Cologne,10 July 2004. ICANN accredited registar Secura announces today, that the company is accepting applications for the sunrise and real time period of eu-domains (https://www.domainregistry.de/eu.html).

Sunrise Period

You should send now to your applications to secure your rights at the new eu-domains. The eu-domains will be the most important event since the introduction of com-domains.

There will be a Sunrise Period (Phased registration for those holding prior rights to a name) at the eu-domains.

The Sunrise Period of eu-domains will have two phases:

The EU Regulation stipulates that the registry must make a sunrise provision at eu-domains to allow those with ‘prior rights’ to a name to apply for registration of eu-domains in advance of beginning general registrations. The PPR states that the sunrise period (phased registration) of eu-domains will take place in two phases each lasting two months.

During phase one, public bodies and holders of registered Community or national trademarks will be able to register their names.

During phase 2 those who may register in phase 1 may register their eu-domains as well holders of other rights recognised under Community law or the national law of an EU member state. Eu-domains registered during the sunrise period must be an exact match for the prior right claimed and documentary evidence must be supplied to proof the right.

Live Registration: First comes-first serves

Some weeks after the Sunrise Period eu-domains goes live and general registrations of eu-domains will begin and registration of eu-domains will be done on a first come first served basis for any eu-domain not taken during the sunrise period.

About The Author

Hans-Peter Oswald
CEO
ICANN accredited registrar Secura GmbH

You can reprint or republish these articles for free if these three lines are at the end of the articles:

http://www.com-domains.com

https://www.domainregistry.de

secura@domainregistry.de

The Basic Stuff

Every website needs a domain name. Example "WebBootCamp.com" is a domain name. Your domain is your website address, a.k.a. URL (universal resource locator). Should you use your company name for your domain? Maybe, maybe not. Is it memorable? Easy to spell? Does it contain keywords that relate to your business? For more considerations on choosing a domain, I’ve put together the following checklist.

Pick a memorable name. How catchy is it? Would the average person be able to remember just your website name, without looking through their bookmarks (if they have even bothered to bookmark it, that is)?

Make it easy to spell! Face it, most people can’t spell. Try to target for the masses when you pick your name. Think of everyone having a 7th grade education.

Make it short, try for a two or three word domain. When possible, name your company the same as your domain name. Whether you actually add .com to your company’s name makes little difference.

Use keywords in your domain. Try services like http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html, and wordtracker.com to see what people are searching for, in BIG NUMBERS, related to your subject.

Don’t use numbers or hyphens. These are easily overlooked or forgotten when people type in your domain. Unless you’re using a stand out combination like 911alert or 123homerepair, don’t go numeric. If you use hyphens, then every time you tell someone your domain, you have to say "it’s blah-blah-blah.com - with the hyphens". This is not impressive, and you risk losing traffic to blahblahblah.com. You’re asking your potential customers to work harder, to remember tedious details about your name. Simplicity is important, because you want them to find you. You’re building a brand here.

Don’t buy any other extension except a ".com" This is the best branded domain extension, highly known and trusted. Any other extension is practically worthless, in my book. In addition to being first in the minds of the public, remember also that most people trying to find a company will put a com after that company’s name in their browser. It’s second nature to most of us. A .org can bring attention for non profits, but even most of those companies will try to purchase a .com as well.

Avoid running names together that end in a vowel and begin in a vowel. EXAMPLE: freeebook.com Also try to avoid having the second word start with the same letter as the last letter of the last word. These combinations can look weird, and are often likely to be misread or simply forgotten. By avoiding these two combinations, along with numbers and hyphens, we make sure our words (and our brand) will stand out.

EXAMPLE: WebmasterNow.com

Good For Starting Sentences, Not Domains

Avoid starting your name with THE, or A, if being used as the word A. EXAMPLE asimplehome.com - "a" is likely to be forgotten. While it is true that directory listings usually list alphabetically, search engines do not.

If you can come up with a catchy name starting with "a", by all means, do so. You may find yourself first in the yellow page listings. Have a look there first, and see what the competition looks like. What are their names, how do they rank?

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. You’ll see that names starting with numbers get displayed first (for non paid listings). So the big question becomes, is yours the type of product or service that will do well from yellow page traffic? You must carefully weigh this against overall branding of your company.

