"I suggest that if you do purchase a great domain name ... park it or hold onto it for a couple of years. Your $20+ investment could bring you hundreds and maybe even thousands of dollars down the road, making Virtual Realty a REALLY good investment." Heidi Richards (owner of 173 domain names)
Do you want to develop a website to promote your business? Do you want to create an online brochure you can direct people to? Do you want to start an online business? Perhaps you have toyed with the idea of investing in Virtual Realty simply as an investment. These are all good reasons to find the right services, the right names and the ins and outs of domain purchasing.
Just what is Virtual Realty? Virtual Realty is simply an IP Address (a set of numbers called Internet Protocol Numbers that are assigned to domain names on the Internet) The Domain name is then a familiar, easy to remember name for a web site (address) on the Internet. When you register a domain name you are in essence purchasing Virtual Realty on the Net – either with the hopes of one day developing a website or selling the domain name for a profit.
Virtual Realty is similar to REAL estate, because they’re not "making any more of it" and generally speaking REAL estate appreciates in value over time and with improvements. Since there are only a finite number of dotcoms available (even though we have not yet reached that amount), we are likely running out of all the good dotcom names. Keeping in mind that this does not take into consideration all the made-up words that become dotcoms – names like Zoomerang and Google and others, you still have to find one that works. With Virtual Realty the name represents the value – think of it as the “location, location, location” with Real Estate –its all about having a good address.
Finding the Right Domain – You can do a search for the dotcom you want via one of the sites above or listed in the resources below. If it is unavailable, many an eager buyer will decide to purchase a dotnet, or other dot extension. In my humble opinion, purchasing something other than a dotcom may not be a good idea unless you have a plan to roll out your new address in a BIG WAY or the dotcom has not yet been developed. Say you own romanceonabudget.net (I own this one) and the owner of romanceonabudget.com now decides to create the website, you may find that you promoting the other site – traffic goes to the dotcom site instead of yours. The two advantages of buying dotnets are: if someone types your URL by mistake intending to go to the dotcom you could get some traffic and, if the owner of the dotcom decided they really need to own both, they may make you an offer to purchase your dotnet. This has happened to me on two occasions – one we sold, the other we did not.
You could of course, buy the dotnet or dotbiz in the hopes that one day the dotcom becomes available. One of the things I do is look for URL’s that are owned by others but do not yet have a webpresence, have a short term renewal (one year or less) and perhaps have not been owned by the registrar for very long. I bookmark these URLS and watch to see if they are indeed renewed. Oftentimes people will buy URL’s with the intention to either develop a website or to sell the URL. IF they bought with the intention of selling the URL, you may have to pay BIG money to get the address you really want. And conversely, if you own it and someone wants it, you could be sitting on a Goldmine of opportunity. However, if they decide not to renew, you might get lucky enough to buy the dotcom you have been watching without paying through the Mouse J. When I decided to have a website for my speaking and coaching site, HeidiRichards.com was not available. I created a company – SpeakingwithSprit.com and established my site using that domain name. I then bookmarked Heidi Richards and waited to see if the man who owned it would do anything with it. Turns out that was his first wife’s name and when they got divorced he no longer had an interest in developing the site so he did not renew it. I bought the URL 19 months after I first bookmarked it for $15 through another company (I have since renewed it with WECAIDomains for $8.77 a year).
Purchasing a Domain Name – Now you are ready to buy a domain name … or several. You can buy domain names from many reputable places such as Moniker.com, www.WECAIDomains.com and others. WECAIDomains.com is a reseller for domain names and the price is $8.77 and lower, depending on the number of names your register at one time. WECAIDomains.com is able to offer domain name registrations at a lower price because we register in bulk. Even though there are still sites that charge up to $35 and more for the same basic service, it is not necessary for you to pay more than $10 per domain to register for a year.
Other ways to acquire unavailable domain names - If the domain you want has already been registered by someone else, you may still have an opportunity to purchase the domain through the secondary market for “used” domain names. You might find these domains listed through several services such as afternic.com and URL Merchant (see resources below). In some cases you can type the name in the search box of your favorite search engine and see if it takes you to a “this domain is for sale” page. A domain broker can also help you acquire a domain name from researching the owner to negotiating the sale and transferring the domain once the sale has been completed. You can contact the owner directly. That is if the information is publicly available. You can find this information in the WHOIS database or through WECAIDomains.com. There is of course, the chance that the domain owner is not interested in selling at any price or at this time.
One word of caution when purchasing virtual realty; Make sure the domain name you are registering is not trademarked by another company. There have been cases where someone purchased a domain name in the hopes of getting HUGE fees for it and the owner of the trademark was able to sue them for trademark infringement thereby preventing them from using the domain or to extort money from the company.
I suggest that if you do purchase a great domain name and all other factors have been taken into consideration, park it or hold onto it for a couple of years. Your $20+ investment could bring you hundreds and maybe even thousands of dollars down the road, making Virtual Realty a REALLY good investment.
RESOURCES
WECAIDomains.com – http://www.wecaidomains.com
Register your domain name for $8.77 a year – we also offer website development, domain forwarding, masking and much more!
WHOIS.com – http://www.whois.com
Provides domain name ownership and administration information through domain, NIC handle, and IP address searches. Searches both currently-owned and previously registered domains that are now available
Moniker.com – http://www.moniker.com – You can register your domain name for free – they do this in the hopes that you will use them to host the site (for a fee). They also develop websites and have a whole list of other services.
NAMEBOY.com - http://www.nameboy.com/
This is a fun website you can use to create a made-up or “cool” domain name. Use their domain name generator by entering two keywords - and it will find available domains, registered domains and domains that are for sale from a couple of different services.
AFTERnic.com - http://www.afternic.com
A great place to buy and sell domain names, this popular domain name exchange serves brokers, individuals and corporations. It provides news, market trends, community appraisal boards, auctions, management tools and more.
GreatDomainNames - http://www.greatdomainnames.com/
If you have a domain name to sell, you can list it here for a year for just $65. By the way, there is no additional commission due once the domain name is sold.
URL Merchant - http://www.urlmerchant.com/
This service costs nothing to list your domain names for sale and they claim to have the absolute lowest commission rates in the industry. They also have a premium domain name showcase for an additional fee.
US Patent and Trademark Office - Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) - http://www.uspto.gov/teas/index.html TEAS is the Trademark Electronic Application System. You can search to see if a Trademark is registered, in the process of being registered or is available. There is also a step-by-step process for completing a trademark or service mark application form properly. It allows you to fill out an application form and check it for completeness over the internet. Using e-TEAS you can then submit the application directly to the USPTO over the internet. The filing fee is currently $325.00 per class of goods and/or services.
