One thing makes me very angry - people pull your leg so much that sometimes you decide to quit before you even start something. You will continuously hear from people that this domain name selling business is facing a big down trend and making money is not as easy as it used to be. I think this is a very discouraging thing to do. Please allow me to share with you my ideas & let you view things as I have observed them to be.

Choosing a good name is one of the most important factors in trying to make money in this domain name business. Trends in the internet industry may be changing, but the true identity of the web sites still lies in the top 3 TLD's : .com, .net & .org and they will continue to stay so. In short .com rules, and that is simple as that.

Many famous domain selling sites will try to impress you that TLD's such as .tv , .biz , .cc, .ws , .etc will be good for your business. In this regard all I have to say is that their fate hangs in balance, and the chances for either of these kind of TLD's to get popular is very brim, let alone a website on that TLd get sold for some good money. I personally have no enmity with either of these TLD's but the way things have gone in the past the famous domain selling sites try to create a hype and entice people to buy that TLD. So I would suggest not be taken in by them. The fact is that these people just try to make you buy more and more domains from them and care nothing if your are not able to sell that domain later. In my opinion & experience it is best to try to find a .com name because it will bring you more money than any other TLD.

If you are still not impressed , then please go take a look at all those famous domain selling sites, and you will see that at least 99% of names that people have in their showcases holds these top three TLD's.

No one can deny the effects & results of effective marketing, here is a personal example :

I was working with an internet services providing company when I took a 2 days training course at Holiday Inn Hotel in my city last June. At the end of the training my fellow team members and I were handed some very small red flowers wrapped in plastic and were told to sell them for as high a price as possible, we could try anywhere in the city and had to come back within an hour. It was Sunday evening and the time was 5.30 pm when we came out of the hotel. All the shops and markets were closed. We had no idea where to go and where not to. Surprisingly we all managed to sell those small flowers for atleast 50 times the original price. The highest one was sold at 200 times.

I agree that selling flowers and selling domains can not even be compared, but one thing is for definite - good presentation & marketing creates cool demand for any product, and so its availaibility certainly sells the product. The idea is to be able to sell quickly through some effective and continuous marketing , and this is where these domain exchanges are so good at.

If you maintain the quality of any product you wish to sell, you are a winner. Similarly if you have quality domain names, and even if they are long names they will sell no matter what.

(That person with the lowest flower sales revenue was me. After the training course ended, my senior colleagues told me that they were given a year old newspapers to sell when they went through a similar training course. Within two months I became the team leader of the company's sales team. Although I already had good experience in my field, but I guess the training did help me in many ways after all.)

I believe that even if it says , "This Domain Is For Sale" , your domain name should have some web page to represent itself. You can try to put a counter on that page to see just how many visits it can fetch.

I remember visiting MailBox.com umpteen times long time ago and always saw a beautiful mailbox picture in the middle of the page and beneath it was written "For Sale" and the guy was demanding something like $80,000 then if I recall correctly. Today I think the name is a lot more worth than just $80,000 .

Everybody will try to run a business on the net sooner or later. So its best to make a simple website for your domain than just trying to sell empty names. Those domain names that do not have any website to represent themselves, I consider them to be empty names. Business can best be done through a website when its live and kicking. It's not that those domain names that do not fit this criterion will have slim chances to sell, we all know that a domain without a website can sell too, but I believe that a domain name should have a web site, it looks a whole lot more decent and professional doesn't it ?

I would not go for empty domain names unless there is some billionnaire Arab Prince who will buy a domain name from me for a very very good price simply because it comprises of his name. As an example just imagine what might happen if you owned SheikhZayed.com ? Dont ask me who Sheikh Zayed is. Ever heard of U.A.E. (United Arab Emirates)?

The first and foremost thing that attracts and invites people to invest money in this industry is the expectation that they will earn too much money too quickly. This is nothing but day dreaming. Your domain name might take some time to sell even if its a really good one. Business.com is an ideal example as it took 5 years to reach the 7.5 Million Dollars mark and it all started with a 70$ registration price.

The reason to sell domain names is to make some cool money, and not to expect to land in some treasure island.

To begin with - the shorter and more meaningful the domain name , the higher its price. In my opinon domain names that have up to 14 characters can sell really good if they truly represent their meaning and are full of commerce value. Unless it has a cool web site offering serious services, a name bigger than 14 characters will find itself in difficut position to get sold. Let's take CommissionJunction.com as an example. Its a long name but no one can deny that it is full of commerce value, and so it ultimately happens to be a very very successful website.

