Register Your Domain Name - What Name? Not Sure? No Need To Rush

There are many places you can search for a domain name. But choosing the right domain name is the real task. If you can include your best keyword, the one you build your Home Page around, and explain your business at the same time, you are way ahead of the game.

Some web site building companies suggest you register your name first, choose your template, and then start to build. But build what? It is important to well understand your site direction and content before you register your domain name. Spend time on brain storming your web site ideas, and choosing relevant and optimum keywords and you can use this information to find a name that suits your business well, but also helps you gain a better place in the search engine listings. If you have several words, like Ecommerce Site Builder, think about using hyphens to make it more readable, ex; ecommerce-site-builder.com.

Building traffic from the search engines is one of the most important components of site construction and design. Many would say THE most important. Having a domain name that includes a core component of your main site keyword helps the search engines clarify your site. You might also consider registering similar names and re-directing them to your site. An example might be e-commerce-site-builder.com. This just means that people finding your secondary names will be automatically directed to the main site. This covers a few more bases and protects you from other business' registering similar names to poach your customers. Maybe you could register some for those that mis-spell or make a typo as well. Often, your web site domain name registration is included in your ecommerce web site hosting fee. In any case, the cost is minimal.

Another reason not to rush ahead with excitement before you do your research is it can take up to six weeks to move your domain name. If you register your name with the first solution you find, and then do your site research which may also include a template design and a hosting solution, you may end up with a long wait before you can go online. Best to take it easy and do things in a logical order. Already registered with company ABC? No problem, but have your domain name transferred as soon as you decide on your web site hosting service. They will be able to do this for you, but it can often take some time. Don't forget until the last moment. It can be a major frustration!

Be sure to register your domain names as soon as you have decided on the best solutions though. You may be disheartened if you go back to register a name you were pondering, and find it registered two days later. It does happen! Who knows who is watching your searches? This is a nasty practice that is "not supposed to happen", and something difficult to prove if it does. Best to be decisive and happy.

Looking for Top Domain Names?

Looking for Top Domain Names?

Domain names of course is the obvious for any internet business, without a domain name you will not have a website. Now if you are new to the internet business world (welcome to a great business). But be aware there is alot to learn about your new endevour.

If you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://www.dlbllc.com. The folks at Dillard Local Branding helped us attain Top 10 status on search engines for several of our sites.

So when picking a domain name be sure to pick a domain name that is easy to remember and describes your business.

A typein domain is a domain that people often would type into their internet browser. As competition on the Internet intensifies, more and more people are actively looking for a quality domain for their site. You can find these names at http://www.TopDomainsAvailable.com

Once you make your first purchase, you'll most likely find yourself registering other names as well. Becareful it can become addicting. Remember a domain is only worth what you can get someone to pay for it. Some people think there name has more value than it does. The dot com's are the domains of choice.

Website Hosting – Understanding Domains

When you are looking for website hosting, you often consider domain names last. Your website domain name is perhaps on of the most important aspects of your entire website. You could have the flashiest, most professional design on the entire internet, however, without the right domain name all of that will be pointless.

Your domain name is your website’s calling card. It is the first thing seen when a person visits your site, it can even be a deciding factor as to rather or not the person will even visit. That is right; a person will decide rather to visit your website or not, based on the website address (domain name).

When you go to obtain website hosting, you will need to choose a domain name for your website. This can be done through your host, which is likely to offer you a discount on the domain, such as a percentage off of the price or even a free domain when you choose them for your website hosting needs. The most ideal domain would be your business name. However, for many reasons that might not be a possibility.

One reason might be that the domain is already taken, you might choices with different extensions such as .net, .us, .org, or other such extensions, but you need to remember that people usually remember .com, so you should strive for that. Another reason might be the length of your business name, such as Joe’s Bar, Grill, and Dance club. Now, you can have a lengthy domain if you really want it like "joesbargrilldanceclub", but look at that, would you remember it?

