The Management Consulting Group

I often have to explain to clients why, when they first get a
domain name and website, it takes up to 48 hours for someone to
be able to see their website. This can happen if they switch web
servers, as well. The key to understanding this is understanding
a little bit of how domain names work.

Keep in mind, this explanation will be just a bit simplified, to
make it easier to understand. I don’t like filling my
explanations to clients with technical jargon, so I’m going to
attempt to avoid that here.

The first thing to understand is this. Web hosting (or web
space) is completely different from your domain name. Where your
website’s files actually sit has nothing to do with what your
site is called. In fact, you can even purchase your domain name
from one company and your web hosting from another. Many people
do.

So how, when someone goes to your web address, does it know
where your web hosting is? Each web host actually has a
numerical address. Let’s say your web site is at
www.yourcompany.com, and your actual web hosting address is
216.60.153.87. How does my computer know that by typing in
www.yourcompany.com, it should actually go to 216.60.153.87?

It doesn’t. Instead, it asks my Internet service provider (Cox,
AOL, SBC, etc.). Each Internet service provider has all that
information stored. So my computer sends my ISP the web address,
www.yourcompany.com, and my ISP actually looks that up at
216.60.153.87.

Hopefully that clears up a little bit the association between
the domain name (www.yourcompany.com) and what is referred to as
the IP address (or name server) of your web host
(216.60.153.87). Now, let’s move on to why it takes up to 48
hours to update those records.

Let’s say you buy a new domain name through Go Daddy. For every
domain name someone buys through them, Go Daddy has their domain
name and actual numerical address stored. That’s thousands of
domain names. But when you buy a new domain from them, at the
beginning, they’re the only ones who have that information. They
then have to get that information out to the rest of the
Internet.

So how does that happen? Let’s use an analogy. How that spreads
is similar to how the flu spreads. If you were spreading the flu
on purpose, that is. Let’s say you had the flu, and wanted to
spread it to as many people as possible, but could only infect
one person at a time. The key, then, would be getting those
people to then also infect others.

That’s how the spread of your domain name works. Go Daddy (or
whoever), regularly contacts other computers out on the Internet
and passes on this information. Then those computers do the
same. However, one computer might send out this information
every hour, another every six hours, another every fifteen
minutes. The schedule of each computer is not the same.

So 48 hours is the maximum amount of time, the experts agree,
that it will take the information about your domain name to
spread to all those computers (called domain name servers, or
name servers for short). The technical term for this, if you’re
interested in knowing, is propagation. 48 hours is the maximum
amount of time it takes your domain record to propagate to all
the domain name servers on the Internet.

As complicated as this sounds, I’ve actually simplified it quite
a bit. But the essential concept is there.

Message to ICANN: Let those who want to create a tld, simply register it with ICANN.

If the tld is not already taken, if they have the technical capability to mange the tld, and they have the desire to market domain names on that tld, then let them do so.

It should be similar to the registering of a domain name, except on a higher level, with the added technical requirements. ICANN should be sort of an uber-registry for tlds.

It would be ludicrous for a domain name restrar like go daddy or enom to ask you for a business plan, or a non-refundable application fee, before allowing you to register a domain name. It would be ridiculous for a registrar to have “rounds” of domain name releases of names “they chose” in advance.

Okay, this month, go daddy will be allocating cheaperwebhosting.com, doggrommingmadeeasy.net, and virtualinternetwebnetwork.net. We will be taking applications and public comment during the month of february. We will then spend another month reviewing the applicants business plans to decide who we will allocate the domain name to. If you are not approved to manage the domain name you apply for, your application fee will be held by go daddy until further notice.

Some people will say that is not a good analogy, but it is a perfect analogy. Here is why. If info.com was still available and I registered it. I could then start selling subdomains like car.info.com, computer.info.com, icann.info.com or any other subdomain someone wished to purchase from me. The subdomain is one dot removed from the domain name the same as the domain name is one dot removed from the tld.

