Domain Owl

In working inside the domain world, people become independent business men (and women) without even knowing it. Internet individuals of every age and rank, teenagers, men and women acquire domain names and offer them for sale constantly, yet they seem to maintain a sort of naivete about the fact that what they are really doing is functioning as their own carnival barker-cum-insurance- salesman. This carries risks which the domainer (possibly unknowingly) is assuming.

Brokering your own domain name sale can have its challenges.  Escrow services have popped up online and established a benchmark many domainer trusts. These domain name escrow service companies work to form a break against the tide of aggression happening with entrepreneurs trying to vend their names to people who may not even speak their language but understand the value of the domain on offer or up for auction.

In observing a heated discussion today between two bidding domainers in a private auction, I realized the lava was being generated by the fact that the seller’s decision to vend the name had not been covered by a reliable domain name broker service. Somewhere in the bid process, confusion had arisen as to how the domain sale would actually be executed. Suddenly, the history of each bid and the goodwill of both bidders was attached to a wild insistence to doing things “their way”.

This angst could have been avoided by stating as Terms of Sale a named broker service acting as name agent. Otherwise, the tension of a bid/offer scenario is reduced to a clammy sandwich of broken promises, dying away email communications, and eroding forum threads, which might have formed the basis of a profitable domain sale. The world is full of domainers who have been caught up in the bonfire of anxiety, exhilaration, excitement and pure greed a bidding frenzy whips up.

Both bidders wanted to use their own version of a buyer’s contract, which of course didn’t meet with the approval of the seller. The actual excitement of the name and who would win it was mired down in discussions of “Tastes Great/ Less Filling” variety vis a vis online business contracts. The seller was suddenly caught in the crossfire of dissenting opinions due to his own lack of foresight in covering his bases.

How did the sale pan out? It didn’t.

As the discussion wound down so did the eagerness of both domainers to get the name. The seller had lost a good opportunity and squandered the good faith of both customers. The deer in the headlights was the seller, whose paying customers had moved on to greener pastures. The domain name was the unfortunate roadkill meeting its ugly demise by the side of information superhighway.

All this pain and suffering could have been avoided if the seller had just involved a listing and brokering service that would have wrapped up every question in  neat set of FAQs. When domains are at issue, good faith and the Internet part company when dollars cross the international dateline. Always cover your bets where a domain registration or name sale is concerned. Always respect the rights of the other (domaining) party in the the transaction. Translated: Nobody “has” to do anything.

Ethical domainers do business this way. (Hint: Don’t look to PayPal to police your four-figure domain sales. ) The benefit of a growing “rap sheet” of successful domain sales at any escrow service is the enlistment of those same escrow services on your behalf in times of trouble. Your good behavior will serve you in good stead when some upstart tries to steal your domain or hijack your site. “Free rent” is a negligible concept where hosting and bandwidth costs are concerned.

Yes, escrow services charge a fee. But so do most non-banking institution ATMs and that hasn’t stopped people from using them. A slice of the action is a small price to pay for delivery of the big bid. If you’ve got online real estate, trust the professionals to turn over the big amounts and rest easy that all is copacetic. Escrow services for domain names transfer the worry of a big dollar domain sale to the heavy hitters who pave the way for a legitimate and legal domain name sale payday.

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Domaining an app is the hottest web development move out there. A happening domain needs Tube support. Youtube.content can be developed and produced using simple tools online. The video media format can be packaged by a multitude of resident system applications, freeware obtainable online, and custom retail video editing software.

Domainers can try their hand at helming projects which a wide variety of users will see. Endorsement of the material can lead to word of mouth and end user referrals. New apps are churning out like wildfire right now for new devices like the Ipad and portable handheld and gaming sites too. Video slices or “tubes” can be embedded easily with tags and captions to create an interactive site that gives visitors something to do.

Domains can hold whatever custom content their webmasters decide upon. these can be coaching tutorials, screenshot by screenshot demonstrations, videos, narrated audio slide shows and other media. The affiliate offers can be blended into demonstrational material that encourage visitors to click on ads. Domain keywords can be emphasized with video images and image tags reflecting actual content.

