How to Choose the Right Domain Names

Choosing names. This is where the game is won or lost...and it happens before you even step on the playing field and hand over your credit card number for those first domain registrations! Learn how to make money from expired domain names and more Click Here!

It is amazing how many people jump into this business without doing any research to find out whether or not there is even a remote chance their names will sell (or earn revenue from traffic or affiliate arrangements). They just start registering names because they like the way they sound. I know because that's what I did when I started!
Choosing the right domain names

It was a costly mistake. I bought hundreds of domains the first few months I was in the business, but didn't make a single sale until five months after I started (and that sale was for peanuts). It took that long before I finally learned the answer to the question I should have asked the first day I arrived. That is "Who are the buyers?" If you don't know who they are, there is no way for you to know what they want.

The vast majority of money from domain sales and advertising revenue comes from businesses who are interested in only one thing - selling their product or service. So guess which domain names are in highest demand? If you said names that describe a commercial product or service you get a gold star (and a head start on all of those people like me who foolishly dove in head first from the high board without knowing my pool of potential buyers was so shallow I was sure to get hurt when I hit the water).

domain sales
Fortunately you can easily avoid making the same mistake. There are free tools out there that will help you measure the potential of a domain before you buy it.

When I found out about those tools and started using them, my business blossomed and I went on to sell hundreds of domains and build a portfolio of keepers that earn a steady income from selling the traffic that comes to those domains to advertisers.

Here are some of the tools you will want to use and a brief description of what each tool will tell you (I want good results from most or all of these tools to be confident the domain I am looking at has a good chance to be a winner):


http://inventory.overture.com/searchinventory/sugestion - When you put a word or term in the Overture search box it will tell you how many times people searched for that term in their system the previous month (Overture is Yahoo!'s advertising network). I get interested if the word returns 10,000 or more because it tells me a lot of people are interested in the name I entered, indicating a strong demand for the product or service. A lower number wouldn't necessarily rule the domain out. Other tools may tell me that a word or term that only returns 2,000 in Overture has some other valuable attributes that still make it worth buying. Keep in mind that Overture combines the results for plural and singular searches. So if you enter the word "home" the number returned would cover searches for both "home" and "homes" which sometimes makes it tricky to determine if a singular or plural word is as strong as the number indicates.

Overture is also relied on very heavily by domainers looking for traffic. If you type in the word or term with the extension (for eample, "shoes.com" instead of just "shoes"), you can get a pretty good idea whether or not the actual domain is getting traffic. Someone will register virtually any domain that returns a number in Overture with the extension. Where 100 without the extension should be a sign to move on, 100 with the extension will draw a flood of competing buyers. This tool does not return accurate results for domains with hyphens.
*

Google - The popular search engine is a good tool to use for checking word/term popularity. Since the number of Google pages returned is simply an indication of how many pages contain the word, use some common sense here. It is most useful for product/service nouns, surnames, city names (smaller cities since large city names are obvious buys), etc. I like to see a million pages or more, but a half million might be fine if other tools point to value. When your search includes more than one word be sure to enter it in quotes, like "domain name" for instance, otherwise you will get inaccurate results for the term.
*

www.netcheap.com (and many other registrars) - I also like to check whether or not an available word/term has been taken in other major extensions (for me that would be .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info and my country code - .us). I prefer to see the word I go after be gone in all of the other major extensions as that lowers the odds of the buyer considering an alternative. If they are all gone it is also another indicator of how much interest there is in that word or term. You can check which extensions are available at most major registrars. I happen to use NetCheap to do this because it has a compact easy to read screen that shows what has been taken.


View Bids tool - Another Overture tool that will tell you what advertisers are currently bidding for a word or term. Just as important as knowing which words are most popular is knowing which words have the highest bids on them. If advertisers are bidding $2 per click on a word it could make a considerably more valuable site than a word that has a top bid of 10 cents.

Information from the latter tool is especially important if you decide to develop some of your domains yourself. You are likely to earn more from an advertising program for web site publishers (like Google AdSense or Yahoo! Publisher's Network) if the word has a higher pay per click value. For example, it is not uncommon to earn $4 a click from a casino advertiser. You would need 40 clicks to earn the same money from a site built on a word that advertisers only pay 10 cents a click for.

There is a much more in-depth discussion of these tools and many others that you will want to use in a Cover Story as stated in the DNJournal called Tools of the Trade: Free Resources That Will Help You Identify Domains That $ell. I strongly urge you to read the complete article because I am convinced you will earn dividends from the information for many years to come.
Keep in mind that these tools do not guarantee sales but they will greatly enhance your odds of buying domains that have a better chance to sell or earn money from advertisers. Sometimes buyers do not surface for even the best names, but the domain business is all about the odds. If you build a portfolio of carefully selected domains a certain percentage will sell and the proceeds should be enough to recoup your costs for the entire portfolio with a nice profit left over.

How to Find Money-Making Domains

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!

Tips To Create Good Domain Name

Domain name is an identity for a website. It is similar to fingerprint as identity for people. Two or more web sites can not share one same domain name. The domain name must be different at least different in the extension. The important for domain name is unique, memorable, simple, alphabet, extension, dash, global, sound, nature activity and intuition.

Good domain name criteria is it must be unique. It is not be similar to other popular domain name by adding one or more alphabets to it. The unique domain name must be different from others.

Good domain name is also must be memorable. People can remember it because it is unique. Therefore they will visit the web site again because they remember the web site name. It will attract more unique visitors to the website. Higher visitor means higher potential to sell product or service.

Shorter domain name means better domain name. It is easier to be remembered and written. The value is higher. Good domain normally has 10 or less alphabets. We observe most popular domain name have less than 10 alphabets. Longer domain name can cause the domain name is typed wrongly. As the result the actual wanted website can not be reached.

Good domain name is also normally having repeated alphabets. This will help the domain name become unique and more memorable. Most popular websites use this tip for their domain name.

Domain name with extension com is more popular and familiar compared to other extension. People who want to buy domain name normally prefer to use com extension as first choice. Only there is no com extension, they will search other extensions or other domain names. People also have tendency to type com if they forget the actual extension. In simple word domain name with com extension have highest value compared to other domain name extension.

Good domain name do not containing dash. Domain name with dash seems it is less interested compared domain name without dash. Domain name containing number also is seems less interested. We can observe the country and people name never use dash or number. Otherwise, it become something lack to the name.

Good domain name must appropriates with the business or activity operated. Good general domain name means it can be used for any kind of business and activity. Anyway it is better if the domain name match the business or activity operated. To practice business or activity differently or oppositely is not good even have a good domain name.
To get the Leading EBook On How To Buy, Sell, Manage And Make Money With Domain Names Click Here!

Good domain name must be global name. People can accept it as global name rather than local name only. It will attract more visitors to the website. However global name is not so important anymore if focus for local visitors only.

Good domain name must have good sound. It is easy to be called and spelt. People have tendency to visit the website that the domain name sound is good.

Above explanation are tips how to create domain names. Another important factor is we must believe our intuition. Normally our intuition is correct. If our intuition says the domain name is good, do not doubt and take it immediately before other people take it. To get good institution, we must always in positive life and mind.