by: Edwin John

A good domain name is, and will always be, essential for any online business. If you ask me, the internet is still only just evolving from infancy. It’s a long way to maturity.

Still the world has come a long way since Ken Olson, president & founder of Digital Equipment Corp. etched his name in history, when he proclaimed less than 30 years ago, “There’s no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.”

How technology has changed our lives within a span of a single generation. Sooner rather than later, more and more businesses will want to go online and cater to a global market instead of being content with the local neighborhood. And one of the first steps after deciding what business you want to do, is getting a good domain name for your business.

A domain name can make or break an online venture. A domain name is a company’s identity online. It is your brand, your personality, your trademark. So, choosing the right domain isn’t easy.

BuyDomains.com argues that: “Today .COM and .NET names have established recognition and can identify your company on the Internet forever. For this reason, they have considerable resale value and serve as excellent investments.

Over time, most, if not all companies will conduct a considerable portion of their business over the Internet. A domain name that is easy for your customers and prospective customers to remember is the key factor in generating new business and conducting business on the Internet.

Having relevant “keywords” to support your domain name is also an important consideration and will enable customers to find your online business effortlessly through Web based search engines.

Another excellent marketing tactic you should consider is to have multiple URL addresses (including your domain name) point to the very same Web site. This is very simple …..This will allow you to keep your legacy domain name, while multiple new e-business names conduct commerce and are listed in the search engines, significantly increasing your Web site’s overall traffic.”

A web site is a worldwide advertisement that runs 24/7. For the price of one print ad, or one-tenth of a 30 second commercial, you can have a solid web site designed and running every single minute of every single day. Show a company how a few thousand dollars invested in a domain name & a web site now can translate into 100 years of sales and effective promotion, and they will all be scrambling to get in line.

Most companies, even small ones, will tell you that having a web site is no longer an option. It offers the business owners the opportunity of having potential customers view their products or services day or night, without needing to an outlay of huge sums of money.

But then, many small and medium sized businesses that are already online have poor or difficult sounding domain names. Names that they would readily change in an instant if they had the right domain name. So there will always be people and companies who will be looking at the domain resale market for a better name for their business. This is key.

When Anysoft, a Massachusetts company, acquired any.com for $30,000, their vice-president, Emily Shain, said it was worth the money because the domain name was such a vital marketing tool that would help customers find them easily.

If you are at the right place at the right time with the right name, you could find yourself pocketing some nice cash.

Even governments are getting in on the act. The New Zealand government shelled out NZ$ 1 million for newzealand.com. As a result, there was understandable criticism in the NZ parliament over the purchase as being a waste of tax payers money.

What was the government’s response? Mark Burton, the NZ Tourism Minister had this to say, “There is no question that this domain will provide an invaluable portal for… commercial entry into New Zealand for those interested in tourism, commerce, and industry.

The South African Government offered US$10 million for southafrica.com. It has also been reported that korea.com was sold for US$5 million to True Net, Korea’s largest Internet service provider.”

Author, Tariq Ghafoor writes, “I feel that there’s still reason for optimism in the domain aftermarket but in order to profit there’s a crucial need to alter one’s perception and strategy just like our brethren have been forced to do in other web-based businesses.”

It’s true. The heady days of the domain gold rush has seen its final sunset. We are seeing shifting trends in the arena. To cope with the changes, a domain speculator needs to see himself as a domain entrepreneur and begin to organize his domain names and increase their value and prepare them for prospective buyers.

Copyright Edwin John

About The Author
Edwin John is an author and webdeveloper.
His ebook “How I Sell My Domain Names” ranks #1 on Yahoo, Alta Vista and Clickbank.
http://www.OpenForSale.com

Find out if your domain name is wanted: http://www.DNames.org

Free Domain Name Tools: http://www.DomainName-Search.com

by: Fred Bunzl

One of the most common errors I come across week after week concerns domain transfers. That is when a request is made to transfer a domain name from one registrar to another.

Many domain owners wait until just a few days before their domain expires before requesting transfer, because they mistakenly think the remaining time on their domain name will be lost if they transfer earlier.

The result is that the transfer often fails because the procedure can take a few days to complete. And during that time the domain expires. The ‘losing’ registrar will then refuse the transfer altogether because of the universal rule that expired domains can’t be transferred.