A website authored by a domain holder can be optimized for site SEO and traffic statistics. The content can be tagged as a how-to video and also as educational, occupational, and promotional. This type of material is readily discoverable and very searchable. The ease with which these types of videos can be made and uploaded is a result of the viral video phenomenon sponsored by YouTube’s popularity. Desktop microphones make any webmaster a narrator.

The domainer who promotes their website using coaching video, how-to methods, tips and tricks, shortcut techniques and screenshot demonstrations has many advantages. The webmaster can decide what words and narrative text and captions get featured, presumably keyword-rich and SEO optimized. The domainer can set up complementary sites and link them together.

A site plan which concentrates a density of words and themes in the content around the site domain keywords will be successful in aggregating visitor traffic. Referrals to the coaching material will also get linked to from forums, online bulletin boards, and member communities of the subject topics. The site plan can outline the key steps in each “lesson” and provide yet another spoke in the SEO discoverability wheel.

Beginners making videos and slideshow media can sketch their plan using Powerpoint outline view notes or slides printed out for jotting down ideas. Screenshots can be defined into surgical coaching material by making highlighted areas using Paint and the selection tool with the colored outline box delineating the referred-to area.

Webmasters should provide how-to content by asking and answering questions about the process or technique involved. What kinds of people will be viewing this presentation? What kinds of language and images will they respond to? What general references and specific details will they expect to see? What kinds of action need to be demonstrated, and how does this fall in with the overall site goal?

Uploading video concoctions to YouTube assist in server hosting costs and allows the domainers to build a site channel that refers YouTube surfers back to the target web site. One key draw for site visitation is to allow continued searchability of the video at YouTube and then cover the video space with a link to the destination website. This brings fulfillment oriented site visitors.

But by hosting exclusive video,  a webmaster can originate valuable content. By authoring original programming they turn their domain name into a brand and their website becomes an advertising portal that turns into a channel. And video channels quickly become very sticky websites with a ton of buzz, just the thing a domainer likes.

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For domainers looking to pick up a few great domain deals here is a typical analysis of the Pool hotlist and the drop evaluation technique. The Pool list is published via email from Pool.com daily in anticipation of recipient interest in bidding on names at the Pool.com domain name auctions held daily online. These names drop or are put up for sale by domainer sellers daily.

Deletion lists can be addicting because they show what other domainers have been up to. Drop lists show what domain names other domainers have decided are either not worth their while to renew, or what domains they have not gotten around to renewing. As many a domain name fish story will start, the “renewal email got lost in the shuffle’ incidence can happen very easily indeed.

Unless a domainer already has a site invested for a given trademark, trademark names are best avoided. One reason they are in the drop to begin with is that the owner has either gotten a “Cease and Desist” letter from the copyright owner or fears one will arrive with any further development of the name. Trademark names are a risk. The domain Amazondiscounts.net is an example of a possible trademark name.

Short names are always good to review because they may come very close to names you already own or may be acronyms for longer names you already own. This begets “type-in” traffic domainers want. A name in tomorrow’s Pool list, like r0b.net, could be good for domain name owners and administrators named Rob or those with burglary aspirations, or those with acronyms totaling R-O-B.

A name for sale like cashmonk.com might be a very good site name for an affiliate or cash raising site or a website with strategems for building multi level marketing or popup revenues online. Keywords like “cash” and “money” can be competitive bidding arenas, so domainers should have their checkbooks ready for active bidding. Money words are genuine traffic attractors because so many people are looking for information about money markets, investing, budgets and so forth online all the time.

Hyphenates are an acquired taste. Some domainers stem from the “old school” of domaining where almost any hyphenate was a detractor for original name value. Symbols were estimated as harder for web users to remember, type in, or use. Hyphenates always stand the risk of building type-in traffic for the name owner of the same domain name without the hyphen.

A name like debt-elimination.com has “money” name appeal but a hyphenate detractor element to it. A domain name for sale at Pool.com like rugged-notebooks has a tech designation but a hyphenate detractor dynamic as well. Likely buyers for this name should be those with other names with “notebook” in them for traffic continuation or site keyword mirroring and linking.

