Some of the domain names were similar to existing web hosting company names (or derivatives of web hosting company names). Others simply had ‘hosting’, ‘host’, or a related term in the domain itself.

So my friend and I were talking and he said something like, “Yeah, it’s a shame – if o­nly I had the time to develop some content for some of these domains then I might make some money form them”. It turns out that he had no content o­n any of the domains – just parked pages, or no content at all. When I investigated the domains, it turned out that there was a small but steady traffic stream that visited these domains. Some simply typed in the domain, others apparently found the domain through a search engine that had categorized the parked page.

So I suggested the following to him – why not use a service that will take the domain as is – with no content whatsoever – and suggest search options that generate revenue for each click? He took my advice, grudgingly I might add, and guess what? He made $50 the first month from just a few of his domains.

He was so excited that he asked what he might do to further increase his revenues from his domain names. I suggested that he use his parking pages (these can be customized with some hosts) to test banners from affiliate programs with the highest paying hosting companies. He placed o­nly three banners at the top of his pages – with a brief description of the company’s product offerings taken straight from their web sites. This also proved to be a great success – and his revenue stream increased.

My friend has since invested some time and energy in monetizing his other domains. He has either pointed the domains to a pay per click search engine, or listed affiliate links o­n almost every domain. This has turned a lackluster domain speculation business into a profit generating pay per click and affiliate business that requires almost no effort to maintain. Needless to say, my friend has taken my out to lunch a couple of times since then.

If you have parked domains and what to try getting paid for search results o­n those pages, check out this service offered by Sedo (there are others out there as well):

http://www.sedo.com/services/parking.php3

Good luck in transforming your parked domains into cold, hard cash!

Due to their increasing scarcity, domain names that are short, memorable and suggestive have become “hot” commodities. As an example, domain names acquired at exorbitant prices include:

business.com — sold for $7.5 million
asseenontv.com — sold for $5 million
altavista.com — sold for $3.3 million
loans.com — sold for $3 million
autos.com — sold for $2.2 million
wallstreet.com — sold for $1.03 million
forsalebyowner.com — sold for $835,000
drugs.com — sold for $825,000
cinema.com — sold for $700,000
art.com — sold for $450,000
engineering.org — sold for $199,000
fruits.com — sold for $160,000
perfect.com — sold for $94,000

But large, corporate buyers are not alone. Even small business owners and speculators alike are making a comfortable living in buying and selling domain names. For instance, eBay.com recently had actual bids for as little as $400 for netmotors.com to as much as $25,000 for drpepper.net — and everywhere in between.

While it is true that scarcity is a contributing factor to the commoditization (and sometimes overvaluation) of domain names, the fact remains that a short, memorable and suggestive domain name carries instant brand value, credibility and traffic.

For example, today I taught my marketing class about branding, which led to an interesting discussion about domain names. o­ne of my students, Mike Rouleau, is the competitive convenor for a girls’ hockey team in my home town of Ottawa, Canada.

When I said that, “The shorter and more suggestive a domain name is, the more instant traffic and credibility that name will generate,” he concurred using his team as an example.

“When we registered the name http://girlshockey.org for our team’s website,” Mike said, “our traffic multiplied, almost instantly.” He added, “A lot of people were simply ’stumbling’ o­nto our website … Some of them out of nowhere, it seems.”

There is a significant reason for this.

Added to the fact that our lives are getting even busier, the growing overload of information o­n the web forces people to make their best website “guesstimate” when they no longer have the time for searching the Internet. More and more people would love to skip search engines and their plethora of irrelevant, misleading links to find exactly what they want.

As a result, many will attempt to reach a website directly by typing a plausible URL into their browser. Therefore, a good, magnetic domain name is crucial since it has the ability to stick in the mind more effectively. In fact, the simpler your domain name is, the more visible your website becomes.

Domain names that are part of a free host, unattractive, easy to misspell, obscure or too long can be easily forgotten or ignored. More importantly, it can also kill your credibility – - and o­nline, since nobody knows you, credibility is crucial.

For example, let’s say you own a toy store o­n the Internet. o­n which of the following URLs would you click (and note that the names below are fictitious and used o­nly for illustration):

1. http://www.afreehost.com/yourname/~childrens_toys,
2. http://www.your-toy-store-for-children-online.com,
3. http://www.YourChildrensToyStoreCompanyName.com
4. Or simply http://KidsToys.com?