I guess one reason domain owners are badly informed about this is because many registrars consider it’s not in their interests to tell their customers about this. After all, the more failed transfers there are, the more the registrar can rake in for another year’s fees. As a domain reseller, I think that’s a short-sighted attitude because it makes customers only more determined to leave your service as soon as possible!

What you need to remember is this….

When you transfer your domain name, one year’s validity is added to the domain’s EXISTING expiry date. So no time is ever lost when you transfer your domain!

For example if your domain still has 6 months to go before expiry and you transfer it now, it will have 18 months after the transfer completes.

So the moral is …

If you’ve decided to transfer your domain name to another registrar, don’t wait until renewal time comes around. Transfer it now.

The only exception is if you recently registered or renewed your domain name. You will then have to wait for 60 days before requesting a transfer. The reason is that domain registrars have a common rule against this. Many were ripped off in the past by fraudsters who didn’t pay their credit card bills and the registrars then had nothing in hand, neither cash nor the domain name.
About The Author

Copyright © Fred Bunzl – All Rights Reserved. Fred Bunzl has been in the domain name business since 1999 and is partnered with three of the Web’s largest ICANN accredited domain name registrars. For more information about Fred Bunzl’s domain name services, visit http://DomainsNow4U.Com.

by: James Leckie

1) If you are buying a .co.uk domain name (e.g. newbusiness.co.uk), make sure you also buy the other main TLD’s (Top Level Domains) for the same prefix (e.g. newbusiness.com, newbusiness.net). This will ensure that no-one else can come in at a later stage and capitalise on your brand name using another major domain name type. Although there are dozens of TLD types available, we’ve always purchased the .co.uk, .com, .net and .org variants to protect our brands. There’s no harm buying more variants, but do make sure you take care of the important ones.

2) If you do a domain name search and find only the .co.uk is available for your chosen prefix (e.g. newbusiness), it may be worth your while choosing another domain name prefix where most or all of the TLD’s are available. We spent quite some time researching suitable domain names before deciding on Bytestart – dozens in fact.

3) It is possible that your small business may grow into different areas of interest, or even change tack altogether. For this reason, it may be an idea not to make your domain name too specific to one area of your expertise.

4) Keep your domain name as short as possible and simple – it needs to be memorable, and preferably not contain hyphens.

5) A few web promotion firms suggest inserting your major keywords into your domain name wherever possible to help with your search engine rankings. We do not subscribe to this view. Sure, there may be some small benefits in having some keywords in your domain name (e.g. “the-best-web-designers.co.uk”), but your web promotion effort should come later. Your domain name should be chosen to best represent your company’s interests rather than to please the fickle search engines!

6) Allowed characters – Domain names can only contain letters, numbers, and dashes. Spaces and symbols are not allowed. Domain names are not case sensitive.

7) Choose a reputable domain name supplier. A company which has been around a while and is well known is a good bet. We’d also recommend choosing a company which provides a user interface so that you can manually edit your domain name details (email forwarding, transferring your domain name elsewhere).

8) If you intend to buy a sizeable number of domains, try to ‘park’ them with one single domain name company. Domains are far easier to administrate and keep up-to-date if they are in a single place you trust.

9) You should ensure that your domain name is not a commonly known brand name or trademark. Something like “Microsoftwebdesign.co.uk” would not be a good choice!

10) Make sure you keep your contact information up-to-date. Although your domain name supplier is bound to contact you when a domain name comes up for renewal, it is your responsibility in the end. Going back to point 8) again, for this reason, having a single domain name supplier will help.

About The Author
James Leckie is founder of the Small Business Portal – http://www.bytestart.co.uk and runs a weekly newsletter service for start-ups at http://www.business121.co.uk.

by: Joel Christopher Remandaban

For the most part, visualization and mindsetting play such a big role when you are starting up in your Internet marketing business. There are just numerous benefits that arise from having proper visualization and mindsetting with regards to your goals as an internet marketer.

Many a successful Internet mogul started out humbly but with a big vision for themselves that they nurtured to completion. Most had this can-do attitude that does not really think of matter in terms of figures but in terms of problems that each needs to be solved.

The simple exercise of visualization and mindsetting does not cost a dime, but it is priceless especially when you are embarking on new endeavors and daring to take yourself to higher levels.

All you will need to have the visualization and mindsetting work for you is the right resources, a bit of time each day to refresh on your vision and mindsets, and possibly a support system from a group of people who would be able to render you extra boost when you need it most.

