Domain Names For Sale

A unique name that identifies one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name design501.com represents one IP address. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular web pages. Every web site that you visit is stored under domain name.

Domains are much more than just names typed into a web browser. Your domain name is how the world will think of you and your business. It's part of your brand and your marketing plan. You can have multiple domains that each relate to some aspect of your business. A domain can be easy to remember and help establish you on the web.

Some domains are often referred to as: aftermarket domains, secondary market domains, high-value domains, great domains, or top domains. These domains have all been previously registered, often because they are popular words or are thought to have great potential for becoming a memorable web address.

Premium Domains have stronger branding potential, are easier to remember, and attract more traffic than most domains available through standard domain registration. You are more likely to succeed with your website if you buy a Premium Domain. The most valuable domains have extension .COM !

Premium Domain names have more marketing potential than others. Many already receive significant traffic. Your business can reap the benefits from the domain's established presence and attract customers. The first step in establishing a successful and profitable website is to own a domain that is memorable, directly related to your business, and attractive to your target audience.

Acquiring a domain name is an important first step in building a successful online business. Below are the most popular reasons why individuals and businesses own domain names.

• Improve Your Marketing and Visibility. The right domain name allows customers an easy way to remember and find you. It's your location on the web. It's also your email address.
• Build Credibility. Using your domain for your website and to personalize your email helps establish credibility and professionalism. For instance, an email address such as admin@ticketsboom.com is more professional than adm127@freeemail.com.
• Protect Your Brand. Purchase the domain name that best represents your business. Domains are valuable online real estate. Secure the right name and keep it out of the hands of your competitors. You may also find many attractive domains for your business. Securing more than one helps protect your brand and increase your reach. You can easily direct as many domains as you want to a single website.
• Acquire More Traffic. Some domains already receive traffic. This traffic principally comes from direct type-in or referral traffic. Direct type-in is when an internet user types the domain directly into browser, such as OlympicGamesNow.Com. Referral traffic typically comes from links on other websites.
• Investment. Similar to real estate, domain names are investments. Domain values increase daily. You yourself can make your domain name more valuable by building and marketing your website.

There are hundreds of thousands of domains to choose from. Below are the most important things to keep in mind when searching for the right domains.

• Relevance. Make sure there is a clear connection between your domain name and your website or business. Domains that are too generic make this difficult. For example: PetsToys.com is better than PetsWeb.net.
• Easy to Remember. Find domain names that are catchy, short, and easy to spell and say. Pronounce the domain three times aloud. Does it sound natural? Imagine yourself telling a potential customer about your website. Is it easy to convey and remember?
• Evaluate Keyword Searches. If your domain name is an exact match of a search keyword, your website will likely appear near the top of those results. This can help your site get valuable traffic. Consider the most popular and relevant keyword searches for your business and see if they are available as domain names.
• Pay Attention to the Extension. The extension .COM is the most popular. Other well-known extensions deliver much less value .net, .org, .biz, and .info. You must consider your competition and whether you want to buy all the extensions for your domain name.
• Find Similar Domains. You may find a number of attractive domains for your business. You should consider protecting your brand and increasing your reach by securing multiple names. There could be multiple opportunities to get search engine traffic. You can easily forward one URL to another domain, which means that you can create one website that many domains point to.

With the hundreds of marketing messages that we are exposed to every day you need to ensure that you stand out from the crowd.

A generic domain name, apart from vastly improving your search engine rankings, represents a superb branding opportunity and could save you a fortune in marketing expenditure.

Companies waste millions advertising domain names that people never remember. Think back to when you last heard a great radio ad, but can't remember the phone number, website, or even the name of the company. Clearly a memorable domain name would dramatically increase response rates to any form of off-line advertising.

A good domain name should be:

• Descriptive
• Memorable
• Generic

Example of how powerful generic domain names combined with good website design and search engine marketing would be BroadwayPlaces.Com or TicketsLister.Com. These domain names are very descriptive, memorable, and search engine friendly!

Picking a Good Domain Name for Search Engines

Search engines have gotten much smarter over the years, but they are still fairly limited when it comes to finding information in a domain name. However, there are certain techniques you can use to improve a search engine's ability to parse useful information out of your domain name.

Use Keywords In Your Domain Name

Using keywords in your domain name is a great first step when it comes to search engine optimization in general. For example, say you run an ecommerce web site that sells used books about web design. When people use a search engine to find your web site, they will be using keywords such as "used books" and "web design". These are the keywords you want in your domain name. The following domain names include the keywords you're looking for:

Picking a Good Domain Name for People

When you're trying to pick a good domain name for people, the trick is finding a domain name that is memorable. Most of the simplest, easiest to remember domain names - like single words and 4-letter acronyms - have already been taken, so you will need to be a bit creative to find a domain name that people will remember.

Use a Short Domain Name

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Most of the time, the shorter the domain name is, the easier it is to remember. This isn't always the case, but it's a good principle to work by. Lets use the used web design book store example here again.

Some easily memorable names might be:

A domain name that is effective with search engines and is also easy to remember is the best route to take. This of course requires the most creativity and experimentation, but is the best technique to use in the long term.

A proper understanding of what makes a domain name valuable is essential not only for marketing your domain names to potential buyers (like Bill Gates), but also for adeptly choosing which domains to register, lest you end up with a domain portfolio only a mother could love.