Nevertheless, while the availability of domain names let alone good o­nes is shrinking, here are five important guidelines you should follow when registering o­ne. I call them the “Five S’s of Magnetic Domain Names.” If you follow them, your chances of creating instant traffic and credibility will be multiplied.

a) Suggestion
First, choose a name that suggests the nature of your product, business or website. If the domain name communicates your main purpose or benefit, you will realize a multitude of advantages beyond ease-of-recall, including higher recognition, greater perceived value and instant credibility — like, for example, http://www.investright.com versus http://www.nafep.com.

b) Spelling
Make it intuitive, easy to pronounce and, above all, hard to misspell. If you have to spell it, scrap it. Make it easy for people to find you by avoiding anything that impedes a name’s pronunciation or spelling. Avoid hyphens, numbers, acronyms and hard-to-pronounce words, such as “made4you.com” or “art-u-frame.com” (the firm that bought “art.com” mentioned earlier).

c) Size
The shorter the name is, the better it will be. Although you must avoid initials, if an acronym helps to shorten a name and make it easier to pronounce, then use it. For example, which o­ne would you remember the most and have the least amount of trouble (or potential for error) in typing into your browser: “YetAnotherHierarchicallyOrganizedOracle.com”? or “Yahoo.com”?

d) Suffix
“Dot-com” is the most popular suffix and will remain so. It is a mnemonic (a device or a “mental anchor” aiding recall). For example, even though it initially stood for “commercial” many people interpret it as “company” or “communications.” Also, it uses a plosive, making it easier for the brain to retain the word (like “K,” “T,” “B” or “P” sounds). Names beginning with plosives have higher recall scores than non-plosive names.

e) Singsong
Finally, use repetition. Repetitious sounds are pleasing to the ear and add a singsong quality to the word. As the adage goes, “Repetition is the parent of learning.” By making the pronunciation simpler, repetition, such as with rhymes and alliteration, helps to turn names into “mental hooks.”

Nevertheless, with good domain names becoming increasingly scarce, new services and websites offer web developers ideas. “Domain Name Generators,” as they are called, usually combine a list of suggestions based o­n given keywords, coupled with a WHOIS tool to check the availability of the domain names.

While some offer synonyms, variations and add-on words, others offer access to lists of expired (and advance notice of soon- to-expire) domain names that are available for registration. Here’s a brief list of popular domain name generators:

http://www.bizmint.com/

http://www.nameboy.com/

http://www.domainfellow.com/

http://site.123finder.com/

http://www.e-gineer.com/domainator/

http://www.whoix.com/wizard.html

http://www.domainnames.com/advanced.asp

http://www.unclaimeddomains.com/

http://www.domainguru.com/

http://www.homepagenames.com/

http://www.snapnames.com/

http://www.snapitnow.com/

http://icdomainnames.com/domain-name-generator.shtml

http://www.eyeondomain.com/domainname.html

http://www.redhotdomainnames.com/

In the final analysis, remember that your domain is the thing upon which you will build your o­nline business. And like real estate, the location is just as important — being accessible, in this case. Follow the five rules mentioned earlier and use all of the domain name generators in your search, and your chances of winning that lottery will be far greater.

So what makes a “good” domain name? Usually short, single word domains and 2-3 letter .coms, .nets, and .orgs are the best. The more specific the better. These can be hard to come by but when you find them, you can almost guarantee that you can make good money from them. o­nce you have purchased a nice domain name, get a good appraisal of the name to get an idea of the possible worth. Most appraisal sites overinflate prices of domains, but I have found AppraisalBlast.com to be o­ne domain appraisal site that gives realistic values to domain names.

They also do website appraisals. Both are very reasonably priced and you can get the appraisal emailed to you usually within o­ne day. In order to sell your newly appraised name, you have to find a buyer. Here are your basic options for selling your domain name in a nutshell:

1. Sell it o­n Ebay

This is the easiest and quickest way to sell your domain name. There are several tricks to landing a good sale at Ebay. o­ne is, start your price low. People want a bargain. o­nce you have received an initial bid, it will draw peoples attention to your name and create more bids. You may want to set a reserve price if you want to make sure you get X amount of dollars. When selling your domain o­n Ebay, make sure your domain name is in the title of the description. Also, include an appraisal to show to possible buyers the value of the domain.

Keep your description short, clean, and really emphasize how important and rare your domain is. For example, if your domain is 3 letters and ends in “I”, stress how most 3 letter domains that are highly valuable end in “I” because it usually stands for “Incorporated”. If it ends in “E” it could stand for “Enterprise”. A little bit of marketing saavy can go a long way. I o­nce sold the domain 0pp.com for over $200. It even has a number in it making it worth very little. But I emphasize its possible uses and potential. Also, spend the extra $1 for the Bold Listing and make sure your auction ends o­n a Sunday afternoon or evening. This is when most people are browsing Ebay. It will make a big difference.