Visualization can be done anywhere for as long as one can concentrate in that place. Whether you are young or old, male or female, rich or poor, you have the capacity to visualize yourself, what you want to become, your target market and your goals, among many other things.

Visualization is powerful because it enables you to build faith, look beyond the present and really be optimistic and driven to make your future look exactly as or even better than you have visualized it. In the business of internet marketing, much visualization will be needed as you try to carry out your goals. The Internet can be such a jungle.

There may be days that you will not be able to do as well as you have planned, but if you keep your visions intact, you will keep plugging until you have reached that desired status you have as an internet marketer.

Mindsetting is a very important activity as well. You will find that when you have setbacks, the things you have programmed in your head will either make or break you.

If you think you are capable and that you can surmount any circumstance, or if you have the mindset that the cause you are working in is really worth any level of sacrifice, you will be more likely to outlast those people who are just going about their business for shallow reasons.

On the other hand, if you find your mindset to be weak or lacking in foundation, you may find that minor setbacks in your business will stump you and make you give up.
About The Author

Joel Christopher is a best-selling author, speaker and mentor, known worldwide as The Masterlistbuilder.

To find out more on how you can triple your leads, sales and profits.

Go to http://www.Masterlistbuilder.com

by: Ying Wang

Putting MP3 audio files on the Internet isn’t something new or recently invented, technology, it has been making noise online for quite a number of years, but has never had been quite so popular and talked about as it is in today’s internet market. There is definitely a buzz around it today.

When I first started multimedia design seven years ago, MP3 audio files were already spread around the Internet. MP3’s popularity rose rapidly after Napster released their P2P file sharing network program in 1999.

Because the MP3 file size is much smaller then “MOV”, “WAV” audio format, and has better sound quality, it didn’t take too long for MP3 to become a major digital audio format of Internet.

Today, it continues to dominate the Internet’s audio market, and has remained unchanged as the best choice among digital audio music formats.

Historically, there was a lack of Internet speed and the size of computer hard disks and ROM’s were relatively small and expensive. Especially MP3 files had to be converted from “MOV” or “WAV” file formats and the audio recording, editing hardware and software was very complicated to use, as well as very expensive and only professional studios had deep enough pockets to purchase.

Therefore, it had never been an easy tool for Internet marketers and web developers to use to their advantage. I can still remember the struggles to compress the audio files, and balancing the quality of the sound, to make it 28.8kbps modem compatible.

Very few business websites had web audio in their website, and the ones who did were only there as background music. There wasn’t any marketing purpose or strategy behind it. It was largely designers showing off their “advanced tricks”, trying to impress their employers, essentially an “e-toy” for website designers.

Today, the Internet bandwidth is no longer a major impediment to Internet multimedia data transferring. Technology continues to evolve at lightning speed, computers now have massive capacities and the price of hardware has dramatically dropped, making it possible for web hosting company to provide a large amount of server space for website owners to store and transfer audio and video content, at an enormously low cost.

But the price of audio editing software remained relatively high, with more advanced features, but still posed a barrier to Internet marketers who intended to make audio a part of their Internet marketing.

This presented an opportunity for Internet Marketers and software developers. Together, they have worked out these issues, limiting seldom used advanced features, keeping only the most utilized, and developed a much more simple software for web audio recording.

This new web audio software and related services has been sold and used by Internet marketers and online business owners throughout the past few years and the results are quite convincing.

Some have claimed their sales conversion rate to have increased by 40) just by adding the audio sales litter on their web page. Can this be true? I will discuss this in more depth in another issue, but absolutely, web audio and video added a new “depth”, a new dimension to Internet marketing. It is mainly used for audio newsletters, web audio sales letters, audio testimonials, recorded tele-seminars, raining materials and more.

It is a very simple piece of software. If you know how to talk, and how to click, you can record your message and put it online. No experiences or technical know-how necessary, no special equipment needed, except a microphone connected to your computer.

I still use the advanced Pro version audio/video production software for my complicated projects, but I like to use this small, and feature-focused software for the smaller single task projects, because of the simplicity and the time saving. And the price of the software is so cheep!

For those who don’t have a computer, can’t figure out how to plug in the microphone into their computer, or are too lazy to do so, some marketers have even designed a telephone system for recording audio files for them.

You simply pick up phone, dial their number, record your message on their system, and they will deliver your audio file to your website. But you have to pay a monthly fee for your laziness, and you still have to pick up your phone and dial the number.

