Advice for E-Entrepreneurs (Domains)

There seem to be a lot of horror stories out there about people losing domains that their businesses depend on. If you have a profitable business that depends on your domain name to operate you should take steps to protect it. I'd recommend the following:

1. Pay up to register the domain for 10 years. This way, at least for the next 10 years you won't have to worry about lost reminder emails or botched auto-renews. It amazes me how many people have extremely valuable domains that they definitely plan to keep for the long term who renew the registration on a year-to-year basis.

2. Register a trademark for the domain name. This way if someone else somehow gets ahold of your domain through an accidental expiration, dishonest/incompetent registrar, etc. you'll have the legal ammo you need to force them to transfer it back to you.

Oh god, Registerfly created hell on EARTH for soo many of my customers thank god they are off the map. I lost 2 domains there also :-(

MJ, can you please share the info on

http://www.domainsbyproxy.com

I tried to look for the sign up button but there is none, which seemed odd. How much do they charge? What happens if your site gets sued by someone, they pony up the info pronto?

Thats just Godaddys private registrar. So you pay an extra what $10 or so a year and it displays their contact info on the whois instead of yours. And yes if someone wants to sue you, they'd issue a subpoena to them to hand over your contact info.

they charge extra??!!?

1and1 does that for free with a 8 dolalr or so domain name if you so choose. How odd.

I've always thought you don't want the word "the" in your domain.

onlinesoda.com - Brandable, I like it.

thelivesite.com - Not nearly as good as livesite.com would be.

In general YES. In my case, my book might be titled "The Fastlane To Millions" so it was prudent to register that. I also own "FastlaneToMillions.com" -- really depends on the purpose of the site but you are correct - having a "The" can serve to add confusion and misdirect new and potential customers.

The ultimate domain spoiler in terms of scarce brandability is the "DASH" (My-Cool-Website-Place.com). People drop dashes both vocally and mentally.

As someone with a hyphenated last name
(the hubby's name was hyphenated),
I completely agree.

No matter how many times I say that there's a dash,
odds are it gets left out.

(Which is why my pen name is dash free)

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How would you go about buying a Domain that is taken? There are a few I want for a business idea but all the ideas I have are taken, but there are no websites.

I would do a whois on the domain (you can use a site like http://www.domaintools.com/) and contact the owner from the e-mail, phone#, or even the address that's listed (assuming the owner doesn't have whois privacy on).

If you own a bar called "Jack's Place" for example, but jacksplace.com is taken -- is it still worth your while to register Jacksplace.net and just use that as your domain, or should you always make sure your domain is a .com, even if it must be more complex and longer?

I'm wrestling with this for one of my biz ideas right now.

- Hakrjak

Darren of problogger.net wrote about this. I'm too lazy to go find the link, but he says he came up with the name "problogger" for his site. problogger.com was taken, so he went with the ".net".

A while later when he was making good money and the owners of problogger.com weren't doing anything, he offered to buy the ".com" and they sold.

So he now has both, but has come to be known as problogger.net

The ".com" domain of course is MUCH better... and is actually how I found him in the first place.

.com is the way to go..... or else u be kicking urself in the long haul.

"If you own a bar called "Jack's Place" for example, but jacksplace.com is taken "

the .net would be a bad idea

jacksbarplace.com would be better. rather than sacrificing for the .net

While I agree that .com is best, I think that getting a .net of your exact store name isn't bad either. It all comes down to SEO, if someone typed in Jack's Place on Google, would you rank ahead of the .com? In most cases you would if you're site was receiving higher traffic.

There are many .net sites out there that are very popular. One that comes to mind is:

http://www.slickdeals.net/ vs. http://www.slickdeals.com/

The .net is the popular one.

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BTW, I use 1and1.com for registering. It's $5.99 a year and you get private registration included.

I have a bunch of URLs. Here are a couple. What do you guys think of these?

Real Estate Related
oldtownscottsdale.net
oldtownscottsdalecondos.com
milleniumparkcondos.com
printersrowloft.com

Forums related
bluerayguru.com
chatfurniture.com

My friend recently picked up this one, I was suprised it was available:
golfranges.net

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Biophase, try to find domains 7 characters or less. While it is hard to do, it is still possible. If you find one, buy the .net as well if avail.

Well, I had some fun today! Prior to now, I owned a couple of dotcom names but I had never done anything with them. Because of this thread, I went out and purchased about 100 new dotcom names.

The shortest one I purchased today was: la4tv.com (I actually like it because LA has a lot of TV production.) Is this a good name or a bad one? Since it was available, I have to assume it's not a great name but it is only 5 letters.

I purchased a few that I would like to develop myself but I have no idea how to develop a website. Does anyone have any books they can suggest?

I purchased these through names.com and now I'm wondering if I am locked into these google applications that come with the websites?

My name FOXY and I am new in the game. I want to learn how to increase my cash flow with little to nothing income and turn it into something that leads to profit.

Post of the year!

Hi Foxy, welcome to the very wrong thread in a very wrong part of the forum!

And welcome to the Fastlane!

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