You want a domain name you can centralize your business around. This is very important and should not be overlooked. This is not your business name – if you register a business, the formal name of the business can be something else.

You could also think of it as a stand-in name and website. Mine is power-trust. I’m not using “power” in its domineering sense but more linked to the “power” gained through trust and honesty. If you go there, there may not be much development at all. I use the name as a reference point for my emails, such as, admin at that central domain, and for support needs. It’s used in my privacy policies and so on.

You can use the website flexibly, changing it as you wish to fit changing circumstances and as your business develops. So, you could leave it almost empty, put a few ads on or develop it as a central point referring to your products and services.

However, its main purpose is a marker for your developing business and a name which people will recognise as representing your business, the more you use it. You could have sub-folders with your main services in them, such as main tools or resources.

Without a central site, with a clearly identifiable domain name, your business may have no clear focus, even though you may brand it in other ways.

Where do you get domains?

There are register sites where you can choose and register a domain. Many domain names are already taken, so you may have to be creative in getting yours. Usually, they’re about $9 a year.

If you liked this article get my new free ecourse on the keys to your own online business: http://www.computer-home-business.com and to get information on starting your own internet business, click here: http://www.web100k.com

Top Five Tips For Choosing an Effective Domain Name For Your Website

Choosing a domain name is something that should not and can not be rushed. As time goes on, websites and domain names build up history which helps with search engine ranking placements, or SERPs. So, you need to stick with the domain name you choose to get the most from this and therefore its vital you spend time making sure your decision is the correct, and below we look at the top five most important things we feel you should take into account before purchasing your url.

Name Relationship – Your domain name or url should really reflect your company name if possible. For example, Clear Web Services domain name is clearwebservices.com because the relationship with our company branding and our website needs to be connected. Although we can register other domains names to capture traffic, which we discuss below, it is still vital that our company name is also our domain name, as this is what the majority of the public will expect when trying to find our company on the Internet.

Target Audience – If you are aiming for a UK audience, you really do need to go for a.co.uk address, but if you are looking to attract a global audience or give the impression of an international company, it is worth going for a.com, as although this used to be considered only for USA companies, it is now really the international standard domain name across the internet. If you are searching from the UK, most search engines will always try to deliver local results to you, as they consider these to be most relevant.

Indexing And Ranking – Although unproved and really just what we see on an everyday basis, local domains like.co.uk and.com tend to rank much better than domains like.info and org.uk for example. If you do a search for anything in Google, the likelihood that the majority of the first two pages of results are.co.uk and.com, with other domains only ranking if there is little competition. As mentioned, this is unproven and only mentioned from experience, but many web designers and SEO experts will also mention when advising on registering a domain name.

Keywords In URL – From a search engine optimisation point of view, trying to get a couple of keywords into your URL or domain name is always a brilliant idea, as long as you make it look natural and still make it a good domain name for your business. For example, if you sold washing machines in Bristol, a great domain would be washingmachinesbristol.co.uk as people would most likely to search “washing machines in Bristol” if they are wanting to buy one from an independent dealer. Do not go over board and simply stack your url full of keywords trying to take advantage of Google, as this will only harm you in the long run, both naturally and from people not being able to remember your url!

Simple To Remember – If your domain name is going to be all over your advertising, including things like your company vehicles, t-shirts, uniforms and even media advertising like TV and Radio, then having a massively long and hard to remember URL is going to be a big mistake. You need to try and make sure your domain is easy to remember and contains no words that could be spelt incorrectly if misheard or only quickly visualised as your car flies by.

Ian Spencer works for Clear Web Services, a SEO Web Optimisation and Web Design company serving the Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire and South Wales. He has worked in the SEO and Internet Marketing world for many years, and working in partnership with another company has launched the new SEO business. http://clearwebservices.com. For More Information, please call 01594 835 857 or email info@clearwebservices.com.

Top 5 Ways to Ensure Your Domain Name is Not Stolen

If you are someone that never realized that your domain name could be stolen, you’ll want to read this article as I’m going to show you the top 5 ways to ensure this doesn’t happen to you.

As if you don’t have enough to worry about running your online business, you’ve now got to be on top of people who may try to steal your domain name. Why would they do this? As with any other theft, the thief is looking to make a quick buck. In the case of this kind of theft, the thief can simply change your contact information to theirs and resell your domain name. Depending on how popular your domain name is, the thief could get thousands of dollars for it. And forget about getting it back anytime soon. You’ll likely fight for years and spend plenty before you even have a chance of getting it back. Consider the costs involved in the loss of your online identity. Your customers will think they are going to your site, but it will be someone else’s.

