Domain Owl

Sometimes just deciding what name to buy from a droplist or domain auction can get overwhelming. The following five items are ways to analyze the financial throughput of a name and its likely appeal to buyers down the road. When appraising a domain name you want to buy, check over these characteristics of a good domain name.
1. Is the Pitch for It “good in a room”?
Formulate the elevator pitch for th domain name or development idea. These days people understand very quickly the marriage of a website app, the domain name, and the scripted code programming undercarriage of development that forms their union. Every pitch will springboard into a new further development. If you talk to a store clerk or a fast food cashier and they “get it” in under 5 seconds, you are good to go. In fact, the more pitches you polish, the more the Q and A can develop your idea and move you to the next step.
2. Is there a Facebook Strategy ?
Facebook has become so omnipresent online employees may be starting to call Mark Zuckerberg ‘Bill”. But it’s doubtful even Zuckerberg could have foreseen the instant absorption of Facebook into familial communication, work relationships, sunrise hoops squads, cheerleading pep sessions, and World of Warcraft leagues. Right now people are making movies to launch on Facebook to attract attention. A cool factor, a gadget factor, a tech factor, anything that plays across personal networks to a niche crowd can work.
Facebook does not bow to many external controls, so working with it is mandatory. Test how you Twitter and tweak your Facebook page to a clean first impression. Keep in mind, many “sign up with Facebook” login scripts don’t work, even on huge multimedia sites. Sometimes business partners are just farming for data. Unless you are a big swinging dictator of online affiliate marketing, or can partner with Facebook is some way, your advertising and retail spending may have just been allocated 150%.
3. Feminine Appeal
Does the domain name/idea appeal to women? A lot of women don’t go to websites that don’t appeal to women. But about 85% of the men domainers I talk to have ideas for male based demographic end user sites. But what about the women? Domainers should develop a tangent for women to interact or a talking point that might sway potential social networking for women. Is the site a jumping off point for online mass collaboration?
Domain development and website traffic today is about niche users, end user marketing, and site appeal for demographic specific users, be it geo-specific, age specific, or qualititatively specific, like a site for patients with a medical problem or a set of FAQs about a computer operability issue. Women in Egypt may want to learn more about the three basket factor and the “Rich Dad” myth. Emotional branding and website bounce can be your friend as well as theirs.
Media is a huge content driver in websites. Lots of women worldwide can’t even access secondary school for study of economics, business, accounting or corporate communications. But they may find their way to a computer terminal somewhere, or a smart phone. And don’t forget, women can be partners and investors in a site they like. And they can be participants and web administrators helping you run the site from across the planet.
Women use the internet double timing home management responsibilities and domestic diva-dom. Think about the market globally for translated advanced business cribs or study tips. Middle Eastern and foreign character language country code domains have huge growth potential especially in translation or using third party website applications that have packages for foreign language utility.
4. Check the Competition
I looked up several domain names this morning related to gaming. Not surprisingly, most of the keyword combinations I searched for at Network Solutions were taken. That tells me I am onto something. Checking further, I glimpsed a kaleidoscope of parked pages but no revenue bearing home pages of a site with ads and content. That means with one day’s WordPress development I am in first place for SEO for those keywords. Definitely a buy.
5. Fringe Elements
When looking to acquire a domain name and the consequent development project, be on the lookout for copyright or trademarks words in the domain. Use online sources to check. The dogs of war are snapping at the heels of trademark infringers and copyright derived hijacked traffic. Don’t get WIPO’d out and challenged with expensive UDRP legalities. Perform the due diigence now required for any forward motion on a domain name in the online business space. One qualified dispute action and you slide down the chute back to ground zero.

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I have come to use a new system of measurement with my domainer peers and colleagues, one that reflects their concrete commitment to developing their domains versus the merely stated intent or practice of doing so. So many domain buyers pose as active promoters it is easy to see how some domain name buyers can get lost trying to figure the players without a scorecard.

I never judge another domainer based on whether they use the same tools as I do or whether they favor the same site estimators.  No two domainers are going to use the same system, even if they have the same vendor accounts and use the same site analytics. Based on how these tools have served each domainer in the past, they will come to their own conclusion about the relative worth of each.

It’s a habit for domain name buyers and sellers to hype their latest online app or website find to each other. It’s part of the game. But sometimes I don’t really have time to expend double digit hours per month (or week) evaluating new interfaces or plugging into new websites that claim heightened value for website marketing. You can take the opinion of a domaining peer, or you ca try it out for yourself.

It’s completely possible that a “power domainer” within your acquaintance may favor you with emails concerning the latest fad website or the newest website or domain evaluator which generates the most pleasing estimation responses. it’s wise to be wary of following any one domainers and their practices and viewpoints too closely. It is entirely possible they may be affiliated with the new site or service, or derive a signup credit or kickback.