The key point in a domain is to make it easy to remember and catchy. Think about your business, consider the business name and what you offer. You want the name of your website to stay in their thoughts and easy to remember. With the Joe’s Bar, Grill, and Dance Club, you might consider "joes", "jbgd", or something to that effect.

When you do choose a few names, look at each one and determine rather you, yourself, would be able to remember it. Would that name stick in your mind? Would it tell you exactly what the business has to offer?

Manage Domain Names - Skills You Need to Maintain a Domain Portfolio

Whether you own one, two or one hundred domain names, you need the ability to manage the domain names in your portfolio. Here is a list of skills you need, starting with the most basic and ending with the more advanced.

* Evaluating good domains names. There is skill involved in selecting quality domain names. Knowing key characteristics can make a large difference in the way your domains can later be marketed and sold. Beginners looking to make money buying and selling domain names often make their biggest mistakes right here.
* Finding good domain name registrars - This comes down to more than price. Reputation, service and ease of use all play a part.
* Registering domain names - the simplest of all the skills, chances are you have accomplished this at least once already. The process of registering new domain names is the most common way to add domains to your portfolio.
* Changing DNS Servers - whether you want to park your domain name or develop a website, you will have to learn how to change the DNS settings of the domain. If you can copy and paste, than this is a no-brainer.

* Locking/Unlocking - domain names can be stolen. Learning how to lock a domain name through your domain name registrar is important. Unlocking is just as important when it comes time to transfer that domain.
* Private registration - learning how private registration can protect you is essential. We live in an age of spam and identity theft. Seriously consider this option.
* Transferring domain names - domain name registrars are like any other business, if they fail to serve you well it is time to transfer your domains to another registrar. Depending on the registrar this can get a little tricky.
* Domain Parking - setting up a domain to display a standard web page without having to purchase web hosting is essential. This can be taken to the next level as well: monetization.
* Buying and selling domains - probably the most advanced domain name skill. This can be tricky and comes only with time and experience.

Domain Name Registration History

What is a domain name? A domain name is a unique name, kind of like an e-mail address is unique, which is registered in a database called WHOIS through an organization called Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI). The domain name corresponds to a unique set of numbers called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. The reason we use domain names instead of IP addresses is that they are closer to our language. It would be difficult to market a site like this: "Go to 64.233.167.99 or 216.109.112.135 to search the internet!" A much easier way to do this is to say "Go to www.Google.com or www.yahoo.com to search the internet!" (Both Google and Yahoo are trade marked by Google, Inc., and Yahoo, Inc., respectively).

A domain name points to a computer called a "name server". The name server knows that your domain name corresponds to your web hosting server’s IP address and it routes the person who typed in your domain name to your web hosting server - to your web site. That is how people anywhere in the world can see your web site by typing your domain name.

In 1992, the National Science Foundation granted an exclusive contract to NSI to be the sole registrar of top level domain names. NSI also had a cooperative agreement with United States Department of Commerce ("DoC"). With no competition, consumers were at the mercy of NSI.

In 1998, NSI and the DoC amended their cooperative agreement to allow for competing registrars. NSI was forced to provide domain name registration to the competing registrars at wholesale prices, rather than the standard $34.99 annual fee. NSI still charges $34.99 per year.

In late 1998, the DoC assigned the responsibility of overseeing the transition to a competitive market for domain names and accreditation of new registrars to a new organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

In 1999, ICANN began taking applications from companies who wanted to become registrars - and then capitalism took over: companies had to compete for business. Prices came down and service improved, however some are better than others. For a more detailed history of this transition, visit www.icann.org/registrars/accreditation-history.htm.

Even with the positive effects of competition in the domain name marketplace, the process of internet domain name registration remains a mystery for many.

There are a lot of companies that want to charge you hundreds of dollars to do the simple task of domain name registration for you. There are some registration companies who will charge you $35 just to register a domain. And there are web site consultants who charge over $100 to do the work for you. But you can do it yourself in about 15 minutes and it can cost as little as $1.99 for a year. If you do some research, learn a little and work smart, you can save yourself some money - and some headaches.
About the author:
Nicholas LaPolla has been working in the computer industry as a consultant and full time employee of various IT departments since 1987.