A deleting name like foreclosedlists.com reflects conflicting factors within a qualified domain name up for auction. This is a real estate name, and a partial money name, but also a list name, and can be considered too long by some purist domain name investors. But the likelihood of searches for this type of site might be estimated to be high enough to realize value and profit for affiliate and traffic visits.

Prohomes.com follows much of the same logic, except it can be argued to more valuable because it is much shorter to type in than foreclosedlists.com. The homes market for domain names may also be seen as a longer term viable keyword investment than the “foreclosure” arena of recent financially related real estate activity. Prohomes.com could be an excellent long term domain “flipping” investment waiting for the right corporate buyer.

Foodcult.com and fakeplants.com make amusing ideas for websites if the bidding price can be kept within the probable window of return on domain investment. The domainer should have an idea what assembling a directory and a number of articles should cost and a link building strategy for the site.

Further on down the list, On99.com might make a good site if the number 99 has some relevance to another data item or price level, such as 99 cents or 99 dollars. Numerical domains can be tricky, but a good example of a site is gymnastics2010.com, which has up to the minute gymnastics articles for this current year. Date domains can be worthwhile to acquire and develop in their current “date year”.

Download the full Pool.com list is available at the pool website, and searching out special domain names or names not featured on the list is a domainer’s stock in trade. Expect higher bidding for short names, and money names, and manage bids so cascading auctions don’t rob the domainer of time to rebid. Finally, resist the urge to get in a bidding war or rally to a name that builds interest simply as an auction win to acquire.

Safe and happy drop listing, everyone!

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Domain name buying and selling is an industry, with good luck and bad luck and hard times like everything else. Long Term domain investors have learned by now not to put faith in empty promises and get rich quick schemes.  Quick recovery financially is not a guaranteed result nor is a cash windfall for every domain purchased and developed into a website.

New domainers should evaluate their best method to break into the domain name game and crack open some profit possibilities. Various approaches can be performed to break into domaining, and some are better for an individual or for a group of investors or a team of web promoters. Marketing can get the word once a site is developed and launched, but that has to be a preplanned adjunct to site development and launch.

The speed of the investment capital outlay on a domain name will start the clock on the return of investment-plus-profit scenario. Therefore a conservative domain investment strategy will put less pressure on the individual operator or project team members. A more aggressive capital recovery strategy makes every keystroke operate at a higher premiums that some campaigns cannot equal.

Different domain names will have a wider audience at different times, such as annual sporting event (Olympics) or in certain seasons (travel sites).  Ongoing steady url advancement is  the ultimate goal. The investment in time and resources during different times of the year and in anticipation of a wider and faster clicking audience online should be integrated into the domain name publicity and marketing plan.

Achievable goals in traffic building, social network attention and link building can set the stage for larger campaign to follow. Each name may have different attributes better for some methods of domain promotion than others. A catchy buzzword and flashy logo will draw some users out of curiosity, while other sites may bring only discoverability with intense keyword seeding and SEO element density.

Monetary clickthroughs trail from these dynamics. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Google, Ebay, or Yahoo. Each of those domains started as press releases and conversation starter tidbits about what the site was all about. Breaking down results from day to day domaining tasks can bring the domain name owner’s value growth goals to fruition.

Having a site is essential in today’s domain market. For those domain investors relying on parking and traffic hits, the risk is palpable. Now more than ever web users and browsers online are looking for a content result or website experience with depth and individualized options. The most basic web user is puzzled and disappointed by a parking page online, and they know they can find amusement and information elsewhere and navigate owner

A parking page or registrar sponsored landing page signals disinterest on the webmaster side, and is matched by a complementary response in the end user. the template and site builders available inside virtually every hosting plan make a index page or parking placeholder a statement of neutrality that forms an assault on an expectant end user.

Searching end users will refer to buzz already being reported about the site from other channels.  If no press release or meta tags exist, the discoverability  for the site  (and the domain)  is too low. There must be a plan to cement the domain’s footprint with associated text and keywords in dozens of spaces online before true stickiness can be tested. Patterns of clicks online from the promotional material to the destination site must be grooved for future users and search engine bots to follow.

