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Sunday, February 18, 2007

A Guide to Sell Your Domain Name Quickly

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A Guide to Sell Your Domain Name Quickly


Everyday I read this question on different forums how I sell my domain quickly? To me earning huge income from domain and selling it quickly are two different things, and you have to select one. Many newbie register a domain in the hope that next day someone will purchase it in two million dollars, which is obviously nonsense. If you are not successful in domain business, forget everything you know about domain trading and start a fresh in a scientific way. Now I explain the whole thing step by step.

Domain Acquisition

Always try to backorder an expired domain instead of registering a new one. Expired domains are already listed on search engines and most have some traffic so you can sell them on high price. If you have registered a new domain the maximum sale price of this domain will be 60$.

Never ask too much for your domain

If you want to sell your domain on an auction never ask too much in the beginning. Your customer will feel very freaky when (s)he will see the price tag of 10000$ for a domain which has a no traffic. But there are some exceptions to this rule specially if your domain is already receiving 100,000 hits a month then ball is in your court you can demand anything for it. Domains with low or now traffic as I said shouldnt ask too much in the beginning.

Sell domain and website together

In domain name industry supply is far much then demand. Selling website with domain add a good value to your domain. If someone want to start a forum first of all he will purchase domain ,hosting and setting up forum application. But if you are giving everything in a single price there is highly possibility of your domain sale.

Sell Domain as a package

Sometimes including different kinds of goodies with domain works really well. Few days before I sold a domain name flirtme.net. I included my reseller package with it which contain ebooks, scripts and software and sold whole stuff in 50$ within a week of domain registration.

Words are most important

If you are going to register a domain, make sure you have proper combination of words. For example, I registered a domain learnwinvista.com two days before everyone can easily remember it but if I use words such 456vis.com or vistre34.com I am sure it took me many months to sell this kind of domains. So domains which can be remembered easily has great chances of sell quickly

Payment Mechanism

You should ask to your client which payment he wants to use. Try to avoid Paypal because it is not universal. Many people loss sales because of Paypal. Storm pay and Ikobo are good alternatives. Another way is to use your own credit card processing facility such as worldpay. But the best solution is to use sedo.com. List your domain on sedo.com its totally free they will receive payment and transfer it to your bank account. But your minimum sale price should be 60$ mans you cant sell your domain less than 60$. Besides selling domain with sedo will give your customer the piece of mind that there are no chances of fraud.

Ehsen Siraj is the founder of Blex Technologies, a recently established company engaged in online business. If you want to sell/buy websites or domain names please visit Blextech.net

Related Links:

Get Your Own Domain Name Or Die Online

Domain Names More Choices than You Think

Domain Name Secrets Revealed

42 Killer Domain Secrets Exposed!

Domain Name Resources

Domain Name Articles

42 Killer Domain Secrets Exposed!


The Basic Stuff

Every website needs a domain name. Example "WebBootCamp.com" is a domain name. Your domain is your website address, a.k.a. URL (universal resource locator). Should you use your company name for your domain? Maybe, maybe not. Is it memorable? Easy to spell? Does it contain keywords that relate to your business? For more considerations on choosing a domain, I've put together the following checklist.

Pick a memorable name. How catchy is it? Would the average person be able to remember just your website name, without looking through their bookmarks (if they have even bothered to bookmark it, that is)?

Make it easy to spell! Face it, most people can't spell. Try to target for the masses when you pick your name. Think of everyone having a 7th grade education.

Make it short, try for a two or three word domain. When possible, name your company the same as your domain name. Whether you actually add .com to your company's name makes little difference.

Use keywords in your domain. Try services like http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html, and wordtracker.com to see what people are searching for, in BIG NUMBERS, related to your subject.

Don't use numbers or hyphens. These are easily overlooked or forgotten when people type in your domain. Unless you're using a stand out combination like 911alert or 123homerepair, don't go numeric. If you use hyphens, then every time you tell someone your domain, you have to say "it's blah-blah-blah.com - with the hyphens". This is not impressive, and you risk losing traffic to blahblahblah.com. You're asking your potential customers to work harder, to remember tedious details about your name. Simplicity is important, because you want them to find you. You're building a brand here.

