Domain commandments for internet business developers

1. Use a category defining generic "exact match" name if you can. A good example is our DiversityJobs.com. But remember, the premium one-word generic name may not always be the right choice, if it's too broad a term. We leased Latino.com for a while trying to decide whether to purchase and develop. We tested it against similar brandable names in Adwords until we found a handful of brandable names that outperformed Latino.com - brandable names like www.LatinoLink.com and www.LatinoUSA.com. On the other hand, consider paying a pretty penny for a name that delivers very specific commercial type-in or direct navigation traffic. Sometimes owning the traffic is preferable to paying Google and Yahoo for it, year in and year out. For example: www.GolfCourses.com, www.GolfJobs.com, www.GolfLessons.com, etc...

2. Integrate domains into your marketing and traffic strategies. Use them in CPC campaigns, build industry link directories or community websites. The traffic and credibility you get from the latter will pay off in spades with time if your content is good. A great open source content management system we've used for several years is at www.drupal.org and currently experimenting with xsitepro.

3. Maintain a list of words to combine with your keywords to help you create good names. For example: _world, _zone, _web, etc...

4. Protect your niche by registering names that could be confused with yours. Create a moat around your business to keep competitors from unintentionally violating your trademark. It's more expensive to enforce a trademark than it is to register the names.

5. Register multiple names for yourself and your products and services. You can't predict what's going to grow and what you'll want to spin off but you can predict demand for good names will go up and what costs $7 today could cost $7,000 a couple of years from now. Register your names in singular and plural, their typos, and with a dash if your domain is two words. Ex: Our primary site is www.latpro.com, so we also want latpros.com, wwwlatpro.com, laptro.com, latinpro.com etc. Don't forget to register your name, possibly with and without your middlename, and your kids names.

6. Look 5 years into the future when deciding what to register and understand your next best alternative to domains. A domainer needs $7 a year from a domain for it to pay for itself which could mean 70 visitors whereas a developer may need only 7 visitors if his cpc cost for visitors on Google is $1. Furthermore, if cpc costs rise to $7 a click in 5 years, the developer will only need 1 single visitor a year to be at breakeven.

7. Use .org, .info, .us and dashes in CPC advertising when the .com isn't available after testing in Google for attractiveness. Depending on the niche, these extensions can pull nearly as well or occasionally better than .com.

8. Avoid trademark issues. Stay away from names that incorporate trademark names or are similar to famous brands. Do this to protect your reputation and your portfolio. If you lose a challenge to one of your names, you could be branded a 'cybersquatter' and you could lose future cases where the plaintiff has no legitimate claim on your domains simply because your reputation was clouded.

9. Develop a weaker keyword or extension. If you can't afford the .com, develop another keyword, extension or the hyphenated .com. It's not a very common practice, but this will change. Once you start making money, you can begin buying the premium domains.

10. Manage your realestate. Remember the McDonald's quote: "We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue from which our tenants can pay us rent." Regardless of whether McDonald's CFO, Harry J. Sonneborn actually uttered these words or not, the principle is important. Internet domains are virtual real estate. Manage them well and your portfolio may one day have as much or more value than your primary business.

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