Simply trying to monetize a domain with no site behind it is risky and leaves  a bad taste in the mouths of end users looking for a online destination and a web experience. Guerrilla marketing works best with some “flavor” behind it, something to do or see when typing in the domain name as an url address online. Intense investor or sponsor efforts must be matched by a seamless, clean designed site with solid content elements to recommend it.

A projection of formal development of a domain name, and the tools and individuals using them should be assigned and plotted. Even a pencil and paper three month plan can get the wheels rolling under a domain inspiration or grassroots blog project. These calendar notations can be edited and rescheduled.

Domain promotion and marketing is time consuming. Just organizing a SEO optimization strategy draws time and energy from team members or the individual webmaster or site programmer. Milestones such as traffic peaks and click volumes should be the goals. Revenue of the affiliate and offers links will follow if the primary goal of site traffic and domain discovery is developed.

Some investors take the plunge into immediate name investment, sometimes in the auction and premium domain name arena. The investment scenarios should be matched with equal investment in formal link exchanges, content adding, text SEO and code density keyword optimization, and clean design for end users. For domain value growth, marketing and promotion benefit when there is more site product to to “sell”.

Each domain project is different, but the thirst for success is the same everywhere. Working through the various challenges and domain name elements is what distinguishes experienced domainers and long term domain investors from hobbyists looking to strike cash flow without effort. When online traffic, public interest, SEO value and a launched site follow the domain purchase, the domain name  investment is sure to pay off.

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Skimming the drop lists is one of the first ways a newb domainer can teach themselves the ropes. Drop lists are available for free and can be perused using whatever script or program seeking search the domainer can devise. Drop lists and deletions lists come from expiring domains whose owners have elected not to renew them.

Drop names also come from registrars who have elected not to retain the names any longer. Registrars have the right to retain the name for new registration after it has passed its last pending renewal period. But some registrars may not want to include the name in its database. The load on the servers may already be too taxing. Or the registrar may simply only want to support paid active registered names.

The domainers’  task is to ferret out which marketable names occur on the drop list and which they might bid on and get at a reasonable price. Some names may seem like they would be very competitive, but for that day the other bidders might be overcommitted or doing something else. Marking out which names you want to bid on and which values you want to assign your highest big sharpens the domaining instinct.

The competitive bidding inside the drop lists day by day is a sport of domainer kings. Keeping abreast of the list for chosen keywords or subject names or even niche terms can pay off with great picks. but the raw data can be too much for some domainers to handle daily. So the drop lists can be downloaded in five day advances for the next five rolling days of drop name auctions.

Many domainers specialize in drop scanning and bird dogging for bargain names in the deletions bin. They develop customers who want certain niche names like typos or sports names, adult names or short names. These domain name buyers create another layer in the domain name game.

User names in auctions become familiar, especially among drop list customers. A history of other bidders can also be seen in some cases. That way domainers know what kind of heavy hitters they are bidding against. Or they can assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of another domainer bidder and decide on their bidding strategy for a certain domain name based on those things.

Identifying keyword terms to your choice is a good idea before scanning the drop lists. Choosing certain names or words that you want to build up into a concentration inside your domain name portfolio can also make this task easier. If domainers are not careful, they will go on bidding and buying sprees for domain names without consolidating a strategic market plan first.

Continuing deletion auctions show names which have been auctioned up into a froth of new bidding wars from their “deceased” status. Often a domain owner will put their domain name into the drop lists to see which avid offers they can get. Or they simply have too many names to handle at present. One domainer’s drop can be another domainer’s mountain of gold.

Expiring names can also be accidental “drops” from the owners who are too busy to scan their expiration emails. They can also be packs of domain names very similar to each other being jettisoned in groups by weary former owners. Knowing what you are looking for in advance, or setting a ceiling on auction bids will save time and resources when bidding on drop list auctions.

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The criteria for assessing a domain name for purchase, resale, or development are fairly open to all.  The keyword value forms one value. Monetary resale is always a goal. Various sites online work to produce an estimation value, although few can claim to be conclusive. Auction sales for domains work well specifically for this reason. Domains can go to the highest bidder according to independent valuation.

While one community of domain name buyers and sellers may quote assorted values from estimation sites, those members are never committed to accept those values as indicative of any redeemable or legal citation. The general value of a domain name still remains the value for which it can, and is sold. Other domain values are as spurious as yesterday’s news.