Don't buy any other extension except a ".com" This is the best branded domain extension, highly known and trusted. Any other extension is practically worthless, in my book. In addition to being first in the minds of the public, remember also that most people trying to find a company will put a com after that company's name in their browser. It's second nature to most of us. A .org can bring attention for non profits, but even most of those companies will try to purchase a .com as well.

Avoid running names together that end in a vowel and begin in a vowel. EXAMPLE: freeebook.com Also try to avoid having the second word start with the same letter as the last letter of the last word. These combinations can look weird, and are often likely to be misread or simply forgotten. By avoiding these two combinations, along with numbers and hyphens, we make sure our words (and our brand) will stand out.

EXAMPLE: WebmasterNow.com

Good For Starting Sentences, Not Domains

Avoid starting your name with THE, or A, if being used as the word A. EXAMPLE asimplehome.com - "a" is likely to be forgotten. While it is true that directory listings usually list alphabetically, search engines do not.

If you can come up with a catchy name starting with "a", by all means, do so. You may find yourself first in the yellow page listings. Have a look there first, and see what the competition looks like. What are their names, how do they rank?

Now, here's where it gets interesting. You'll see that names starting with numbers get displayed first (for non paid listings). So the big question becomes, is yours the type of product or service that will do well from yellow page traffic? You must carefully weigh this against overall branding of your company.

You could of course, have more than one domain, and more than one brand for your company, but be careful about promoting the same sites with different names to the same search engines. You could find yourself banned from those search engines altogether.

Brand New?

Don't pick your name as your domain name, unless you're famous. Names aren't keywords (won't help your search engine rankings), and usually easily forgotten. Unless you've built a big brand around your name already, stick to a good key phrase! It is much easier to brand.

Who's who, and is my name taken?

To search available domains, and to find out who owns registered ones, use the whois function at http://www.internic.net. If you come across a registered domain, it will show you where it was registered. The next step to detecting the identity of the actual owner, is to visit the registrar (this is where the domain was registered) site listed, and use their whois search. This should provide you with name, address, phone number and email of the rightful owner. Unfortunately, this information is not always available, but it is most of the time.

A Common Myth Equals Missed Opportunities

All the great domains are taken. Hogwash! The dirty little secret is, thousands of great domains expire every day! Here's a handy resource for finding great expired and expiring domains - http://deleteddomains.com - I've found some real gems here, like webbootcamp.com, webmastertoolset.com, customoilpainting.com and customoilpaintings.com - all formerly owned and let go, just to name a few.

When applicable, do try to get the singular and plural versions of your domain like we just saw with customoilpainting(s). When one could be easily be mistaken for the other, it helps to be covered this way. You're also protecting your brand.

Another expiring domain service to check out is snapcheck.com. They have some interesting statistics for expiring domains, such as google page rank and yahoo and dmoz listed domains. Bear in mind that any "perceived value" on a domain put there by a search engine listing or page rank is inherently fleeting. That's because the content that was responsible for that listing is now gone, and it is simply a matter of time before the search engine's spiders crawl the site again, and re-evaluate it's content. In other words, the search engine ranking is very likely going to disappear soon, unless you quickly repopulate the site with compelling content, worthy of the rank the original site had.

Roads To Nowhere, No Stops Ahead

One tasty bonus that accompanies a popular site is link popularity. This is how many other websites link to the domain in question. Think of a link as a road into your website. Quite often, webmasters do not update their links when the site they're linking to changes or disappears altogether. So if you find an expired (or soon to be expired) domain with high link popularity (many links to the domain), it may well stay that way for some time to come.

Case in point: special-report-network.net was once a very successful ad network run by online marketing guru Allen Says. For reasons unknown, he shut down the site and let the domain expire. The domain had over 14,000 links pointing to it! The weird part is, it still does! Want proof? Go to alltheweb.com and search for "link:http://www.special-report-network.net", without the quotation marks. This will show all the sites linking to it. The domain got snatched up by Ultimate Search, a hong kong company that registers thousands of domains, and makes money from paid search results. The site has nothing to do with the original ad network site that Allen built and made successful, yet the links remain, and links equal traffic.

Bear in mind not all links are created equal. Link farms (A.K.A. FFA or "free for all" links pages), and seldom visited by real people. Instead, automated programs add people's URLs when they submit to a mass submission service, hoping to generate big traffic. Instead, all they get is a bunch of spam, which they've agreed to receive, in order for using the service.

