Domain names are the first step in implementing your Internet marketing business plan. Domain name represents your brand. Many people know very well the importance of brand in the offline but even those can make mistakes in their Internet brand management. Domain name is the first step in successful Internet brand management.
Choosing a domain name
It is not easy to register a good domain name (especially dot com), these days. According to domain name statistics on the most popular web site for whois searches Whois Source there are more than 57 million active generic top level domains registered as of September, 2005. Majority of these domain names are .com names. You can view this statistics if you visit http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/
It is sure that you cant register a classy one-word domain name but with a little knowledge and appropriate services you can find a decent one, especially if you are not interested only in .com names. Useful site for finding decent domains is above mentioned Whois Source - http://www.whois.sc There you will find a free service that will give you 20 domain suggestions based on your keyword. Also, on the Internet you can find software that focus on domain names. Using free software Domain Name Analyzer you can make a list of domain names and this software will check availability of all included domains so you wont have to check one-by-one which is time-consuming. Also this program will give you useful suggestions.
Another useful thing in find decent domain names is using expired domain name or back-ordering services. Using the first service you will get the list of expired domain names where you can find some really nice names with a little luck. However, it is not easy because many people use those services and some companies have special infrastructure that check availability of certain domain names every second and register them. You will have better chance to get your desired domain using back-ordering services. These services will monitor for domains you want to register and once they expire they will make register them on your behalf. Popular services are SnapNames.com and Pool.com.
It is recommended that your domain name be short, catchy, brandable and most important easy to remember! You can register a domain name that has no obvious connections with your business but that is cool. Then you will have to invest more money in branding. With good domain name you will save thousand and thousand dollars in advertising, especially in TV advertising. If you are an email marketer domains are also very important because getting email subscribers without well designed web site is not recommended. It is recommended that the name of your domain be the same like your email newsletter name. You can make teaser articles in your email newsletter so that your readers will have to visit your web site in order to read complete articles and vice-versa. You can put teaser articles on your web site and require that people subscribe to your email newsletter to read complete articles.
Also, in order to find out popularity of certain keyword combinations you can use keyword suggestion services. We can recommend you these services:
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
You can use Google, enter your keyword combination and see how much results you will get.
If you are in process of registering a domain name we can suggest you these two great companies:
Go Daddy http://www.godaddy.com
Namecheap http://www.namecheap.com
Internet brand management
We will take our company Infacta, Ltd. as an example. Infacta is Ireland-based company so it is logical that we registered www.infacta.ie. However, although we are Ireland-based company we focus globally. This can prove the fact that we have clients in more than 130 countries world-wide. So, it is also logical that we have a domain name in .com extension, too. Dot com domain name is considered as a global domain name for companies. Many people think that it is enough to have 2 domain names. For successful Internet brand management it is not enough. Beside, .ie and .com domains, Infacta owns domains in all major generic top level domain extensions (gtld) like .net, .org and .info. This is to prevent people or companies to use other Infacta name in other extensions that can confuse our customers and make harm to our brand. Beside that, we registered domain names for our products GroupMail and GroupMetrics in different domain extensions. Other famous companies have literally hundred and even thousand domains in their portfolio for each country where they have a presence and for their services. That is called a professional brand management.
There is also one more thing that can show how serious one company is regarding their domain names and Internet presence, in general. That is domain expiration date. Domain names expire. After that (preferably before that) date domain owners have to renew them. When you make whois inquiry about certain domain name, for example at www.whois.sc , beside registrant info you will see an expiration date. Imagine that you want to see an expiration date of your email marketing software company and you see that the expiration date is the next year or even this year. This doesnt sound promising if you want a reliable business partner that will be in the business in the next 10 years, too, that you can count on. It is not only important because of whois searches and credibility, it is important because of search engines. Google gives better placement for companies that have domains registered for longer period. It is a sure indicator that it is a stable business and that they wont go anywhere. Infacta domain name www.infacta.com expires in 2011.
There are some services that can help you in Internet brand management, to monitor that someone else is not using your trademarked names. One of those companies that offer brand monitoring services is NameProtect, Inc. at http://www.nameprotect.com Also, it is highly recommended that before you register your domain name to visit http://www.uspto.gov to check if your name that you want to register has been trademarked to avoid possible problem and law suits later. USPTO is official web site of the United States Government for patents and trademarks. Here you can also register your patent, trademark or service mark.
If your companys name has a good, generic name and you want to register a domain, it is most likely that the .com domain will be taken. Sometimes, it is good choice to buy it from the actual owner. Also, you can buy domain names that are highly connected with your products and services and that will help you in Internet marketing.
The most popular web sites for buying/selling domain names are:
Sedo - http://www.sedo.com
Great Domains - http://www.greatdomains.com
Afternic - http://www.afternic.com
Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit:
Domain name investing is the only game in which you have absolute control over the fate of your investment on a global market.
Many amateur domain name investors are scrambling into the market, hoping to make a high gain from offering just a few domain names for sale on the auctions. This of course is how most of us began, but in the end you will either sink or swim. To become a major domain name player you must first learn the art of buying, selling is considered unpopular among top domain name investors.
So what does it take to make it to the top Well, first of all it takes guts, and second it takes a vision. Some major domain name players simply wish to conquer a certain market by buying off thousands of domains which will put them in control of demand, and demand controls the price. Slowly feeding these domains back on the market they are almost guaranteed a golden nugget. What do they do with the rest of the thousands of domain names Just park them and watch the revenue roll in by serving Pay-Per-Click advertisements to the millions of visitors the domains generate each month. An example of such brutal market sweep happened on Monday, Feb. 23 2004 when Thunayan K. AL-Ghanim, widely known as Elequa, owner of one of the worlds largest domain portfolios (containing about 35,000 domains), closed out the last three-letter .info domains. Just 48 hours later he came back and wiped out the entire remaining stock of three-letter .biz domains in one day (approx. 4,600 domains). If you feel like this is your style, several hundred domains will get you into the door, but you will need several thousand to have a seat at the table.
Other domain name players take on a very different game. They treat each domain name as a precious jewel and need only a handful of top-notch domains in their vault to fulfill their appetite. Their goal is to develop each domain into a money-generating cow from scratch. This approach requires just a couple domains that could cost anywhere from just a few thousand dollars up to anywhere close to the million bench-mark (depending on how huge the vision is). Chris Chena, a whiz kid from Paraguay took on this strategy after failing a few times in domain name investments. He went after the finest Spanish domains such as Juegos.com (games in Spanish) and Viajes.com (travel). After successfully developing them, he maintains gold streams of hundreds of thousands dollars in monthly revenues which more than paid for themselves a few times over.
So, lesson learned from the big guns. Become skilled at sustaining a revenue stream from your domain name investments. And when you are ready to grow up, mass register hundreds or even thousands domains, or buy off a few exclusive broad-market domains. Make a goal, and enjoy the game.
For more information on domain name investment visit