Ways Of Finding Available Domain Names

Ways Of Finding Available Domain Names

John E, Media Relations Adviser http://easily.co.uk – Domain name registration, register your low cost domain name today! Search domain names quickly, all major extensions and no catches.

Chances are, if you have a website, this has probably happened to you:

You think of a truly excellent domain name. However, when you try to register that name, you discover, much to your dismay, that the name is unavailable. Back in the early 1990s, when the Internet was young, it was much easier to acquire a first-rate domain name. In 2009, available domain names are becoming scarce. With more than 184 million domain names currently registered, and hundreds of thousands of new names being introduced every day, valuable domain names are rare indeed.

Available domain names of significant value are commodities as a good name is part of the overall strategy to drive traffic to a website thereby adding to the sites visibility on the web. Think of a website domain as you would some property or estate. Given that some of this virtual estate has sold for as much as an actual estate, it is an easy analogy to make.

However, it is uncommon for a website to sell for a million pounds or more, and if you had millions to spend on a domain name, you probably would not need to purchase it to begin with.

For those of us who dont have the means to bid on high-priced private auctions, there are still ways to find and acquire available domain names at a more modest price:

Public Online Auctions

An auction site like Ebay, is often a great place to find available domain names at a cheap price.

Expired Domains

There are websites that deal exclusively in domain names whose previous owner allowed the annual registration fees to lapse. While these domains are technically owned by the clearing house that acquires them from the original registrar, they are typically for sale.

Back-Ordered Domains

These are names that are ordered just prior to deletion. After a domain expires it goes into a period of ‘redemption’ where the original owner can still renew the domain at a significantly higher cost. If, for whatever reason, the original owner lets this grace period lapse without taking any action, the domain goes into a 5-day deletion phase. During this time, a third-party can buy the expired domain. In most instances, these newly available domain names are purchased in bulk by clearing house who then earn a profit selling these domains to individuals, however, every once in a while, one can grab a bargain through the back-ordering process.

Domain Name Generators

Domain name generators are specialised tools that create new domain names from keywords or random bits of language and check these combinations for availability.

Direct Private Sales

Occasionally, you might come across a website owner or blogger who is in the process of shutting down his site and is offering to transfer his domain to the first person willing to take it off his hands.

However you choose to purchase your domain name, the importance of having one cannot be overstated. Acquiring a good domain name is paramount if you are to establish your online brand. A domain name is your unique identity on the World Wide Web and it is the name your visitors will come to know you by. Finding a domain name that is reasonably short, relevant to your niche, has the dot com extension and its availability can be extremely difficult.

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