If you're a stodgy Old-Skool Domainer who's been around since the fabled days of dot-com glory, you may already be familiar with concepts such as ease of retention, commerce potential, length, extension value, and avoidance of hyphens.

In today's domain market, the critical concepts are traffic, brandability, and search engine compatibility. Let's look at each of these in more depth:

1) Traffic: On the Internet, more traffic is better. And it's expensive these days: Yahoo and other directories charge $299 just for listing, banner ads are all but ignored, and for some keywords the price of a single click from a paid search listing exceeds $10! Thus, the targeted traffic that your domain receives may well be the single greatest driver of value. This is especially true for descriptive generic domains that attract browser type-ins, and (to a lesser extent) for expired domains that used to be developed websites. A handy formula for estimating the value of your traffic is:

Traffic = # visitors x click-through rate x per-click bid amt. Value (eg. traffic quality) for relevant keyword

2) Brandability: Do you remember when we all thought the leading online bookstore would be called Books.com, the #1 computer seller Computers.com, and the leading online pet store Pets.com? Do you buy your food from Grocery Store(TM), fill up at Gas Station(TM), and then have lunch at Fast Food Restaurant(TM)? Thanks to advances in mass brain-washing, most of us think of brand names when we need to have these needs met. The Internet will increasingly follow the real world, and brand names supercede generic domains in importance.

However, the good news for domain investors is that there will always be new brand names being created, and these new brands will need an Internet presence. If you have a knack for coming up with catchy, succinct, and evocative names, you may hit upon "Centrino", "Froogle", or "The Clapper" before the big boys do. Just don't be too greedy with your asking price: a brandable domain only takes on its value after somebody has burned a few million promoting it. Until that point, the company will opt for another name rather than pay an extortionist price for the .com.

3) Search Engine Compatibility The art of Search Engine Optimization has gone from being a chapter in Web Design books to a multi-million dollar industry. One of the tools of the trade is a keyword rich domain name, which often takes the form "Keyword-rich-domain-name.com".

Does this really help? The jury is still out, but try a few searches for yourself, and you will notice that many of the top results contain the keywords as part of the domain names. I have a theory for why this works: It's no secret that Google looks at the text of incoming links to help determine what a site is really about. The theory is that people will give their links descriptive text. But in reality most people link using the domain name. So if your domain name is "domain-name-appraisals.com", you will benefit from being described with those keywords each time someone links to you.

Growing numbers of small investors are pocketing thousands of pounds by website flipping, the cyberspace equivalent of buying a run-down property, giving it a paint job and selling it on for a profit. But how easy is it to earn cash from trading website addresses?

Certain sites are easier to remember than others, making them more valuable. As the popularity of the internet has grown, the value of these addresses has risen, in turn creating a global market.

You can buy in two ways. Sites such as 123-reg.com or UKreg.com list addresses available to buyers. However, the most popular names have already been sold and are traded on marketplaces such as Sedo.co.uk and Marketplace.Sitesearch.com. These work in the same way as auction websites that put sellers in touch with buyers.

Some investors spend time looking for addresses that are undervalued or not being used by the current owners, so they can sell them on for much more. Two years ago Mark Richards, who runs websiteflipping.co.uk, noticed that no one had registered the .com and .co.uk addresses for “latelicence” and “latelicense”. He bought the domains for £20 and sold all four as a package one month later for £6,000. Other sites that Mr Richards bought for a small fee and hopes to make a profit on include ecoshop.co.uk and Journal.co.uk.

Once you buy a website, you can hold on to it for a period of time and pay another company to fill it with advertising. This is known as domain parking. A website such as London.co.uk is a parked domain. It holds nothing but links to other sites. The owner of London.co.uk receives a small fee whenever a visitor clicks on one of the links.

However, as search engines have become more sophisticated, these sites have featured lower on the lists of results presented to internet users.

David Kesmodel, author of The Domain Game, says: “Google and Yahoo! began detecting websites that were parked and ranking them far lower down the list of results. Advertisers also became weary of featuring on the websites, which users found annoying.”

Until recently, domain parking was the most popular way for professional internet investors to make money from a website with minimum effort. However, website flipping is now growing in popularity.

This involves buying a domain name and working on improving the content of the website to attract more traffic and increase the value, which can rise by tens of thousands of pounds. Mr Richards suggests researching the terms that internet users type in to search engines. “Look at the market you are buying in to and try to spot terms or phrases that are growing in popularity,” he says.

One area to be wary of is cybersquatting - buying addresses similar to or including brand names of large companies. In theory, the companies will then buy the addresses for a high price. In practice, however, the courts often decide that the addresses should be transferred at no cost.

Peter Savage, of Devon, has been buying and selling domain names for two years. His best return was www.fastpizzapizza.com. He registered the address for $20 after watching the success of Pizza.com, which sold in April for a record $2.6 million. A month later he sold his address on Sedo.co.uk, the website marketplace, for $5,600, earning him £3,122.

The 49-year-old says: “I couldn't believe that someone was willing to pay that much for a website name I had thought up in two seconds.”

Mr Savage invested the money in a further 80 addresses, including conservatories.net, which went to auction this week with a reserve price of £9,950, twice what he paid for it. Mr Savage owns more than 600 websites in total. Some of these are parked with Sedo.co.uk, others carry Google advertising and generate a small profit.

“To be successful, you need a lot of patience,” he says. “But if your timing is right, the profit margins are far higher than in the real world.”