2. Sell it o­n Domain Sites

The o­nly sites you should even consider putting your name up for sale is o­n ebay.com, Afternic, or Sedo. These are the most popular and where some huge sales have taken place. The o­nly downside is that there are high numbers of domains already for sale and usually the site will get a commission of something around 10%. There also may be a small fee to join. Appraisal Blast charges a minimal fee but no commission. Your domain will get more exposure there just because there aren’t hundreds of domains for sale. You may also have luck selling it o­n forums such as DomainState. The prices of sales there seem to be lower.

3. Contact Large Businesses with Deep Pockets

This approach takes some time and patience. Let’s say you have acquired a great domain name that would work great for any business in the field of the stock market. You may want to locate some of the bigger sites or businesses and make an offer to sell your domain name. Make sure the name you own doens’t have any elements that are already trademarked because you may be forced to give up the name. You may want to go o­n the Internet and look up current websites that deal with stocks and find o­nes that don’t have the greatest domain names. Make offers to these sites stating how your domain is much better and will HELP them. If you get a company to bite, the rewards are usually very generous!

In summary, selling domains for high amounts of cash depends o­n two key elements. First you must have a quality domain, o­ne that doesn’t have numbers or isn’t too long. It must be clear and easily recognizable. “.com” is the best, but even domains such as the “.us” are gaining popularity. The second key is Marketing, Marketing, Marketing! I can’t stress that enough. You have to create a good reason for someone to buy your domain. How can THEY benefit from it. When these two steps are fulfilled, a sale is almost guaranteed!

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.

——————————
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

Below I’m giving you web’s most best seller Domain Names

Business.com
$8 million
The details: Bought by the Californian-based eCompanies. They plan to develop the site as a business-to-business service. .

AsSeenOnTv.com
$5.1 million
The details: Bought for an extortionate sum and now the place to buy all your As Seen o­n TV products.

Altavista.com
$3.3 million
The details: Bought by Compaq for its search engine Altavista. It meant you no longer had to type in the cumbersome URL www.digital.com/altavista.

Wine.com
$2.9 million
The details: Not o­nly did VirtualVineyard.com acquire the domain name wine.com back in September 1999 but it also bought a live site. However it’s the URL that VirtualVineyards really wanted, the VirtualVineyard’s content was immediately swapped over to the Wine.com domain.

Autos.com
$2.2 million
The details: The sale of this domain was conducted by Hit Domains (www.hitdomains.com). The URL was bought by CarsDirect.com, the number o­ne car buying site o­n the web. Autos.com is now the front door for the company’s various auto services.

Express.com
$1.8 million
The details: Now home to the o­nline audio and video retailer DVD Express.

Wallstreet.com
$1m
The details: This domain was sold in April 1999 by Ehud Gavron, who runs an ISP business in Arizona. o­nline casino Players Sportsbooks and Casino bought Wallstreet.com and they run a stockmarket gambling service o­n the site. Players Sportsbooks and Casino are based o­n a tiny island in Venezuela – presumably for tax reasons.

Rock.com
$1m
The details: Yes, you’ve guessed it, this site is now devoted to all matters rock music related.

Websites.com
$970,000
The details: This desirable domain was auctioned off by Great Domains (www.greatdomains.com) and now is home to Verio, a company that provides Internet and web hosting services to businesses.

Drugs.com
$830,000
The details: Drugs.com was bought from Eric MacIver in May 1999. MacIver had originally planned to set up a pharmaceutical distribution site at Drugs.com. Internet start-up incubator Venture Frogs bought the domain and is now running a drugs and pharmacy portal from there.

If you go to ebay or any other o­nline auctions sites you’ll find that 100’s of domain names are listed for auctions. There are marketers who are fully engaged in buying and selling domain names. For some peoples it’s passion, for others it’s a business. Many peoples play with domain names like stock market; they make money… they too loose…

After-all this is business Man!

When negotiating to sell your domain name, it’s best to get a sense for how it will be used and how committed the buyer is to that particular name. For example, Compaq anxiously sought to replace “altavista.digital.com,” the domain name for the popular search engine that they had acquired. They approached a small Oregon company that owned the domain name “altavista.com.” After much negotiating, Compaq finally paid US$3.35Million to the small Oregon company for the “altavista.com” domain name (reported by the SF Chronicle, July 1998).

On the other hand, if a smaller company was in the process of choosing a new product name and was searching the web to see if the corresponding domain name had already been taken, they might rather change the name of the product before paying too much to acquire the domain name.

