Archive for January, 2011
January 28th, 2011 | 
Author: How To Appraise A Domain Names Value
Knowing the value of an internet domain name is crucial in today’s business industry. Altough there is no exact formula to appraise a domain there are a group of things to consider before putting a value to a domain. A majority of people will base their immediate appraisal on TLD extension word length and keyword popularity but won’t really consider backlinks brandability or emerging trends part of the equation. There are a few factors that a person must be aware of before they can feel they have thoroughly assessed the domain and attach a valid appraisal amount. The first thing a person can do to is recognize that there are many subtle components that need to be assembled and viewed as a whole to get a comprehensive perspective on the domain. It seems every domainer has their own method used to appraise a domain so I’ve listed a few factors that I feel are necessary in being considered before a domain can be appraised.
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TLD Extension
TLD or TopLevel Domain is the ending extension attached to a domain such as .com .net or .org. The .com extension is considered the most sought after even though there are other TLD’s that are gaining huge popularity and acceptance. CC’s or Country Codes are also seeing their fair share of registrations.
Name Length
Now that all the 2 3 and 4 letter .com’s have been registered the letter count on a domain is fast becoming a huge factor in a domain’s worth. The desire for a short domain is at an all time high and values are steadily climbing due to the limited supply of shorter length domains. Seems shorter names are easier to remember and with that a value increase.
Characters Numbers and Hyphens
Hyphens integrated between letters are often viewed as separators between keywords. Although there is much dispute whether or not the hyphens negatively impact a domain’s search engine optimization there is considerable preference that a domain not include anything extra in it’s name. Number digits are beginning to see their popularity rise and can be included with relevant keywords or letters to make a great domain.
Keyword Popularity
Marketable search terms and keyword popularity are extremely relevant in appraising a domain name. The frequency of a given search term helps to indicate the brandability or popularity of the keyword. Generic word domains such as flowers.com or poker.com are the strongest in their keyword popularity genre.
Traffic and Revenue
Traffic or visitors to a particular domain is one of the most important factors to consider when appraising a domain. More traffic usually means more revenue due to payperclick income and possible advertising opportunities therefore increasing the value of the domain.
Brandability and Trends
Any domain that is easily memorable short and nondescript is considered brandable and therefore increases it’s value. It would be easier for a person to remember TVrepair.com instead of the longer fixmybrokentelevision.com . Not only is the first choice shorter and has better word flow but also there is less of a chance of someone incorrectly typing in the URL. Also keep tuned in to current trends that may seem to increase an otherwise meaningless domain into a treasure. An example is when Apple Computers began to incorporate the letter i into their products descriptions such as iPhone iPod and iLife.
Automated Domain Appraisals
This is a tricky one. Although I feel automated domain appraisal systems such as Estibot are helpful in assisting to appraise a domain I don’t feel they should be the “end all” decision used to obtain a domain’s value. If used more as a reference tool they can be one of the greatest resources that help determine an appraisal value. Any script/applications can have some bugs especially ones with complex algorithms as Estibot. Make automated domain appraisals one of the tools to find an appraisal not the only tool.
Future Potential Interest and Overall Appeal
As time goes by new words trends and fads explode onto the scene and with each new word or trend created a domain is born. Stay up with current events and become a regular visitor to news aggregate sites such as Digg and domain industry specific DNHour to stay on the cusp of emerging potential interests.
Backlinks
I like to keep my eye on the number and quality of backlinks to evaluate an domain appraisal. While tons of irrelevant backlinks might negatively effect a domain’s search engine optimization it can still be a positive thing for a domain names’ value. With more and more domains being “parked” the links tend to lean towards relevant backlinks and therefore less likely to be bogged down in the SEO nightmare of page rank. And it’s hard to argue that backlinks don’t increase traffic.
Relevance Region Specific and other Fuzzy Logic
As said earlier there is no exact formula to appraise a domain name and therefore the notsoexact elements must come into play. An example would be that veteran domainers tend to skew their entire method of appraising when it comes to country specific or region specific domain names. Different factors are incorporated to determine nonEnglish domain word values and domainers across the globe are becoming better in detecting future potential interests in foreign markets. Another example is the continuously growing popularity of “longstring domaining” or stringing multiple words or keywords to achieve a brandable and memorable domain name. TacoBell has ThinkOutsideTheBun.com and Amazon has the domain BuyABook.com. By definition these would not be very valuable but that’s when the fuzzy logic creeps in. A domain’s value can be perceived in multiple ways.
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So keep in mind that even though there isn’t one exact correct formula being used by the domain industry to appraise domains a reasonable appraisal can be determined by anyone if they keep all the factors in mind and how they each interact with each other.
I’d suggest you monitor the pulse of current domain sales by frequently visiting
DNJournal’s Domain Sales Chart. This will show you weekly and even yearly todate domain sales for the industry. And don’t forget to visit the front page of Sedo to view ongoing live auctions. Each of these great resources will help you in creating your own customized method of domain appraising by seeing what domains are selling and for what amount.