There is no longer any reason to believe ICANN is doing anything other than restricting free enterprise and free trade by not opening up the market for tlds. It is no longer acceptable that ICANN should be the one to decide which tlds will or will not be created nor is it acceptable that ICANN gets to choose who can or cannot run a tld.

Do you present a businesss plan to the city you live in before they allow you a business license? No.

Does the city ask you to prove you are financially stable before issuing you a business license? No, as long as you pay the registration fee.

If you apply for a business license to open a clothing store, does the city ask how you will run your clothing store or if you have the necessary expertise to run a clothing store? No.

Does the city think you will hurt them economically if your clothing store goes out of business? No, it’s none of their business.

Is the city concerned that there may not enough demand for yet another clothing store? No, again none of their business.

ICANN not allowing me, or anyone else in the world, to create a tld of our choice in any language we choose, is a blatant violation of our rights. In many countries, America among them, the right to free enterprise still exists. ICANN is denying me that right as an American citizen and doing so when even their own organization exists under American law.

There are no needs for auctions or rounds or anything else. If you want to run a tld, then you register it and start selling domain names. If you fail, you fail, just as in any other business venture you take on.

Artificially restricting namespace to make a few business IP interests happy has to stop.

Chris McElroy has been an advocate for the rights of domain name owners and individuals who use the Internet since 1995 and is currently advocating that ICANN open up the TLD market. His website at www.newsandmediablog.com has more information about politics, ICANN, domain names, and consumer rights.

What is a domain name at all? A domain name is the text name corresponding to the numeric IP address of a computer server and associated website on the Internet. When you decide to have your own website you also need to decide on a domain name where you can use your website and where people can find it. But how do you find a good domain name and what do you have to be aware of when choosing a domain name?

Sometimes a good domain name for your website is to choose a domain name that matches the name of your website. As an example, a website uses the business name it represents as its name and the matching domain name is “businessname.com”. This helps identifying the business on the Internet. A very well known real life example is the website of Microsoft, which can be found at Microsoft.com.

The use of keywords in domain names can be important. Some search engines identify the keywords and deliver the matching website as a search results to people doing a search for this keyword. Using keywords in domain names can often have significant impact on how well a website is ranked in the search results. However - keyword stuffing in domain names is a bad thing to. People will have difficulties remembering those names and it just does not look as professional. If you are serious about your domain name avoid domain names like “search-engine-success-guaranteed.com” or something like that. You will get the idea. How long or short should a domain name be? The shorter a domain name the easier it is to remember. A short domain name also looks more professional (some exceptions may apply though). The perfect domain name has 14 characters or less. However - it is not always possible to follow this rule. If you need to work with more than 14 characters, 22 characters should be your upper limit. Do not go with longer domain names to avoid problems.

Should a domain name include hyphens? Hyphens in general are not a bad thing but you might loose visitors to the same domain name without hyphens. Using a hyphenated domain name makes verbal advertising more difficult as the speaker has to make sure that people understand the hyphen (dash) in the domain name. Still - it will be a significant disadvantage using a hyphenated domain name for advertising. For search engine optimization a hyphen does not really matter though and the domain name or better - website will show up at the same position as a non-hyphenated domain name.

The domain name extension or TLD (Top Level Domain) plays an important role, too. “.com” domain names will always be the best choice to go with. This does not mean that your website will not be successful if you decide to go with a different TLD like “.us” or “.info”.

About the Author

Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Christoph Puetz lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. One of the websites he maintains can be found at Hosting Tutorials.

So you want to be an Internet superstar, work from home and earn six figures cool we are working on doing just that.
In previous articles we have discussed figuring out what you want to do for your home business another term for this is finding your niche.

We then discussed a few different programs available to help you if you are a Veteran, or Single mother. (There is a lot more of this to come)

We will now discuss step three in designing your income producing website.

Proper domain name selection.

When selecting a domain name there are a couple of key questions you should ask.

Is my domain name easy to remember?