You could of course, have more than one domain, and more than one brand for your company, but be careful about promoting the same sites with different names to the same search engines. You could find yourself banned from those search engines altogether.

Brand New?

Don’t pick your name as your domain name, unless you’re famous. Names aren’t keywords (won’t help your search engine rankings), and usually easily forgotten. Unless you’ve built a big brand around your name already, stick to a good key phrase! It is much easier to brand.

Who’s who, and is my name taken?

To search available domains, and to find out who owns registered ones, use the whois function at http://www.internic.net. If you come across a registered domain, it will show you where it was registered. The next step to detecting the identity of the actual owner, is to visit the registrar (this is where the domain was registered) site listed, and use their whois search. This should provide you with name, address, phone number and email of the rightful owner. Unfortunately, this information is not always available, but it is most of the time.

A Common Myth Equals Missed Opportunities

All the great domains are taken. Hogwash! The dirty little secret is, thousands of great domains expire every day! Here’s a handy resource for finding great expired and expiring domains - http://deleteddomains.com - I’ve found some real gems here, like webbootcamp.com, webmastertoolset.com, customoilpainting.com and customoilpaintings.com - all formerly owned and let go, just to name a few.

When applicable, do try to get the singular and plural versions of your domain like we just saw with customoilpainting(s). When one could be easily be mistaken for the other, it helps to be covered this way. You’re also protecting your brand.

Another expiring domain service to check out is snapcheck.com. They have some interesting statistics for expiring domains, such as google page rank and yahoo and dmoz listed domains. Bear in mind that any "perceived value" on a domain put there by a search engine listing or page rank is inherently fleeting. That’s because the content that was responsible for that listing is now gone, and it is simply a matter of time before the search engine’s spiders crawl the site again, and re-evaluate it’s content. In other words, the search engine ranking is very likely going to disappear soon, unless you quickly repopulate the site with compelling content, worthy of the rank the original site had.

Roads To Nowhere, No Stops Ahead

One tasty bonus that accompanies a popular site is link popularity. This is how many other websites link to the domain in question. Think of a link as a road into your website. Quite often, webmasters do not update their links when the site they’re linking to changes or disappears altogether. So if you find an expired (or soon to be expired) domain with high link popularity (many links to the domain), it may well stay that way for some time to come.

Case in point: special-report-network.net was once a very successful ad network run by online marketing guru Allen Says. For reasons unknown, he shut down the site and let the domain expire. The domain had over 14,000 links pointing to it! The weird part is, it still does! Want proof? Go to alltheweb.com and search for "link:http://www.special-report-network.net", without the quotation marks. This will show all the sites linking to it. The domain got snatched up by Ultimate Search, a hong kong company that registers thousands of domains, and makes money from paid search results. The site has nothing to do with the original ad network site that Allen built and made successful, yet the links remain, and links equal traffic.

Bear in mind not all links are created equal. Link farms (A.K.A. FFA or "free for all" links pages), and seldom visited by real people. Instead, automated programs add people’s URLs when they submit to a mass submission service, hoping to generate big traffic. Instead, all they get is a bunch of spam, which they’ve agreed to receive, in order for using the service.

How can I snag that expiring hottie?

When you find a name that is pending deletion (the owner hasn’t renewed it), the next step is to try to secure it, the moment it becomes available. Strangely, domains do not fall back into the pool of availability the day they expire. It can take up to 60 days or more in some cases for them to "drop", and the times are not announced. Thankfully, there are automated services to perform this task for us, such as Namewinner.com, Snapnames.com, Expirefish.com, and Pool.com. Prices vary, and none can guarantee success.

Namewinner lets users bid against each other for expiring domains and only the winner pays, while Snapnames and Expirefish are first come, first served, meaning only one user has a shot at grabbing a particular domain. Snapnames also has the most registrar partners, (including Network Solutions), which may give them an edge for securing expiring domains that are currently registered with their partners. They also have the highest price tag, and you pay whether or not they secure your name. Pool.com is a newcomer that seems to rival the services of Snapnames, with better prices.

One more method you might try, is going directly to the current owner. Let’s say your desired dropping domain is already "back ordered" on Snapnames.com, and Expirefish.com. Now you can still bid for it at Namewinner.com, and Pool.com, but you feel the odds are against you. If you’re really hot on the name, and willing to pay a premium, you may be able to bypass the solutions above, simply by cutting a deal with the current owner.