With a domain name theft, you’ll be out of business immediately. On top of that, you could end up with a very damaged reputation, depending on what the new owner of your stolen domain name does with the site.

Sadly, many folks who register domain names don’t take the proper steps from the get to to protect their online identity. You’ll want to follow the following 5 tips when it comes to protecting your domain name:

1. Private Registration

Be sure to select “private” registration when registering your new domain name. There are some registrars such as 1&1 and Namecheap that offer private registrations at no additional cost, but many registrars will charge you anywhere from $10 to $15 for this service. By using a private registration, your personal information will not appear in the WHOIS directory, making it more difficult for someone to hack into your domain registration account.

2. Lock Down option

Most registrars offer a free service that locks your account. In the event someone tries to make changes to your registration information, they won’t be able to until your account or specific domain is unlocked – either by email verification or via telephone.

3. 24/7 Registrar Support

Be sure to use a registrar that offers 24 hour support, 365 days a year. This is critical in the event you find that your domain has been hijacked / stolen. By being able to contact support at any hour, your registrar will be able to begin an investigation and recovery operation immediately.

4. Notification

Be sure to set up your account with your chosen registrar so that you are notified anytime a change is made to your account. You can set this up so that you are called or emailed.

5. Check WHOIS

It’s always a good idea to check your domain’s information in the WHOIS directory on a somewhat regular basis. I check all of mine on a monthly basis, for example. Be sure you are still registered as the owner and that the contact information is still correct.

By following these 5 tips, the chances of anyone hijacking /stealing your domain name will be greatly reduced.

Warren has been writing articles and producing how to courses online since 2005. He specializes in online business issues and currently operates a number of websites in a number of different niches. You can check out his latest website here: Material Handling Conveyors which features a wide range of Material Handling Conveyors.

When building a website or a blog, having the right domain name will can really make a big difference in how successful your site is. A domain name generally will not make or break a website, but a good one can give you an extra boost. For example, I have built a few websites overtime that had great domain names, and as a result earned good revenue despite promoting it very little.

Find A Keyword Phrase

Google and other search engines do place emphasis on the domain name. If your domain name includes a keyword phrase, Google will rank your site higher for that phrase naturally because of it.

For example, I did a site with this keyword phrase in the domain: indoorcyclingbike.com. While I have promoted it more in the last few months, this site was ranked on page one of Google almost from the very beginning. I only submitted one article for marketing purposes, and because this phrase gets a really good amount of searches each month, I will naturally get traffic from this keyword each month from the search engines.

The phrase ‘indoor cycling bike’ gets approximately 33,000 searches per month from Google alone. Now this number is not exact in terms of the real searches, but the idea is that there are a lot of searches for it which means that I am getting a nice piece of that pie by being on the first page.

Product or Service Phrase

Rarely will you ever find a great keyword phrase available as a domain name, and I feel I lucked out on this one. What’s also great about this phrase is that it’s an actual product. So when someone searches for “indoor cycling bike” in the search engines and see my site with the domain indoorcyclingbike.com, they are more likely to go to that site since it is completely relevant to what they are searching for.

When you find a great domain name, chances are it won’t have to be promoted as much over time. This is at least the experience I have had, as the best domains I have gotten have required very little promotion on my part in order to reach page one.

This won’t always be the case, but having a great domain name is much better than not having one and will increase your chances of getting a higher volume of traffic and ultimately making money.

Now you understand the value of a domain, but what criteria should you have for selecting one?

Read More

Learn more tips about choosing a quality domain name and where you should buy them at.

Also, learn about what virtual real estate it is and why it’s very profitable.

Keep It Simple And Easy To Remember

Domains – Most customers who look for a website want to remember something that is associated with the product or service you are offering. Unless you have a lot of money to spend on advertising like eBay or Amazon your best bet is to choose a domain name that represents your products and services. Use simple and easy to remember words that are spoken often by your customers. For example, your eCommerce business might be selling racing bikes so consider the domain names: racingbikes.com or roadracingbikes.com. Try to avoid names like joesracingbikes.com or smithsracingbikes.com even if your company is called that. We want to make sure your domain name is easy to remember and captures the widest scope of customers.