How can I snag that expiring hottie?

When you find a name that is pending deletion (the owner hasn't renewed it), the next step is to try to secure it, the moment it becomes available. Strangely, domains do not fall back into the pool of availability the day they expire. It can take up to 60 days or more in some cases for them to "drop", and the times are not announced. Thankfully, there are automated services to perform this task for us, such as Namewinner.com, Snapnames.com, Expirefish.com, and Pool.com. Prices vary, and none can guarantee success.

Namewinner lets users bid against each other for expiring domains and only the winner pays, while Snapnames and Expirefish are first come, first served, meaning only one user has a shot at grabbing a particular domain. Snapnames also has the most registrar partners, (including Network Solutions), which may give them an edge for securing expiring domains that are currently registered with their partners. They also have the highest price tag, and you pay whether or not they secure your name. Pool.com is a newcomer that seems to rival the services of Snapnames, with better prices.

One more method you might try, is going directly to the current owner. Let's say your desired dropping domain is already "back ordered" on Snapnames.com, and Expirefish.com. Now you can still bid for it at Namewinner.com, and Pool.com, but you feel the odds are against you. If you're really hot on the name, and willing to pay a premium, you may be able to bypass the solutions above, simply by cutting a deal with the current owner.

This can be a bit risky however, because once the owner realizes your interest, they may decide to ask for a unreasonable sum of money, or simply see value in the domain again (generated from your interest), and renew it as an investment. Assuming you can make a deal, you may want to suggest using escrow.com, which eliminates the possibility of fraud for both of you. The owner will need to renew the domain before they can transfer it to you.

The Website Graveyard - Visit Those Spooky Remains!

Once you've found a deleted or soon to be deleted domain you fancy, you might want to take a trip into the past, to see what that site used to be! Now bear in mind most domains that are registered are never developed, so there may be nothing at all to see. But for those domains with a tangible history, we can often peek at their ghost, courtesy of the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org.

One Owner, Driven Only On Sundays

Another way to check the history of a domain, is simply to search for it. Try searching google, and groups.google.com, to see what people may have said about the site. You may think twice about purchasing a domain with a sketchy history.

Speculators Beware!

Don't go overboard and buy every known extension for your brand - (.net, .org, .biz, .info, etc.). Big corporations like google can afford to buy all the country domains. When you're starting out, remember, domain fees are yearly, and you need to consider the lifelong cost of each domain. For most people, one domain is just fine.

You may think snatching up good domains and reselling them would be a lucrative business. The problem is, finding a buyer is not easy. In fact, that's an understatement.

Don't register domains containing trademarks. You will likely here from that company's legal department if you do, and will be forced to relinquish the name by The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), or a lawsuit, or both.

Who's in charge?

Icann (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees the domain registration business. Their URL is http://www.icann.org. If you ever have trouble with your registrar, it may be worth reporting to Icann.

Case in point: A client of mine tried to switch his domain to another registrar (at my suggestion), to get added free features (free URL forwarding), and save money. His current registrar denied the transfer, and tried to charge him a fee for leaving! Once we threatened to take up the matter with Icann, and publicly expose them at Icann's forum (http://forum.icann.org/regxfer), they immediately backed down, and released the domain.

If you believe someone has registered a domain that infringes on your trademark (or has infringed on your intellectual property), the authority to see is The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), at http://wipo.org

Brand Awareness

Capitalize each word of your domain in your sig files and letterhead, and anywhere else you advertise your domain. It helps your brand stand out.

EXAMPLE: http://www.WebBootCamp.com looks better than http://www.webbootcamp.com

Also, only add in http://www. when you're creating links back to your site (i.e., email, websites, and online forms). In all your offline advertising, such as signs, business cards and letterhead, you should definitely skip http://www. and just use "YourDomain.com". You only have a second or two of people's attention when they see your URL, so make it count. Brand that name! Just make sure your web host has your site set up to show without WWW. Most sites are correctly set up to display when a person types in "YourDomain.com", or "www.YourDomain.com" but a handful, maybe 10% or so will show page not found, if you skip "www". That could be devastating, so check with your host, and demand that your site come up either way!

Ready To Buy Your .com?