This can be a bit risky however, because once the owner realizes your interest, they may decide to ask for a unreasonable sum of money, or simply see value in the domain again (generated from your interest), and renew it as an investment. Assuming you can make a deal, you may want to suggest using escrow.com, which eliminates the possibility of fraud for both of you. The owner will need to renew the domain before they can transfer it to you.

The Website Graveyard - Visit Those Spooky Remains!

Once you’ve found a deleted or soon to be deleted domain you fancy, you might want to take a trip into the past, to see what that site used to be! Now bear in mind most domains that are registered are never developed, so there may be nothing at all to see. But for those domains with a tangible history, we can often peek at their ghost, courtesy of the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org.

One Owner, Driven Only On Sundays

Another way to check the history of a domain, is simply to search for it. Try searching google, and groups.google.com, to see what people may have said about the site. You may think twice about purchasing a domain with a sketchy history.

Speculators Beware!

Don’t go overboard and buy every known extension for your brand - (.net, .org, .biz, .info, etc.). Big corporations like google can afford to buy all the country domains. When you’re starting out, remember, domain fees are yearly, and you need to consider the lifelong cost of each domain. For most people, one domain is just fine.

You may think snatching up good domains and reselling them would be a lucrative business. The problem is, finding a buyer is not easy. In fact, that’s an understatement.

Don’t register domains containing trademarks. You will likely here from that company’s legal department if you do, and will be forced to relinquish the name by The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), or a lawsuit, or both.

Who’s in charge?

Icann (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees the domain registration business. Their URL is http://www.icann.org. If you ever have trouble with your registrar, it may be worth reporting to Icann.

Case in point: A client of mine tried to switch his domain to another registrar (at my suggestion), to get added free features (free URL forwarding), and save money. His current registrar denied the transfer, and tried to charge him a fee for leaving! Once we threatened to take up the matter with Icann, and publicly expose them at Icann’s forum (http://forum.icann.org/regxfer), they immediately backed down, and released the domain.

If you believe someone has registered a domain that infringes on your trademark (or has infringed on your intellectual property), the authority to see is The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), at http://wipo.org

Brand Awareness

Capitalize each word of your domain in your sig files and letterhead, and anywhere else you advertise your domain. It helps your brand stand out.

EXAMPLE: http://www.WebBootCamp.com looks better than http://www.webbootcamp.com

Also, only add in http://www. when you’re creating links back to your site (i.e., email, websites, and online forms). In all your offline advertising, such as signs, business cards and letterhead, you should definitely skip http://www. and just use "YourDomain.com". You only have a second or two of people’s attention when they see your URL, so make it count. Brand that name! Just make sure your web host has your site set up to show without WWW. Most sites are correctly set up to display when a person types in "YourDomain.com", or "www.YourDomain.com" but a handful, maybe 10% or so will show page not found, if you skip "www". That could be devastating, so check with your host, and demand that your site come up either way!

Ready To Buy Your .com?

Don’t overpay! I’m still surprised that many people don’t know they can buy domains for under $10 these days. Shop around. Currently I recommend http://www.TOSDomains.net. They offer a lot of extras like URL and email forwarding, free.

Keep Your Registration Current!

Don’t let your domain expire! You cannot afford to be even a day late in payment. If it falls into the redemption period, you may find yourself high jacked by your registrar for an outrageous renewal fee. See this illuminating article for more about the redemption period - "Domain Redemption Period Farce Exposed!" here: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1034. If your expired domain falls back into the available pool, it may be registered by anyone, and you may have little recourse trying to recover it.

The easiest way to ensure you are sent renewal notices for your domain is to keep your email contact current for your domain. Perhaps the most common reason for people losing their domains, is simply that they switch ISPs, and subsequently, their email address changes, and they forget to update that information with their domain registrar.

If you own a lot of domains, keeping up with administration can be tedious. One trick I rely on, is to use one domain for my primary business email address, and on that registration "admin" contact, I use my ISP email. For all my other domain registrations, I use my primary business email address (based on my primary domain, which I will never let go). Now, if I should switch ISPs, all I need to concern myself with is changing that one domain record, to reflect my new ISP email. All my other domain records have that primary domain email as the admin contact, so as long as I keep the one record current (and keep the email account active), all will be current, and all domain renewal notices will be sent to me.

