Does My Domain Name and Company Name Need to be the Same?

Your domain name is an important aspect of your company website. A domain name is the address on the internet where your business can be found, so it is important to make your domain name suitable for your business.

In Internet parlance, a domain name is also known as a URL or Uniform Resource Locator. Typically, a domain name will look like this: http://www.yourcompanyname.com.au.

Obtaining a domain name is your first step to conducting your business online. Having a website means that you are more accessible for your customers, which is important to boost your sales and reputation world wide. It is now becoming expected for businesses to have a domain name and a website.

It is a good idea to have at least a small website in your company name if only to guard its integrity. It’s not enough to just obtain the domain name, as a challenger to the name can point to the fact that it not being used in an attempt to wrestle its ownership from you. Whether you register several other domain names, one for each area of your business, or for each of your ‘brand’ names, is optional, but recommended for the same reason. Grab the names before someone else does.

An important feature of owning a domain name that is the same, or as close as possible, to your company name is the ability to use that domain name as part of your company email address/addresses. This contributes greatly to the professional and business image of your company, projecting it in a credible light.

It is necessary to be selective about your domain name and company name. Over the years, legal disputes have arisen out of the use of domain names and company names that are identical to existing registered trademarks or company names.

What’s more, names that could be the subject of an infringement action need not be ones that are locally registered here in Australia. Most world famous names and marks have international protection against intellectual property infringement that may be enforced against anyone in almost every country.

ASIC (Australian Securities and Investment Commission) recommends that your choice of a domain name is not identical, similar or confusingly similar to an existing business name, company name, reserved company name or registered trademark.

You can avoid legal conflict by conducting a domain name search on the Internet and a name search on an Australian domain registration website prior to reserving a company name for your business. If, after conducting a thorough search, the proposed name for your company is free for use, then go ahead and apply for it as your company name.

Should you have an existing business and find that its name has already been used by someone else for their website, it will be necessary to look for an alternative that either modifies the business name, or successfully interprets the nature of your business.

There are a number of providers on the Internet who offer domain name registration services for a fee. Sign up with any one of these providers and make sure that you renew your domain name registration regularly so as not to lose your rights over it. Your domain name is specific for your company, so no one else can use the same internet address your company has.

If you would like to know more about company names and domain names, visit http://www.companiesnow.com.au

Choosing a Domain Name

In this article you will learn how to chose an effective and memorable domain name and learn how you can actually increase traffic by using an old, expired domain name.
Times wasting so lets get started…
In the physical world, you can distinguish a business
because of its structure, window displays, or signs. You cantell that a bank is a bank, or a clothing store is indeed a clothing store.
In the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective visitor has no way of knowing what your site is all about until he/she finds it and reads its contents. Who can ever tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search engine?
Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space.
The need to provide immediate clues to an online business led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names instantly provide the user with an idea of what a business is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. For instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.
The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful; that some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1
million.
However, generic names do not necessarily create the “buzz” that you’d like surrounding your website. Branding has always been about proper names: McDonald’s did not name their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not Photographs. Microsoft is not Computer Software.
For better branding results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips when creating a domain name.
* The domain name should be short
* The domain name should be simple
* It should be suggestive of your business category
* It should be unique
* It should be easy to interpret and pronounce
* It should be personalized
* It should not be difficult to spell
* It should not be difficult to remember
Domain names can be registered through many different
companies (known as “registrars”) – a listing of these
companies is available at ICANN: http://www.icann.org. You
can register for 1 to 10 years – prices can vary anywhere from $10 to $20 per year. Most web hosting companies, as explained later, will handle the registration process for you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not renewed in time.
Using expired domains to skyrocket your traffic
At some point while you’re building your website, you’re going to have to buy a domain name. This is the address that users type into their browsers to reach your site. That takes about five seconds, and depending on the name you want and whether anyone else owns it, it won’t cost you more than a few bucks.
But domain names are also a golden opportunity to make some easy money.
I’m not talking about Internet real estate, where you buy up good names and sell them on for a profit—if you haven’t got into that now, forget it. The bottom’s fallen out of the market and the best domains are long gone.
I’m talking about expiring domains.
Thousands of webmasters invest time, effort and money to promote their site and build up traffic. Many of them then lose interest and move on, leaving their site active. That means that although they still own the domain, they’re not actively promoting it. But they don’t need to. All the automatic marketing systems they’ve put in place are still bringing in traffic. The site runs itself.
Now, at some point the ownership of those domains is going to expire. If you snap up those domains once they come back onto the market, you’ve got a pre-built stream of customers.
You can either rebuild the site, or redirect the traffic to your domain. You could set up an affiliate program get paid for users someone else paid for.
It’s that easy.
There are tons of options, and lots of easy ways to make lots of money with very little effort. Opportunities like these are everywhere.
Websites such as www.expiredtraffic.com or
www.deleteddomains.com actually do all the legwork and let you reap all the rewards. Expired Traffic even has an affiliate program and www.snapnames.com allows you to back-order a specific domain name.
Do be careful when using other sites though. There are some swindlers out there that will sell you subscriptions, provide you with outdated lists, take your money and keep the good domains for themselves. It happens, and there’s little point in taking a risk when www.deleteddomains.com does such a great job.

Why Your Business Needs a Premium Domain Name

If you already run or are planning to start an online or offline business, you need a website that will help your business succeed. But since the business world is well into the new millennium, you can be sure that all the plum domain names are already taken. So how do you go about getting one for yourself?