In order to give you the best negotiating room, you might simply choose “open” as your asking price. If you find that you’re getting too many low offers, then we can easily update your catalog entry to include a minimum price.

—————————————–

Quality Web Solutions.
-: Fast and Secure UNIX Servers and Windows NT Servers o­n a World Class Network :-
- Profitable since 1995 and still growing -
Visit us today — http://www.cyberwebglobal.com

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.

Direct Web Navigation is when a visitor locates a site by typing the domain directly into the browser or from a using a bookmark.

According to websidestory.com, in 2/2001 48.14% of sites were found through direct navigation and the other 51.85% through search engines and weblinks.

As of 2/2003 that percentage has risen to 64.43% and o­nly 35.55% were found through search engines and links.

This study however does not diminish the importance of search engines and links for initially finding a website.

But it does give evidence that a domain and site that a visitor is able to remember will be returned to directly in the future.

Note I said ‘able to remember’ and not ‘worth remembering.’ Sure your site should be of such value that it is worth remembering, but if you don’t have that solid brandable domain that sticks in the brain like glue than it won’t matter.

How many times have you wanted to return to a cool site, but couldn’t remember the domain to get their? Of course you could search for it at a search engine, but this takes more time and effort. The more steps you put in front of your prospects, the less likely your site is to be found.

This is why domain branding is so important. For a very low investment any o­nline business has the power to intensely leverage their marketing.

Think about it. Your Domain name is the most important marketing tool you have. Your domain is the first thing your audience sees and your first chance to generate a response from a consumer. Do they visit or move o­n? This decision is hugely impacted by the effectiveness of your domain.

The entire basis of marketing is getting someone’s attention and your domain must do just that. It becomes extremely powerful to use a brandable domain name to leverage your marketing to the maximum.

Put simply a quality, short, memorable domain will always lead to an increase in sales.

Nobody knows this better that large corporations who have spend millions o­n solid brandable domain names. In o­ne famous example venture capitalists in California paid $7.5 million to acquire Business.com. Even forsalebyowner.com fetched $835,000.

A little off topic but still interesting, is Ex-marine Darryl Pollock who registered the domain IraqiFreedom.com and has received offers into the thousands (Note: He has been qouted saying that if he were contacted by the pentagon he would ‘completely cooperate with them.’)

Crazy isn’t? But big business knows that these domains are worth because that domain will bring in sales for years and years to come. They can build it, promote it, brand it and it will work for them forever. Even two word, hyphenated domains are grabbing some pretty prices, checkout these recent Afternic and Ebay sales:

Internetbank.com $92,800
E-Privacy.com $35,080
eloans.net $6,060
Ez-HomeLoans.com $4,725
venture-capital.net $14,510
officetravel.com $2,625
qalaxycafe.com $1,890

When you are marketing your site, business, product, service, you must be seen, heard and remembered by your audience. Consumers are bombarded with messages all day every where they travel. You must stand out and the most cost effective way to do this is logical domain branding.

So what domains are memorable and what makes a domain brandable?

Find out and see examples in Part 2 of our special domainbranding articles series.

Get Part 2 now, by sending a blank email to
mailto:10336@QuickPayPro.com?subject=63

I am confident that the market for domain names will move back into a growth phase in the next two or three years time, its true that the dot com boom was a “bubble”, but we are now seeing a maturing in the market with more businesses recognising the value of the web as an additional sales channel.

Domain names sales have been weighted towards the North American and European markets, but I predict that sales of domains outside this market will be the driver in the longer term, particularly as Eastern Europe and the far eastern markets recover. India and China are certain to grow strongly in the not too distant future.

The introduction of the new .eu the domain name for the European Union will also be very interesting, as this is likely to give the European domain market a boost.

Domain name registration services such as our own, offering both good value and helpful service will benefit the most. Customers don’t want to over pay for their domain name , they are however prepared to pay for support and recognise that a reasonable fee means the registrar is likely to be around in 5 years time.

Selling domain names and web hosting is rewarding, particularly when your helping the smaller business customer who are often less familiar with the process.

If your looking for help and advice – get in touch. We would be delighted to help you add your domain to the following table!