In the end, it’s not so much about the name, as it is what you make of it. Just look at all the big successful internet companies out there with strange names! Yahoo!

To learn how to set up your domain to point to your hosting account, I recommend the reading materials in Web Boot Camp, an all inclusive "how to" guide for web business. Get web savvy today! http://www.WebBootCamp.com/r.cgi?main

Copyright 2004 Jim Symonds

About The Author

Jim Symonds publishes Web Secrets Exposed! Eye popping, and jaw dropping, sneaky little web design tricks & web marketing secrets revealed. How did they do that? We show you! Subscribe Now FR*E! Just Go To: http://www.WebSecretsExposed.com

Would you buy from someone with an "@yahoo.com" e-mail address? I wouldn’t. And the clients I’ve had the most trouble with use yahoo addresses or other free addresses. I understand that you don’t want your regular e-mail address in ads that your run on free ad sites to prevent spam, but lets use some common sense here.

If you don’t buy anything from yahoo’s off line why would you buy from a yahoo online? If you’re serious about your business you have to show it in your actions. The first action to take is to buy your own domain name and use it for all of your e-mails.

Lets say there’s a Bob Jones who starts up an online company. Will you be quicker to buy from him and trust him if his e-mail address is "bob@starpower.com" or if you read an ad from "bobjones711@yahoo.com?" He’s the same guy, but which address makes you trust him more and believe he’s a legitimate business?

Even if you’re not ready to put up a site (which you should be if you’re marketing online), at least create a professional presentation with your e-mails. They’re your main form of communication online and it’s the main brand people see when you communicate. Everytime you send an e-mail you’re advertising. Do you realize this? You’ll never make decent money online if your e-mail address ends with "@aol.com."

When you come up with a great name for your site or business get a ".com", not a ".net" or ".info" or ".tv" or ".someotherwordpeopledontthinkoffirst." If you can’t get a ".com" for your name, then come up with another name.

Since my main site is www.NetMarketingMastery.com and that’s a bit long to type out, I also use www.nmmastery.com for people to get to the same site and use sopan@nmmastery.com for my e-mail address.

There are 877 and 888 numbers that do the same thing as 800 numbers, but what do you think of first?

Have ever you ever heard anyone talk about 888 numbers? How many times? Okay, now how many times have you heard people talk about 800 numbers? 888 and 877 numbers are known as the step brothers and sisters of 800 numbers.

Similarly, when you want to send a package overnight what company do you think of first? Probably Federal Express because they were the first company to do overnight shipping. You can use UPS or Airborne Express or some of the other smaller companies, but FedEx is the company that gets the most business because they’re thought of first. You need to have a ".com" domain because that’s where visitors will go first no matter how many new domain endings are created years and years from now.

If you have ".net" domain name then you’ll be setting yourself up to lose visitors to whoever has the ".com" domain for your name. Outside of earthlink.net how many ".nets" come to your mind right now? On the other hand, how many ".coms" can you think of?

When you hear about a cool company and want to see if they have a website do you try their name with a ".com" or with a ".net" or ".info" or ".tv" 0r ".anythingelsebesidesa.com?" I’ll bet money that you try the ".com" first everytime and you always will because it’s always going to be your first choice.

So if you haven’t already, go buy a domain for your birth name and get crackin’ on coming up with a great name for your business and go buy a domain for that name before it’s taken. Honestly, we’re talking about a $15 a year investment. If you’re not willing to invest $15 into your business then you don’t have a business. If you want to be taken seriously you have to have your own domain name or you will die online trying to make money. Period, end of story.

About The Author

Sopan Greene, M.A. is a marketing & life coach & editor of the Net Profits newsletter. Grab Your 2 FREE eBooks & a FREE report: "Million Dollar Emails" "How To Start Your Own Traffic Virus" & "The 13 Deadly Internet Marketing Mistakes Almost Every Business Is Making…" mail to: webmaster87-5956@autocontactor.com

http://www.NetMarketingMastery.com

Choosing a domain name is a very important first step for anyone starting a business on the Internet. This name is the first impression that strangers are going to have about you and your business. You are going to need to give this decision some real thought.

It is very likely that you have a name in mind already. Something catchy, perhaps? Something that has meaning to you. Maybe you always wanted to name your business after you grandchild, or your favorite pet. I strongly urge you to reconsider.