Some dedicated web hosting companies, such as the one I use, ThirdSphere, also jumped onto this new trend, including related features in their service package to gain sales. It provides Flash Audio Generator, Flash Video Generator software, and helps web designers to convert their pre-recorded audio and video file to a lightweight FLV file to be put online.

As a new highly effective Internet marketing method, streaming web audio and video will continue to grow in the Internet marketing realm and continue to grasp at Internet marketers and visitors’ attention for a number of yeas, until the day when all sites on Internet have a voice and talk to us.

For more information about how to use streaming web audio as am effective internet marketing method, and how to recording a mp3 audio for website use, please visit:

http://www.webaudiorecording.com
http://www.smartnewbies.com
http://www.webaudiorecording.com/recommends/WebHostForStreaming

About The Author

Ying Wang is a founder of Stimulus Communications a Montreal based marketing company. He is a street-smart about marketing and advertising strategic planning, experienced in the production of both traditional and digital marketing media. Ying was awarded a Masters of Art History and Art Technology from the National University of Kobe, Japan, and was also awarded a professional degree in Multimedia Design from Montreal’s International Academy of Design

by: David Gwee

I recently just pick up a neat trick on how to increase my blog page rank through backlinks with anchor text from high page rank sites for free. How do I do it and why high page rank sites allow this ?

Although I am a newbie blogger but I would like to try this out on my “Internet Network Marketing Blog”(http://www.mlmJedi.com) as anchor text and sees if it works because presently my Internet Network Marketing Page Rank is “0” !

Its pretty easy and simple. First research for blogs of your Niche or Industry.For me will be the Internet Network Marketing MLM niche.Look for those with Page rank 3 and above.Just Leave a comment, not just those spammy short comments like: Good work or well done.

Contribute and write something worthy of passing their comment moderation.The better or longer you write the higher chances of your comment being approved and thus attract their readers attention to your Blog.

Now come the most important part, you need to fill in your name, email, website URL .We all know that our blog URL will Leave a backlink but if I fill up my name as :”Internet Network Marketing Blog” and yes that is my anchor text and Google will know that “Internet Network Marketing Blog” is my anchor text and its important to my Blog URL .Check out Youtube Video in my blogpost where I test this in http://www.JohnChow.com ‘s blogpost title:”The John Chow Effect”‘s comment.

Is this tactic workable ? Come watch Youtube video and comment in my blogpost http://www.mlmjedi.com/seo-blogging/how-to-increase-my-internet-network-marketing-blog-page-rank-with-free-backlinks

“How I increase my Internet Network Marketing Blog Page Rank with Free Back links ?” is brought to you by The MLM Jedi.

May the Force be with You

About The Author

David Gwee author of THE Online MLM Blog : http://www.mlmJedi.com an Online MLM Expert shows you How -INSIDER BLUEPRINT- a 100% Profit Affiliate Program featuring “Pay It Forward” & MLM Funded Proposal Advertising Concept, Can EXPLODE Your MLM Leads Online! Go http://www.WhoisJoeschmo.com NOW!

You may be wondering if you should get a .com, .net, .info, or .whatever kind of domain. So many different kinds of domain extensions to choose from, and so little time. If you are registering a domain name for a for profit business, you should always register a .com domain. From a brand perspective, there is no better domain than a .com domain. Most people associate business domains with the .com extension just like they associate school domains with the .edu extension.

It may not make any difference in the beginning, but the more successful you become the more it could hurt you. Let’s say you develop a new product idea and the .com domain name you want to call it is not available, so you register the .net domain instead. Sounds harmless enough. Now, let’s fast-forward a couple of years. You have spent time and money to develop your brand and people are searching for your product online with the .com extension simply because they expect you to own the domain with the .com extension.

Another reason to shy away from other than .com domain names is that someone may already have copyright protection for the domain name you want to register. Look further if the .com domain you desire is not available. Even if you don’t find the exact domain you initially searched for, you may find one that is better than your original idea.

Whenever the domain you desire is not available through the registrar, you can try purchasing it from the registered owner. Unfortunately, many people register domain names to take advantage of others. The common name for such a person is domain squatter. I only recommend buying domain names from domain squatters if you have money to burn. The more they know you want it, the worse your chances of getting a good deal.