About the writer: Rudy Hernandez is the chief domain industry blogger at LogistikLabs.com. Rudy has been an integral part of the domain industry since 1999. Visit Rudy’s blog at LogistikLabs.com.
Building Your List With Best Ideas
Building a list can be a daunting task for some but it can be accomplished fairly quickly depending on how much effort you put into it. Now there are several ways to accomplish this and Im going to try to go over some of the best techniques I have found in this article. The first thing I suggest is setting up joint ventures. This is great because it gives you access to others lists when promoting your product. It also gives you a targeted captive audience who may also register on your site to receive more information. However before you start driving more traffic to your site you should make sure that it is easy for your visitors to signup. What this means is that you should include a registration form or link on every page of your website since visitors can find your site through any given page. Article submission is another favorite of mine. The more quality articles you can produce and post to the multiple ezine and article sites the better your chances are of finding more subscribers. If the submission site likes your article and receives a lot of traffic because of it they may choose to archive it which will give you even more exposure! If you cant or dont like writing you can always hire someone to do it for you through a freelance site like elance.com. Either way try to at least post an article a month. Of course Google Adwords is another option for building your list. However this costs money and if your funds are limited you may want to try MSN. You will probably find that they are a bit cheaper but do provide good value. If you choose to advertise this way always make sure you track and test the ads that are or arent bringing you the most amount of visitors. Solo Advertising is also effective. This is typically when you write an email and pay someone to send it to their lists. This is different from a joint venture because it is not a partnership and therefore all revenue generated is yours to keep. A good place to get started with this is ezinesrus.com. When you go to this site just click on targeted solo ads and itll go through and actually tell you everything about it. They have several lists to choose from to help you target your customers better. They also vary in cost depending on the size of the list you are submitting to. You can search for more of these types of sites under the term solo advertising or targeted solo ads. The last thing you can do is press releases through either PRWeb or PRWeb Direct. If you are not sure what press releases are or how to do them just visit these sites to get a clearer idea of what is expected in a good PR piece. Actively promote your site and you are sure to see an increase in your sites traffic and an increase in sales!
There are many strategies out there to make money on the internet but nothing makes sense unless you have a big list. Email Marketing is a the most profitable way to make money on the net. When you build a list of hot and hungry prospects you control your future. Discover how to use the internet and turn your computer into a cash gushing machine. Sign up right now for my newsletter to find out how to do exactly that
About the Author
Building a list can be a daunting task for some but it can be accomplished fairly quickly depending on how much effort you put into it. Now there are several ways to accomplish this and Im going to try to go over some of the best techniques I have found in this article. The first thing I suggest is setting up joint ventures. This is great because it gives you access to others lists when promoting your product. It also gives you a targeted captive audience who may also register on your site to receive more information. However before you start driving more traffic to your site you should make sure that it is easy for your visitors to signup. What this means is that you should include a registration form or link on every page of your website since visitors can find your site through any given page. Article submission is another favorite of mine. The more quality articles you can produce and post to the multiple ezine and article sites the better your chances are of finding more subscribers. If the submission site likes your article and receives a lot of traffic because of it they may choose to archive it which will give you even more exposure! If you cant or dont like writing you can always hire someone to do it for you through a freelance site like elance.com. Either way try to at least post an article a month. Of course Google Adwords is another option for building your list. However this costs money and if your funds are limited you may want to try MSN. You will probably find that they are a bit cheaper but do provide good value. If you choose to advertise this way always make sure you track and test the ads that are or arent bringing you the most amount of visitors. Solo Advertising is also effective. This is typically when you write an email and pay someone to send it to their lists. This is different from a joint venture because it is not a partnership and therefore all revenue generated is yours to keep. A good place to get started with this is ezinesrus.com. When you go to this site just click on targeted solo ads and itll go through and actually tell you everything about it. They have several lists to choose from to help you target your customers better. They also vary in cost depending on the size of the list you are submitting to. You can search for more of these types of sites under the term solo advertising or targeted solo ads. The last thing you can do is press releases through either PRWeb or PRWeb Direct. If you are not sure what press releases are or how to do them just visit these sites to get a clearer idea of what is expected in a good PR piece. Actively promote your site and you are sure to see an increase in your sites traffic and an increase in sales!
There are many strategies out there to make money on the internet but nothing makes sense unless you have a big list. Email Marketing is a the most profitable way to make money on the net. When you build a list of hot and hungry prospects you control your future. Discover how to use the internet and turn your computer into a cash gushing machine. Sign up right now for my newsletter to find out how to do exactly that
About the Author
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;http://www.reprintarticlesite.com
http://www.jointventures.reprintarticlesite.com
Virtual Private Servers Vps – A Guide
Web Hosting if tarred with as broad a brush as possible is split into Shared and Dedicated Hosting. There are those who purchase a space on a server for their own use and then there are those who just buy the server. A bit like buying a plane ticket or buying a plane except the difference between a return to Oslo and a Cessna are a bit more pronounced.