In the very informative book, The Invisible Touch, Harry Beckwith has some unique ideas about naming a business. He touches on saying your proposed name out loud, slowly. How does it really sound? He cites the name Facial Aesthetics. Sounded out slowly, it becomes ‘fa shil ass thet icks’. Doesn’t sound so good now, does it? Get opinions from others, and then really listen to what they have to say, objectively.

The next thing to consider is whether or not your name says anything about your business. Some years ago, I was friends with a lady who had a business named “Heather’s Feathers”. So, what do you think that this business sold? Feathers? Birds? Bird products? Nope, it sold emu oil. And Heather was her 4 year-old daughter’s name. Consider what you would think of when you see a business name.

You may love your family name. If you are thinking of naming your business after yourself, however, you really need to give it some thought. I have never forgotten these two businesses, whose names I saw on billboards years ago: Crouch Equipment and Tick Insurance. Now you may say to yourself that I remember these names after years. True, but not for their products or their service!

You also run a risk if you choose a name that is too, let me say… mystical. You may know what you mean when you name your business Mystic Blue Nights, but how many other people will?

Don’t choose a domain name that reads like a book. It is difficult for the average person to remember long domain names. It may be descriptive to get lowcostdiabeticrecipesforalloccasions.com, but it is not going to be memorable, and you run the risk of people misspelling it and not being able to find you. Watch out for the use of dashes, too. People don’t expect them, so instead of visiting your site, Pickles-R-Us, they could wander to your competitor ‘pickelsrus’ instead. Trying to be clever and tweak a competitor’s name could backfire on you.

If the name that you really want is not available as a .com, go and look at the .com site before you choose .net, or one of the other extensions that are becoming available, such as .info and .tv. People think .com first, and if they are looking for you and put .com in by mistake, you sure don’t want them to end up at some porn or hate site.

You are going to have to live with your choice of domain names for a long time. Take your time and choose wisely.

About The Author

Sibyl McLendon is the owner of Spirit Web Design http://www.spirit-webdesign.net. She has been designing sites for 3 years. Visit Spirit Web Design for useful information on website marketing.

webmaster@spirit-webdesign.net

Ahhh… your company name.

Your identity. What separates you from everyone else.

I would be willing to bet that you spent a good deal of time coming up with the perfect name for your company. Am I right?

Something catchy, easy to remember, and unique. How am I doing so far?

What if I were to tell you that your company name is possibly the single biggest hindrance to your business’s success online.

Unfortunately, for many companies it is.

Choosing a name for your business online is much different than choosing a name for a brick and mortar business.

You see, in the real world, a business with a catchy, easy to remember name will get traffic simply from people driving by on the street or walking by in a shopping center even if they have never heard of you before.

Unfortunately, this is not how things work online. Online, there is no drive-by traffic, no people walking in to your business because they were next door shopping.

Online, you must be found among a pool of tens of thousands of other businesses.

Online, people don’t casually browse with friends to pass the time.

Online, people search… and unless your name is Microsoft, Wal-Mart, or another extremely well known and well branded name, people are not going to search for your company name.

Studies show that approximately 80% of Internet users find what they are looking for by way of search engines (i.e., Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, etc.), and I guarantee you, they are not going to be searching for your wonderful catchy name, they will be searching for the topic they want.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you own a gourmet coffee business called "The Brewmaster" that you decide to take online. Of course you love your name and create your online identity around your offline name. You reserve the domain name "www.brewmaster.com," keep your company name, and title your site "The Brewmaster."

You’ve submitted your site to Yahoo as well as all the other directories and search engines. Ahhh… life is good. Orders should start rolling in any minute now…

Guess what? Unless you have a HUGE marketing budget for banner ads, etc., you’ve just doomed your business.

Let’s look at why.

First, let’s look at the…

*Site Title*

Whether you’re dealing with a directory or a search engine, the site title is the single most important aspect of your listing. For search engines, the text found within the title tags of the page is given more weight than any other single factor on that page (i.e., keyword density, keyword frequency, heading tags, etc.). In a directory, your entire listing is comprised of two things, your title, and your description.

In both cases, if the keywords related to your business are not found in your title, your chances of coming up in a search are virtually non-existent. If your site is about "gourmet coffee" then those words, or at the very least, "coffee," should be somewhere within your title.

