When does a domain get marked as spam?

[Frager]

Hi guys,

I am not only new here in this forum, but I am also new in the domain business. Until recently, I only traded stocks in the stock market. I have the eye for things having a potential, whether they are stocks, start-up companies, new business models etc. Therefore before doing something wrong, I like asking the pros and they are here in this forum. In advance I thank you for your answers.

* The only and biggest risk for a domain is to be marked as spam, right?
* When does a domain get marked as spam and will it get marked automatically by search engines or by whom?

* My domain registrar offers free URL-Forwarding. Am I allowed to forward my domains to any website or do I need permission of the website owner that users entering my domain are forwarded automatically to their website?
* Would my domain get a better standing at search engines when my domain forwards to a great website that fits to the name of my domain?
* Several domains are of the same topic. If I forward them all to one website that I build, would it be good or what is the disadvantage?

A professional domain reseller is selling Mobiltelefone.net and he is asking a high price.
Mobiltelefone.de is the domain of a company selling SIM cards and cell phone contracts.
* I am wondering why I should pay a high price for such a .net domain if I can register Mobil-telefone.net for as low as $ 12,- because it is free? Also the .org is free. This is one example that I don't understand the logic of domain sale.

A former friend of mine (now an enemy unfortunately, his success made him crazy) launched a website and three years later he has sold it for one million dollar. He registered a domain with a dash in between. He had told me that the name of his website would be better understood by search engines if it contains a dash and he would accept it that his members forget the dash and land on a parked website.

* How much are you aware of the risk that your domain could be marked as spam? I could not find one single topic about this important risk here in this forum when I browsed through the past few pages.

* Do you make more money with domains that are destined for online sales, like domains containing 'apps' for mobile phones like appstore where website owners get a few percent commission for each sale?
* How comes that domains with the word 'apps' are not sold out with the wrong writing aps even though many people might forget that apps contains two 'p'?
* How comes that singular domains are taken, but there are still many free plural versions of domains?

* Why do you pay for hosts if you can do URL-forwarding to free blogs like blogspot.com?
Do domain registrars limit the number of forwards per domain per day/week/month?

 

[Domainate.com]

Hi guys,

I am not only new here in this forum, but I am also new in the domain business. Until recently, I only traded stocks in the stock market. I have the eye for things having a potential, whether they are stocks, start-up companies, new business models etc. Therefore before doing something wrong, I like asking the pros and they are here in this forum. In advance I thank you for your answers.

* The only and biggest risk for a domain is to be marked as spam, right?
* When does a domain get marked as spam and will it get marked automatically by search engines or by whom?

* My domain registrar offers free URL-Forwarding. Am I allowed to forward my domains to any website or do I need permission of the website owner that users entering my domain are forwarded automatically to their website?
* Would my domain get a better standing at search engines when my domain forwards to a great website that fits to the name of my domain?
* Several domains are of the same topic. If I forward them all to one website that I build, would it be good or what is the disadvantage?

A professional domain reseller is selling Mobiltelefone.net and he is asking a high price.
Mobiltelefone.de is the domain of a company selling SIM cards and cell phone contracts.
* I am wondering why I should pay a high price for such a .net domain if I can register Mobil-telefone.net for as low as $ 12,- because it is free? Also the .org is free. This is one example that I don't understand the logic of domain sale.

A former friend of mine (now an enemy unfortunately, his success made him crazy) launched a website and three years later he has sold it for one million dollar. He registered a domain with a dash in between. He had told me that the name of his website would be better understood by search engines if it contains a dash and he would accept it that his members forget the dash and land on a parked website.

* How much are you aware of the risk that your domain could be marked as spam? I could not find one single topic about this important risk here in this forum when I browsed through the past few pages.

* Do you make more money with domains that are destined for online sales, like domains containing 'apps' for mobile phones like appstore where website owners get a few percent commission for each sale?
* How comes that domains with the word 'apps' are not sold out with the wrong writing aps even though many people might forget that apps contains two 'p'?
* How comes that singular domains are taken, but there are still many free plural versions of domains?

* Why do you pay for hosts if you can do URL-forwarding to free blogs like blogspot.com?
Do domain registrars limit the number of forwards per domain per day/week/month?

First off, the reason your post hasn't gotten responses yet is because you asked about a million questions. You're better off limiting to 1-3 questions per thread.

I'll answer these for you though:

"* The only and biggest risk for a domain is to be marked as spam, right?
* When does a domain get marked as spam and will it get marked automatically by search engines or by whom?"