Nick started building web based applications, web sites and database back ends in 1996. He is a strong consumer advocate and enjoys helping people learn how to work with their computers and the Internet. He also enjoys helping people, friends, family and strangers alike, find the resources and the help they need when they get into a bind. Nick currently works full time for a national radio ministry as a web applications programmer.

Cool Domain Names: How Much Cool Is Too Much

Your best friend calls to tell you about a really cool domain name she thought of for a website.

Your first question should be: so what?

While that question may damper your friend's enthusiasm and potentially hurt your friendship, you would not be a friend if you didn't ask that question. Cool ideas need substance and a cool domain name all by itself doesn't mean much. While a domain name might be "cool", consider you need to accomplish one of two tasks in order for that domain to create value.

First, is it a domain name other would want? Is there a market for it? If the answer is no, then you need to develop the site (which is task number two). If the answer is yes, then your friend may have truly been onto something.

Even cool domain names need to meet some criteria of quality:

* length does not exceed 21 characters
* up to four meaningful words in contextt
* no hyphens
* no numbers
* uses generic term

If the domain name passes the quality test, then it very well maybe attractive to the domain name marketplace. There are no guarantees here. Understanding the domain name marketplace takes time and experience. Just because you own a quality domain name does not mean you can garner one hundred thousand dollars for that name.

Second, ideas for cool domain names are associated with an idea for website content. This content could be informational, a game, a service or an application. The bottom line is substance. All domains, whether you want to label them as cool names or lame names, are greatly increased in value when their is substantive content associated with them.

The next question after asking, so what? is to ask whether you are willing to do what it takes to make your cool idea succeed?

It is all well and good to register that cool domain, but it will take courage, patience and skill to make it work.

The Geek.Name Project-Finds Unregistered Domain Names

First off, let me start with the fact that I have been following the domain name market for many years now. It has become one of those hobbies of pure blind entertainment that you don't really know why you got interested in it in the first place.

When I first started following domain names I was looking for unregistered domain names, and to my disappointment, I found that it seemed like all the decent names were already taken. So, after dealing with that initial blow, I found that domains were being auctioned/sold...sounds good? yes, until you realize people trying to sell domains want absorbent amounts of money for even mediocre domain names.

Somewheres around the time I disregarded the idea of buying domains for inflated prices I found that good domains were expiring every day, meaning they could be reclaimed by anyone. This really perked my interest at the time, as this was public information(provided by tld maintainers), and I figured I could snag up something decent without too much hassle.

After finding a domain name I liked I used godaddy.com's backorder service which is roughly $20 a pop, not bad, but the problem is they only have a small number of registrars to try to snatch up a deleted domain and will almost never get a decent name successfully(the credit can be reused if it fails). This is not the case for snapnames.com, pool.com, and enom.com. If it is a decent domain name you can count on it going to one of them after it expires, and that's no good as it goes on auction for a base price of $60 on most of them and general jumps rapidly from there as the bidding frenzy begins, even for moderate domain names.

So, recently, I came full circle and started thinking about unregistered domain names again. I decided to do a google search for "unregistered domain name lists", and what I found wasn't what I was looking for, had lists of domains that were out of date, or annoyed me trying to make money off me.

For example, one of the sites I found was "makewords.com", which is a nice site and has good made up words, but I was after the same kind of domains that were being bid on either on public auction sites or expired domain name sites, mostly core dictionary words in my case.

Then, deeper into my google searching, I found a couple sites that listed the kind of unregistered domain names i was after, yay! ...or not, the sites I found had outdated lists of dictionary-based words that when you go to register them you find they have already been taken. Quite annoying.

Finally, the deepest into my google searching, I found a site that wanted you to pay to have a short list of dictionary-based domains e-mailed to you. Yuck.

