Namewinner lets users bid against each other for expiring domains and only the winner pays, while Snapnames and Expirefish are first come, first served, meaning only one user has a shot at grabbing a particular domain. Snapnames also has the most registrar partners, (including Network Solutions), which may give them an edge for securing expiring domains that are currently registered with their partners. They also have the highest price tag, and you pay whether or not they secure your name. Pool.com is a newcomer that seems to rival the services of Snapnames, with better prices.

One more method you might try, is going directly to the current owner. Let's say your desired dropping domain is already "back ordered" on Snapnames.com, and Expirefish.com. Now you can still bid for it at Namewinner.com, and Pool.com, but you feel the odds are against you. If you're really hot on the name, and willing to pay a premium, you may be able to bypass the solutions above, simply by cutting a deal with the current owner.

This can be a bit risky however, because once the owner realizes your interest, they may decide to ask for a unreasonable sum of money, or simply see value in the domain again (generated from your interest), and renew it as an investment. Assuming you can make a deal, you may want to suggest using escrow.com, which eliminates the possibility of fraud for both of you. The owner will need to renew the domain before they can transfer it to you.

The Website Graveyard - Visit Those Spooky Remains!

Once you've found a deleted or soon to be deleted domain you fancy, you might want to take a trip into the past, to see what that site used to be! Now bear in mind most domains that are registered are never developed, so there may be nothing at all to see. But for those domains with a tangible history, we can often peek at their ghost, courtesy of the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org.

One Owner, Driven Only On Sundays

Another way to check the history of a domain, is simply to search for it. Try searching google, and groups.google.com, to see what people may have said about the site. You may think twice about purchasing a domain with a sketchy history.

Speculators Beware!

Don't go overboard and buy every known extension for your brand - (.net, .org, .biz, .info, etc.). Big corporations like google can afford to buy all the country domains. When you're starting out, remember, domain fees are yearly, and you need to consider the lifelong cost of each domain. For most people, one domain is just fine.

You may think snatching up good domains and reselling them would be a lucrative business. The problem is, finding a buyer is not easy. In fact, that's an understatement.

Don't register domains containing trademarks. You will likely here from that company's legal department if you do, and will be forced to relinquish the name by The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), or a lawsuit, or both.

Who's in charge?

Icann (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees the domain registration business. Their URL is http://www.icann.org. If you ever have trouble with your registrar, it may be worth reporting to Icann.

Case in point: A client of mine tried to switch his domain to another registrar (at my suggestion), to get added free features (free URL forwarding), and save money. His current registrar denied the transfer, and tried to charge him a fee for leaving! Once we threatened to take up the matter with Icann, and publicly expose them at Icann's forum (http://forum.icann.org/regxfer), they immediately backed down, and released the domain.

If you believe someone has registered a domain that infringes on your trademark (or has infringed on your intellectual property), the authority to see is The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), at http://wipo.org

Brand Awareness

Capitalize each word of your domain in your sig files and letterhead, and anywhere else you advertise your domain. It helps your brand stand out.

EXAMPLE: http://www.WebBootCamp.com looks better than http://www.webbootcamp.com

Also, only add in http://www. when you're creating links back to your site (i.e., email, websites, and online forms). In all your offline advertising, such as signs, business cards and letterhead, you should definitely skip http://www. and just use "YourDomain.com". You only have a second or two of people's attention when they see your URL, so make it count. Brand that name! Just make sure your web host has your site set up to show without WWW. Most sites are correctly set up to display when a person types in "YourDomain.com", or "www.YourDomain.com" but a handful, maybe 10% or so will show page not found, if you skip "www". That could be devastating, so check with your host, and demand that your site come up either way!

Ready To Buy Your .com?

Don't overpay! I'm still surprised that many people don't know they can buy domains for under $10 these days. Shop around. Currently I recommend http://www.TOSDomains.net. They offer a lot of extras like URL and email forwarding, free.

Keep Your Registration Current!

Don't let your domain expire! You cannot afford to be even a day late in payment. If it falls into the redemption period, you may find yourself high jacked by your registrar for an outrageous renewal fee. See this illuminating article for more about the redemption period - "Domain Redemption Period Farce Exposed!" here: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1034. If your expired domain falls back into the available pool, it may be registered by anyone, and you may have little recourse trying to recover it.

The easiest way to ensure you are sent renewal notices for your domain is to keep your email contact current for your domain. Perhaps the most common reason for people losing their domains, is simply that they switch ISPs, and subsequently, their email address changes, and they forget to update that information with their domain registrar.

If you own a lot of domains, keeping up with administration can be tedious. One trick I rely on, is to use one domain for my primary business email address, and on that registration "admin" contact, I use my ISP email. For all my other domain registrations, I use my primary business email address (based on my primary domain, which I will never let go). Now, if I should switch ISPs, all I need to concern myself with is changing that one domain record, to reflect my new ISP email. All my other domain records have that primary domain email as the admin contact, so as long as I keep the one record current (and keep the email account active), all will be current, and all domain renewal notices will be sent to me.

In the end, it's not so much about the name, as it is what you make of it. Just look at all the big successful internet companies out there with strange names! Yahoo!

To learn how to set up your domain to point to your hosting account, I recommend the reading materials in Web Boot Camp, an all inclusive "how to" guide for web business. Get web savvy today! http://www.WebBootCamp.com/r.cgi?main

Copyright 2004 Jim Symonds

Jim Symonds publishes Web Secrets Exposed! Eye popping, and jaw dropping, sneaky little web design tricks & web marketing secrets revealed. How did they do that? We show you! Subscribe Now FR*E! Just Go To: http://www.WebSecretsExposed.com