Don't overpay! I'm still surprised that many people don't know they can buy domains for under $10 these days. Shop around. Currently I recommend http://www.TOSDomains.net. They offer a lot of extras like URL and email forwarding, free.

Keep Your Registration Current!

Don't let your domain expire! You cannot afford to be even a day late in payment. If it falls into the redemption period, you may find yourself high jacked by your registrar for an outrageous renewal fee. See this illuminating article for more about the redemption period - "Domain Redemption Period Farce Exposed!" here: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1034. If your expired domain falls back into the available pool, it may be registered by anyone, and you may have little recourse trying to recover it.

The easiest way to ensure you are sent renewal notices for your domain is to keep your email contact current for your domain. Perhaps the most common reason for people losing their domains, is simply that they switch ISPs, and subsequently, their email address changes, and they forget to update that information with their domain registrar.

If you own a lot of domains, keeping up with administration can be tedious. One trick I rely on, is to use one domain for my primary business email address, and on that registration "admin" contact, I use my ISP email. For all my other domain registrations, I use my primary business email address (based on my primary domain, which I will never let go). Now, if I should switch ISPs, all I need to concern myself with is changing that one domain record, to reflect my new ISP email. All my other domain records have that primary domain email as the admin contact, so as long as I keep the one record current (and keep the email account active), all will be current, and all domain renewal notices will be sent to me.

In the end, it's not so much about the name, as it is what you make of it. Just look at all the big successful internet companies out there with strange names! Yahoo!

To learn how to set up your domain to point to your hosting account, I recommend the reading materials in Web Boot Camp, an all inclusive "how to" guide for web business. Get web savvy today! http://www.WebBootCamp.com/r.cgi?main

Copyright 2004 Jim Symonds

About The Author

Jim Symonds publishes Web Secrets Exposed! Eye popping, and jaw dropping, sneaky little web design tricks & web marketing secrets revealed. How did they do that? We show you! Subscribe Now FR*E! Just Go To: http://www.WebSecretsExposed.com

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8 Tips for Choosing a Domain Name


If you're just starting out on the Internet, choosing a domain name is one of the first major decisions you will have to make. I won't say that choosing a name for your site will determine the overall success or failure of your online business. It will, however, affect almost every aspect of your business. Finding a good domain name requires extensive planning.

I would like to offer some tips for successfully choosing a domain name:

1) Use the .COM extension. This is still the number one choice for the majority of online businesses. While, .NET,.ORG,.INFO,.BIZ, and .US are viable alternatives they are not as widely recognized as .COM. The .COM extension will immediately give you and your business more credibility. Also, because we are creatures of habit many people automatically include .COM when typing in almost any web address, so why not capitalize on human nature?

2) Keep it Short. Whenever possible your domain name should not be longer than 13-15 characters, numbers, or hyphens. It is much more difficult for the average person to remember longer variations of a web address.

3) Make it Sticky. You want your domain name to be easy to remember. Make it stick out in people's minds. Be creative. Be Unique.

4) Minimize Confusion. You should never lose a prospective customer because they misspelled your domain name, or they used the wrong extension. If you can afford it, register other variations of your domain name and have them redirect to your main site.

5) Include Keywords in Your Domain Name. Try to include at least 1 and if possible 2 keywords in your domain name. Many of the experts believe this can help with the way some of the search engines index and rank your site.

6) Be Descriptive. Your domain name should have something to do with your business. Make it descriptive of your site, your product offerings, or your service.

7) Search for Deleted Domain Names. Domain names that were once registered but have expired turn up every day. With some research you might be able to find one of these names that would be a good fit for your business. You can search for deleted domains at http://www.deleteddomains.com

8) Check for Trademarks. You should do this before registering your domain name. Search as many existing trademarks as possible and look for possible conflicts. Obviously you want to choose a name that is unlikely to cause you any legal problems. Trademark research can be done at the following sites:

U.S Patent and Trademark Office - http://www.uspto.gov

Thomas Register - http://www.thomasregister.com

The Trademark Association - http://www.inta.org

Nameprotect - http://www.nameprotect.com

If you need help with researching your domain names try the following websites:

1)Nameboy - http://www.nameboy.com

2) GoDaddy - http://www.godaddy.com

Both Nameboy and GoDaddy are well-known registrars and will allow you to search for and register domain names.