After the years of seeing these money-grubbing domain name related sites with pay-fees and/or ads all over the place(which I have done myself, sadly) I decided I would return to making something just for the fun of it, and make a non-pay/ad-free site that did what I could not find. I plan on keeping it this way as long as my hosting plan isn't affected by bandwidth or affected in some other monetary way, which I don't think is likely to be a problem.

So, I began making a domain searching/polling engine to find unregistered domain names that were of the same caliber being picked off on the expiring domain name catchers mentioned before. I decided that I would make a semi-simple algorithm to rate each domain name found, so I could quickly run down an ordered list of high-rated domain names to see if I was interested. I also decided this domain name searching engine would make an ever-evolving list, and only store the domain names found for a short period of time, a few days, so as not be disappointed to find them all registered.

During the final stages of making the engine I noticed it found a domain called "geek.name", and I thought "That's easy to remember and quite applicable to the project i'm making". So, POOF! The website for the project had been set. I soon designed a website to accompany the engine, and here we are.

So, all that's left are the links for the result of the project:

http://geek.name/ - find your unregistered geeky domain name. http://rss.geek.name/ - geek.name's live feed.

Domain Names Explained: Key Terms To Understand About Domain Names

Metropolitan areas are made up of property. Any piece of land typically has an address: 123 Elm Street. The property can also be developed and a house can be built upon the land.

On the Internet, websites are like the houses and buildings. Domain names are the addresses to those structures.

While it does get a little more complicated than the above illustration, it is helpful to think of the Internet in those terms.

Key terms you should know:

Internet - The collective whole of networked computers across the globe. This includes the World Wide Web, email, FTP and other protocols.

World Wide Web - a portion of the Internet where most websites reside. It is graphically capable and is supported by such languages as HTML and CSS.

URL - Universal/Uniform Resource locator - this is the complete unique address of a website on the World Wide Web. It is made up of three components: the protocol, the host type and the host name. HTTP:// is the protocol. WWW is the host type. example.com is the host name (domain name). Put them together to get: http://www.example.com

HTTP - Hypertext transfer protocol. The protocol of the World Wide Web.

Top Level Domains - the suffix on the end of the domain name proper: .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, etc.

Second level domains - the name portion of a domain. In example.com, .com is the top level domain and "example" is the second level domain.

Subdomains - These could be called third level domain names. They are attached as prefixes to the second level domain. In news.example.com, "news" is the subdomain.

Domain Name - The registered domain name with the attached protocol: www.example.com

Registered Domain Name - the second level and top level domain put together: example.com

ccTLD - country code Top Level Domain Names Examples: .us, .de, .es

Domain Registrar - a company that registers domain names for individual users.

DNS - Domain Name System - The system by which domain names are translated into IP Addresses.

IP Address - a number representing the "address" of a network or a computer.

ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This organization manages the DNS.

3 Ways to Make Money with Your Domain Name

Probably, you have heard about making money online. Also, you have seen lots of different programs and systems that help you earn cash on the Internet. It could be selling stuffs, being an affiliate, running a website, etc. Now, there is another surprising concept: making money with your own domain names. But, is it really true?

Shortly, I have to say that it is possible to earn a living with domain names. Today, there are lots of people starting their own businesses based on this kind of opportunity. But, first of all, you will need to know how it works.

Basically, there are 3 different ways to make money with your own domain names:

1. Buying domain names at low prices, then selling them higher:

Believe it or not, one of the most important secrets of a powerful and popular website is having a good domain name. Thus, many website owners are looking for such domain names and willing to pay a lot in order to own them. Suppose, you had registered that domain name earlier, so you are the person who sets the price and win the deal. That´s it. You have purchased the domain name at a very low price and have sold it many times higher. But the secret is that how you could get those good domain names. Actually, several years ago, it was not difficult to register a good domain name. But, today, it has become harder and harder. Yet, there is one promising solution: buying expired domain names. Everyday, thousands of domain names are being expired due to forgetting the payment of annual fees. After a while, the expired domain names will be deleted and then be available for everybody who wants to purchase it. Among those expired domain names, you can find some valuable, well-established and attractive domain names.