Some domainers prize traffic statistics, and some domainers work from the original sale price.  Domain ratings systems can indicate the value of a domain, but cannot guarantee it will bring that price under the domain auction gavel. But an important component of many a domain names’ assessment is how the buyer or developer uses those metrics to go forward.

Typing a name into a category does not institute monetary value. Many keyword generics lie fallow in domain portfolios worldwide. The rationale for these to not be developed is that no development could renew the value the domainer has already invested and still reap the profit they have planned. These domainers are waiting for big-ticket auctions to vend their names.

Other names are still in the transitory period between acquisition and decision making. Maybe the domainer hasn’t had time to investigate the best of of “x” domain yet.  Or perhaps they are waiting for a spike in related content or keywords to vend the name in a private sale or escrow process. Parking is a time consuming challenge to manage and keep up to date with. And the lack of development attached to a parked name always make me leery of its traffic.

A topical forum post caught my attention debating this topic. Yahoo has a domain rating system which declaims a domain as:  Banned, Trademark,
Quality Control, Controversial, and Restricted are terms no domainer wants to see associated with their names. These names generally will little to no sale value. But one domainer’s name value authority can be another’s temporizing engine.

Where do the evaluation and assessment sites stand? Yahoo has a cloud over it (not a good one), and many domainers deride Alexa while still avidly utilizing it to assess their domain positoning ion te name marketplace. Valuate.com has many fans, and many banner ads. Estibot has some faithful fans, and assessment tools at Sedo, Pool, and Google Adsense can offer some additional metrics.

Since domainers are always looking to revalue and affirm their portfolio total, a trustworthy domain ratings site or evaluation destination tool is mush desired. A domainer cannot guarantee the originating site or evaluation engine for a domain name will still be in operation or still have the same integrity when the resale or auction decision is made.

Domainers need to avoid becoming emotional about their domain purchase choices. The most unsexy of domains can be the hardest workers, reaping affiliate revenues and growing traffic metrics while the big players spend a fortune promoting their varsity level urls. The traffic statistics going forward are what matter, and the business development the current domainer invests in the domain name is what cultivates domain value.

Domain names can be valued at one time ans the equally creditable estimation of that same domain name can be evaluated at another time and the value can be very different but extremely accurate. A domainer assumes risk when a big dollar domain purchase occurs and the lifetime of that value is not the same as the lifetime of the domain ownership. The joy of domaining is leveraged on what values the owner can bring to the name, and any other strategy sounds a lot like sour grapes.

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The rush of getting a great domain for reg fee or selling a domain for a profitable margin can’t be duplicated. Cooking up  a great domain sale or domain acquisition creates a entrepreneurial fervor that is a completely new career in marketing, sales, and advertising. There is no drug more compelling or more rejuvenating than domaining fever. But a few caveats wouldn’t go amiss.

The domain trade blogs and domain newspapers tout the sale of big dollar domains and six figure auction sales many domainers may never see. They can dream about them, but they may never see those big ticket paydays in the domain world personally. Domain forums are places where the highs and sometimes the lows of the domain world get seen, but not everything in between.

I have known million dollar domainers and can appreciate the unseen time and effort they put into their domaining careers can be lost in the melee of a celebratory domain name sale. They have spent early dawn hours and late night sessions plugging their domain name candidates into the matrix for profit and assuming link building, SEO techniques, and domain name marketing and promotion will support the inflated resale price.

The domain sale headline of a huge price for a single domain name has a back story. Those responsible for big sales might be teams of promoters and investors acting behind the scenes. The consulting advice they receive and the strategy to sell the name go unseen, by and large. The auction may not be the first time the name was offered for sale, and many sleepless nights may have been spent agonizing over the reserve price.

Many domain name buyers and sellers aggregate multiple domain name sales across weeks, months, and years to establish a financial longevity and career perspective on the domain name career and what it means to them. These domain name entrepreneurs may spend countless hours talking to prospective buyers, campaigning at live auctions with bidders, and days and weeks of travel time attending domain name trade shows and conventions.