Enter the premium domain name: a domain name that has already been registered by someone else, and is not available in the primary market. But it is available for sale in the secondary market, at a price. Premium domain names are much more expensive than primary market domain names due to their brandability, their length, their targeted keywords and a host of other reasons which make them a necessity for any business in the competitive internet marketplace.

They are well worth the price, too. Here are a few reasons why you need to get yourself a premium domain name even at a higher price:

1. All the marketable names in the dictionary have already been registered, so it is quite possible that the name of your brand is already a premium domain name. If that is the case, it makes complete business sense to get it, because your website needs to be an integral part of your branding strategy. It can be a permanent, interactive and informative virtual billboard that talks to your customers, day in and day out.

What is more, your brand needs to be protected at any cost. You cannot have a service or product unrelated to your specific brand existing on the domain name that epitomizes it.

2. Chances are high that a short, memorable generic name related to your business is already a premium domain name. Such a domain name might be able to draw targeted type-in customers to your website. This leads to automatic higher search engine ranking. This gives it tremendous development potential, especially if you are into e-commerce, and hope to attract paying customers to your site.

3. Most premium domain names have good extensions, mostly .com, because that is one of the reasons they were snapped up from the primary market in the first place. A good extension also assures a lot of type-in traffic, another reason you need to grab it for your business.

4. While the above reasons are good for you if you are a business owner, it also holds true if you are a domainer and buy and sell domain names for profit. A good premium domain name can be an extremely sound investment, because sooner or later a business owner would want to pay a lot just in order to acquire the domain name from you. You would find such a premium domain name at a reasonable price after an incredible amount of research, but it could all be worth it in the end.

Whichever way you look at it, a premium domain name is an asset which cannot be overlooked if you want to establish a genuine and lucrative web presence. There is every reason why you should begin your research on a great premium domain name that could well prove to be your springboard to success.

This article was written by Irell Quezada from NameCake. A website that specialises in buying and selling Generic Domains and who offer expert advice on domain names and the competitive advantage they can give your business in the online marketplace.

Article Marketing: Dealing With Writers Block. Use the Public Domain

For some people writing can be a difficult and overwhelming process. For others it can even cause panic and anxiety. But it does not need to be that way if you take some easy steps to find your inspiration and material in what is called the Public Domain.

Public Domain

Under US copyright law there is a body of published content, books, articles, and written material of all sorts, that do not fall under copyright protection. That means that this material can be reproduced and used for whatever purpose you may have in mind. For the affiliate marketer, this represents a great opportunity for finding content that can be repurposed, resold or distributed as free bonus material or in a free report. Material that falls into this category of availability is said to be in the Public Domain.

Article Marketing and the Public Domain Content

Article marketing is a natural tool for which Public Domain material is very well suited. It makes it much easier to research, plan and layout your material because much of the process is already done for you in the content you will find in the Public Domain. That does not mean that you should lift material verbatim and simply put it into your article or e-book. You have to use your common sense and judge when it is useful and appropriate to take content wholesale and when you should do some minimal rewriting to add you own style and voice to your written material.

Given the volume and variety of Public Domain material available, you should have ample opportunity to create a large volume of rich and interesting content. This is particularly important because the distribution channels and article directories are always looking for fresh relevant content for their libraries. And your readers are also always looking for useful and helpful material to get them going in starting an internet marketing program.

Search engines also are always looking for new and authoritative keyword rich content to index and display. So if you take the time to research and find the Public Domain sites to give you material you need, you will find yourself in a very good position to rank well in search engines and with the reader looking for your article or e-book.

Public Domain Sites Where to Start

There are many sites available and you should start by trying a Google search on your own but there are some classic Pubic Domain sites you should be aware of.

The Gutenberg Project, www.gutenberg.org, is one site that you should know about. It is a repository for many books and novels, much fiction but some non fiction as well, and is a great place to take a look to see what you can find.

The Internet Public Library, www.ipl.org, is another resource that can help you find relevant, authoritative content. It has a great selection of subject collections and ready reference resources along with a Reading Room category with magazines and newspapers that are a gold mine for the article writer.

Internet Archive, www.archive.org, is another great Public Domain site. It offers not only written material but also video, audio, web based content that can really make your research and content design snazzy and attractive. Article marketing with a video and audio component is really cutting edge and would differentiate you from the crowd.

WWW.booksforabuck.com is a site where you will find very affordable material. They also offer the option of letting you sell your e-book if you should so decide. A lot of the content is fiction but there are also opportunities for non fiction material also.

Finally one other site is Wikenews.org.; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Domain_Resource. Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all. This is a great site with all sorts of content you can explore to find material for your article marketing.

In addition to the free sites there are products for sale that can aggregate Public Domain for you and save you the time and effort of searching the Web. Whatever you decide to do, Public Domain is available to you for the taking.

Conclusion

Writers fright or writers block are not uncommon for the internet marketer. Which ever applies to you, whenever you encounter them, just take a trip to the Public Domain sites for some inspiration and just plain entertainment and you will find that writing can be fun and a great way to learn all sorts of new things.

May Your Travels Be Prosperous.

Over the past 20 years Claude Pelanne has worked in a series of startup ventures including some of the first commercial webcasts. He is an internet marketer and serial entrepreneur. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include the resource box. For tips and resources to get into internet marketing visit cpelanne or claudepelanne


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