By the same measure, qualified recommendations by senior experts in the domain world can save you time and put you on a footing with the best in the business.  Checking out their communications keeps you in the loop regarding where the domain herd is moving and how fast it is going. And signing up for a new service can keep you abreast with first hand opinion regarding the efficiency of a website and how prurient their abilities are.

I had one such recent experience lately. One of my clients wanted me to make some blog posts (blurbs) on a service called BuildMyRank.com. Before this gig I had never heard of BuildMyRank.com. This program had some kind of promotional public relations slash distribution channel for brief informational posts about the clients’ relative keywords. The individual client would input the blurb and link them with interconnected anchor links at the target site.

One of the requirements of this site is that your site be “developed”. It’s not clear from the BuildMyRank prose if this means a minisite will qualify, if a parking page disqualifies the url, or of forwarding does the trick. I know I was irritated with how long the BuildMyRank.com signup process took, and the installation of the original url had unrelated interface problems that reflected a beta launch software edition.But nobody wants to walk away from a free (or paid but worthwhile) SEO advancement instrument.

I had used proformatted links inside BuildMyRank.com with my client and so duly posted a website and put up content. (At this time I had no intention of publishing a review) When I resubmitted the information for the newly developed site, many of the key links did not align and the interface keep issuing error messages not in concordance with the posted content. The keywords fit into the linking convention but the “save” operation would plug the links into the software. So I emailed customer support about the problem.

Well, you learn a lot about a website (and their “SEO” services) by the customer service response. My frustration was met with bitchy and argumentative responses again and again. The operator from BuildMyRank.com never addressed the specific bugs. They assured me that “thousands of users worked just fine” and immediately decided to close my account rather than deal with the issue.

Not only had my first attempt to use this Buildmyrank.com service broken down, but my account had significant bugs. Email to BuildMyRank.com did not yield working fruit. The difference between my client and me getting anywhere was that his BuildMyRank.com items were from a paid account service, and I was still in “free trial” mode.Would the eventual SEO value diminish or disappear under similar circumstances? If it indeed ever appeared?

The emails from BuildMyRank.com are snotty and stupid. This told me a lot about how they approached getting things done. Knowing this so far in advance was a relief. I hadn’t recommended this site to anyone yet. They would never know how many referral clients they lost, domainers with huge portfolios looking for SEO results and only the assurance of a trained site operator to work with.

I don’t know the net benefit of is service to my client, but I do not recommend BuildMyRank.com. The argumentative and offensive stack of response emails form their “administrators” reveals a bunch of coffee drinking teenagers pretending to run a business. Risking your url’s white SEO hat on this company is a risk. If you get difference experience at BuildMyRank.com you have my heartfelt congratulations.

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The Domain name offer can come in from the cold with the new era of blog databases and instant websites. A template or open source application used for an existing domain’s website means that any buyer can take advantage of premium content original to that domain name as part of the purchase price. This can be termed a “domain sweetener”.

Adding sweetener to your domain can be as simple as allowing the buyer to utilize the current hosting where the domain is lodged. Server information is generally given with the WHOIS record.  The WHOIS record must always be accurate for this reason. Unless a Privacy option is purchased at the time of the domain name creation, the registrant’s name phone number address and fax number is visible to the public. And even Privacy entailed records have bid or offer links at the lookup point.

What functions as a sweetener? Bundled domains with other sub-TLD’s, Emails with the domain or a free renewal might be other domain sweeteners. The ability to transform a nibble of interest into a successfully executed domain sale may take some sweetening on the seller’s part. The trick is knowing when to add the sweetener. Only the seller knows how motivated they really are to get some cash out of the deal.

Domains will attract lookups and type in interest form time to time. the record of these lookups can be tracked by referrer traffic form the WHOIS. This can be viewed from the statistics utility in the web hosting menu. The concept of the WHOIS lookup concedes that a likely buyer is checking out who owns the domain name, how long they have owned it, where it is hosted, and what the owner is doing with the domain.

A domain buyer will check out whether or not the current owner has a lot of time or investment put into the name. The theory is that a domainer will sell a name more cheaply if they haven’t developed it themselves.  Or the prospective buyer may want to see if the domain name is parked and thus assess its potential value as a parked revenue generator. The offer for the domain name may include the content seen online.

Existing content in the form of databases or text files can also function as a domain sweetener. If the domainer has invested in domain development at all, these files can be furnished with the domain name sale as a sweetener. The incentive should be communicated that valuable planning and effort are attached with the domain purchase price. The sweetener should be signalled when the buyer has had enough time to consider an offer.

For this reason, domain name offers to buy should have a deadline and a “window of opportunity” attached. This way the prospective buyer has to evaluate how motivated they are. The domain name price will not be a given with a horizon of forever, but an opportunity to buy the domain name at the stated price within a secured period of time. The communication regarding the sweetener should come from a motivated seller near the end of the offer period.

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