Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Late to the Domain Name Blog Party

According to this post from Domain Name News, I'm very late to the domain blogging party. It's been done by many before me. Does that mean I should quit? Naahhhh! I'll take comfort knowing that I was one of the first with a Domain Name Tutorial and still want to serve my visitors well with the best imformation I can find.

2007 The Year of the Domain Blogger
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There were domain blogs long before 2007 and good ones such as DomainNameWire.com and DomainEditorial.com.
(The post fails to note that Domain Editorial which just made it's last post, is being rolled into Domain Name News.)
However, 2007 marked the year that even DomainNameNews.com got rolling, and we weren't alone in launching a site dedicated to domain oriented stories. Previously reclusive and veteran domainers like Frank Schilling, Sahar Sarid, Larry Fischer, Chris Stewart and Michael Berkins among many others came out of the woodwork to launch blogs dedicated to domain related topics and conversation. Many other notables like Rick Schwartz, Michael Gilmour and Elliot Silver threw their hats in the ring as well, too many in fact to list. Check out this site for a good list, keeping in mind most of these were started this year!
The domain name blogs name dropping is a great resource for those just getting into domaining and I encourage all to subscribe and read those if you want to invest and profit from domain names. However - if you just want to learn the basics, buy a domain name and get back to business - thanks for dropping by.
If you are in the domain space and just now starting a blog, well that is sooooooooooooo 2007.

All right guys, I know I just started this week and I'm SOOOOOO 2007 - but I'm not stopping now. Thanks for the list though and I'll happily subscribe to those feeds and pick up more domain name news and commentary.

Online Small Business Internet Tutorials for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs - Domain Names
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How about that 1999 Entrepreneur Magazine rave, eh?

So in the LOOOONG tradition of WebSite101 tutorials, sharing information with entrepreneurs launching and growing businesses online, this list of domain name blogs is a great service to all of those visitors and I hope everyone finds it as useful as I do. (Being new and all that ;-)

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Check to see if YOUR Domain Name is available by typing it into the search box directly belowPricing starts at only $9.95 - The lowest price you'll find for single year registrations! We Beat Yahoo Domains - Compare our prices here! or you can Search the WHOIS database to see who owns a domain! If you want to transfer to take advantage of our lower prices, transfer your domain name from Yahoo Domains.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Domain Name Willed When Domain Owner Killed

Doing some online research about legal processes for domain name inheritance produced this funny Google "Did you mean" search result. "Do you mean: "domain name was killed". My response in my mind when I saw it was "No, the Domain Name OWNER was killed, and his domain was WILLED to his family, but because there's no protocol, the Domain Name did EXPIRE and the Business on that domain died!



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Funny enough, now this blog post will be the only result for that search within a couple of days.

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Check to see if YOUR Domain Name is available by typing it into the search box directly belowPricing starts at only $9.95 - The lowest price you'll find for single year registrations! We Beat Yahoo Domains - Compare our prices here! or you can Search the WHOIS database to see who owns a domain! If you want to transfer to take advantage of our lower prices, transfer your domain name from Yahoo Domains.

Domain Name Inheritance: Willing Your Domain

I've long been concerned about what happens to my domain names when I die. Of course I want my wife to have mine and will pursue that with my attorney, but what happens if you haven't planned? Do domains eventually expire when you haven't renewed them - maybe years after your death? What are the current laws? Where doesn ICANN stand on willing domain names to family or business partners?

I started a bit of research and all I was able to find is this press release from 2005, from DomainMart appraisal service, below. The press release is still live at PRWeb archives, but the link in the release leads to a dead page. (No pun intended). Stay tuned and we'll follow up with more on this topic.

DomainMart Launches Domain-Name Inheritance Planning

Domain-name inheritance planning might seem unnecessary, but it is a prudent move. Without planning, total strangers will eventually grab your domain names.

Berkeley, CA (PRWEB) January 3, 2005 -name protection services, today announced the introduction of a domain-name inheritance planning service. Domain-name inheritance planning might seem unnecessary, but it is a prudent move, without which total strangers eventually end up grabbing your valuable assets,” says Alex Tajirian, DomainMart President and CEO.

DomainMart develops individual solutions to help owners assign their domain-name inheritance according to their wishes and in the most economical way possible.

If the domain names are part of a will, DomainMart works with the trustee to make the transfer painless. Otherwise, prior to their expiration DomainMart notifies the owner. If the owner does not respond to DomainMarts inquires, they contact the assignees and proceed to implement the owners wishes. Thus, the service indirectly acts as a registration renewal insurance policy too,” adds Tajirian. Owners can cancel the service or modify the instructions at any time.

DomainMart is a pioneer in providing domain-name secondary-market services, including appraisal/valuation, leasing management, escrow, and protection since 1996.

