I was a domain newbie when the free .info wave hit. Looking back, i am so glad that the infos were free, because i picked some pretty BAD names thinking that they would resell for XX,XXX - HA! Today, a bit wiser, i buy names primarily for affiliate marketing, and eventual resale.
So, I thought i'd share the most important lessons in picking a domain name to domain newbies, after all, unlike the info's i got, most domains aren't free.
#1) When buying a name for resale purposes, buy only names that YOU would buy at a premium. That means, if the name sounds like cr@p to you, 9 outa 10 times the names will sound like cr@p to a prospective buyer. If you wouldn't by l0ts-of-bad-d0mains.org for XXXX, most likely nobody else will either.
#2) Is the name going to be brandable or niche related? brandable and niche domains are like apples and oranges. If you are going to go for a niche related domain, run the keyword/keywords through something like overture and see just how many searches are done for that particular word/phrase.
Good niche related names can take advantage of organic traffic (unpaid, natural traffic). The resale value of brandable names depend on how you develop the site. On first glance...you couldn't tell me what Walawalabingbang.com was all about. It's hard to predict the resale value of brandables....imo. For newbies, i recommend sticking with names that are niche related. As you start developing an eye for good names, then you can venture out to brandables.
#3) Which brings me to my next point. Don't expect a 1000% return on your domain name within the first month of purchasing a domain. Most newbie domainers tend to get disapointed when their names don't sell at XX,XXX right away. IMO, names that make big bucks have been registered for a long time, have a history of natural (unpaid) traffic, and make some sort of revenue (either adsense, ppc, affiliate, or real product)
#4) I've found that buying names from more than 3 registrars ads confusion to my portfolio. You see that Godaddy is having a 2.99 sale, Yahoo's selling domains for 4.00, and Registerfly is giving infos away.....you might think that you're saving big money buy going where the sale is, but i find that having 4 names at one registrar, 10 in another, 6 at another, 9 at another, just makes me loose track of where and what i have. Find a good registrar, or reseller, and stick with them. You might pay a little bit more per domain, but your saving yourself a TON of headaches 6-8 months from now.
#5) New names are good for development, bad for parking. It takes a good 3 months for a name to get indexed by major search engines. If you want a name for parking purposes, consider buying an existing name with proven traffic and proven revenue. If you place a new name at Sedo, don't expect more than 3 cents a month for that name - and don't expect to be listed in many search engines either....
#6) Don't buy a lot of traffic for new names. Last year, when i first developed my art affiliate site CanvasFakes.comI started a Google Adwords campaign right away. I spent on average 30 dollars a month on the site. 3 months later, i made my first commission! but i had spent almost 90 dollars of advertising! from that month on, i'd spend 30 dollars on adsense, and make 40 dollars commission...leaving me with a net profit of 10 dollars-- whoap te do!
My point is, that you should first build naturall traffic with reciprocal linking, free link exchanges, blogs, and other ways before paying for traffic. By stopping my google adwords campaign, and building free traffic revenues...you keep more profit to yourself and increase the resale value of your name/site. I stopped my google adwords campaign all my sites and now get to pocket mid XX to low XXX from my affiliate programs.
#7) Be patient! It may be disheartening to see 0 traffic hits for 3-4 months, or 0 offers...but time plays a huge roll in a domain name's value. The longer you own your name, the more it will be worth.
#8) Quality not Quantity. It is better to have 10 good names than 100 sucky names. I say this because now and then, we'll all be faced with a free domain name deal. The first impulse of most newbies is to reg a million of these free names...regardless of the meaning and future potential. When faced with a free domain name deal ask yourself, would i buy this name if it cost me $200...or am i just getting it cuz it's free? When it comes to freebee domains, think of the long term...most likely, they will have 0 value untill the freebee sale is over.....Take your time, sit for a moment, think about the name, research other extensions, checkout overture, and then reg it.
#9) Becareful when buying existing names. In the midst of honest resellers, there are many money hungry, scamming scumbags out there waiting to take advantage of you. Do your homework before buying a name....Check the PR of a name, Check it's existing links, how long has it been around? has it ever had adult material on it? is the traffic inflated? Does the seller have a good rep? Check the scams section....you'll see even the best of buyers (and sellers) have been scamed at one point or another. You can limit your risk of being scammed by doing your due diligence and researching a name before you buy it.
#10) If you want to park a new name, choose a high paying keyword. That way even if it gets 1 or 2 clicks a month, you will get maximum revenue. Cute Kittens will most likely have a lower ppc than debt consolidation...REMEMBER you cannot buy traffic for parked pages...which is why i recommend parking older names that. If you want to park a new domain, don't use a domain forwarding feature. Instead, use the *iframe* option (if they give you one). THis will give you more controll over your website. For example, one of my websites is parked at sedo, but hosted on my server. This allows me to check traffic via my cpanel...and this also allows me to add on to my site. If i want, i can add a reciprocal link page to my parked page....for extra traffic via back links.
(what ever you do, check with your parking company to make sure you're not breaking any rules
)
Think of your domain names as a piece of cyber real estate. Good names, good development, will get you far. Take your time, start with one name at time...and you will be sucessfull :D
All of these tips are most of the things I learned in my domaining experience. You'll make good choices, and some bad....you'll learn by your mistakes. Granted this isn't everything you should know/do...and i'm sure you'll hear other opinions on domaining, but this is what's helped me make good choices when buying a domain. My 2 cents :D
So, I thought i'd share the most important lessons in picking a domain name to domain newbies, after all, unlike the info's i got, most domains aren't free.