The big ticket domainers have some serious mileage and dues paid for those big auctions sales. And for every big ticket domain sale, you can bet the seller has a sizable portfolio of unsold names waiting at home. That domainer has spent years combing through every name drop list and every auction site spreadsheet, scrutinizing each proffered name for potential future value.

When the “ordinary” or newbie domainer gets started, their eyes should not be in the clouds. Luck and lightning may strike, but they really don’t bolster the family checkbook. Domain lightning in a bottle is a fun read but can’t be counted on. Every domain investment, large or small, should answer to measurable likelihood of gains and multiplicity of return on investment.

Domain name buying, domain name creation, and domain name acquisition is a fun and stimulating activity. Trading domain names opens up the mind to future possibilities. But the actual monetary involvement with the domain name career should be delimited to specific timetables and renewal dates that shore up the concrete edges of the domain name buy.

Financial constraints for marketing and promotion should follow the marketing plan. A map for stages of investment of time, money, and website or link development should be assigned milestones. These chronological datelines in the life of any domain ownership should include SEO results when keywords are added in, page rank changes (if any), and potential bidders or buyers for that name.

These types of notes and metrics can keep a distance between the emotional relationship many domainers have with their online real estate and the dollars and cents realities of ongoing maintenance, hosting, and renewal that come with domain name management. Any model of prurient investment urges reconsideration of ongoing effort, time and resources toward lesser probability return entities.

The wise domainer will streamline their efforts towards the domains that really count, and survive the ups and downs of the domain market with equanimity. The trade papers and the domain blogs can promote the big ticket domain sale until the (Tu)cows come home, but the sensible domainer will keep numbers, analysis and cool headed thinking on their side.

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If you are like me you started out in the domain world with very few instructional courses or any type of formal teaching associated with the domains, reselling, webmaster site origination, but the domain world today chases every industry and every happening. People check online immediately the minute they hear of something new and interesting. The domain name and website url have become reactionary statements to culture and news events.

Today I read about an auction in which the domain name 3DTVs.com was offered at auction for a reserve of $100,000.The opening bid range for this domain at Moniker is actually between $100,001 and $250,000. That is a lot of money and a lot of potential value for the right customer. The transparent use such an url would have for electronic vendors and online brands in 3DTVs is massive.  The roads to get to a quarter-million-dollar domain, and the decisions involved, are part of the excitement of domaining.

I can remember a time when just trying to explain to someone what a domain was took a half an hour, and explaining how a domain auction worked even more time. And even then, trying to illustrate how a name like 3DTVs.com might explode into a stunning portal would make people look at me like I was crazy. Just assigning a monetized value to a domain like that takes courage. The future is wide open for LCD, HDTV, and 3DTV televisions.

Technology domains have always been an exciting niche of the domain marketplace because they showcase the Internet both as a launchpad and pathway for marketing and promotion at once. The user base of the Internet has learned to follow the dots and click links and see what there is to see. Configuration of a site plan, seeding of trackback links online and nouveau introspections into web journalism turn up something new every day.

The tools for launching a website online and building value are all available and at the webmaster’s fingertips. Web design, content, images and applications make website production a snap. Keyword density, SEO priming, and content originality allow anyone a place at the domaining table. If you can write you can post. If you can copy and paste you can insert images and align tables. If you can send email you can bolster a network of site fans.

Domain development and domain name portfolio investment have a business model for every budget however modest. Online domain services, link marketing, seo optimization, microtools, and sponsor offers come much more smoothly than in the dark days of only .com, .net and .org. Link exchanges, RSS feeds, article directory websites and more illustrate the variety of approaches a domainer webmaster can take to realize value on a domain.

Today more than ever before Internet users want destination websites that give them the  information they need, entertain them in new ways, and provide ideas and concepts for business and creative project development. The new owner of a premium domain name like 3DTVs.com will have a kaleidoscope of choices for web development in front of them.

The pioneer days of domaining, with its tumbleweeds, dusty main streets and ill-informed communication between domain owner and site programmer are over. Exciting new technologies online guard content with licensing search tools, index meta tags and data tables, and release time content explosion overnight that lead back to the target domain site.