For more information, please visit http://domainmart.com/protect/DomainNameInheritancePlanning.htm or contact:

Tom Saitori, Marketing Specialist DomainMart Inc.
e-mail: TomSaitori@DomainMart.com
Tel: +1 (415) 905-4234

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25A0 Domain Mart - Domain Name Appraisal, Buy/Sell, Broker, Escrow, Parking, Traffic Monetization, Investment Services
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Check to see if YOUR Domain Name is available by typing it into the search box directly belowPricing starts at only $9.95 - The lowest price you'll find for single year registrations! We Beat Yahoo Domains - Compare our prices here! or you can Search the WHOIS database to see who owns a domain! If you want to transfer to take advantage of our lower prices, transfer your domain name from Yahoo Domains.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Business Domains Advice from Times Online UK

The UK's Times Online has an article today by Rachel Bridge about Domain Names, and while most of the advice is good, some of it steps beyond the boundaries of the author's knowledge. Bridge talks about getting a great domain name to start your online business right. She got taken to task by a commenter Matt from London immediately -
... in the notes at the end of the article it's weird that you mention underscores??? You can't register a domain with an underscore it it

About the author (from the bio on her own site)

Rachel is the Enterprise Editor for The Sunday Times and is responsible for the Small Business and Start Up pages in the business section of the paper which highlight issues relevant to entrepreneurs and small and medium sized businesses.

Moving past the minor inaccuracies, Bridge quotes Susan Hallam, founder of Hallam Communications, an internet-marketing consultancy - who discusses domain name speculation and buying names on the secondary market - as well as several admittedly important items such as search friendly names which have important keywords in them.

The author then moves to the other end of the spectrum of leading thought on domain names and discusses "Creative" names in quotes from Hugh Boyle, head of digital for Europe, Middle East and Asia at Ogilvy Action, a marketing communications agency. Boyle says:

“People relate well to firms that don’t necessarily put their brand in the domain name,” he said. “And it is good to be clever or funky with them. It’s an area where you can be creative.”

Yes, Mr Boyle, but that gets into the area of branding and should only be used by major corporate sites with designs on the Fortune 500 levels in my opinion. Being a search engine optimization specialist, I tend to agree more with Hallam on search friendly names, than with Boyle on the "Funky" names.

“Domain name endings such as .net, .uk.com, .ltd.com, .biz and .tv don’t resonate. And you won’t get many English companies using .eu. Also don’t have any hyphens. If people are going to the wrong site when they are looking for you, then unless they really need your product or service, they won’t bother to look again.”
But I do concur with Boyles' suggestions about getting the .com in all cases and avoiding hyphens. The article is from UK based Times Online and addresses that varied TLD area of concern from the European perspective, though Bridge fails to note for readers that Britons will do better in their own Google.co.uk search engine when they purchase the .co.uk TLD (which is the default for those located in the UK, searching from UK IP addresses) - in addition to the .com version of their domain name.

Interesting that Bridge didn't go further in her research and talk with any one of dozens of domain experts. Bridge mentions domain name brokers in a brief discussion on the secondary market but includes nothing quoted from any company representatives.

Not having any experience in the UK or Europe, I can't speak to whether domain names are available for longer periods, but a final note on her article suggests that domain name owners should take care to renew their domains every two years. I have always advocated for the maximum 10 years registration as that may have some search engine positioning implications - plus you only have to remember every 5 years or so when you go extend it for another 5 and correct any contact information with your registrar.

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Check to see if YOUR Domain Name is available by typing it into the search box directly belowPricing starts at only $9.95 - The lowest price you'll find for single year registrations! We Beat Yahoo Domains - Compare our prices here! or you can Search the WHOIS database to see who owns a domain! If you want to transfer to take advantage of our lower prices, transfer your domain name from Yahoo Domains.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Without a Domain Name, Your Business is Homeless

Visit Total Eclipsed
Used by permission of "Total Eclipsed"

Without a web site address to call home, a business is homeless. It's seen by customers as the equivalent of working with a computer in the dusty corner of the garage near the clothes dryer lint trap. Many small business owners start this way, working out of a P.O. Box and sharing the family phone line with a teenage daughter who believes that talking to her BFF is far more important than business calls on that phone line.

Face it, it's time to buy that $9.95 domain name and start down the road to business legitimacy. Just as we have gone from "Do you have a fax machine?" to "What is your fax number?", so too are we moving rapidly away from "Do you have a web site?" toward "What is your web address?". How is it that we accept the need for the fax machine, the copy machine, the phone and the computer, but not a web site?

Every business is expected to be online, just as they are expected to have a telephone and a fax and an answering machine. Size will always determine resource allocation. Hire a professional if you can, but get online now!

The first step to getting your business Online is to get a domain name, which is typically your business name or generic word or phrase and includes the famous dot com, dot net, and .org extensions. Here's a complete tutorial on Domain Names to help you learn everything about choosing a name for your web site and how domain names work to help you navigate the web.

Or, you could just research a domain name now, buy it today and grow your business.

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Check to see if YOUR Domain Name is available by typing it into the search box directly belowPricing starts at only $9.95 - The lowest price you'll find for single year registrations! We Beat Yahoo Domains - Compare our prices here! or you can Search the WHOIS database to see who owns a domain! If you want to transfer to take advantage of our lower prices, transfer your domain name from Yahoo Domains.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Domain Name 101 Tutorial & Articles - Choose Your URL

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Check to see if YOUR Domain Name is available by typing it into the search box directly belowPricing starts at only $9.95 - The lowest price you'll find for single year registrations! We Beat Yahoo Domains - Compare our prices here! or you can Search the WHOIS database to see who owns a domain! If you want to transfer to take advantage of our lower prices, transfer your domain name from Yahoo Domains.