In other situations, someone may have good reason to own your desired domain name. It is unlikely that you’ll be able to buy the domain name from a thriving online business. It is possible that you run across a Web site with the perfect domain name for your business.

About The Author

George Meszaros with Webene http://www.webene.com

by: Daniel Moro

Choosing a good domain name is one of most important steps in setting up your online business, but it’s getting harder and harder to find good names that are still available. You could use a domain name with hyphens, but is that really a good idea?

Let’s quickly review what makes a good domain name. A domain name needs to be relevant, easy to remember, keyword optimized, and free from trademark conflicts. It should also be shorter. Although seven characters or less is ideal, you may have to settle for a domain name that’s a little longer.

So you’ve just set up your new barbecue grills business and now you discover that barbecuegrills.com is already taken. Should you consider hyphenating the domain name to barbecue-grills.com or should you go back to the drawing board?

The first choice should always be to take the name without a hyphen. Having established that, there are some exceptions. Let’s look at hyphenated domain names and when they are might be good to use.

Domains with hyphens can sometimes be a good idea if you really want certain words in your domain name but all the domains without hyphens are already taken.

Another reason to use a hyphen is when the words you plan to use are harder to read without the hyphen. The domain hotellamps.com is harder to read than hotel-lamps.com. That is not necessarily a great domain name but it does serve to illustrate the point that some domains are easier to read with a hyphen.

You might also consider using hyphens for search engine optimization. Some people suggest that using hyphens helps the search engines to distinguish your keywords better. This may be a good option for webmasters whose primary goal is to optimize their sites for traffic from natural search engine rankings. The only catch here is that this could change over time since search engines are constantly adjusting their search algorithms.

Incidentally, if you decide not to use hyphens in your domain name, watch out for any unintended double meanings that might be embarrassing. To illustrate this point a couple of fairly suspicious domain names are therapistfinder.com and molestationnursery.com. In case you are wondering the latter was reportedly the domain for the Mole Station Native Nursery based in New South Wales, Australia, although it seems, fortunately, to have moved.

Whatever reason you have for using a hyphen in your domain name, it would be good to remember one thing. Some people will forget the hyphen when they type your domain name. So whenever you invest in promoting your site, some lucky webmaster who owns the un-hyphenated version of your domain is going to get some free traffic, courtesy of your hard work.

As you can see, there are some situations when using a hyphen in your domain name may be a good decision.

About The Author

Daniel Moro has been successfully building online businesses for ten years. Download your free report on ’10 Remarkably Effective Traffic Building Techniques’ at http://www.DanielMoro.com/domains.htm

Article Written By Mara Miller
Sedo.com Marketing Associate

In this article we’ll explain the tools and techniques domain pros use to determine — or at least reasonably guesstimate — how much traffic a domain receives. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to predict approximately how much money a domain will make, and thus gain a better understanding of the domain’s true value. The educated buyer always comes out ahead, so read on to unlock the mysteries of domain traffic and learn how to determine scientifically if a domain is really worth buying.

We will discuss three methods for evaluating traffic:

1. Trackers/ Direct Methods
2. Predictors/ Indirect Methods
3. Traffic Source

1. Trackers/ Direct Methods

Ideally, you can skip all of the guesswork and find out how much traffic a domain receives directly from the domain owner. The easiest way to do this is simply to ask the seller — Sedo’s negotiation system includes a comment feature to enable you to do just that. However, the seller may make a mistake (or simply be dishonest), so it’s always a good idea to double-check his numbers with one of the methods below.

DEVELOPED WEBSITE
Traffic counting scripts are one of the simplest and most reliable methods for determining traffic to a developed website. Each of the websites listed for sale on Sedo is required to integrate the SedoTracker, a free professional statistics program which can easily be integrated into website code. Key figures from the SedoTracker are automatically displayed on the website’s for sale listing, giving buyers the additional reassurance of a third-party-verified system. Sellers gain even more information, such as top referrers, geographic and chronological breakdown of visitors, and more. Most sellers will provide serious buyers with these important details upon request.

PARKED DOMAINS
If a domain name is parked, Sedo will automatically provide traffic statistics on the domain’s sales listing page. These pages display the unique visitors/ month, based upon the past 32 days. If a domain has not been parked for the full 32 days, the visitor numbers could be inaccurate. It’s also worth noting that visitor numbers can be manipulated by malevolent sellers, but in general the parking visitor stats serve as a very helpful guideline for potential buyers.