Need another example ? Take a look at EverythingWireless.com

Let me be totally honest with you. The 4C valuation model presented by GreatDomains.com is good enough to guide people about domain names in many ways. I got convinced with 3 of them only however. (Yes I like being a cynic) You will have a very good idea though as to why shorter and meaningful domain names have such a high demand.

It is most important to register a name that makes at least some common sense. Domain names such as AlGoreIsAnIdiot.com reflect that whoever registered it, has no respect for his money.

I have found many e and i domain names to be available i.e. unregistered. They say that domain names that start with "e" and "i" don't sell good, but I disagree. If Business.com can get sold at 7.5 Million Dollars, then do you assume that eBusiness.com will be a total loser ? It might not have all that high value, but still it's a very respected name and has a lot of value. What do you think about eWallStreet.com , eMarketing.com, iConsultant.com or iTech.com ? Do you want to believe that they will sell for peanuts ? Nope. Never.

Frankly I think there is nothing wrong with a "-" in the domain names either as long as your domain name is short and remains within 17 characters & has just one "-" in it. However there is no way that I would approve a-good-domain-name.com , no matter what any internet marketing guru may claim.

Example : eZine-Marketing.com

If people dislike the "-" in the domain names, then can someone please tell me why sooooo many domain names carrying a "-" have already been registered & why so many websites are successfully working despite a "-" in their name? Also many companies have specially registered domain names with a hyphen, to protect their business.

Commission-Junction.com is an example.

Brand names are those names that are considered important to hold some product's identity or / and to start or run some business. They always carry some ideology to support them. A brand name is then registered as a business or company's trademark. Every trademark however is not necessarily a brand name.

Some people have domain names that they claim can be good for a brand name. It is entirely upto the buyer though, to buy a brand name that you offer to sell him. Brand names can have lots of value regardless of the way they are pronounced or typed.

I have found many many strange names to have got registered. So strange that I can never even think of registering in them in the first place. I had to search a couple of thousand words and terminologies before I finally learnt what sort of names I needed to select. You will find lots of slang names to have got registered and I believe the main reason is for the words being spoken or used on a large scale.

Not all slang names or terminologies have a good market, you can never predict how the market behaves. Examples : ComputerJunky.com & SupaNet.com . You also find many names to contain slang words as well as number, e.g. ezHits4U.com .

Interestingly big companies are always on the lookout for a different and catchy brand name for either a product or the company itself, and hence they opt for and settle with names that are homephones - usually slang in nature.

Net2Phone.com is one cool example in this regard. Since these guys brought VOIP (voice over IP) services that skyrocketed their name like Dialpad.com, therefore many people started to do the same, i.e. register names containing the number 2 in them.

There are still many names with a 2 in between to be available for registration and many many have been registered, but perhaps have no value. The number 4 also has the same story. B2B.com and B4B.com may have a very high value whereas come2paradise.com or come4fun.com may have no value unless you build some good website and offer real good services through them. It is also upto the buyer to decide what he intends to do with the name.

Some names are totally numerical like 1969.com, and some numerical domain names are based on famous american dial-in numbers e.g. 1-800 names. To my utmost surprise 1969.com has a very hot demand (check GreatDomains.com for that). Someone perhaps intends to do some serious business with that number.

These are those names that people type according to their own thinkings. In the beginning I used to think of a word or terminology and add a .com with it to check if the site was available, or just to check what was being offred on that site. Other people do the same as well. It is very possible that you visit a very popular web site that you may have never heard about.

Having given the example of Net2Phone.com , let's think of NetToPhone.com , it will appear as www.nettophone.com and technically there is nothing wrong with such a name. You will be extremely surprised to know that net2phone.com got registered in 1995 whereas nettophone.com got registered 5 years later, this very last November (2000). When you type www.nettophone.com redirects you to www.net2phone.com . We have now learned that comapnies try to save their repute and online name from copycats by registering more than one names and redirecting them to their main site. (I wonder just how many names one may have register to do this)

Let's now take a look at the following domain name:

BusinessSolutions.com is a very long and letter repeating domain name. It very clearly means what it says (business solutions of course), but I can not say for sure if it will have a cool demand merely because it has letter repitition 3 times.

There are many people who have registered domain names that receive heavy traffic every day. Moreover they do not even intend to sell those domain names. They just register those domain names for fun's sake I guess. Their heavy traffic is because you type a famous domain name incorrectly. I recall that "123greeetings.com" was a porno site some 2 years ago. I don't know if it still exists or not.