I like to think hobby domainers today have replaced the fallout bunker building tradition of the 1950’s. People tinker with their domains at night and on the weekends, and brag about them during social visits. But the domain promotion activities of social networking and link building can be a productive way to replace hours of bored site clicking. The Internet can consume a lot of time, and time is the most precious element of all.

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New domainers can spend time combining keywords to make new domain names, or they can browse the clearance aisles of the domain world. Drop lists are churning every day, throwing deleting domain names into the shark pool of auctions. The victory belongs to the brave few who can master these drop list scanning chores and pull the gems from the silt.

Drop lists, or deleting name auctions, are composed from various sources. The chief source is the body of renewing names the owners have elected not to renew. These names recur to the domain registrar for ownership and record keeping. The domain owners may not be in the domaining business sector any longer or they may simply be streamlining their domain portfolio. Differing  reasons a name might expire or not be renewed make the excitement of what domain may pop up on the droplist potent for domainers.

Some domainers take the view that only the “dogs” of the domain industry make the droplists. This is not true. The fact is, most domain owners respond to the expiration and renewal notices their various registrars may send. Timely and repeated notifications of domain name renewal are a sign of a conscientious registrar. Godaddy.com, Networksolutions,com, Enom.com and other have a history of reliable “expiration period” pre-droplist domain notification practices.

Yet the domain name of value may yet slip through the the cracks and debut on the drop list to a sea of interested domain name bidders. the challenge for domain main investors is to seed their portfolios with enough anterior names, traffic domains, and lucky finds to increase value in the domain portfolio overall.  Original domain names take longer to seed into the existing SEO vocabulary than established domains with search engine traction.

The domain drop list market is opportunistic and highly competitive. One day a hundred thousand domainers might peruse the domain drop lists and fuel frantic domain name bidding. On a holiday or Sunday many domainers skip the list one domainer might find a fistful of PR treasure and SEO gold for very modest resale amount prices.

Droplisting can save time for the domain name investor because  instead of inventing a new name and taking the associated risk, they can get a known domain name. Instead of guessing via WHOIS domain name data for the entire pantheon of existing and available keyword combination terms and domain names they can simply select to buy or not to bid for existing names.

Many domainers construct cognate domain name clusters within their portfolio as a strategy to capture traffic for a certain subject, hobby, term, or keyword combination. They can resell these names to new project investors or other domainers looking to consolidate an existing position among top terms, keyword base names, and words.

A side benefit of the droplist treasure hunt is that the domain name already has a “presence” within Google and other search engine entities. Bidders can check the rankings themselves using SEO evaluation sites and PR site ranking reports online. Such finds can happen, especially when the drop list techniques for scanning become rote and efficiency rises.

Droplists continue to serve as a way for a domainer to augment an existing portfolio by watching for keywords or terms very similar or cognate to the existing owned domain name the domainer already has. A domain name speculator can vary his “bet about certain technologies or terminologies becoming robustly searched by allotting key resources of investment to the same group of keyword names or related “traffic” urls.

The various email addresses, changed contact numbers, and new addresses can prove a challenge for the registrar to finitely contact the domain owner. This is why WHOIS registry data is so explicitly gathered at the time of the original domain purchase. The administrative and other contacts are used if the registrar feels their customer is somehow not responding. Conscientious registrars guard the domains of their customers.

But if they miss a notice and the renewal period stretches on with no action, the registrar takes control of the “abandoned” name. The registrar may elect to keep the name rolling through their domain name base, or try to vend it for sale in the next chronologically occurring auction. International website owners and domain name brokers can play a part in this process as well.

Shopping the domain name auctions as the names expire and move through the hopper can be fun. Many domainers scrutinize the droplists just to see which trends in domain name buying are being sold off. A bulk selloff tips them off that a name type or lexicon of names is “over”. These maturations of names, especially trendy or “buzzword” names, happen in cycles.

But scanning drop lists, running search scripts, and searching by TLDs and country codes can save time for the busy domainer. Pool.com is one such site, Sedo.com is another.Some domainers specialize in finding keyword names for other domainers. Many registrars feature a droplist augmented service and auction events.

