Posts Tagged ‘expired domain names’
Buying Expired Domain Names
Whenever you encounter a popular name online, attached to a dot com or dot net, you might be wondering when you can one day get enough financial clout to put up your own immensely famous web company. With a dot com or dot net address that is easy to recall, you can have visitors flocking to your website easily, potential customers looking for a good deal on your products and services, and ordinary, run of the mill Internet surfers just curious to see what you are all about.
Not all dot com or dot net addresses last forever. When companies move out of the Internet and find new business opportunities to sink their teeth into, they can leave their domain name hanging. Along with this domain name is a built in market: because a large number of people have been going to the domain name and its adjoining website for so long, an expired domain name literally has its own market hanging on to it. With a lot of traffic, you can have a potential website waiting for you to create it.
Note, however, that domains do not simply expire and run into the next highest bidder arms. When a domain name passes its expiration date, it rests in a forty day static period, where the current owner of the domain name can still re enter it into a domain name registry. After forty days of not being touched, the domain then goes into a thirty five day period where the owner can still re enter it into a domain name registry, but for a much higher fee than when it was offered. After all these grace periods, the domain has finally expired, and the next owner can be you.
You can look for expired, or soon to expire domain names in domain registries online, which can advertise which domain names may soon be up for grabs. When you finally get that expired domain name, you have to get down to business. Because you have a constantly flowing market that goes with the domain name, you are pressed for time to create a new website that this market will go to when they type the old domain name into their web browser address bar. If the domain name is related to a site that you already maintain, then you can redirect it to your site and have all the traffic run over to your side of the Web universe.
If you must create a new website, do so within twenty four to forty eight hours of purchasing the expired domain name. You do not have to create a site heavy with graphics or animation: you need five or more pages of useful content that can contain information relevant to the domain name, and useful to the website visitor. Prepare to meet this incoming traffic head on by enrolling in affiliate programs and posting your AdSense ads in strategic places in your new website.
When creating a new website, follow all the rules of good web design. Make sure that your text contrasts well with your background without straining the eyes of your visitors. Avoid putting too many graphics or animation that can slow your site down when it loads into the browsers of your website visitors. Make sure that your site is secure enough to accept payments from your buyers should you offer products or services online. Lastly, make sure that you have well-written content that you can update regularly, keeping your readers coming back for more.
These are only a few tips in correctly using expired domain names. Be on the lookout for expired domain names by updating yourself constantly. Do research on popular domain names and web content that you can work on. You, too, can earn money, web traffic, and online fame, if you have enough mettle and know how.
Dangers of Dropped or Expired Domain Names
There are many dangers in buying a dropped domain name. A dropped domain name is basically a domain that was purchased by someone else, but that person let the domain expire. This can happen for many reasons. The owner may have forgotten to renew the domain, in which case you may be able to turn a profit in selling the domain back to the original owner. The owner may have let the domain name expire due to any number of reasons as well, although the most common reason for this is that their enterprise failed.
Beware of the Danger
This is where the danger lies. Expired domain names come with a history, and that history remains with the domain even after you buy it. If the domain has a low PR rating, it could seriously affect your success with the domain. The domain may also have been used for spamming or other illegal activity, in which case you may have problems getting visitors to your website. Search engines can also be wary of the domain, or simply have banned it from their registries due to a break in terms of service.
Before buying any domain you should be certain that it is not a dropped domain name. Many people will engage in illegal, unethical, and immoral activities with a domain until it is banned from all emails and search engines, and then drop it for a new domain name. If you get one of these domains, you will be stuck with a designing of website that no one will list, no one will visit, and everyone will ignore.
Check Out Domain before Purchase
The best way to protect you from this type of situation is to check out the domain thoroughly before purchase. You can do this in any number of ways, but the easiest way is to use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. This handy free tool allows you to enter the domain you are considering and view snapshots of the pages at several different dates. If the domain has changed multiple times you can see this, as well as how long the domain has been in existence.
You should also check that the domain has not been pointed to a parked page, meaning an “under construction” or “buy domain now” type message. These parked pages cause a loss in PR rating, back links, and search engine rankings. These issues can take some time to fix. You can visit the domain to see if it is on a parked page, and if so, use the Wayback Machine to determine how long it has been like that.
In the end, it is simply easier and less stressful to buy a new domain name. However, if you find that perfect domain, check it out thoroughly and make sure you have a plan to dig it out of the gutter. Contacting search engines and other traffic building websites and services to let them know that you recently purchased the domain may help in this, but nothing is guaranteed. Be wary, and enjoy your web experience!