Reserve Your Domain name Now!
The In's and Out's of Pre-Owned Domain Names
Author: Richard Lowe, Jr.
I don't know about you, but sometimes
it seems like all of the best domain names have already been taken.
On more than one occasion, I've come up with a great domain name
for a site, only to find that someone else had already purchased
it. I can live with that, but sometimes I've found that it has been
purchased by some scum domain scavenger, and that's really annoying.
A domain scavenger is someone who purchases a whole bunch of domain
names under the theory that people will want to purchase some of
them during the year or two that they own them. These people are
bottom feeders, as they hold many useful domains, demand huge prices,
and do not provide any real value. It's not uncommon to find that
a domain name is not available, to check the WHOIS information and
find it is owned by "this domain is for sale". In fact, some of
these scum have been known to purchase thousands of domain names
made of up the first and last names from a phone book, in the hopes
that at least some of the people will want their names as a dot
com.
Anyway, domains are only purchased for a specific time period, and
they do come up for renewal regularly. Quite often they are not
renewed, and at that time the domain names may be purchased by others.
Even the so-called "good names" are occasionally not renewed.
Sometimes domain names do not get renewed because the business that
owned them is no longer operational. Sometimes the business still
exists but has found it no longer wants or needs a domain name.
Quite often the bottom feeders will allow their unpurchased domain
names to expire because they don't have the funds to purchase them
again or they feel the domains are no longer marketable or profitable.
Occasionally, the domain name holder has died or lost interest in
their business or the internet. Once in a while a domain is allowed
to expire because it has attracted some maliciousness and it cannot
be maintained, and most often of all, the domain name holder simply
does not realize that it needs to be renewed. In this last instance,
the domain name is unintentionally expired and someone can purchase
it before the owner realizes it.
| Check
to see if YOUR Domain Name is available by typing it into
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.info, biz and .us domains). There is no charge to check availability
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In any event, regardless of why a domain
name expires, you can often find yourself in a position to purchase
one that has been previously owned. Note that in addition to expired
domains, you can also purchase domain names on the after-market
(by making bids) or from the domain name resellers (the bottom feeders
mentioned above).
Some Advantages Of Using Pre-Owned Names
The name was part of a link exchange - Webmasters work hard to get
their sites involved in link exchanges. This means the domain names
are listed on other sites, and this is useful for getting traffic.
If you take over a domain name, you can inherit these incoming links
and the resulting traffic.
It was listed in Yaho, DMOZ and/or Looksmart - A small industry
has sprung up recently, which consists simply of selling tools and
reports to allow people to quickly find domain names which are listed
in Yahoo, DMOZ, Looksmart or other directories yet have expired.
By expiring, these domain names are up for grabs, and all of the
resulting benefits for the original site transfer to the new site.
For a well placed entries, this can literally mean hundreds of thousands
of hits per month.
There are hundreds of thousands of sites listed in Yahoo and millions
in DMOZ. Anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred expire each
month. Eventually the expiration would be discovered and the entry
removed. However, if someone purchases the domain name quickly enough,
the entry will remain and you will gain that traffic.
It has a good page rank in Google - Another thing that webmasters
work very hard on is gaining page rank with Google, the number one
search engine. A high page rank implies that the site appears nearer
the top in search results pages. When you purchase a domain, you
can inherit the resulting page rank and traffic. Note that you will
need to duplicate the page or pages referred to by Google in order
for this to work properly.
The Downside Of Using Pre-Owned Names
You inherit spam - If the previous owner received spam email, then
when you take over the domain you may very well inherit it. Why
is this? Well, when you own a domain name, you get the email sent
to every single username on that domain. Of course, most email servers
are smart enough to "bounce" email messages for users who do not
exist, but that email still gets sent to the server. For a domain
which received a lot of spam, it could mean a significant amount
of bandwidth used just for junk messages to non-existent users.
You can inherit robot activity - I got a domain once which someone
had listed with a number of robots (programs which perform automatic
functions). These robots were exceptionally active and caused a
tremendous amount of traffic - so much so that I had to give up
using the domain for a couple of months until the robots stopped
visiting.
You might inherit enemies - Sometimes people give up domain names
for a reason. One of those reasons might be an enemy - someone (or
a group) that is targeting the name for some malicious act. For
example, the name might be the target of email bombs or denial-of-service
attacks. In these instances, you could find yourself inheriting
these issues.
The domain could be banned - If a site gets involved in spamming
search engines (attempting to fool them for higher placement on
the results pages), it can be banned. By purchasing these old domain
names, you might be similarly banned. This normally would not effect
your existing domains, but it might reduce the value of the domain
name that you purchased.
Things to do before giving up a domain name
Be sure you really want to expire the domain - Once someone else
purchases your domain name, you may find it impossible or very expensive
to get it returned. You will lose access to the use of the name
entirely. So be sure that you want to give it up before you actually
allow it to expire.
Be aware of expiration dates - Keep an eye on your domain name expiration
dates as you may not get notified by the registrar before expiration.
This can happen because email is not a perfect delivery system,
because of a glitch in the registrar system or even because you
didn't check your mail or email for the renewal. Don't accidentally
lose your domain names.
Change your email addresses - Once you lose access to a domain,
you will lose access to any email that is going to that domain.
Think of all of the private emails that you get, and imagine them
going to strangers. Well, once someone else gets the domain he may
receive those private emails.
Change any links that you can - If you are allowing a domain to
expire, be sure you salvage any links that you might want to keep.
While you can do this after a domain name expires, it makes more
sense to do it beforehand. For example, if you had owned three domains
that all went to the same web site and you allowed two of them to
expire, you might want to spend the time to change the links to
the domain name that you keep.
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Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at
http://www.internet-tips.net
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