2. Predictors/ Indirect Methods

What do you do if a domain is not parked and the seller won’t provide you with stats? Fortunately, there are a few tricks available that may help you get a rough indication of whether or not a domain receives any traffic.

We wouldn’t recommend relying exclusively on any of these tricks as a bulletproof way to guesstimate traffic. However, taken as a whole (and with a hefty spoonful of salt) they can shine a bit of light on the question of whether or not a domain will receive valuable traffic.

ALEXA.COM
This site ranks websites based on the number of visitors they receive — for example, Yahoo,com is ranked #1, MSN trails in the #2 position, and so on. Many high-traffic domain names will get an Alexa ranking just from their type-in traffic. In general, an Alexa ranking under 1,000,000 for an undeveloped site is a good indicator that the domain receives decent traffic (eg, several thousand monthly uniques). Rankings over a million are less reliable, but usually any sort of Alexa ranking means that the domain receives at least some traffic. As with all of these methods, Alexa should be used as a guideline only: sometimes even domains for which Alexa returns “No Data” (too low to rank) will still receive traffic, and vice-versa. In addition to Alexa, you’ll find a similar tool available at Ranking.com.

OVERTURE SEARCHES
Overture’s “Keyword Selector Tool” tells you how often a given keyword was searched. For example, “Sedo” was searched 1,014 times in November, while “Paris Hilton” was searched 862,528 times. Naturally, a domain that contains a highly-searched keyword is more likely to receive traffic. However, the Overture Tool’s usefulness goes beyond that: if you use the exact domain name (with extension) as the keyword, Overture results can be used as a predictor for whether or not a domain name receives traffic. For example, “Yahoo.com” was searched 11,089,508 times in October, according to Overture. Sedo-parked sites “Moma.com” was searched 1,055 times, “Camera.com” 258 times, and “gamer.com” 558 times. Our research has shown that Overture searches do sometimes have a rough correlation with traffic (especially type-in traffic), but as with other methods there are many exceptions to the rule.

3. Traffic Source

If you want to better understand something, go to the source. This aphorism applies to domain traffic as well. Thus, in addition to using the above methods to guesstimate the quantity of traffic a domain receives, you may want to use these techniques to try to determine the source of that traffic. Traffic source will affect the longevity and conversion of the traffic — in simpler terms, it will have a huge impact on how much money the domain will make.

LINK POPULARITY
A website or formerly-developed domain name may receive traffic from old incoming links and directory listings. There are many online tools for checking link popularity. One of the best can be found at Marketleap.com. The important thing to look for here is not just the quantity of links, but also the quality. A single link from a major website may be worth thousands of links from smaller sites. The longevity of link traffic varies widely: a link from a news article may generate a flurry of traffic that lasts only a week, while a directory listing may continue to generate steady traffic for years.

SEARCH ENGINE LISTINGS
Search engine listings are a major source of traffic for many sites. You can guesstimate how much search engine-derived traffic a website receives by looking at its “search engine saturation”. This is an indicator of how often the domain appears in the various search engine indexes. Again, Marketleap.com offers an excellent tool for evaluating search engine saturation. Just keep in mind that it’s also important to look at how high the site is listed and how often the keyword is searched. Don’t forget that search engine listings change frequently, so if this is the primary source of traffic, expect fluctuations!

PAID TRAFFIC
Some traffic may be coming from PPC advertisements, exit pop-ups or banner ads that the seller is buying. This is the shortest-lived traffic, because as soon as you buy the domain, the seller stops paying for the ads!

EXPIRED TRAFFIC
If a domain was formerly developed, some users may continue to visit because of old links and references, or simply because they remember the domain name. This traffic may continue for years, but naturally it decreases with time.

TYPOS AND VARIATIONS
Don’t ignore traffic diverted to the domain name through typos from other high traffic sites. Check out traffic for similar domains by using the tools above. Also consider traffic from variations of names, such as an abbreviated form of your domain name or an acronym. If these sites experience a high volume of visitors, there is a possibility it will translate to high traffic for similar sites. Alexa can be a useful tool for doing this — they have a feature which lists sites visitors of the questioned domain also visit. You might also try the typo-generator found at SearchSpell.com, which boasts the uncanny ability of identifying the most common typo-errors for a given keyword.

Traffic is crucial for any revenue generating business on the web. Use the tools listed above for determining domain traffic and never make a wrong buying decision again!