Don’t Be Fancy
Try to make sure you choose domain names with the correct spelling and to use short hand words. I have seen some domain names like racingbiks.com or rcingbikes.com. These are words we may know when we are sending a text via SMS but when it comes to marketing your eCommerce business it is not worth shortening your domain name for people to try to remember.

It’s very common to see onlinebusiness.com get shortened to onlinebiz.com, which is not very good for search engine optimization and other keyword link strategies that I will discuss about.

Choosing Dot Com Or Another Extension?
According to Verisign, over 45% of total domain registrations have a .com extension. Keep in mind that shoppers will more than likely remember a.COM extension while shopping online and this will have an impact on how successful your business will be. In any business I set up the first extension I look for is a .com, which allows me to expand and market my business globally even if I am not a business located in the United States.

Domain Name Friendly For Search Engines
You may have realised my emphasis on choosing a domain name that is related to your products and services and also my encouragement to keep it simple. The reason why I recommend you look at choosing a domain name related to your products and services is to allow for search engines to easily find your website. Having the right keywords that relate to your eCommerce business in your domain name can play a vital role. For example if my domain name was racingbikes.com and I went online to search for “racing bikes”, more than likely your website will come up at the top because it is the most relevant to the key words searched. This has already conquered half of your battle. If you had chosen rcingbikes.com, then you would be spending a great amount of time and resources trying to optimize your website.

A question I get asked quite a lot is what happens if the domain name I want for my eCommerce business is taken? Since there are billions of websites on the Internet, it would be common for single and double word domain names to be already taken. Though don’t sweat, because you can still create a domain name from other keywords in niche markets. Let’s take for example the keywords “racing bikes” again. Since racingbikes.com is taken, let us dig further and choose a brand of bikes you want to focus on. Shimano is a popular and reputable brand: so let us choose shimanoracingbikes.com. You could repeat this with many other brands and use that to create a lot of domain names that would be directed to your website. Alternatively being more generic you can choose topracingbikes.com or leadingracingbikes.com. Which ever keywords are dominate in your market, try to find out which ones would be profitable for your eCommerce business and search to see if the domain name is available.

Checking If Your Domain Name Is Available
There are many domain name registers in the market but I don’t recommend you buy domain names from them as they don’t provide good support.

How To Register Your Domain Name
The company that I use to register my domains is Namecheap and I can highly recommend them. They are very affordable and provide 1 year of private registration as of writing this. It also allows me to keep my business address and phone details private at no additional cost. A lot of top Internet marketers use them because they provide good support and also they refer any spam complaints to the web host.

The process in registering your domain is a very simple process. Once you have decided on a domain name, check to see if it is available and then register it through Namecheap. Once that is completed, you will receive a couple of notification emails with your registration certificate and you will be the owner of the domain. In the next few posts I will explain to you how to setup your hosting services and link them to your domain name.

http://www.internetbusinesspath.com/

Tyrone Shum is an internet marketer helping you enhance your internet business through his weekly podcasts, tips and resources.

Choosing the right domain name can be a daunting task when you are starting off with your business. A good choice will help with the branding of your site, while a bad domain name could make people look at your site in a negative manner. You’ll want to be careful to avoid the common pitfalls that many Internet entrepreneurs make when selecting a domain name:

Too Long – If your domain looks like the song from Mary Poppins you’ll want to find one that’s a little shorter People don’t like to type and if they have to type a really long name they might just say forget it. Or, if they are determined to visit your site, a long domain name increases the chances of a typo, thus sending them to a site that isn’t yours, or making it appear that your site doesn’t exist. In the world of domain names shorter is typical better.

Too Short – We’ve just established that a shorter domain is better than a longer one, all things being equal. You do not want to have your name be so short that it’s hard to read. Don’t leave out important letters and expect your visitors to understand what the word is. It might work in the case of tumblr.com or flickr.com but these are exceptions to the rule. Unless you are branding your site around the lack of certain letters, you’ll want to make sure your domain contains full, readable words.

Confusing – Think of a domain name like a vanity license plate. If you are driving down the road and you see a license plate and have to take more than one guess to understand what it means then this is a license plate fail. The same goes for domain names. Don’t expect people to guess what your domain is. It might seem clever to you, but you don’t want any inside jokes when establishing your presence online. Make it clear and concise as well as clever.

Dashes – You should forgo the dashes if you are trying to create a brand-able website or business name. Unless you are building a site that will be strictly online, dashes will only get in the way. Many people don’t type in the dashes when they type a domain name, so you could be sending your visitors to a competitor. If your business is entirely online, dashes are OK since people will only be clicking links to your site, or copying and pasting the address.

