Domains - Boom Or Bust?
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Lorenzo Modesto May 13, 2009
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Lorenzo Modesto |
Lorenzo Modesto started in the Internet industry in 1996 and has held
executive positions in sales, marketing and business development at
industry leading service providers. He is the Managing Director of Domains a domain registration company. |
Lorenzo Modesto
has written 1 articles for DomainInformer. |
View all articles by Lorenzo Modesto... |
A brief history of domains
Domain name registration started in
earnest in the early days of the Internet, when people started to
cotton onto the fact that domain names could be used for something
other than novelty or specialized technical duties.
There were
heady growth levels as new domain name registrations expanded like
wildfire through the available and common domain suffixes (.com, .net
and local country domains such as .com.au and .net.au for Australia).
Every man and their dog starting a business, registering a business or
trying to capitalize on a new business concept was using everything
from common names and brands, to locations, nouns, adjectives,
fantasies and business concepts. If you multiply this by the number of
people dallying in the Internet then one can start to appreciate the
volume of new domain registrations that were occurring on a daily basis
- the stuff of which Dot Com dreams were made.
Dot Com Crash
Everything
that goes up must come down, as the saying goes… It started one morning
in May in 2000, with colossal losses in listed stocks on Nasdaq,
closely followed by each of the relevant local markets around the world.
One
of the flow-on effects was one of massively reduced new domain name
registrations, followed by a delayed but equally colossal fall in the
number of domain renewals around the world.
According to sources
within the domain name registration and renewal industry, this severly
affected domain name registrations, domain renewals and domain
redelegation to the point where domain companies were required to scale
back their operations considerably, planning for survival rather than
growth.
Domains Resurrection
When all the dust settled,
people and business alike finally started to work out that the very
same properties that had lead to the impressive growth in domains still
held true, and slowly colour started to return to the cheeks of domain
registration companies worldwide.
Domain name registration growth
has reflected this overall mood and returned to healthy levels as users
around the world both register and renew domains that are used for many
different purposes.
Domains Dos and Don'ts
Many people have
since realized that domain names can be used sensibly, practically,
cleverly and creatively to deliver a clear and accurate branding
message and facilitate business or even personal communications. Just
in case people have missed all the fun until now, below is a list of
some simple Dos and Don’ts that should enable an individual, whether it
they are starting a new business, registering a business or business
concept, or just improving the branding of an existing company to
select an appropriate domain name.
Do:
- Keep your domain name as short as possible
- Try to avoid initials in your domain name (they mean nothing to people or search engines)
- Keep your domain as close to your company name as possible
- Look at your competitors’ domains to get a feel for how they have chosen them
- Make a list (you may find that your choices have already been taken)
- Bounce your domain name off friends and/or service providers you trust
- Keep your expectations realistic (one domain does not a fat bank account make)
Don’t
- Go for the record of the longest domain name unless that’s exactly what you intend to achieve
-
Rush! No one is going to leap in and get that domain name that will
make you a million overnight (and it won’t anyway – don’t blame me…)
- Give up. Online success takes perseverance and patience but the time and effort you put in should pay off |