If domainers can identify their niche market or likely keyword dependent domain name for development, they can shrink the cycle of their time spent searching for names of interest online. Tools, scripts,  and droplist sites can save searches to expedite the droplist scan. And they can save their time for domain development, the meat and potatoes of the domain world.

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The world of online marketing and domain promotion operates with dollar signs in its crosshairs. Taking profit online is a guilt-free occupation. If responsible webmasters don’t position their sites and groom their online research for clicks and related revenue opportunities, the money can’t flow. But the tools to realize cash revenue can be unwieldy for domain name owners.

Digital goods can be electronically conveyed and charged for, and pathways to these thin margins of income can be loaded onto any site that takes the webmaster’s fancy, in any order they choose. But not every site has got its act together yet. Defining an image, offering a service, honing a brand, or establishing a foothold on a market niche takes work in the Internet world.

But the opportunity to partner with another webmaster, provide online profiles for clients and their websites or domain names, and/or consult with broker, auction or resale estimates for their names is everywhere on the domain forums and auction sites. These are some of the most basic and primary marketing and promotion services any domainer looks for.

1. Location Data Mining

The market for location data is expected to reach nearly $13 billion by 2014. ISP providers and Google can package your personal data and release it by court order or corporate policy. Geomapping and zip code data can provide a saleable database for future resale. Adding records via blog posts and article entries with associated table data relating to cities and zip codes can have value.

Online users have a research use for those types of data which makes any database containing it saleable. Building a database with sushi restaurants indexed by zip code, constructing an art and craft supply website with link urls to the major craft fairs and supply stores online, and focusing on building a nice database for a selected user niche for certain website’s services all have a value. Data mine for a target niche, and vend the data online.

2. Affiliate Revenues

With strategic and aggressive content composition effort built around a related domain name , a profitable website starts to take shape. When page ranking projects a competitive start value to ad placement, affiliate ads cane start racking up fees for clicks. But building a qualifying website that can deliver clicks and traffic to justify the hosting costs remains a task.

3. Sponsor Promotions

Individual and direct marketing sponsorships take work to negotiate and coordinate, but they can be well worth the trouble. Direct sponsorship ads have the benefit of being custom crafted with original graphics. But the hidden value of original executed sponsorship ads is the novelty value they will have, versus the ‘already seen that” presence so many affiliate ads languish in.

4. Domain Marketing for Resale

Many domain names are purchased for the sole goal of resale for profit. The portfolio of a domainer is rife with opportunities for strategic resale. The pricing and email campaign to market the domain, or the purposeful listing of the domain name at auction is the bottom line. But identifying likely domain name buyers from IP addresses and reference urls can also be likely.

5. Online Domain Name Promotion Services

Promoting a domain name, spreading links online, submitting urls and writing content are all ways to realize dollar value for efforts online. Take a visit to get Listed.org and scope a local business or your own firm. Missing a few entries or a zero result? Null presence on search engines is a bad sign. Just suggesting key information and basic facts can make visitors to a given website much happier.

Software for link and article submission and link building is only one way to make money online. Listing domain site abstracts and communicating a site’s main idea takes work. Making the site effective and optimizing traffic, SEO and hosting resources is a saleable job. Evaluate what skills you are good at and build a reportoire of online clients and sales. Tweaking blogs and delivering graphics are in-demand services webmaster need.

6. Brand/Service Creation and Promotion

Learning how to build Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube presences is an art. These setups can take time and effort not every webmaster has.   There is always one slice of the brand promotion pie a webmaster is loathe to execute on his own.  Once done effectively, the process or cluster of promotion tools can be enabled for others. Anything that saves time is of value to domainers, including auction droplist analysis and data collection.

Once a domainer can demonstrate to a webmaster they can imitate a result or deliver a product, they are in business. Writing a search code script, inventing a new animation, offering an online widget, anything the webmaster can do to provide a solution can work. Building a database of local business that will print a page of material for a flash drive or businesses with free babysitting  could be a Twitter superstar of tomorrow. If you build it, they will come.

Webmasters and domain owners can leverage an online or realtime user base, traffic volume, or demographic of site users to get clients or exercise site publicizing activities. Whatever “problem” one webmaster has, there are likely thousands standing behind them in line to solve it.

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