#1) When buying a name for resale purposes, buy only names that YOU would buy at a premium. That means, if the name sounds like cr@p to you, 9 outa 10 times the names will sound like cr@p to a prospective buyer. If you wouldn't by l0ts-of-bad-d0mains.org for XXXX, most likely nobody else will either.
#2) Is the name going to be brandable or niche related? brandable and niche domains are like apples and oranges. If you are going to go for a niche related domain, run the keyword/keywords through something like overture and see just how many searches are done for that particular word/phrase.
Good niche related names can take advantage of organic traffic (unpaid, natural traffic). The resale value of brandable names depend on how you develop the site. On first glance...you couldn't tell me what Walawalabingbang.com was all about. It's hard to predict the resale value of brandables....imo. For newbies, i recommend sticking with names that are niche related. As you start developing an eye for good names, then you can venture out to brandables.
#3) Which brings me to my next point. Don't expect a 1000% return on your domain name within the first month of purchasing a domain. Most newbie domainers tend to get disapointed when their names don't sell at XX,XXX right away. IMO, names that make big bucks have been registered for a long time, have a history of natural (unpaid) traffic, and make some sort of revenue (either adsense, ppc, affiliate, or real product)
#4) I've found that buying names from more than 3 registrars ads confusion to my portfolio. You see that Godaddy is having a 2.99 sale, Yahoo's selling domains for 4.00, and Registerfly is giving infos away.....you might think that you're saving big money buy going where the sale is, but i find that having 4 names at one registrar, 10 in another, 6 at another, 9 at another, just makes me loose track of where and what i have. Find a good registrar, or reseller, and stick with them. You might pay a little bit more per domain, but your saving yourself a TON of headaches 6-8 months from now.
#5) New names are good for development, bad for parking. It takes a good 3 months for a name to get indexed by major search engines. If you want a name for parking purposes, consider buying an existing name with proven traffic and proven revenue. If you place a new name at Sedo, don't expect more than 3 cents a month for that name - and don't expect to be listed in many search engines either....
#6) Don't buy a lot of traffic for new names. Last year, when i first developed my art affiliate site CanvasFakes.comI started a Google Adwords campaign right away. I spent on average 30 dollars a month on the site. 3 months later, i made my first commission! but i had spent almost 90 dollars of advertising! from that month on, i'd spend 30 dollars on adsense, and make 40 dollars commission...leaving me with a net profit of 10 dollars-- whoap te do!
My point is, that you should first build naturall traffic with reciprocal linking, free link exchanges, blogs, and other ways before paying for traffic. By stopping my google adwords campaign, and building free traffic revenues...you keep more profit to yourself and increase the resale value of your name/site. I stopped my google adwords campaign all my sites and now get to pocket mid XX to low XXX from my affiliate programs.
#7) Be patient! It may be disheartening to see 0 traffic hits for 3-4 months, or 0 offers...but time plays a huge roll in a domain name's value. The longer you own your name, the more it will be worth.
#8) Quality not Quantity. It is better to have 10 good names than 100 sucky names. I say this because now and then, we'll all be faced with a free domain name deal. The first impulse of most newbies is to reg a million of these free names...regardless of the meaning and future potential. When faced with a free domain name deal ask yourself, would i buy this name if it cost me $200...or am i just getting it cuz it's free? When it comes to freebee domains, think of the long term...most likely, they will have 0 value untill the freebee sale is over.....Take your time, sit for a moment, think about the name, research other extensions, checkout overture, and then reg it.
#9) Becareful when buying existing names. In the midst of honest resellers, there are many money hungry, scamming scumbags out there waiting to take advantage of you. Do your homework before buying a name....Check the PR of a name, Check it's existing links, how long has it been around? has it ever had adult material on it? is the traffic inflated? Does the seller have a good rep? Check the scams section....you'll see even the best of buyers (and sellers) have been scamed at one point or another. You can limit your risk of being scammed by doing your due diligence and researching a name before you buy it.
#10) If you want to park a new name, choose a high paying keyword. That way even if it gets 1 or 2 clicks a month, you will get maximum revenue. Cute Kittens will most likely have a lower ppc than debt consolidation...REMEMBER you cannot buy traffic for parked pages...which is why i recommend parking older names that. If you want to park a new domain, don't use a domain forwarding feature. Instead, use the *iframe* option (if they give you one). THis will give you more controll over your website. For example, one of my websites is parked at sedo, but hosted on my server. This allows me to check traffic via my cpanel...and this also allows me to add on to my site. If i want, i can add a reciprocal link page to my parked page....for extra traffic via back links.
(what ever you do, check with your parking company to make sure you're not breaking any rules
)Think of your domain names as a piece of cyber real estate. Good names, good development, will get you far. Take your time, start with one name at time...and you will be sucessfull :D
All of these tips are most of the things I learned in my domaining experience. You'll make good choices, and some bad....you'll learn by your mistakes. Granted this isn't everything you should know/do...and i'm sure you'll hear other opinions on domaining, but this is what's helped me make good choices when buying a domain. My 2 cents :D
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