Remember that old expression from real estate? A real property is valuable because of “ location, location, location. ” On the Internet, a piece of real estate is called a URL, which stands for uniform resource locator. Technically, the correct term is uniform resource Identifi er, The identifi er for each web site that makes the World Wide Web possible. Another name for the URL is the Domain name.

A URL, or domain name, is both the name of a web site and its address. For example, the URL of the web site associated with this book is Www. YourInternetCashMachine. com . At least in the South, where we both live, URL Is colloquially pronounced “Earl,” as in “Say, Bubba, did you buy that URL? ”

Your fi rst step is to decide upon, and purchase, the URL for your new Internet business. Selecting the best URL is very important; in doing so, you will secure your own valuable piece of Internet real estate.

A URL consists of the introductory “www” for World Wide Web, the domain name you choose, and an extension. Among the available extensions are .com, .org, .net, .gov, And the country extensions such as .ca (Canada), .uk (United Kingdom), .au (Australia), and others. Among the newest extensions available are .ws And .name.

The most popular extension remains. com (pronounced “dot com ” ), because in practical terms, it is the default extension in most people ’ s minds. So when potential visitors look for your site, they are most likely to enter a. com extension. If at all practical, we recommend you use a. com extension. However, so many. com names have now been claimed that new web site owners are expanding their horizons. For example, our friend Mark Joyner now uses the site www. MarkJoyner. name. The. org extension is usually used by nonprofi t organizations, and. gov is reserved for government - related web sites in the United States.

Later in this chapter we offer our recommendations about where to buy your URL, and much more. First, however, we invite you to read our next guest expert article, by Marcia Yudkin. Marcia is famous among Internet marketers for selecting dynamite business and product names.

When you’ve got a great idea for an online business, your next step is a crucial one. You need an address for it that fi ts the idea and can easily be remembered and typed. You need a great domain name.

People often botch this step out of haste or frustration. Depending on the subject matter of your new business, you can try brilliant name after clever name, only to discover that someone has already reserved them. Or you come up with a halfway decent name that seems like it will do, and you grab it and forge right ahead, heedless of its weaknesses.

Use These Criteria for Screening Domain Names

Don’t settle for a domain name with outsized disadvantages. Get off to your best possible start by using these guidelines.

A Good Domain Name Is Pronounceable

That is, someone who sees it written down can say it out loud. Imagine someone on the phone, calling a friend, “Hey, you’ve got to check out this cool web site I discovered! It’s. . .” Just about anything with hyphens can’t pass this test. Something with two or more hyphens fl unks the test. When trying to convey a double-hyphenated domain name over the phone, you’ll have to spell it at least three times and still the chances are not good that the other person will get it right.

Make sure you also test the domain name without any capital letters. When I heard an ad on TV for Www. NoMoreAllNighters. com, I smiled, thinking it was a winner. However, when someone sent me a link to the web site in this form: Nomoreallnighters. com

(which is how it would appear in many browsers), I read it as NomoReallNighters. com and was totally baffl ed. Likewise, for years I thought a Vermont friend’s domain name was the very puzzling Www. MaDriver. com rather than MadRiver. com.

A Good Domain Name Is Spellable

Possible trouble spots include doubled letters of two sorts. First, last-name domains like PassarettiPhotography. com create problems because people won’t remember whether there are one or two s’s, r’s, and t’s. My friend Denise Passaretti therefore sprang for the domain name Www. PhotosbyDenise. com.

Second, combinations of words with the same letter repeated at the end of one word and the beginning of the next trip up lots of people. For example, when turned into a domain name, would The Energy Spot be Www. theenergyspot. com Or Www. thenergyspot. com? People won’t be sure. Of course, in this instance and the preceding one, you could buy up all the possible misspellings and redirect them to the spelling you intend to use, but why not save yourself that hassle if you can?

A Good Domain Name Is Memorable

As I write this article, the domain Www. zyzzyg. com is available, which is really rare for a name using only six letters. I don’t recommend using it, though, because no one will be able to remember it. There isn’t any hook there for it to stick in the mind because it looks like a string of nonsense. There are less obvious ways to confuse the memory. A client of my naming company commissioned a new domain name because with his existing one, people couldn’t remember whether it was, let’s say, Www. MyFastCashFactory. com or Www. YourFastCashFactory .com—one of which was a competitor.

How to Come Up With Domain Names That Aren’t Taken

Most people do not use the following naming tactics, so you’re much more likely to fi nd a domain name you can reserve by brainstorming along these lines:

☛ Focus on results. What is the outcome or end result that people want to have from buying a certain product or service? How do they feel when they have fi nished the transaction? My own company name, Named At Last (Www. NamedatLast. com), falls into this category.

☛ Look for puns. Make a list of relevant keywords, say each out loud, and play around with the sounds. Puns are much less likely than other kinds of names to have been registered because their component parts are not actual words. For instance, the name Sitesfaction, for a web design company, was a fi nalist in our fi rst naming contest—and an available domain at that time despite tens of thousands of web design fi rms in the English-speaking world.

☛ Think slang. Let your imagination and memory fl y around for pleasing-to-the-ear expressions. As of today, the domain www. BoyOhBoyToys. com for an online toy store is unregistered, as is a domain for its sister store, Www. AttaGirlToys. com.

☛ Go symbolic. Suppose you’re an expert on the horror genre and want to start a paid online community for horror fans. www.Horrorifi C. com, Www. HorrorGate. com, and Www. HorrorNet .com are all taken, but when I fi rst made this list of clips, the less obvious and more vivid Www. FrightOwl. com was not.

☛ Vary real words. “Google’s name is a play on the word Googol, Which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeroes,” says the Press Center of the world’s most successful search engine. “ The word was coined by the nine-year-old nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner,” it continues—providing another hint for creative naming: consult a kid.

Marketing guru Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity And ten other books hailed for their outstanding creativity. Find out more About her naming company, Named At Last, which brainstorms new company Names, new product names, tag lines, and more for cost - conscious organizations, At Http://www. NamedatLast. com.

Once you have chosen your web site name, the next step is to purchase your URL. There are a number of companies selling URLs,

110 YOUR INTERNET CASH MACHINE

And the cost varies widely. Some of those companies also offer web hosting, while others do not. For convenience as well as cost, we suggest you select your web host and obtain your URL through them. The company we recommend offers free domain names to their customers.