*The Company Name*

Just as your site title should have your most important keywords within them, so should your company name.

Why, you ask?! The answer… directories.

In directories, when a visitor uses the search function (which is what the vast majority use) you will only be found if the search term the visitor uses is found either in your site title or your description. Unfortunately, virtually all directories require your site title to be your actual company name. Remember that directories are powered by humans, not software. A human reviews the site, and assigns the title and description that he/she decides is correct. Yes, they all let you suggest a site title, but ultimately, regardless of what you submit, your title almost always ends up as your company name.

Looking again at the above example, this would mean that your title in almost all of the directories would be "The Brewmaster." This means the only place you would have left to put your keywords would be the description, and this again is up to the editor. This means that any site that has the search term "coffee" or "gourmet coffee" in both the title and description would come up far ahead of your site in the search results, costing you traffic and sales that could have been yours.

*The URL*

Here is another very much overlooked tool. Whenever possible, your URL should contain your most important keywords. Many engines and directories will give your site a boost if your keywords are found within your URL. Also, when you submit your site to the directories, if your URL, your company name, and your site title all match, that will virtually guarantee that you will get the title you requested.

Let’s tie the three previous areas together with an example of what you could have named your site instead of "The Brewmaster."

Here’s one possible alternative: "Gourmet Coffee Brewmaster."

The above alternative would give you a company name that includes your most important keywords and the perfect title for your page.

You could then reserve the domain — http://www.gourmet-coffee-brewmaster.com — giving you a perfect trifecta. The same company name, page title, and URL — practically insuring that you get the directory listing you want.

Of course, this is only one possibility, but I think this should illustrate the point.

To Summarize

Follow these rules and you should have no trouble developing a very steady flow of large amounts of traffic from the directories, and you will be well on your way in the search engine arena as well.

About The Author

John Buchanan is the author of the book "The Insider’s Guide to Dominating The Search Engines," and publisher of a FREE monthly newsletter "The Search Engine Bulletin." Visit us at http://www.se-secrets.com for more information or to sign up for the newsletter.

If internet is about interactivity between websites, domain name is the door for that interactivity. It is your online identity, very much like the name of your best friend, what is his very own personal identity.

From a user’s point of view, a domain name is what he types in the address bar of his web browser to get a certain web site. For example, domain name of our website is www.kigoobe.com and one can get access to this site using the domain name www.kigoobe.com.

However, the scene behind the screen is not exactly the same. Though we see that computers use domain names to communicate over the internet, the basic things that they use to communicate is something called Internet Protocol Address (also called IP address). It is something numerical and a simple IP address can be like 10100011.00011011.00010101.10010011

This kind of combination of zeros and ones is called binary number system. To make things easier for people IP addresses are translated from binary to decimal numbers and the result becomes something like: 189.01.23.255 This looks simpler, but when thousands and millions of websites are in question, this kind of number system, though better than the first one, was still posing problem and then at last in 1983, the University of Wisconsin came forward with a solution to it, and that was to replace these numeric values with suitable text formats.

So here starts the story of www.kigoobe.com or www.yahoo.com or www.microsoft.com. Of course you will agree, that this is much easier to remember than all these 1 2 3 4 etc.

Another term important in this context and what you may come across quite often is URL. An URL (Uniform Resource Locator) can be said as the exact address that holds your domain name. For example, URL of the domain name www.kigoobe.com will be http://www.kigoobe.com. To see that in action, open another window and type in www.kigoobe.com in its address bar. If you press the enter key after that, you will see that kigoobe.com has been changed to http://www.kigoobe.com as the page loads. That’s the URL. The browser changes it itself.

If we break this in different parts, we will find http, www, kigoobe, and com.

http: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. Protocol stands for a set of rules for these kinds of communications. Transfer we all know. Hyper text stands for texts that contain links to other texts, and which is not constrained to be linear only. It can thus hold text, graphics, images, sound, video, and other multimedia files, etc.

Now if we take all together, http or hyper text transfer protocol stands as a set of rules that come into being during transfer of those kinds of hyper text files over the internet.

www: World Wide Web. It refers to all the publicly accessible websites of the world. Besides it also includes ftp (file transfer protocol) files, usenet newsgroups, etc.

kigoobe: It can be anything, something that you choose yourself. We have chosen Kigoobe, somebody else chose one day yahoo, you can choose yourname, or yourbusiness, whatever.

com: The most commonly used first level domain name. Other first level domain names include .org, .net, .edu, .gov, .us, .fr, etc.