.info – Many online marketers say to avoid the.info extension and you’ll also want to avoid it if you have a business. Many people are still not familiar with.info as an extension and you’ll just look like you couldn’t come up with a proper.com name.

Dominic thinks there’s tons of great domain names still available. Take a look at his latest website on room air purifiers and getting a great quality electrostatic air cleaner to keep your home free from airborne allergens.

There is a common trouble that a lot of people run into while purchasing domain names. They find that the URL they want is taken already. Mostly, this leads to choosing domain names which fits poorly with the business name or a brand. This in tern might hurt the overall success of the online venture.

According to experts, this typically happens since proper procedure was not followed while buying the domain name! Still, even in the middle of so hard competition in the domain purchase arena, some people really are securing the domain name they originally wanted. A survey found that most of them follow the following tips.

First Step: Take time to research
The first and foremost thing you have to do before buying the domain name is – research. Take the time you need for thoroughly researching on the desired URL address. You can do this research simply if you type in many variations of that address. For instance, use.com,.org or.ca (first two letters of your country) on the search bar. Just go to that site where you’re considering buying the domain names from. Then check whether that name is available or not.

Second Step: Decide on the Length of Time
After that, you should try to decide on the duration you wish to own that domain for. This decision matters a lot while you’re considering purchasing domain names. For instance, you can choose to own that domain for a year as a minimum or as long as 10 years. But it is not advisable that you register for time a span even as lengthy as 5 years. Rather, register for one year to begin with. When the domain name is about to expire, renewing it is always an option for you!

Third Step: Purchase
When you’ve found that the name you want is available and that’s the name you want, just go online, and buy with your debit/credit card. The bottom line here is that, if you find your desired domain – just purchase it! You never know when it’s too late. Fortunately, purchasing domain names shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes

Domainpurchasesite.com is focused on providing websites and online businesses with highly targeted, keyword specific domain names and domain purchase solutions. Great Domains Here!

Before I go into details about protecting domain name you should first know that there is no business operating under the sun that has got no risks. Perhaps that is the reasons behind why businesses get rewards in term of profits. It’s agreed by business school of thought that the higher the risk in any given business, the higher the rewards.

Online businesses are no islands on this matter too. It’s really heartbreaking and total confusion when you realize that some lazy cruel person somewhere has actually messed with your domain name. How has she messed with it? Well… I am going to tell you how this happens.

Cyber squatting is where a person registers a name which is another person’s trade mark without owner’s consent. The person will sell it at inflated price. If you have a trade mark, somebody can cyber squatter it. Cyber squatters usually register many trademarks and speculate selling them at much higher prices than the ones they paid for when buying them. Some will go as far as registering another level of domain name of the trade mark.

There has been cases regarding cyber squatting and if the plaintiff wins the case, then the cyber squatter ends up paying for damages caused. There are options you should use to recover your trade mark. First you can solve the dispute using Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy [UDNRP]. UDNRP is a domain name dispute solving organization created by ICANN. It’s quick and cheap using it.

Secondly you can write a cease-and-desist letter to a cyber squatter informing her to withdraw the name or else you will take legal actions against her if otherwise she doesn’t.

Thirdly and lastly you can sue the cyber squatter to let the court decide the fate of that particular trade mark. There is a difference between domain name theft also know as hijacking and cyber squatting.

Domain theft is a situation where a properly registered domain is stolen by another person. It’s not necessary that this name is a trade mark as compared to cyber squatting. Through hacking, a person is able to steal your website name.

Here are Three Ways of Protecting your Domain Name from Cyber Squatting and Hijacking:

* By locking it-Locked domain names cannot be transferred to another account or registrar. You should only unlock it when transferring it or at the time of renewal.
* Through Authorization Code-Transfer Authorization Code is a six to sixteen characters code that is assigned to your domain name as a means of securing it from unauthorized transfers. Let the code be your secret.
* Through Secure Socket Layer[SSL]-SSL enables your surfers to know that indeed they are on the correct domain name they are searching for. It also protects the information send. This will enable you protect your domain name from cyber squatters and domain name hijackers who will try to impersonate your website name.