There is a bridge over these troubled waters however. Its known as VPS Virtual Private Server its also known as VDS Virtual Dedicated Server but thats not as common presumably because it leads to confusion with old fashioned displays and sounds like something unsavoury you might catch on a night out in Calcutta. VPS allows freedom from the constraints of Shared Hosting without the expense or expertise of a Dedicated server.
A Shared Hosting server typically has an operating system installed on it and the host then installs the software they want they set the server exactly as they like it and then customers pay them certain amounts of money to purchase a little space on the server. The customer has as much control over that space as the host will let them and their performance will be based on however many customers are Sharing the server hundreds perhaps. Remember that a server is just like your computer at home or at work and just like your computer it has a certain amount of memory and a certain speed of processor and it can only do so many things at once before it has to start putting people in a queue this is the point where your site may seem slower than usual.
A Dedicated server works the same as a Shared server except the owner of the server has far more control over what is on their server. Like the hosting company with the Shared server the owner of the Dedicated can pick the operating system what software is installed and how many sites run on the server. If a Dedicated server is set up specifically for one site and is configured for that site alone that site will run considerably faster than a site on a Shared server. It doesnt have to share resources and it can be built purely for the purposes of running that site.
VPS sits between these two types of hosting. There are several kinds of VPS but we will focus on software VPS. In this instance the host will buy the server and install an Operating System OS on it. They then use another program i.e. Virtuozzo to create several isolated Virtual Servers sometimes known as Containers on the server. Each of these Containers is a Virtual Server they function as if they were standalone Dedicated Servers when in actual fact they are a more advanced form of Shared hosting!
Compared to Shared hosting VPS has many benefits. To begin with Shared hosting comes with no performance guarantees. Thats not to say that Shared hosting is slow its just that some sites require a lot more resources than others and a few busy or intensive sites on a full Shared server could well impact the performance of everyone else try opening a few basic programs on your computer at once keep them open and then see how well your computer runs when you start a virus scan those basic programs arent so responsive now are they?.
With a VPS your Container will come with a guaranteed proportion of the servers resources. This usually comes in the form of RAM Memory available for instance your VPS might come with a guaranteed 256 or 512 MB of RAM. This means that regardless of how many people there are on the server regardless of how busy their sites are you always always have that much memory available for you to use. Some companies also advertise the burst memory available to you as well. This is essentially the memory that you could conceivably use assuming that everyone else isnt using their quota. However burst memory is a subjective term as there are no guarantees on how often this memory will be available to you beyond the length of a piece of string its more a fancy figure to impress potential customers with.
As a Container is purchased with a guaranteed RAM quota there will be far fewer customers sharing a VPS server than there would be sharing a er Shared server. So the CPU wont be divided between as many clients and their respective demands on it so speeds will improve and the load on the CPU will decrease. All in all your hosting will be noticeably faster. Again some hosts will advertise CPU preferences server contention rates etc. to demonstrate how the more expensive VPS packages will take preference to some degree over the cheaper packages when requesting resources from the CPU. How much this makes an impact on your decision to buy that VPS or not is up to you; many hosts dont make any preferences between packages whatsoever.
The other major benefit to a VPS is the extra control that you will have over your hosting. If youve managed to find someone who does hardware VPS then youll be able to pick your own OS as well hardware VPS essentially creates the VPS on a hardware level rather than a software level the good part; you can do whatever you like with your VPS the bad part; the hardware rather than shared is divided so instead of having the use of for instance a 2gHz processor and a guaranteed 256MB of RAM you get a .5gHz processor and a guaranteed 256 MB of RAM if 4 people are sharing your server. From here you can configure your hosting as you see fit customise your PHP settings install PHP x Zend whatever Hardy Heron and/or Peggle not recommended for a work environment. Even better as your VPS is essentially a Virtual Machine you can take snapshots of your entire VPS so your whole account can be backed up into a single file and then should something go horribly wrong you can use the snapshot to restore the VPS in its entirety.
VPS will of course cost more than Shared Hosting but on the flip side of the coin it is considerably cheaper than a Dedicated server. If performance is more of an issue for you than cost then a Dedicated is the way forward a VPS will never be able to command the amount of resources that a Dedicated server used for the same purpose can. But as a costeffective solution to providing a significant performance boost to your hosting as well as allowing yourself a greater degree of control VPS is hard to fault.
*Please note Ive been to Calcutta. Im not implying that the place is unsavoury disreputable or otherwise trying to smear the good name of Calcutta in any way it just seemed to round the sentence off nicely!
About the Author:
Ewan MacLeod works for NuBlue a UK based Web Agency that specialises in Web Design and Web Hosting.
About the writer: I work for NuBlue Web Solutions providing Web Hosting Design and Marketing services.
