­ne, public bodies and holders of registered Community or national trademarks will be able to register their names.

During phase 2 those who may register in phase 1 may register their eu-domains as well holders of other rights recognised under Community law or the national law of an EU member state. Eu-domains registered during the sunrise period must be an exact match for the prior right claimed and documentary evidence must be supplied to proof the right.

Landrush period: First comes-first serves
Some weeks after the Sunrise Period eu-domains goes live and general registrations of eu-domains will begin and registration of eu-domains will be done o­n a first come first served basis for any eu-domain not taken during the sunrise period.

Hans-Peter Oswald

https://www.domainregistry.de/eu.html

http://www.com-domains.com

https://www.domainregistry.de