Got more questions? Why don’t you simply write to us and we will try to reply to your question! You will get our contact details at Paris web design.

Happy surfing. Cheers.

A Master in biological anthropology, the author is the owner of a Paris based web designing firm ‘Kigoobe’.

If anybody else is publishing this article, please let us know, there is no restriction, but we would love to know where our articles are getting published. A link back is also requested towards Création site internet Paris

What’s your domain name worth?

Perhaps it is better to ask how much a potential buyer would be willing to pay to acquire your domain name. If there was some interest in your domain name, you ought to, at least, have some kind of idea of its value. Generally, is the domain good or bad? If good, how good is it?

If you were to visit any domain reseller sites, you will find literally thousands of ridiculous names. If you scrutinize their asking prices, it will leave you shaking your head in amazement. They run into the thousands and even millions. Names like ApeChatsWorth.com…..It would be better to let them expire or sell cheap if you can find a ‘fool’.

So how do you tell if you have a winning name?

I know someone will be quick to say, "That’s easy. Get them appraised."

Well, you could do that. But the problem with domain appraisals is that there are no industry standards. And you simply cannot put a market value on it and give an accurate appraisal by any standards. Perhaps, in that sense, a domain name is different from real estate because it is not something you can see or touch.

There are numerous companies and sites on the web that will evaluate your domain and give you their opinion on what your domain name is worth. Their services cost anywhere from between $10 to $50. They give you a nice certificate online. But let me tell you that, an appraisal certificate may not necessarily do anything for your domain name.

As can be expected, a single domain name can have vastly differing values when evaluated by different appraisers. Values can differ by tens of thousands of dollars.

You have probably heard it being said over and over again that a domain name is only really worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it. Or what the buyer and seller can agree on to make a deal. So even if a domain name has been evaluated at $2,000 but if no one wants to pay out more than $200 for it, it is obvious the real value of the name is far less than the perceived value that it was originally appraised for.

If you have absolutely no idea what your domain name is worth, getting a professional appraisal may be useful as well as to give you a basis for an asking price if there was indeed someone interested in the name or simply to decide what you want to do with the domain name. A potential buyer already interested in a domain name you have, may be further swayed towards your position by an independent appraisal.

However, let me caution you to be careful. There are a number of thriving scams on the internet designed to play on your emotions and get your money. One instance is when a so-called "buyer" feigns interest in your domain name but requests first for an appraisal from a particular appraiser, just to be sure of the market value, he claims. Then, insists that no other appraisers will do. It doesn’t take a genius to see through this. If you pay for the appraisal, the so-called ‘buyer’ suddenly disappears, no doubt to fleece his next victim. Many fall for this cruel trick in their ecstasy imagining that finally, there was actually someone wanting their domain name. Before you spend any money, check out feedback on the website’s services from other customers. You can do this at Alexa.com. Simply enter the name of the website and you can see reviews and feedback from other customers.

A genuine buyer who wants your domain name is interested in it, NOT because some appraiser says it is worth a princely sum. But only because he himself sees it’s intrinsic value and/or has specific plans for the name. Keep this in mind.

There are a number of free domain appraisal services you could try just to test the waters around your name.

A number of domain name forums have active appraisal boards where you can post your domain names and someone will evaluate it for you. A search on your favorite engine will give you several options.

You may also have come across automated computer scripts online that give you a free instant evaluation of your domain name when you put in certain required details about your name. Those give you a ballpark figure but sometimes do grossly inflate the value. It is after all a script.

If you do decide to get and pay for a professional appraisal, make sure you are engaging a reputable company or you would end up blowing your money.

If you’re still undecided, let me take a look at your domain name and I’ll evaluate it for free. No obligations. See http://www.OpenForSale.com/ to submit your domain name.

Copyright 2005 Edwin John

Edwin John is the author of the top-selling domain ebook, "How I Sell My Domain Names." A guide that teaches domain owners how to find buyers for their domain names. Visit: http://www.OpenForSale.com/

Do you have domain names that you are not currently using?

Did you know that these domains can actually become a source of revenue for your online business?