There are some sources on the net where you can find the needed information about expired domain names. On the other hand, you can find some sources to put your domain names for selling. At those auction places, you will see how the customers are bidding and competing in order to grab your domain name. Doing this business properly with working carefully can bring you a lot of profits.

2. Selling advertisements on your parked domain names:

Another way in this approach is to put advertisements on your parked domain name. You register a domain name, then park it on a specific marketplace. Besides, most of them allow you to choose some keywords related to the topic of your domain name. Afterwards, you can see the related advertisements on your parked domain name as sponsored links. These ads are often based on pay per click action and you will get paid whenever someone clicks on the ads. This way is a good idea, even if you intend to sell your domain name later. In fact, the earnings depend on the amount of your visitors. So, it would not be a huge amount of money. However, it could help you earn extra money with your own domain name.

3. Redirecting your domain name to a specific page:

The third method is actually an accessory way. For example, you are an affiliate, a person who sells the others´products or services. In most cases, you, as an affiliate, have a web page like the seller´s, but the difference is your URL address, that is to say your domain name. It is too long and full of various numbers and letters. Sometimes, it would be difficult to market or advertise a page with the URL address like that. Thus, you may need a better web address. So, it is time to register a related domain name and redirect it to your affiliate page. It means, whenever someone types your domain name in the address bar, the page will automatically be forwarded to the affiliate web page. In this way, you send traffic to that web page and if a sale is made, you will make money. So, it could be another way to make money with your registered domain name.

The above mentioned methods are the main ways that help you make money with your own domain names. But, naturally, it is business and there is always risk with any businesses and don´t forget that the whole process of making money depends mostly on your ambitions, individual capacities, expertise, business experiences and desires.

How Important Is Your Domain Name?

Domain names are definitely very important for website marketing and the promotion of your business. There are countless unknown junk websites, hosted by free web hosting services or Internet Service Providers, without their own domain names, which are just there but not doing any great business. And there are many well-known websites, commercially successful, whose very domain names rake in tons of money. It is likely that a few of the former variety are doing some profitable marketing, but the chances of successful marketing by those with their own domain names get multiplied. For some reason, over the years, people have developed a prejudice against websites that have not got their own domain names. Most of these cannot win any customers. With a professional look, which accompanies companies with own domain names, business naturally prospers.

To appreciate better how important domain names are for promoting business on the web, let us understand what domain names actually do rather than what they actually are. Every computer connected to the Internet is allotted a unique number, rather a unique string of numbers, called the Internet Protocol (IP) address, for its website identification. This number is not based on the geographical location of the computer, for one thing. For another, it is dependent on the web hosting companies that provide their service to the computer concerned. That is the number is changeable, not fixed forever. Unlike the IP addresses, domain names are easy on the mind and, once registered, remain unchanged. Domain names of prosperous companies have become Internet household names. If your website is successful, the popularity of your domain name grows, which in turn drives your business better.

Structure of a domain name

A domain name has at least two parts in its structure. Take hp.com as an example. The suffix (.com ) is known as the top level domain and the prefix (hp) the subordinate level domain. Top level domains indicate the areas of interest or activity of the websites registered under them. For instance, .edu is for websites related to education and .gov to government agencies and so on. So when you think of a domain name for your business, you will typically want it to be under a .com because it is the easiest to remember. However, with the incredible number of domain names out there, .biz, .tv, .us among others, have been introduced as new top level domains. What is most important is your choice of the subordinate level domain for your domain name.

Here comes the role the keywords play in your choice. If you know that search engines locate your website more easily when your domain name is keyword-related than otherwise, you will chose a domain name that earns your website a high page rank. Your business will thus succeed better if your domain name is more search engine friendly.

Make your domain name short, simple and sweet for making at once memorable and easily visible to search engines. Do not use spaces and symbols. They are not allowed. Only letters, numbers and dashes are permitted in domain names. Also, always remember to renew your domain name registration before the it expires.