J. Nyamache has done a lot of rich net writing contents on his website about all you got to know about good domain names. He provides you with great information on how to choose and register your domain name that works for search engines and targeted traffic at affordable price. Click here to learn about good domain names

Let me tell you a true story. A friend of my who likes to collect domain names was describing a few that he had acquired. While he has a wide range of domains in various categories, these particular domains were all related to web hosting.

Some of the domain names were similar to existing web hosting company names (or derivatives of web hosting company names). Others simply had ‘hosting’, ‘host’, or a related term in the domain itself.

So my friend and I were talking and he said something like, “Yeah, it’s a shame – if only I had the time to develop some content for some of these domains then I might make some money form them”. It turns out that he had no content on any of the domains – just parked pages, or no content at all. When I investigated the domains, it turned out that there was a small but steady traffic stream that visited these domains. Some simply typed in the domain, others apparently found the domain through a search engine that had categorized the parked page.

So I suggested the following to him – why not use a service that will take the domain as is – with no content whatsoever – and suggest search options that generate revenue for each click? He took my advice, grudgingly I might add, and guess what? He made $50 the first month from just a few of his domains.

He was so excited that he asked what he might do to further increase his revenues from his domain names. I suggested that he use his parking pages (these can be customized with some hosts) to test banners from affiliate programs with the highest paying hosting companies. He placed only three banners at the top of his pages – with a brief description of the company’s product offerings taken straight from their web sites. This also proved to be a great success – and his revenue stream increased.

My friend has since invested some time and energy in monetizing his other domains. He has either pointed the domains to a pay per click search engine, or listed affiliate links on almost every domain. This has turned a lackluster domain speculation business into a profit generating pay per click and affiliate business that requires almost no effort to maintain. Needless to say, my friend has taken my out to lunch a couple of times since then.

If you have parked domains and what to try getting paid for search results on those pages, check out this service offered by Sedo (there are others out there as well):

http://www.sedo.com/services/parking.php3

Good luck in transforming your parked domains into cold, hard cash!

About The Author

Derek Vaughan has been actively marketing on the Internet since 1995. Mr. Vaughan has marketed products at the Walt Disney Company as the online marketing manager of ecommerce for ESPN.com. Mr. Vaughan is also the founder of Cheap Hosting Directory – a web hosting review site. Mr. Vaughan holds degrees from both the Indiana University and Purdue University. He has also received a Master of Business Administration degree from the Owen School at Vanderbilt University. Cheap Hosting Directory – http://www.cheaphostingdirectory.com – is a part of TechPad Agency’s network of web hosting portals.

Expired domains are a wonderful of making direct as well as indirect revenues. Now that one line is not enough for a lay man to know how are they exactly worth it. Basically the whole idea of how to make money with domains is surely not for the newbie. This is one resource that is used by webmasters to increase their revenues. If you are not a person who doesn’t know much about domain names and search engine optimization then this idea might not be for you. Or what you can do is to research on how expired-domains work after reading how you can make money with them. This article will talk about two ways of generating income through expired; indirect make money ideas from this domains and direct make money ideas.

How to make money directly from expired domains?

Basically you would be implementing the same strategy of earning from blogs or through selling products online on this domains as well. The only difference would be that instead of a new domain name you would be opting for an expired-domain. Why? The reason is very simple! The older your website is the more chances it has to generate traffic. Also, most of the affiliate programs give deep consideration to the domain’s age. If you have a new domain then probably for the initial six months or a year you won’t be able to get the top notch affiliate marketing campaigns but with an expired domain you will. An expired domain will have an older age compared to your new domain and thus once you set it up you can easily get a lot of traffic generated. Also, the plus point is you get affiliate campaigns easily.

How to make money indirectly using expired domains?

Now imagine you have a website on which you are selling products or it’s your blog and you want more exposure for it. What do you do? You pay search engine marketers to advertise your blog and turn in more traffic. Another way of getting traffic is through expired domains. As said earlier, these domain names are old and therefore can easily attract customers with a handful of good posts. All you need to do is to simply buy an expired domain that related to your keyword and set it up. Once it is all set up the next step is to refer your main website on it. Bloggers can create short posts on expired domains saying that if you want to the read whole post you need to click on this link. The link would direct the reader to your main website. The plus point is expired domains are cheaper than new domains. All you need to do is to buy some expired domains relating to the keyword you are serving and start referring customers. This is one of the simplest ways of getting customers as well as building your main websites recognition online. The more other websites will talk about your website the more worthwhile it will become and what could be better when you are the person behind all those ‘other’ websites.