There are 2 risks in domaining as I see it. One is getting anything that is TM-infringing - you can not only lose the domain but be sued afterwards. In other words, not very smart to go after TM-infringing domains. The 2nd risk is to dive in head-first, getting every domain that sounds good to you thinking it should sell easily, and find out thousands of dollars into it that you don't really know what you're doing and you have a portfolio of worthless domains. The flipside of that is asking way too high of prices for all of your domains, in which case you may have nice domains, but you'll never make a sale and renewal fees will suck you dry. Hence you should read the forums a lot before you do very much domaining.

"* My domain registrar offers free URL-Forwarding. Am I allowed to forward my domains to any website or do I need permission of the website owner that users entering my domain are forwarded automatically to their website?"

You can forward them anywhere. Don't get a TM-infringing domain and figure that forwarding it to the site whose TM you are infringing makes it safe to do - it's not.

"* Would my domain get a better standing at search engines when my domain forwards to a great website that fits to the name of my domain?"

No. Your domain won't get a better standing in search engines if it forwards to anything - only if it actually has content on it or is getting incoming links to it.

* Several domains are of the same topic. If I forward them all to one website that I build, would it be good or what is the disadvantage?

That's debatable - it depends on if they may rank well on their own. I have a case where I have a generic domain forwarding to a site of mine, and the site now ranks for the term in that generic domain entirely because that domain is forwarding to it, BUT that's only likely because that domain would have ranked well on its own. Doing 301 redirects of the domains is the important part - it wouldn't be doing this if it was a 302 redirect.

"A professional domain reseller is selling Mobiltelefone.net and he is asking a high price.
Mobiltelefone.de is the domain of a company selling SIM cards and cell phone contracts.
* I am wondering why I should pay a high price for such a .net domain if I can register Mobil-telefone.net for as low as $ 12,- because it is free? Also the .org is free. This is one example that I don't understand the logic of domain sale."

This is debatable. My own opinion is that only a .com can really have a lot of value where the "next extension down" (which for .com would arguably be either .net or .org) is available. I see that all the time whereas I don't see it that often for non .com domains, although I have at times sold .org's for a decent amount where .info/.biz/.us were all available. It really depends on how much the buyer wants that particular domain.

Also, you should not be registering domains for $12 these days. There are many places like GoDaddy, Moniker, NameCheap, Fabulous etc. that are considerably cheaper than that.

"A former friend of mine (now an enemy unfortunately, his success made him crazy) launched a website and three years later he has sold it for one million dollar. He registered a domain with a dash in between. He had told me that the name of his website would be better understood by search engines if it contains a dash and he would accept it that his members forget the dash and land on a parked website."

That's a subject of debate. It's not BETTER understood by search engines with a dash - that's nonsense. Dashes supposedly don't HURT the domain in a search engine's eyes if it's merely separating words. That said, it's very ugly for a developed site looking to get people taking it seriously, ugly in advertising, not radio-friendly or even TV friendly (people will likely remember it but may type it without the dash) or in general for type-in traffic, so there's many reasons to stick with hyphenless.

"* How much are you aware of the risk that your domain could be marked as spam? I could not find one single topic about this important risk here in this forum when I browsed through the past few pages."

That's because probably 95-99% of the people here don't develop websites on the domains. Domains won't be marked as "spam" with parked pages on them unless you're spamming people to go to them, which is a definite no-no. In general, you shouldn't worry about being blacklisted or anything unless you're taking practice in devious tactics to get people to your site or get money from them once they're at your site.

"* Do you make more money with domains that are destined for online sales, like domains containing 'apps' for mobile phones like appstore where website owners get a few percent commission for each sale?"

This is one type of name - generally dubbed product domains. If they're well-searched terms, they're a solid kind of generic domain to go after because developing eStores can be easy for certain things, and are more straightforward web developments than thigns like info sites.

"* How comes that domains with the word 'apps' are not sold out with the wrong writing aps even though many people might forget that apps contains two 'p'?"

"Apps" has been used so often that I think you're wrongfully assuming that people are constantly making that typo. That is a common KIND of typo though, but again you're going into territory where you may be infringing on trademarks, which many typos are, so you should always be mindful/careful of that.

"* How comes that singular domains are taken, but there are still many free plural versions of domains?"

Sometimes the plural doesn't make sense, like PartyPokers.com. Sometimes the person that got the singular didn't think to check the plural, and sometimes the plural was taken when the singular owner got his and the plural later became available. There's many reasons for that to occur.

"* Why do you pay for hosts if you can do URL-forwarding to free blogs like blogspot.com?
Do domain registrars limit the number of forwards per domain per day/week/month?"

Your domains don't build any value if you forward them elsewhere. Blogger owns everything on blogspot including your blogs there. They may not take advantage of that all too often, but it's true. You're much more secure and value-building if you build a blog or site on your own domain on its own hosting.

Be glad I did this - this took a half an hour and that was a lot of questions!

 

[Frager]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate your response. I just wished that there would be more people of your personality.