Now you have your niche you need to start looking for domain names that will compliment your product, service, offering or idea. Look at what your competitors are doing and learn from their successes and failures. Think smartly if you are selling something you might want to add words into your domain like for sale, sales, buy. Logic says that people who would search for boatsforsale.co.uk or buyboatsnow.co.uk would be more targeted if you have a boat selling business, than boats.co.uk or boating.co.uk, mind you I wouldn’t mind owning either of them.

Extra Reading: “12 rules for choosing the right domain name” over at SEOMOZ

Hypenated Domains - I own a few successful hypenated domains, but offer this advice; be patient.

If the domain you want is available without the hypens, buy it first. Hypenated domains in the past have been seen as more spammy by search engines, but if you add enough value/content you should have no problems. The other reason I prefer non hypenated domains is type in traffic (when a user directly types in your domain into a browser). If I was lucky enough to own villas.co.uk I would likely see a huge volume of type in traffic, which costs me nothing to produce. It is unlikely someone will type in a two word phrase with a hypen in between, so you may miss out on some traffic.

Extra Reading: over at AFF4U on hypenated domains.

Buying your Domain

Prices of domain names change from registrar to registrar and many domainers will have their favourites. I personally use moniker.com, as a friend recommended them to me a while back and have only one complaint with them….sometimes I can be searching for a .co.uk domain name and the system just crashes, so I revert to good old sedo.co.uk.

Example

In our previous post, choosing a niche domain name I decided on a niche, mountain bike tyres. I would then go to my registrar and look for different domains like: mountainbiketyres mountainbike-tyres mbtyres biketyres biketyresforsale etc…. .com or .co.uk depending on your strategy.

Tools

Moniker - My registrar of choice
Sedo
Godaddy
1 & 1

Research

Research is a key attribute to success in any business and this is no exception. You see forums littered with one off threads from Joe Bloggs asking questions like, what is the most profitable niche or genre. Very few people are going to give that thread the time of day, research is time consuming, labourous and sometimes painful, but without it you will be shooting in the dark. If you are starting out, try finding a niche that you are passionate about or have knowledge or an interest in. This will help keep you motivated, when researching what angle to take or what part of that interest to pursue. I started in real estate in spain and so it was logical to buy a domain name that fitted that niche, so I bought spain real estate .co.uk. We started adding value to the domain in 2001, by building a small manageable website, which required little maintenance, but was user friendly. Back in the day there were few web competitors about so we grabbed the opportunity and started to market ourselves to the public, many of which still didn’t even have broadband. Point is, I was motivated to create value as the domain would be my income and it was relevant to what I was doing and the knowledge I had.

Example

My hobby is mountain biking. I may want to concentrate on a niche within that, so what does a mountain bike consist of a frame, seat, suspension forks, wheels and tyres. Im going to choose tyres for the sake of this example. I now have a niche mountain bike tyres and need a domain name. I would look at variables on the niche like mountainbiketyres mountainbike-tyres mbtyres biketyres biketyresforsale etc….

A tool to help you

Google Traffic Estimator Tool - This tool gives you an ESTIMATE of traffic, clicks per day and average CPC.

Whilst researching the domain name industry over the past year or so, I began to see a simple pattern relating to domain names, their value and real estate.

So here is my analogy

Buy a plot of land - Buy a domain

Think of a domain name as a plot of land. The value of a plot of land can be measure by a number of variables, but location, location, location is key and planning permission is a must. A plot of land in central London is going to be worth more than the same plot in Leeds (relatively speaking). Buying the right domain name is key to easier success on the web. Domains that get large amounts of type in traffic due to the words within the domain name, already have greater value. Domain names where the words are a traffic rich or profit margin rich businesses, afford greater potential. Remember if you start with a great base, developing the domain will be easier and has great value potential.

Develop your plot of land - Develop your domain

Turning a domain into a website is like developing a house on your plot of land. A plot of land with a house on it, is worth more than the stand alone plot. Assuming you have done your costings correctly, there should be room for a sizeable profit margin. If you build a website on your domain name and use the right setup, marketing and resources, it should have increased in value. The margins in domaining should be high, as costs are relatively low.

Sell or Rent your Home - Sell or Lease your Domain

Selling your domain is like selling your property. Researching the right price, marketing with the right estate agent and presenting your property to it’s full potential will all help in your goal to sell. If you want to sell your domain for the highest price, developing it with a stable traffic stream, a track record of sales and good design, should all work in your favour.

Renting your property can be a great way to make a steady income, while someone pays all your costs. This is called cash flowing property and it means that you have a property whose mortgage, running and maintenance costs are lower than the rent achievable buy leasing it out. It needs to be attractive and be fitted with all the mod cons. To get a domain to a position where a company will pay to lease it, you will need to have a good name ;), a stable traffic stream and stats to back it up.

Leasing domain names I think is in its infancy, but over time as less great domains are available companies will start to look at leasing valuable domains.

So if you own a domain add more value by trying any of the above and increase your online real estate value.

We were watching the TV and heard someone say “Shoulder Candy”, which relates to a womens handbag that looks fantastic on. We have been trying to think of good domain to encompass our new domaining project and so we ditched shoulder and stuck domain on the front. the .com was owned already by an Aussie hosting company, but we are only focussed on the UK market and in this case we didn’t feel it mattered.

This site will be a raw account of many of our domain projects detailsing what we do and our opinions about the ride, we hope you enjoy it