One Hundred Smart Companies who Understand Generic Domain Names

Memorable Domains in the UK has a page up of 100 Smart Companies that Understand the Concept of Generic Domain Names

The list has 100 companies (mostly UK) and the generic domain name they use to promote themselves. Each of them has made good use of a generic domain name that exactly matches either their primary business, or one of their main products or services, and many of these are internationally known.

Well worth a read.

How and when to buy generic domain names

When and how should you buy an existing generic domain name for your business?

In Branding on the Internet I discussed what you should call your web site, the short answer is it should match your business name, the longer answer is in that article. Part of the branding article was about using additional “Generic” or product related domain names for extra qualified leads to your web-site, hopefully leading to more business.
My advice, then, as now was:

“You know your business and how well a sale does for you. If your average sale netts you $1,000 profit, then an extra domain name only needs to bring in one more sale every few years to pay for itself. If your average sale netts you $10 profit, then that extra domain name needs to bring in 4 or 5 extra sales a year to pay for itself. Stop and think what your potential customers will be looking for and try to find the right domain name(s) for them to find then register as many money making names as your budget allows.”

That article assumed you would be registering previously unregistered domain names, but what if the generic name you want is owned by someone else? Many people give up at this point, but it may well be that you can still acquire it.

DNC Consultation: Second Level Domains Policy Review

Some top level domains (.com, .tv) allow people to register a name immediately before the top level domain. Other top level domains provide a restricted number of names immediately to the left of the top level domain such as .me.uk, .com.au, .co.nz and allow registration only at the third level. These limited number of second level names are known as second level domain names. Some registration schemes, such as the Chinese .cn registry allow a hybrid system.

Currently New Zealand's .nz registry allows only 12 second level domains; .ac.nz, .co.nz, .geek.nz,
.gen.nz, .maori.nz, .net.nz, .org.nz and .school.nz are "unmoderated" meaning anyone can register a name in these second level domains while .cri.nz, .govt.nz, .health.nz, .iwi.nz, .mil.nz and .parliament.nz are "moderated" so that only those meeting the requirements of the second level domain can register the name.

Expired or Not? The strange case of Dick Smiths

On Friday night Expired Domains was showing the auction on the domain name dicksmiths.co.nz as finishing then. From Saturday morning it's been showing as finishing in 2 months time.

How to change ownership of .NZ domains

There are three main "players" in a domain name. The registrant (the nominal owner), the registrar who sells the owner the domain name and the hosting service that provides web and mail services for it. When you buy a domain name, the owner definitely changes, and depending on the deal you strike, the other two players may or may not change.

Profiting From The Coming Recession

I won't say it was a first, but I received a very thought provoking unsolicited commercial email today. Not normal spam, but somehow my email address had got on a legitimate company's marketing list.

To an extent nearly everyone in an Internet business is dependent on advertising for our respective businesses' income. It doesn't matter if that revenue is from CPC/CPA marketing, building websites to advertise businesses, selling domains or on-line journalism it's advertisers who are paying the bill. Since this recession started my parking CPC advertising revenue is off by 30% and I've heard others mention similar percentages.

Beware of free DNS services

Businesses come in all shapes and forms. Many small businesses are sole traders, often working on a shoestring budget. When businesses of this size first create a web presence it is often done on free services like Geocities or Blogspot. Sometimes this is because they are trying to minimize costs, and sometimes it is because they wandered into a web presence by accident. Although I am an IT professional, and have my own cheap hosting, this blog started as a very personal diary that I later split into three, distributing the back articles; one of the child blogs is decidedly business related. Once a blog or mini-site becomes part of a business' identity it really needs to be under the business' branding and this usually means having its own domain name to build recognition of the business, avoid confusion with the other sites on the free host, and present a more professional image.