The need to provide immediate clues to an online business led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names instantly provide the user with an idea of what a business is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. For instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.

The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful; that some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1 million.

However, generic names do not necessarily create the “buzz” that you’d like surrounding your website. Branding has always been about proper names: McDonald's did not name their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx is Courier. Kodak is not named Photography. Microsoft is not called Computer Software.

For better branding results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips when creating a domain name.

• The domain name should be short
• The domain name should be simple
• It should be suggestive of your business category
• It should be unique
• It should be easy to interpret and pronounce
• It should be personalized
• It should not be difficult to spell
• It should not be difficult to remember

Domain names can be registered through many different companies (known as "registrars") - a listing of these companies is available at ICANN: http://www.icann.org. You can register for 1 to 10 years - prices can vary anywhere from $10 to $40 per year. Most web hosting companies, as explained later, will handle the registration process for you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not renewed in time.

A popular, recommended domain registrar is namecheap.com.  They offer you full control and ownership of your domains and their customer service is fast and friendly.  They also offer hosting and many other website services which are reliable and high quality and priced very competitively.  At the time of this writing, .COM domain registration was at $8.88/yr and website hosting packages starting at $6.95/month.   

1.7.1 Using expired domains to skyrocket your traffic

At some point while you’re building your website, you’re going to have to buy a domain name. This is the address that users type into their browsers to reach your site. That takes about five seconds, and depending on the name you want and whether anyone else owns it, it won’t cost you more than a few bucks.

But domain names are also a golden opportunity to make some easy money.

I’m not talking about Internet real estate, where you buy up good names and sell them on for a profit-if you haven’t got into that now, forget it. The bottom’s fallen out of the market and the best domains are long gone.

I’m talking about expiring domains.

Thousands of webmasters invest time, effort and money to promote their site and build up traffic. Many of them then lose interest and move on, leaving their site active. That means that although they still own the domain, they’re not actively promoting it. But they don’t need to. All the automatic marketing systems they’ve put in place are still bringing in traffic. The site runs itself.

Now, at some point the ownership of those domains is going to expire. If you snap up those domains once they come back onto the market, you’ve got a pre-built stream of customers. You can either rebuild the site, or redirect the traffic to your domain. You could set up an affiliate program get paid for users someone else paid for.  It’s that easy.

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