The following shows the number of .com registered growth against time

July 15, 2003 23,633,877
June 15, 2003 23,354,574
May 15, 2003 23,071,842
April 15 -2003 22,832,760
March 16 – 2003 22,626,562
February 17, 2003 22,452,747
January 12, 2003 22,147,502
December 15, 2002 21,991,795
November 17, 2002 21,773,883
October 13, 2002 21,524,698
September 15, 2002 21,358,016
August 11, 2003 21,273,992
July 15, 2002 21,270,830
June 16, 2002 21,243,232
May 12, 2002 21,382,537
April 14, 2002 21,581,810
March 17, 2002 22,284,362
February 17, 2002 22,299,727
January 13, 2002 22,746,754
December 11, 2001 23,198,677
November 12, 2001 23,171,002
October 4, 2001 23,291,654
September 24, 2001 23,280,339
July, 14, 2001 22,845,079
June 12, 2001 22,702,074
June 6, 2001 22,670,915
May 31, 2001 22,624,608
May 24, 2001 22,606,495
May 16, 2001 22,496,480
May 9, 2001 22,470,923
May 2, 2001 22,475,976
April 25, 2001 22,409,745
April 18, 2001 22,366,367
March 29, 2001 22,186,938
March 22, 2001 22,160,178
March 15, 2001 22,123,487
March 7, 2001 22,045,648
February 23, 2001 21,915,624
February 15, 2001 21,756,189
February 8, 2001 21,592,167
February 1, 2001 21,439,059
January 30, 2001 21,387,603
January 18, 2001 21,185,015
January 9, 2001 21,023,720
December 22, 2000 20,652,200
December 12, 2000 20,401,837
November 27, 2000 20,033,920
July 2000 14,680,275
January 2000 8,006,100
July 1999 5,748,100
January 1999 3,425,625
July 1998 1,879,501

Earlier data is combined .com..org ,.net and .edu

January 1998 2,292,000
July 1997 1,301,000
January 1997 828,000
July 1996 488,000
January 1996 240,000
July 1995 120,000
January 1995 71,000
July 1994 46,000
January 1994 30,000
July 1993 26,000
January 1993 21,000
July 1992 16,000

Data Source: Zooknic (http://www.zooknic.com/)

If you need help with your domain name purchase, give us a call or click our link in the following resource box

Guess what? All domain registrars are not the same.

Okay, let’s back up a minute. Way back when the internet was young (maybe 5 years ago) all domain names were handled by Network Solutions, Inc. In those dark, evil days you had no choice. It didn’t matter what you thought of the process, it was unimportant that you were not getting service and the price, well, was a standard high fee.

A few years ago the government decided that Network Solutions would no longer be a monopoly. The government wanted to do this to deregulate the industry and encourage competition, and also perhaps to spur a little bit of growth into this thing called the internet.

Okay, so now you do have a choice. In fact, there are well over a hundred different domain registrars at last count. They seem to be springing up all over the place, and the level of support and service, as well as the price, seems to vary greatly.

You may not know it, but you can change domain registrars at any time. It’s actually not very complicated at all.

Here are some of the questions that you may have regarding domain transfers.

How much does it cost?

It depends upon the domain registrar. I have found that many will transfer your domain for no cost to get your business. Others will charge a few dollars ($5 to $20 or more), but will drop the fee if you extend your domain for a couple of years. Shop around and find a good deal.

What are the advantages of transferring?

You may not like the domain registrar you are currently using – perhaps they have poor support or cost too much. You can shop around and find the best solution for your needs.

Remember, though, that if you are like most people, domain registration is something you will not do very often, so perhaps customer support is not all that important.

What are the disadvantages?

Transferring a domain can be confusing. Also, there is no guarantee that the new registrar will be any better than the old o­ne. Again, remember that domain registration is not something that you should need to deal with very often (if you are like most people) so it may not be worth the effort to change.

Can any domain be transferred?

Yes, any domain registered with any registrar may be transferred to any other registrar.

What does a registrar do?

The registrar manages your domain name. They maintain security and the structures that make the domain work.

Does changing registrars have any effect o­n ownership?

No. When you change registrars you are o­nly changing managers. You still retain ownership.

Are there reasons why a domain may not be transferred?

Yes. Some of these are listed below.

- The domain name is in a legal dispute of some kind.
- The identity of the domain name holder is in dispute or unknown.
- The domain name holder is in bankruptcy.
- The domain has o­nly been with the registrar for 60 days.
- The registrar refuses to transfer for other reasons.

How is a domain transferred?

This varies from registrar to registrar. Some require a notarized form to be delivered to them, others can do it using a web site form.

How long does the process take?

The registrar will usually take five to ten days to review and validate the request. o­nce it has been validated and put into action, it will take a couple of days for the change to filter through the internet.

Will the web site associated with the domain be accessible during the change?

Yes. This normally does not effect access to your web site. The registrar is changed, not the web site address and other information.