When purchasing a domain you want to keep it as short as possible and avoid hyphens whenever possible. For example H-B-S.biz is much easier to remember then Home-Business-Success.biz. In this case we bought both names. We use the shorter domain to put on business cards, flyers, and brochures. When a person types in H-B-S.biz they are automatically forwarded to our long domain website. The long domain URL has two of our keywords in it, which should help with the search engines. The bottom line is the shorter and more memorable the domain the better. It is suggested to put keywords into your domain name wherever logically possible. Try to keep the domain short and use a maximum of three words. If you want to brand your company you can insert your company name in the domain. Be as specific as possible, for example if my company was called: XYZ marketing and one of my websites was about Home business I could purchase the domain XYZHomebusiness.com. In, this example we have both our company name and keywords, so this would be a good domain name to choose. With some niches such as Home business the competition is tough so as in our case you might have to settle for a domain name with hyphens in it. Try to avoid it but it is not the end of the world.

Has anyone owned the domain prior to me?

When I was first looking for a domain name for H-B-S, I was happy to discover that Home-business-xxxxx.com was available so I bought it. Big mistake. We proceeded to build the page and gather incoming links as well as doing some manual submissions to directories. After a few weeks we noticed that our site was not getting crawled by the search engines. We also noticed that any emails I sent to Jeff using the new domain got blocked by his email spam program “Spam Cop”. We both wondered what the heck was going on. It was then I started to do some investigation to find out if someone else had owned the domain name prior. There are a number of ways you can check this. The first way is to go to Alexa.com and use the Wayback machine. Check to see if the site has ever been published on the net before. If the site is about Gambling, or a Pill store I suggest you look for another name.

Should I only buy a .com URL? Two years ago I would have said yes, however, today a .biz URL is fine. A majority of people who surf the net are aware of the .biz extension and your customers should also be able to remember it easily. As with the hyphen example above if you can get the .com and a spammer has not used it in the past go ahead and get both the .biz and .com versions.

Should I buy all the extensions available? In a nut shell yes! With the cost of a domain name starting at around $7.00 each I suggest for peace of mind and future growth you buy the .com, .biz and .org variations of your domain name. I know of a case where a person put up their site and built it for six months very successfully. Well about three months later the person discovered someone had bought the .biz version of their URL and was trying to steal traffic. Listen you are investing in your future success, spend a few extra dollars now to avoid a potentially major headache in the future.

Should I buy a domain name from a Domain auction? You should save your money. There are thousands of combinations of domain names that will fit your business. Take that money and invest it into your website promotion perhaps through Pay per click or pay for submission to a few of the upper level directories.

I hope this article has helped you and will make your domain name selection easier and more profitable.

Stephen Mistretta is a Freelance Writer and a Partner in the Work At Home Website
http://www.Home-Business-Success.biz

Our goal is to cut through the garbage and find the programs and products that actually make you money.

Buying a good domain name is only one step in making a successful investment. In the world of virtual real estate, the domain name is the land and the actual website is the structure. There are thousands of high-grade domain names that point to a very shabby websites, this opens up opportunity doors to willing investors.

Our main objective is to find out what makes a fixer-upper domain name, and which ones would actually make a good investment. There are a few tricks that we can use to make a valuable decision.

When finding a fixer-upper domain name:

1. Look for areas of the market that experience growth. For example, if real estate is booming hot, then real estate domain names will be also increasing in value.

2. Once the market which is experiencing online growth is pin-pointed, think of high-class domain names that have unspectacular web presence. Check the domain name auctions such as Sedo.com to see if any domains in that market range are for sale, and make a bid. Today’s domain economy is extremely “SELL” based, so you might get away buying a top-notch domain for a really low price. If you come across a really good domain name with a dying website, you possibly hit the jackpot since the owner is no longer interested in maintaining the investment and will likely sell at a good price.

3. Put together a short plan on how you or your team will improve the site, or even consider tearing down the entire site and building a new one.