You can register a domain name today for less than it costs for a nice lunch. There is really no reason not to put forth the effort and money to register a domain name that you can begin building your online presence with.

Your domain name is your first chance to build credibility with your visitors. Keep in mind that you never get a second chance to make a great first impression.

Remember, choosing your domain name is one of the most important first steps you will take in building your online presence. Make it a step forward. Happy Hunting!

About The Author

David Cooper is the editor of the 1Source-WebMarketing Newsletter. David specializes in helping people with their internet marketing efforts by offering real world tips and strategies. Subscribe to his FREE newsletter at: http://www.1source-webmarketing.com

dave@1source-webmarketing.com

Related Links:

Get Your Own Domain Name Or Die Online

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5 Tips For the Perfect Domain Name


What is a domain name? A domain name is the location of your website on the Internet. Your domain name will be what you become known by online so it's important to get it right.

Each website on the Internet is labeled with something called an IP address which is the actual address of the website online. A typical IP address looks like this: 159.134.27.64. Remembering a string of numbers like that is difficult so a domain name translates all those numbers into something like amazon.com. This is far easier to remember.

#1 Dot what?

Each domain has what's called an extension. The most well known of these extensions is .com. This, however, is not the only type of domain extension available. There is also:

.net

If you can't find your preferred .com domain name you could always choose the same domain with a .net extension. It might not have the same ring as a .com but is still as just useful as a .com.

.org

These domain extensions were orginally designed for educational and more formal websites. Anybody can register a .org however so you have more options for domain selection.

.info

A more recent introduction to the domain name game are .info domains. Many of the valuable .info domains were bought up overnight but there's still a huge range of good .info domains available. With a little creativity you could really make a .info work for you e.g. www.moviereview.info.

Bear in mind that most web surfers tend to remember .com more easily than anything else.

#2 Branding vs Business Name

There is an age old debate on the whether or not you should establish a brand name online or use a domain that more actually reflects your real business. Let's look at Amazon as an example. Amazon sells books online. Most people setting up a business would have chosen say www.booksonline.com instead of amazon.com Amazon has since established itself as a brand name of global recognition - proving the value of building a brand name.

You'll need to choose between the two. Brand name or your own business name. Consider how your domain sounds, how it might look on a business card and how well it relates to your business.

There's no one right answer to this question. You need to choose what makes most sense for you, your website and your business in general.

#3 Hyphenated or not

This is another area of debate. Should your domain be one single word or should the words be separated by hyphens? There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Single word domain names can be easier to explain, use on header paper and lend themselves to brand names very well.

Single word domains are in very, very short supply.

Hyphenated domains names can be slighltly more difficult to explain, may not look as well on headed paper and possibly harder to establish as a brand name. There's no shortage of multiple word domains.

The single biggest advantage a hyphenated domain has is that search engines can "read" the domain more easily. For example in a domain like foreignholidaysonline.com the search engine can only read the first word "foreign" and that's it. It can't tell anything else about the website domain name.

If you hyphenated that to foreign-holidays-online.com the search engine can read "foreign", "holidays" and "online" as separate words and therefore knows that this website is about foreign holidays.

A well chosen hyphenated domain name can be just as effective as a single word domain name.

#4 Your Domain Registrar

These are the people you pay to register the domain for you. There are dozens if not hundreds of these companies out there so which one do you choose? This takes some research but things worth checking are:

* Do you retain sole ownership of the domain or do the registrar keep some level of control over it?

* Search Google for any horror stories relating to the registrar

* Does the registrar allow you to transfer the domain to another registrar?

* Is there an online control panel for domain administration?

* How easy is it to change the domain Name Servers?

Shop around for domain registrars. What you really want to find is a previously satisfied customer to ask questions before you buy.

#5 Cheap Domain Names

You can save a lot of money on the domain names you purchase. A typical .com domain costs about $15 to register from most registrars. However you can get the same domain for as little as $7.95 from other, very reliable, companies.

Oddly enough some of the cheaper domain registrars are more reliable, have fewer horror stories and offer equally good customer service as their more expensive competitors.

Are there any disadvantages in using a discount domain registrar? Will it affect your website in any way? The answer to both is a definite No.

This article was provided courtesy of Domain Tutor where you'll find tons of information on how to register a domain name

Related Links:

What is Domain Name Backordering?

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