Domain Names Info

Finding A Domain Name

One of the more common things you will do as an Internet marketer is to look for domain names to register. Finding domain names is not so much as tough a task as deciding on what kind of domain name you're looking for. In this article, we're going to briefly touch on each topic as you really can't have one without the other. Hopefully, you will find these few tips helpful.

Finding a domain name is actually the easy part. There are a multitude of places on line where you can search to see if a domain is available. One of the most popular is whois.com. The site is very simple, though at times I find it painfully slow to load. Maybe that's because of its incredible popularity. Its current Alexa rank is 7,991. That's not too shabby for a site where all you're doing is looking up domain names to see if they're available.

The one thing you have to be careful of when searching for domain names, and this applies not only to whois.com but to any site where you look up domain names, is that the way their search features are configured, you MUST leave out the www and the com from the search. So, for example, if you are looking up to see if www.mynewsite.com is registered or available, you would only type in mynewsite. Some services only allow you to look up com domains while others will have drop down boxes that allow you to choose com, net, org or whatever. This will vary from site to site.

If the domain name is available, you'll get a message saying that it is. If it isn't, then you'll get a message stating this and asking you if you want to do a lookup to see who owns the domain. If this is a domain that you really want, you can contact the person and see if they are willing to sell. Some domain lookup sites, such as GoDaddy, will give you the option of paying a fee to reserve this domain should it become available in the future. They even have a service where they will actively try to purchase the domain for you. The fees vary but most are in the $10 to $20 range.

As I said, finding a domain name is not hard. The hard part is thinking of one that is going to catch people's attention. There are two ways to go about this. One is the keyword method, where you look for a domain name that is keyword rich for the niche that you're targeting. So let's say that you want to put up a site for people who are looking to stop smoking. You might come up with www.stopsmoking.com, which I am quite sure is probably taken considering how keyword rich it is. The other method of choosing a domain name is to go with branding, such as what sites like Yahoo and Google do. Their names have nothing to do with what they are, but everybody knows them. Branding is tougher to pull off because you really nee a catchy name and do a lot of marketing.

Finding a domain name is really not hard. Finding a good one, now THAT is the challenge.

Premium Domain Names

Everybody is talking about getting their hands on a premium domain name like they were talking about buying a Cadillac at a used car lot. Makes me wonder if they even have a clue what a premium domain name even was. And then I got to thinking. What is it that makes a domain name a premium domain name? Certainly it can't have much to do with the name itself. I've seen some stupid domain names that are considered premium domain names. So, I did a little digging. Actually, I did a lot of digging. For those of you who are really curious as to what determines if a domain name is a premium name or not, this article should provide some interested answers.

Okay, first let me give you the "technical" definition of what a premium domain name is and then I'll explain to you what this really means in the cold cruel world that we live in. A premium domain name is one that has already been registered and is now up for sale, usually in an auction to the highest bidder. Sounds pretty simple, wouldn't you say? But the reality of trying to get one of these gold mines is a different story altogether.

The first order of business is to explain how a domain name gets to be a premium domain name to begin with. Well, that's actually pretty simple. Somebody buys a domain, puts a site up on it, builds traffic, gets a high PR and search engine ranking and then decides that they're going to sell it and make a killing. How much of a killing depends on several factors.

The first factor is how much work they've put into the domain. If it's a very popular site, that's going to greatly affect the value of the domain itself. Some people make a living at this by simply creating killer sites and selling them at auction. They figure that it's less work than having to maintain the site forever.

The second factor is who the person is putting the domain up for auction. If somebody like the Rich Jerk puts up a domain name, like he did once on Ebay that sold for $500,000, you can bet your eye tooth that the domain is going to sell for a pretty penny, assuming that he lets the cat out of the bag that it's his domain. Some people would rather fly under the radar.

The last factor is how much in demand that domain name is going to be. If you're selling a domain name with a keyword or keyword phrase that isn't searched for much, you're not going to get much for it. But if you've got a name like income.com, which John Reese just bought for $1 million, well, then you're going to make a pretty penny off of the sale.

If you're planning on buying or selling a premium domain name, do your research. Find out what it's really going to be worth to you if you're buying it and then find out what you can realistically get for it if you're selling it. Both things will depend on lots of keyword and market research.

Premium domain names don't always sell at a premium.

Tips On Transferring Domain Names

When you initially get your brand new domain name, it gets temporarily placed on the server where you bought the domain name from, whether it be GoDaddy, Valueweb, or whoever. In some cases, you're pretty content with keeping the domain name right where it is and set up hosting for your account, in which case no transferring is needed. But if you're like most people, and if you're smart, you'll want to have your domain hosted by somebody other than the person you got the domain from. In this article, in addition to explaining how to transfer your domain name to a new hosting service, we're also going to give you some reasons why you may want to do this.

Having your domain hosted by the same company you got it from can just be plain dangerous. Take a hosting company and domain registrar like GoDaddy. GoDaddy is very strict when it comes to spam and spam complaints. It doesn't matter whether you're at fault or not. If they get enough complaints they'll suspend your hosting quicker than you can shake a stick at it. Now, if you were hosting the domain with another company, GoDaddy would have no say in the matter. But, in hosting and registering with them, not only will you get your hosting canceled on you, but you'll also lose the domain itself. With another company, all you have to worry about is losing your hosting, which you can always get from another company. This is probably the main reason why you don't want to host your domain with the same person who you bought it from.

So since we don't want to risk having out domain confiscated from us, we want to immediately transfer the domain name to the hosting company we plan on doing business with. Now, depending on who you got your domain from, this procedure will vary, as I quickly found out. One procedure is very easy and the other is, quite honestly, a royal pain in the backside.

The easier procedure is when you buy the domain from a registration service that gives you access to a domain account and control panel. Somewhere in the control panel, you will see an option for setting the DNS setting for the domain itself. After you purchase the domain this setting will be the company where you bought it from. What you need to do is simply contact the hosting company you plan to use, find out what the DNS settings will be for their server and replace the existing one with the new one. This will usually take about 24 to 48 hours to propagate. Sometimes it happens a lot faster. The last domain I got propagated in less than 4 hours. I was transferring from GoDaddy to my current web hosting account. GoDaddy does work very fast. I'll give them that much.

The not so easy procedure is when you have a registration service like Valueweb. They make you call them up with the new DNS settings. There is no control panel to access. They say it's because some people don't do it right and they want to avoid problems. Trust me, it's an easy process and the last thing you want to do is deal with these people on the phone. Register your domain with a service that allows you to change the DNS settings yourself.

For the most part, transferring a domain name is a simple procedure and you shouldn't have too much trouble unless you copy down the DNS settings incorrectly, which, according to Valueweb, seems to be a rather commonplace occurance.

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