Chapter 3
How to Find Good Names
There are many ways to find good names and I will go over the most common techniques as well as the tricks and short cuts I use to find my names. There are 2 initial routes you can take. You can choose to either buy a domain that has already been registered (and most likely established as a website at sometime), or to register a brand newdomain name for the first time. There are many benefits to purchasing a name from somebody else that has alreadybeen registered. Older domains may still be getting traffic. The traffic may be coming from returning visitors from when the domain was a website and people remember it or have it saved in their favorites, or it could be coming from backlinks. A Backlink is any link on the internet that leads people back to your website. For example, let's pretend that a person named Lisa owns the website www.buy-in-bulk.com and the year is 2008. Let's also pretend that there is a guy named Joe who has a website called www.wholesaleratingsandreviews.com.Ok, so Lisa's website is www.buy-in-bulk.com and she sells wholesale products and Joe has a website thattalks about websites like Lisa's.Joe's website is a review site that reviews and rates different wholesale companies or websites. Well one day Joe decides to talk about Lisa's website on his website and Joe says on his website something like "Today I found this website called Buy-In-Bulk.com and they had fantastic wholesale products! You can visit their website here: http://www.buy-in-bulk.com. Well this is Lisa's lucky day because Joe just made a backlink for Lisa. Now, when somebody visits Joe's website, there is a link on his website that visitors can click which brings those visitors back to Lisa's website. So maybe those people will become Lisa'scustomers. Understand? Ok, now let's say that in 2008 buy-in-bulkwas doing great but then in 2009 they go out of business or they decide that they want a better domain name to use for their website...Now there is no more website at www.buy-in-bulk.com. The website no longer exists, just the domain name. But Joe has such a large website and never checks his old pages so the backlink is still on Joe's website. So people are still going to www.buy-in-bulk.com even though there is no website there.
Now imagine if there were lots of people like Joe who had mentioned buy-in-bulk.com on their websites and added backlinks...That would mean lots of people would still be visiting that address at www.buy-in-bulk even if there is no website there. Now what if you saw somebody selling the domain name buy-in-bulk.com? What if Lisa decided to sell this name one day anddidn't realize how valuable it is now with all this traffic it still has? Even better, what if Lisa didn't even think it wasworth selling and just let it expire...When you own a domain or register a domain for the first time, you have to pay renewal fees on it every year. There is a one time renewal fee that you must pay every year to the registrar (For example, if your domain is registered through Godaddy then you have to pay them somewhere between $7-12 onthe renewal date each year).
Most registrars will allow you to pay for many years in advance if you want. There is usually a grace period after your deadline so you have a couple days or weeks after the expiration date to pay. But if you do not pay the renewal fee, your domain will expire and anybody else can buy it at that time. It's free to the publicand anybody can re-register it under their name and the original person who registered it (Lisa in this case) would losethe domain to the new person who renewed it. In other words, the domain name would have a brand new owner. You can check for domains about to expire at websites such as justdropped.com and expireddomains.com. You mayhave to pay more than just the registration fee if other people are bidding on the name but most of the time, if you see it before anyone else does, you get it before them if you reserve it in advance or catch the name right when it drops (You will most likely have to reserve them because very few people are lucky enough to just catch valuable expired names on the day they drop.)
So let's pretend Lisa forgot to renew her domain, and you saw that it was about to expire. Now you purchase Lisa's expireddomain and only pay the registration fee. You now have a domain name that receives traffic everyday from all those oldbacklinks. Traffic is very valuable becausenow you can build a profitable website and already have customers coming to your website without any advertising, or you can park it and get paid per click or you can resell it for alot more to a company or anybody else(I will discuss parking domains and reselling domains later in this guide.)