4. If you see potential for a profit, make an offer to purchase the domain name from the owner.

It is important to have a plan of the website or “structure” that will be placed under the domain name. Just like in real estate, it is not logical to simply buy a home, tear it down and then try to sell the land alone.
What attracts domain name buyers is the type of traffic that visits the website, so make sure that your fixer-upper domain name and the new attractive web-structure attracts lots of traffic. This traffic has to be unique, and it cannot come from paid advertisements.

Fixing up websites is not for everyone, it requires specialized skills and vision. Remember, you must be ready to spend some money to be successful in domain name fixer-uppers. Not only do you have to invest time and money to develop a jaw-dropping website, but you also have to make sure you research the market so that you’re developing in the right zone! But if done correctly, huge profits are usually claimed.

For more information on domain name investment visit http://www.planswork.com

Domain names to the internet are the as necessary as wheels on a car. All websites need a domain name; it is how your website is found on the internet by your potential customers. It is your unique identifier and two organizations can not have the same domain name. Your domain name is not really purchased or bought; it is actually leased for a year to 10 years.

Choosing a good domain name requires some thought, because picking a good name may be an important factor in getting return visitors to your site. You will want to keep it short and to the point, no more than 14 letters. This can help reduce the chance of a visitor mistyping your site and ending up on another site.

It is a good idea to choose a domain name that reflects the type of business you plan to do. You will use the name often in your website and if done right it can help you with promote your site with the search engines. What are some tips for choosing a domain name?

Tip 1 - Buy it early. Take a day or two to decide on your name. Think it through, but, don’t procrastinate. Over 30,000 domain names are sold a day. Don’t let someone else beat you to a good domain name.

Tip 2 - Buy your name in .com and .net. Let’s say you buy domain name KCBBQ.com. Your competitor, who also sells Kansas City BBQ sauce, knowingly buys KCBBQ.net and maybe even KCBBQ.biz. Why would he do that? Isn’t he limiting his own business by getting a name similar to yours and won’t he confuse his customers? Don’t think your competitor is innocent. He has just engaged in a domain name trick! He is not planning on conducting his primary business under these names. He bought those names to TAP into your business! Avoid this common newbie mistake and buy all the necessary domain names to protect your interests.

Tip 3 - Buy alternate domain names. Domain names are so cheap that it is affordable to practice this tip. Let’s say you decide that you want to also buy KCBBQ.com and .net why not purchase KC-BBQ.com and .net. These other sites won’t go to waste. You can point these sites to your main domain name KCBBQ.com and increase the traffic to your site.

Tip 4 - What if all good domain names are taken? You should consider buying a previously owned domain name. As we mentioned before domain names can be purchased for multiple years. Sometimes the lifecycle of a website comes to an end and the domain name already has a good page ranking with search engines. You can effectively buy yourself traffic without any work.

Tip 5 - If at all possible don’t choose a domain name that is close to competitors, just because you like the name. For example, if there is a web hosting company called domainexpress.com, it is not recommended that you pick domain-express.com. Take some time think it out, but, don’t wait too long picking your internet identity. It is a necessary exercise in defining your buisness and it can be fun. If you don’t like it, the worst thing that can happen is that you -sell it; There are profits to be made in doing that too!

Tariq Giaziri
Head Developer
http://www.iamtq.com

Why domain names can be a good investment!

We have a number of generic finance related domain names and have recently added to these through the £14,000 investment in debtconsolidation.co.uk.

It’s true that debt consolidation is one of the hottest terms especially in respect of PPC’s and we believe we will get free traffic from people guessing the domains when they are looking for debt consolidation or debt free i.e. people that are looking for debt consolidation will enter debtconsolidation.co.uk in the toolbar rather than searching for debt consolidation on a search engine. Both debt consolidation and debt free are amongst the most searched for terms on the internet and you would therefore expect a percentage of people looking for these terms to guess the domain. Many domain investors use the overture search rank as a key to the potential value of a generic domain. i.e. if a lot of people search for a term then a smaller proprtion will second guess what the domain name will be.

