domain use...

[joesnow]

Can anybody summarise what exactly doamins are useful for?

I know its good to have a basic range of decent domains that relate to your product, preferably ones that relate directly to your top targted term.

What else can you do with domains?

How about ones that aren't relevant, are they any use to re-point at all, a guy at work is buying in hundreds of domains, not always relevant, and wondering waht we can do wihht them? (don't ask why by the way)

Cheers

Joe.

[edwinj]

A domain name is your identity on the internet whether you run a business or a personal website.

In additon to that some people buy domains with traffic that they can re-direct to their existing website.

Other reasons to buy domains? Well you can sell them.

They're like real estate on the net. And just like property, there can be good property and bad property.

Some domains you purchase can resell for $20, $200 or even $200,000. Why? Because other people may want the domain for their business.

"Domain names will go up in value faster than any other commodity known to man". Bll Gates said that.

It's a fascinating business. You should learn more about it. A good place to start is right at this forum.

[Robban]

A great thing to do with domains is to park them with a PPC site. It takes all but a couple of minutes to set up. Its a shame - so many domains are unparked and that just serves nobody any good.

Another great alternative to parking is using them for a FREE storefront (should somewhat match the domain) You can find al kinds private label opportunites. In web hosting, shopping, information malls, + you can also do an affiliate sales page. The great thing about Free private label storefront is that they are hosted for free. All you do is direct your domain and traffic there if you can.

But what is a good domain is what is bad one is tricky. And there's an endless supply with so many TLDs (such as .com, .net, .biz and .youknowit) so selling them for big profit is harder than it sounds.

GOOD LUCK!

[joesnow]

Thanks for the response guys.

we are literally buying on hundreds of them, and they vary immensley, our core product is travle and obviously any good travel/product realted ones we'll redirect to our travel pages.

How would I market these ones? Should I submit them to SE's etc, I also thought they would be useful for external links etc.

Still need to look for opps with the others though, whats a storefront?

Thanks

[kgun]

I will divide domains in the following categories:

1. Good names.
May be worth thousands of USD if you have the right one, e.g. the same name as an existing company that wants to set up a new site.

2. Good sites with high traffic and pagerank.
May also be of value to a (startup) company, since it may drive customers to their site. They can use the site as is or the site has subscribers (existing customer base) to different services that a buyer may profit from.

3. Sites with positive cash flow.
The bigger the better. The value may range from some thousand USD til millions.

Example: Business.com was sold for about USD 10 million. Not difficult to figure out why.
- Great name.
- Great site.
- Great traffic.
- Positive cash flow.

Advice: Do not assume that there is a free lunch. You may be disappointed. Hard work on your site is my best reccomendation. If you have the right name and sell it for a good price, you can compare it to winning in a lottery. The expected outcome of such a lottery is in my view negative, but never the less some people win. Loosers pay, winners stay.

Expected outcome (E):
p(i) = probability of success.
s(i) = site i sold for USD?
C = Total cost of n sites.

Then:
E=p(1)s(1)+(p2)s(2)+ ... + p(n)s(n) - C

It is up to you to figure out how easy it is for you to get E > 0 after some time (years).

In my view there is an optimum amount of sites that you should work on. Some will say, concentrate on one site. Other people say, I have 15 - 20 sites. On two of the sites I earn enough to feed me and my family. The rest is a zero sum game.

If you think you find great names, you may buy them, but the number of possible names are constantly increasing. .EU was recently introduced. See my point on names? I have about 20 sites, and that is good enough for me. My children (I have 4) may get and administer some of them in the future. Hopefully, when that time comes the site has traffic and page rank (if that is a fruitful concept in some years).