 Article Written By Jay Finnan
Sedo.com Director of Customer Relations

Increasingly, domainers are deciding to corner their own part of the market rather than diversify their investments. It’s a product of aggressive investor speculation fuelled by the growing belief that the industry is poised for even more exponential growth in the near future. Investors big, small and everywhere in between have decided the best strategy for them is to target domains from specific industries, events, locations or based entirely around a specific brand and buy every possible variation in an attempt to control as much web presence as possible. There are risks in using this strategy but the rewards have been so huge for some that more and more are creating their own domain empire.

When it comes to domains, niche specialization has been around for a while but it has never been as popular as it is today. The investment strategy has two major benefits. It saves time for the investor, and when it comes to selling they are in a better position to negotiate.

How can you make the niche investment strategy work for you?

Choosing the right domains to invest in can take a lot of time. Researching new products, technologies, hot trends or likely typos is labour intensive and doesn’t always pay off. Rather than taking the time to constantly re-educate themselves, some domain speculators have taken a different approach. They’ve chosen to focus on something they already know well and aggressively corner that market. Niche markets are alive and vibrant with speculation. All of the one word .coms are gone but if you’re a bio-engineer you can still find good bio-engineering domains available, for scuba divers there are still good scuba related domains available, and the list goes on.

For one heavy domain investor, his investment strategy was closely tied to his business and pastime. If you’re looking for outdoor sporting names, chances are he already has them. This domain owner, who asked to remain anonymous, started investing in 1995. Back then there were a lot of questions about what was going to be valuable and what strategy to take.

“It was really uncertain back then whether investing in domains that represented whole categories or niches paid off. We had long debates over things like singular vs. plural and whether anything but the most generic terms would be valuable.” He was certain about investing in outdoor sports domains though. “Knowing the outdoor sporting industries already gave me a real advantage. There was no doubt; I knew what was going to be valuable there.”

He was certain about not investing half-heartedly either. He knew that if he was going to increase the value of his investment exponentially, he would need to acquire as many domains as he could in his niche.

Another investor, Clark Siegelin, has chosen to specialize in brand names, specifically around .com domains using the well known and generic suffix 360. His bet has paid off with recent sales of cash360.com and firm360.com netting him thousands of dollars each. He continues to receive offers totaling thousands more for domains such as cellularphones360.com, tourism360.com, download360.com among others. For Mr. Siegelin the value of the brand was obvious so he registered every possible 360 related domain he could think of. Half-hearted investment wasn’t an option. Deciding to corner the 360 market was just as obvious as the value of the brand.

“Put it this way. The same buyer of cash360 is going to be interested in money360.com is going to be interested in banking360.com is going to be interested in stocks360.com.”

The level of interest might be different for each, but owning them all definitely puts you in a better position when negotiating for any of them. Cornering that niche has the added benefit of putting you in a much better position when the time comes to sell. If you have all the domains a prospective buyer is interested in they’ll keep coming back with better offers because you have all their good alternatives.

Geographical niches are some of the most popular right now. Investors are increasingly specializing in regional tlds as well as “place names”. Emerging markets, recent liberalization and the development of more and more active websites built around TLDs such as .in and .cn, just to name a few, have convinced more than a few domainers to invest heavily in regions they know are growing.

After “missing the .com era”, Jeffrey Williams decided to invest heavily in .co.in domains near the end of last year. “I was fortunate enough to find out that at the same time .co.in names were also to be released to the general public but this was not widely known.” He wound up getting 90% of the domains he pre-registered and so far his investment of a few thousand dollars has increased nearly 10 fold. He believes, “without a doubt”, that deciding to specialize in a niche earned him much more than diversifying his investments. It had the added bonus of celebrity status among those in the Indian domain name market. “I have gained the reputation as being the .co.in “guy” something that would have been impossible with .com/.net etc as I was too late.”

The key, for all of these investors, was entering a field of speculation where they were already knowledgeable. They all believe that leveraging their knowledge saved them a lot of valuable time on multiple fronts. Time that was put to better use finding available domains and marketing the ones they had already acquired. This niche expertise also left them in a better position to negotiate sales after finding prospective buyers because they knew what someone could make from their domains, what the growth trends would be and everything else that would make the domains valuable down the road.

Whether it’s investing to sell, investing for traffic or both, specializing in and cornering a niche is a growing investment strategy with big potential that is already paying dividends for some.