A good generic domain name can also help with search engine placement. Approximately 12 months ago debtconsolidation.co.uk used to be at the top of google for debt consolidation but someone must have failed to renew! www.debtconsolidation.co.uk is already on the 1st page of msn.co.uk for debt consolidation out of 17,265,739 results. Debt Consolidation is a very hard term to get to the top of especially only after website was launched 2 weeks ago. (Website is still temporary!). So I believe domain name has played a big part in it. This seems especially true for msn. Try searching for debt consolidation loans on msn and look at all the domains that are top! Only 1 in the Top 10 doesn’t have debt consolidation loan in the domain name!! That’s the beauty and the value of a generic domain!!

A domain name can also be of use through pay per click advertising (PPC). We advertise extensively through google adwords and what we have found is that the domain can have a direct effect on your Click through ratios (CTR’s) and hence the amount you need to pay per click. We advertise on google and where the domain is similar to the search terms you generate significantly more traffic (hence why espotting (miva) insist you include the search term in your title).

When you are valuing a domain for a business as well as looking at how much people will pay for a PPC it is also worth looking at how much they will pay for a successful application. This is really where the true value can be seen.

We are therefore confident that generic domain names (that are business related) are definitely good investments for the future and it’s wise to buy before others realise it too! We will definitely be looking for new ones that come available.

I think some of the bigger companies aren’t on the same page yet. It is too difficult to get approval for a purchase off someone who doesn’t understand the potential value. Often they also outsource their internet advertising so there is no one in the business that understands the internet.

So to summarise a domain name can have considerable value if it is able to generic free relevant traffic to your website. Also as the internet grows and users become more sophisticated in how they search then we would expect the value of domain names to increase further.

Miles Grady BA (Econ) Hons ACA
Director AllClear Finance
and website
Debt Free.

During the early days of the domain names, there were only three of the biggest domain names that exist on the web. These three commonly noted domain names include the .com, .net, and .org. However, today as many of the domain name companies continue to rise and as the number of the domain name consumers increase, many new domain names were then added and other new domain names are still formulated. Maybe a few years from now, we can definitely see more new domain names on the web for the reason that those proposed new domain names today are said to take function for the future.

Generally, there are actually so many new domain names that are recently in action. Due to the continuous effect and emergence of the new domain names, the picture then became more and more complicated. From the conventional domain names like the .com, .net, and .org, which are known as the Big 3, here came the Country-level top domains as one of the new domain names ever developed.

The Country-level top domains are generally under government control, with the aim of adding level of toughness and stability that a third party might find difficult to match. Then next in the line of new domain names are the Country-level top domains that are masquerading as something else. They are only made international by agreement, and many noted that as such, they are just there by contract.

After the introduction of such new domain names, here are the alternative top-level domain names which involve the .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro. These mentioned new domain names are created by the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN and so these are considered as the seven new international domain names. The making of these seven new domain names are probably intended for helping the people in finding the right domain names for them.

Having such new domain names, the domain name industry is still not satisfied with the effect. So just recently, it is reported that ten organizations have applied to the net’s ruling body and they proposed for nine new domain names under the net domain name. The report further mentioned that if the proposal will be approved, the new domain names will be the first added to the net since the year 2000 when seven novel domain names as it is mentioned above were set up.

For particular emphasis, the new domain names proposed by ten organizations include .asia, .cat, .jobs, .mail, .mobi, .post, .tel, .travel, and .xxx. It is considered that the last three of these new domain names were so called sponsored domain names that are created with the intention for a particular sector of the industry or administered by a trade body or other representative groups. And all of those new domain names proposed to ICANN will also be sponsored.

Recently, those proposed new domain names are scrutinized by independent experts and if it approved, those new domain names should then be active by early 2005. And lastly, each organization paid $45,000 to submit their application for a new domain.

The 12 Month Millionaire Will Show You Everything you did and didn’t want to know about making One Million Dollars by this time next year… revealed LIVE! Active hyperlink must remain w/article.