There are several companies on the internet that will pay you to redirect your domain to a landing page, filled highly relevant PPC (pay per click) links. The links displayed on your landing page will be optimized based on what keywords are in your domain, and what links previous visitors have been interested in looking at. You can earn real money every time one of your visitors clicks a link on your landing page, in addition to guaranteed ad revenue for each and every unique visitor that you recieve. All this revenue building up month after month can form into a very nice income stream for your business.

Considering the fact that you can earn up to $5.00/click (depending on your domain, and what country your traffic comes from) with this type of program, there is no doubt that domain parking can be an extremely lucrative practice. If you would like to learn more about how to start earning money with your unused domain names and be recieving paycheques by the end of next month, please click here…

For more internet marketing articles and online business resources, please visit WealthStream.info…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About the Author: Jeremy Maddock has been a successful internet marketer for over three years, and is the webmaster of http://www.WealthStream.info.

Read this brief article that reflects what we learned about subdomains and their important role in effective internet marketing.

A sub-domain is a section of your main web site, set up and recognized as it’s own cyber real estate. There is usually no cost or very low cost to set up multiple subdomains on your hosting account. Sub-domains are folders located within a directory of your main site and carry a pre name to your existing domain.

Example ..

http://www.masteradvertising.com is our main domain name.

But we use many sub domain names for our research areas, script testing and growing development areas.

Such as ..

http://traffic.masteradvertising.com

(for our traffic exchange)

http://mail.masteradvertising.com

(for our members free mail service)

http://team.masteradvertising.com

(for our admin team members) and so on …

To best utilize your subdomains, it is important that they all remain o­n the same subject area or theme. Our site pertains to online advertising. It would not benefit us to launch a pet store under pets.masteradvertising.com.

Each subdomain can serve as another gateway into your main establishment, for visitors, testing marketing strategies, and search engines too!

Since creating content for a website takes time, often webmasters simply modify the existing text of the main site and reuse it on the subdomain site. It is important that the content is not exactly the same and that the subdomain does not simply redirect to the main site. Otherwise, search engines may not index them and you may even may even get tossed from the engines database.

Subdomain websites can be submitted to the search engines just like your main site. If your website is doing alright in the search engines, then imagine having five more websites out there for the spiders to find. Five more listings means that web surfers have five times as many ways to find yournetwork of websites.

More and more search engine algorithms take into consideration the number and ranking of sites that link to you. By linking your sub-domains to your main site and to each other, the ranking of all of your sites is improved.

Your subdomains provide a great area for testing banner exchanges and other advertising resource mediums, without cluttering up the main site. Each sub domain will carry it’s own traffic statistics, and campaigns can be tracked efficiently by ones self with server stats or other preferred tracking methods.

Get creative and branch your services and products out between your subdomains yet centering them around and connected via your main site. It will increase your keyword density and rankings per sub domain and most consumers are more comfortable working with a specialized area then a o­ne-stop shop.

About The Author

Dawn Wentworth

http://www.masteradvertising.com

Resources and Research into Traffic Generation

submit@masteradvertising.com

The domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make when trying to win over the search engine dilemma. Try using at least one of your best keywords within your domain name.

The search engine and the directories give higher preference when your domain name is relevant to your site content or theme.

Let me give you an example of three different ways you could look at your domain name and how the major search engines will view them for indexing.

www.trafficnmore.com

www.trafficNmore.com

www.traffic-N-more.com

Which one would you have chosen?

www.trafficNmore.com, Right!

The search engines may not necessarily see it that way.

Even though trafficNmore.com is easily understood by the eye of the visitor, the search engine will not see the difference between trafficnmore.com and trafficNmore.com.

Both are good ranking for a site dealing with traffic issues.Even though you have the approval of your visitor looking for your information, you could get a higher ranking with the search engines by using www.traffic-N-more.com and still keep the eye appeal for your visitor.

Here is why.

The hyphen breaks up a longer domain name to reveal the major keywords that describe your website content or theme. This makes it easier for the visitor to understand and most importantly allows the search engine to detect your keyword for indexing right off the bat. Cool, huh?

Moral of the story, give your visitor a break, be nice to the search engines and they’ll be nice to you and give you lots of reoccurring traffic for free.

Debra Gravelle
Free Traffic. Free Download.
http://www.traffic-n-more.com/toolbox.htm
admin@traffic-n-more.com

About The Author

Debra Gravelle has been a business consultant and planner for 22 years.