How to select a domain name?

[monaghan]

Without giving away all your trade secrets, how you do you guys decide on what names to reg? I guess those with excellent dropcatchers can more or less have your pick of any expiring domains, but what about new domains?

Is there any issue with monitoring an area (for example local up & coming sports stars or bands and so on) and then registering domains as a fan site? Obviously this is not going to get a quick return, but a good choice of domain may pick up over time.

Any other hints & tips?

For lower traffic domains are you better off using a parking service or your own landing page / small site?

 

[rob]

First a few questions :

- What is your aim in domaining?
- What budget are you working inside?
- What current skills and setup do you have?

Answers to those can shape replies to your inital questions

 

[monaghan]

Rob,

Thanks for the reply,

Aim - Just a sideline, would be nice to get the occasional mid-value domain, but this is not a "day job replacement". I'm not looking to write the next killer drop catch system or anything like that (unless I suddenly get a big success ). Would be nice to balance the books or even make a small profit without too much effort.

Budget - again, just a sideline, so looking to make use of a bit of spare time and existing systems rather than invest lots.

Skills & Setup - I'm an IT consultant by trade running an IT consultancy and web hosting business. The company has Nominet membership and a few domain reseller accounts for .com, .uk.com and so on to service the hosting side of the business it also has Windows & Linux servers in the UK (and US). I have the usual PHP / ASP web skills along with many years of database experience (mostly MS-SQL & MySQL)

I have a few domains which looked good and were registered a "live tests" of registrar interfaces to my billing system which have covered their reg fee on adsense.

 

[stevebrowne]

Personally I avoid drops or buying from others (currently) I try and focus on areas and memes that *might* be big in 6 months onwards. If you read the news you can pick up on new product areas and ideas and usually have a decent chance of getting nice, relevent domain names before the hoards come in.

Of course, there are others doing this as well, so it's not all plain sailing. What encourages me is that everyday I come up with domains that someone else (and you'll get to recognise the players by name!) has registered only days beforehand (or even the same day). It can re-enforce the fact that the area may be useful to have domain names in.

As for sites, I self-host at the moment as parking just doesn't pay enough. If you have access to multiple servers etc. then you could be laughing. Set up a number of site templates and then host them on different IPs and class-cs etc. and you can even link them together and benefit.

 

[fish]

New & emerging technologies can be a good (but sometimes longterm) punt. Generally speaking if the technology takes off then it'll have global appeal.

Having read about UWB in the news recently I have regged a good few potential winners I don't think I missed any did I......?

Cheers

Howie

><(((0>

 

[jacal1]

With limited money and limited time I'd buy a few at auction that have established traffic and work to creatively maintain or increase the traffic. After a little time you can usually turn a profit. (Look at forums like these to buy, and pay attn to trader ratings, etc.) Often you can even do spin off sites with hand registrations.

Emerging tech requires you to reg a TON of names and then keep your fingers crossed that one of yours is what the product is actually called, or that the technology makes it into the mainstream at all. It also usually brings in zero ongoing money while you wait and hope. Don;t buy anything that is not short and unique and generic - e.g. usedfuelcellcarsale.co.uk is never going to be worth anything.

Dropcatching is owned by a small few who get all the good names, and there aren't that many good names dropping anyway as people get more savvy about domains' values.

Brandable domains that have never been regged (e.g. floopsie.co.uk or rababooba.co.uk) - don't get me started. Worthless.