This way of choosing some domain name might make you undecided what suffix or prefix to choose from because there are sooo many of them. But one thing is for sure, this is the best way you will find good names. For instance digital, multi, free , new, mega, max & quick are good prefixes and site, now, biz, cafe, wear , profit & bank are cool suffixes. They really do work and some good name designed from them can help you to fetch a good price.

The domain names that I consider to always have some good value and demand belong to these popular categories:

"Trade", "Business", "Sweepstakes", "Casinos", "Sex or Adults", "Teenage Fun", "Entertainment", "Sports", "Medicine & Drugs" , "Technology" & "Free Offers". The list does not end here though, I have just named a few categories.

Joining them will certainly help you a lot in knowing what is exactly going on around you not only in the domain name industry but also about a lot of other major issues. There are people in this community who know a lot, so I always look forward to learn more and more from them.

You should always check that whatever name you may have selected is not a trademark of some company. I can not say for sure what some company might intend to do with you when they find out that you are using their trademark, so it's better to avoid getting involved in problems

If you find a domain name to be unregistered or available, do not rush to register it. It might look catchy (to you) but may not have any value. I have been through with situations like these myself many times and it creates confusion because you get eager to discuss it with your friend, perhaps the only person you can talk to about these matters, and sometimes even he is not around.

If you mention a good name to someone that is available, it will be registered before you will go ahead to own it. So before you register it, try to run a few tests that really work. It just takes few minutes.

1:- Go to www.google.com , www.yahoo.com, www.lycos.com, www.northernlight.com and other major search engines to see how many values are returned against your domain name. For instance if you find that a domain name xyz123abc.com is available, then simply type xyz123abc in the search boxes of these search engines and see what the result is. If the name is a terminlogy & has two words, then try to search as "two words" i.e. within parenthesis.

2:- Make a note of the number of values returned by each search engine. This shows how popular that word or terminology is.

3:- Then go to GreatDomains.com and put the same word xyz123abc in their search box. You will be surprised to see the result.

All This will give you a whole new insight and broader spectrum in order to decide whether you still want to register that domain name. This will also help you to think about other domain names to add to your profile.

This is the most difficult aspect to comment on. You can never really know what people decide . Some terms become immensely popular for no obvious reason, some remain lesser popular and some happen to remain totally unpopular.

Let me give you a few examples that surprised me when I check a few things at google.com

Name / Terminolgy	Values Returned
investment	9,720,000
investments	3,220,000
invest	2,390,000
investing	3,870,000
investor	5,970,000
investors	3,140,000
"business loans"	87,100
"business loan"	46,000
"small business loans"	31,100
"small business loan"	11,900

There are a lot of companies and sites on the internet that offer you prices ranging from $10 to $35 per year. Most registrars never mention the complete list of facilities you get whilst registering. A domain name is useless without any url forwarding, so the next time you buy any domain name, make sure you buy a name with url forwarding.

It is entirely your own decision which registrar to choose, but the leading company right now is Dotster.com that charges $15 per domain registration only, and another $5 for url forwarding. There is another rather new site however that I personally recommend and it is DomainNicNames.com , because it charges only $12 per domain name and this includes the url forwarding price. There is also a list of facilities mentioned on their page that you get totally FREE alongwith registering a domain name that many other companies do not even bother to mention.

There are some companies that offer a variety of packages for your web site and offer a control panel to help you create your own web site online within few minutes. In this regard I suggest you go to ImageCafe.com as they offer the coolest templates for your site at just 15 per month. There is no restriction of banner advertisement & your website will be running within no time.

If your are looking forward to make a quick site in flash then look nowhere , head straight for E-Flash Technologies.

WebsiteGalaxy.com is one site that will host your domain name totally free and have some simple templates for you to choose from, but they do not allow any more than 1 picture & also carry a register.com banner on every page

My web hosting section throws light on this issue and recommends two out of a few hosting companies.

Honestly I didnt know about them either in the beginning. In 3 out of 4 years of my internet exposure I never even knew how that such things exist and how search engines really work. So i joined some e-groups on yahoo and read a lot of articles that guided me in marketing strategies and helped me understand how search engines and meta tags really work. One has to be very precise with keywords and doorways to reach a top ranking in the search engines , if we think that we can outsmart the search engines, then thats a totally wrong approach. So here the traffic enhancing software come in, and they help us do what we really should have done in the first place.

Two of the software mentioned in my web traffic enhancing software section (in the suggested affiliate programs) are actually ZdNet's own favorites, so all you have to do is simply follow the leader.