It seems everyone is jumping into the “traffic domain name” game
- either purchasing them for their own use or purchasing traffic
from others who own these domains. For those that don’t know, a
traffic domain is one that has either expired and still
receiving traffic, or one that is being typed into the browser
url location (type-in traffic) by users looking for a particular
website. These are hot little properties but often abused as
some register typos of an existing popular domain - such as
Google for example. Yes, Virginia, there is a lot of traffic in
those typos.

I own a number of expired & type-in traffic domains and have
overall had good results. The worst one gets about 10-15
visitors a day but manages to earn anywhere from $5-$20 in
revenue through a pay-per-lead program I use. Combined, all my
traffic domains pump out a nice chunk of change without me even
having to host them, look at them or even think about them.

On the other side of expired domain & type-in traffic is
services which allow you to purchase traffic from domain names
which they control and manage. Now you would think this sounds
pretty good after what I reported about my own traffic domains,
but the sad truth is that the majority of these services are
complete scams.

Oh yes, they’ll deliver the “targeted” 5,000 or 10,000 “hits”
you purchased, but the reality is that the actual traffic from
their domains either doesn’t exist at all (generated by software
to create an illusion of unique visitors) or comes from sources
like auto-surf sites. And it’s not like you can really monitor &
evaluate this traffic to know if it’s real or not, and you
certainly have no way of knowing if it’s targeted or just junk
hits. You’re basically putting all your trust in the site
offering the service and since none offer any guarantee that the
traffic will bring you sales, they’re off the hook.

Look at it this way - let’s say a service is offering 100,000
premium targeted visitors for the very low price of just $49.95.
Think about it. If you had 100,000 targeted real visitors at
your disposable, would you sell them off for essentially pocket
change? Of course not. If you were selling a product for $29.95
and only 1% of those 100,000 visitors made a purchase - then
that would be 1000 sales totalling $29,950. Can you really
believe that they would let that amount of money slip through
their fingers just so that they can do you a favour?

Do yourself a favour - If you’re thinking of purchasing traffic
from one of these services, keep your money to invest in more
reliable and proven options or learn about finding and
registering expired domains (an article on this topic coming
soon) and register them for yourself.

There are only 2 things you need to know to succeed in buying &
selling domain names and making money from EACH and EVERY name.

1. Find good domain names. 2. Market them.

Does that sound too easy? Well, let me make it even simpler…

The only valuable names left to be registered are among the
20,000 or so domain names that become expired everyday.

The real treasure in this market is in dropped domain names.
There are countless services on the net that will help you ‘dig’
for the ‘gold’ names.

You can do a search for ‘expired names’ on any search engine
and and you will find one that you like.

What has been sadly lacking in the entire market is that
crucial second step because no one tells you what to do once you
do get that dream name.

Not the domain registrars, not the domain appraisers and not
your domain sales brokers.

That’s why, we decided to produce a guide for domain owners. A
manual that will take you step-by-step to finally sell your
domain names for cash.

Take a look at: http://www.OpenForSale.com This ebook teaches
you how to market your names and how and where to find buyers
for your domain names!

It is top class resource that every smart domain investor
should have by their side as they learn how to profit from their
investments in domain names.

A customer had this to say:

“I am a webmaster, database programmer, researcher & writer. In
a week or two of online research, I only discovered a fraction
of what you cover in your book. Your book is not only a
timesaver, but also a vital resource that I will keep nearby as
I begin to wade into the domain name game. The pages of this
book live up to its title, “How I Sell My Domains”, very well.
You provide the reader with realistic expectations and a ton of
hints and tips for selling domains. I found your work fantastic.
Thank you for sharing your expertise.” Mason Burley -
NameSpotter.net

Domain Blueprint Columnist, Alexander Teo wrote:

“Read it before you buy and sell domain names for profit. You’ll
get more than your money’s worth.”

Check it out now: http://www.OpenForSale.com/sell_domains.htm