Wikipedia states the definition of a domainer to be a person involved in buying, selling, developing and monetizing domain names and selling them for profits. Moreover according to them its a kind of real estate investment, just that this doesn’t involve houses.

However the definition may be easily understandable, but it is clearly not everyone’s game. To be honest, I was never a good domainer, despite all the knowledge I possess. Because it is more of a game of chance, when it comes to domain names. Its just about finding the right person, at the right time, be it buyer or seller. Despite all the keyword domains I may own, I still can’t find any potential buyer, while my fellow domainers are making major bucks, out of names that never make any sense.

So beginning with the actual guide, let me brief you on how the whole system works.

The domain names fall into several extensions and categories.

• TLD – Top Level Domains
• ccTLD – Country Code Top Level Domains
• SLD – Secondary Level Domains (Sub-Domains)
• IDN – Internationalized Domain Name

The TLD.
The TLD includes domain names with extensions .com, .net, .biz, .pro, .org, .name, .info and .mobi. Such domains are also referred to as Generic TLDs, if they end with these extensions. Otherwise TLDs have a much larger number of domain extensions. The TLDs are the main focus of any domainer, because they have the major market and are widely popular among domainers and non-domainers alike. They are preferred because they are common, and their extensions are easy to remember (Note, I mentioned the extensions not the domain name itself).

The ccTLD
ccTLD domains are country specific domain names, that end with the country’s extension. .pk (Pakistan), .in (India), .cn (China) and .us (United States) are some examples of such domains. These domains are mostly for businesses pertaining to that country and are mostly followed with a suffix, such as .edu (For Education). These domains may or may not worth much, because you are never too sure of a country’s organisations and its needs. Obviously companies will register the domain names first hand, so that limits you from buying them and selling them for a higher price to the actual company. However common names like photo.us or photography.uk etc. are still very popular amongst the commmon domainers. The reason for their popularity would be given afterwards.

The SLD
These domains are nothing too special, just that they are names that suffix your domain name. Such as blog.domainname.com. In this case ‘blog’ is the SLD of the ‘domainname’.

The IDN
The IDN are all those domains that donot contain the ASCII (US) markup. Such domains may have local language symbols in the domain name, and are mostly common at a local level. Global domainers donot prefer such domain names, until ofcourse they are aware of the potential buyer. E.g of such domains are 鸽.net (Pigeons.net).

Now coming to the actual domaining business.

The domaining starts from getting hold of an actual domain. There are 2 ways to do it. Either register a domain from one of the domain registrar (enom, WildWestDomains etc.) or buy it from someone. The ways of approaching a domain owner include, checking his who.is information and then contacting him via Email, or approaching him at a forum or domain market (SEDO). The deal is done in the regular manner, with the domainer’s focus on getting the domain at the least price he can convince the seller on. Once the domainer gets hold of the domain, the actual thing begins.

Domains that worth more include domains that have dictionary words in them, are 2,3 or 4 alphabets or numbers, and are easily pronouncible. But be assured that this is not the only criteria. Any domain can worth more or less, depending on your potential buyer and the way you present it.

So now that you have the domain, what to do with it to make it worth more. If the domain is a common name, then you may not need to develop it. Otherwise if it is not, then try to develop your domain as a website. Take the example of my domain oz0a.com. The domain is not worth more than the registration fee, but if I develop it and market it well. It may get me high $XX in no time. So this where the domainer starts his 2nd investment, the first was to buy the domain. Get a hosting and turn the domain into an actual website. SEO this site, and get your website indexed in search engines. Monetize it for a month, and then start publicising its sale, when you have good search engine rankings and good keyword count. This will attract more buyers, as not many are interested in going through this mayhem to get their site in search engines.

The next step would be to publicise the domain. You may include a FOR SALE Image on your actual website to inform your visitors about your interest in selling this. Otherwise, just go with the regular method of posting in forums, blogs and domain markets (May not pay off fast, but still). It is better to develop the domain into a website till the time, you don’t get a good buyer. Be aware! Don’t try to sell your domains cheap to people who may call your domain to be worthless. These are the actual good domainers, who’ll make millions out of one stupid mistake of yours. Only you can judge what your domain is worth, but don’t be too high yourself. Just focus on getting a good price, so that you have a good profit margin, to enable you to buy more domains.

For the rest, good luck to you all. I hope this article would have proved helpful to you all. If you think I have left out anything, don’t hesitate to comment.

I got this website to be indexed and top the google in just 2 days due to a very clever scheme, THE META TAGS. I am sure, most of you are aware of its use, but not many are aware of its CORRECT usage. I am using Flash as my primary content, and that means, that indexing such a website by a spider is almost impossible. That is why I use a very clever scheme to keep my Meta tags and my content indexable.

The website is for a school forum. I conveniently added it to all search engines by using my many online tools that allow you to. Afterwards it was a simple game of meta tags. I used the Keyword, Description, Author, Robots, Copyright and distribution (almost all) tags in this website, and it proved quite helpful, as the search engine can read not only my created page, but also benefit my company ‘Xyber 3D Studios’, by indexing it as a Keyword. After adding the relavent keywords, the next step was crucial i.e. The title and content relavency to the meta tags should be optimum! That was pretty simple as well. I just wrote a simple note for NON-Flash users in HTML below and above the Flash content, and used KEYWORDS of my meta tags in the actual note. This means that my content was complimenting my keywords, 100% relavency!

Next thing I did was created a Facebook Promotion Page for the Website. I created Link Backs from this page to my website. Facebook is already PR 9, and it is one site, that may always have that kind of pagerank. Therefore it is one the most reliable sources of FREE LINK EXCHANGE! I tried to add the site to DMOZ and Yahoo, but I’m still awaiting a reply of confirmation, so no use to me.

Then after 2 days I waited for the magic. I typed ‘Bahria College Karachi’ in Google and Wola! My site was first to be shown. I agree that due to the lack of new content, the site decreased to No. 6, but that was another story. My primary objective was achieved! My TEMPORARY WEBSITE is doing marvels, imagine what my actual website would do. And I plan to make it all Flash as well, not because I love flash, but thats the only thing I know :).

Correct way of Adding Meta Tags.

<META name=”Robots” content=” index,follow”>
<meta name=”distribution” content=” global” />
<meta name=”copyright” content=” Your Name Here” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=” Keyword 1, Keyword 2,” />
<meta name=”description” content=” 25 – 30 Character Description would suffice” />
<META name=”Author” content=” Your Name here”>

The above tags are given in their correct usage format. Note the spaces used, and use them in the same to avoid errors on your page.

For Flash Users. The W3C compliant Code presently is.

<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”c.swf?path=movie.swf”  width=”400″ height=”300″>
<param name=”movie” value=”c.swf?path=movie.swf” />
<param name=”quality” value=”high” />
</object>

Good Day to you all.