Business 4 Everyone

Business Referral Marketing

2009-02-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

Segregation by type of work or discrimination are two common explanations for gender segregation in the workplace. A third, gender segregation due to referral hiring through segregated social networks, is less well explored. In this paper, I use an agent-based model of referral hiring to demonstrate that it could create high levels of gender segregation near those observed in data. But the model cannot account for all of the segregation observed.

Online Store

2009-02-21T16:26:00.000-08:00

Opening your own store as a Wahm is easy when you take your business online. Online shopping is becoming a mainstay of American commerce and more people are comfortable with making purchases from Internet stores. If you have something that you are passionate about selling, consider opening an online store.
Before you start an online store, do some research online and check out your potential competition. If you have a business idea in mind, it is worth the time and effort to see what else is being sold in your category of products. If you have no idea what you want to sell, you?ll also want to head online to search out what would be most profitable to sell.
When you make the selection of what you are going to sell, remember to think ?niche.? A niche is a small category of products that meet the needs of a specific group of people. Your online store shouldn?t have a ?Wal-mart? approach where there is a little bit of everything for everyone. Online commerce is all about small categories of interest. There are so many things to choose from, you have more success when you cater to a small and specific group of people.
The best place to start with finding a niche is thinking about your own interests. When you sell to a niche that you know well, you are more likely to know what products will be of interest to those people. You can sell to your clientele based on your own experience.
Many Wahms start an online store because they have homemade products to offer. One example is handmade baby clothes and cloth diapers. Many Wahms have found success with putting their sewing skills to work and selling their wares online. Other popular handmade online stores include bath and body products, candles and gift baskets.
This does not mean that you can?t have online store success if you don?t make your own products. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of Wahms who have success by opening stores stocked with store-bought inventory.
Whatever your choice, whether handmade or store bought, there are many options for hosting your online store. These options depend on how comfortable you are with web design. Many companies, like Yahoo, offer store websites that are very user friendly and simple to set up. They can cost anywhere from $30 to $200 per month for the storefront services. Many Wahms also find success with eBay stores, which allow them to sell in auctions or in a fixed price format.
Look at all of your options before you choose your online store hosting. Remember that the quality of your hosting will reflect the quality of your business. The last thing you need is your entire website going down due to cheap hosting. The best choice is to find a reputable host that will provide you with a storefront and hosting for a reasonable price. Don?t try to pinch pennies on this aspect of your business. You could end up out of business in no time.
Once you?ve found a place to host your store, you?ll need to drive internet traffic to the store. One of the easiest ways is to trade banners with other Wahm online stores. Many Wahms support each other in their online efforts. This form of networking is a great way to introduce your products to customers who already look to support Wahms. You can also advertise using pay per click advertising and work on your website so that it increases in page ranking for certain search terms.
Keep your customers coming back with an easy to navigate website, simple ordering techniques and good customer service. Even though most of your business will be done online, it?s a good idea to get a business phone line and put that number on your website. This way customers can feel confident in purchasing from you because they know they can speak to a real person if there is a problem with their order.

Hosting

2009-02-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)
Types of Internet hosting service
Full-featured hosting services
Virtual private server
Dedicated hosting
Colocation centre
Web hosting
Free hosting
Shared hosting
Clustered hosting
Reseller hosting
FFmpeg hosting
Application-specific
Blog hosting
Guild hosting
Image hosting
Video hosting
Wiki farms
Application hosting
Social network hosting
File hosting
Remote backup service
Game server hosting
DNS hosting
E-mail hosting

An example of "rack mounted" servers.
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.
Contents[hide]
1 Service scope
2 Hosting reliability and uptime
3 Types of hosting
4 Obtaining hosting
5 See also
6 References
//

[edit] Service scope
The scope of hosting services varies widely. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with little processing. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer this service free to their subscribers. People can also obtain Web page hosting from other, alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or cheap. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense.
Single page hosting is generally sufficient only for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, and ASP.NET). These facilities allow the customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. For e-commerce, SSL is also highly recommended.
The host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail. Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce). They are commonly used by larger companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company.

[edit] Hosting reliability and uptime

Multiple racks of servers.
Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for a 99.9% uptime, but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment.
A common claim from the popular hosting providers is '99% or 99.9% server uptime' but this often refers only to a server being powered on and doesn't account for network downtime. Real downtime can potentially be larger than the percentage guaranteed by the provider. Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.

[edit] Types of hosting

A typical server "rack," commonly seen in colocation centres.
Internet hosting services can run Web servers; see Internet hosting services.
Hosting services limited to the Web:
Free web hosting service: is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting. [1]
Shared web hosting service: one's Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. The features available with this type of service can be quite extensive. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.
Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated server. Many resellers provide a nearly identical service to their provider's shared hosting plan and provide the technical support themselves.
Virtual Dedicated Server: dividing server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS will often be allocated resources based on a one server to many VPSs relationship, however virtualisation may be done for a number of reasons, including the ability to move a container (Virtual Private Server) between servers. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. This is also known as a virtual private server or VPS. Customers are sometimes responsible for patching and maintaining the server.
Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.
Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.
Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered Servers are a perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution. A cluster may separate web serving from database hosting capability.
Grid hosting : this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.
Home server: usually a single machine placed in a private residence can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer-grade broadband connection. These can be purpose-built machines or more commonly old PCs. Some ISPs actively attempt to block home servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user's connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses. A common way to attain a reliable DNS hostname is by creating an account with a dynamic DNS service. A dynamic DNS service will automatically change the IP address that a URL points to when the IP address changes.
Some specific types of hosting provided by web host service providers:
File hosting service: hosts files, not web pages
Image hosting service
Video hosting service
Blog hosting service
One-click hosting
Shopping cart software

[edit] Obtaining hosting
Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.
A customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. A customer may also choose Windows as the hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP.
Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System, so the end-user doesn't have to worry about the more technical aspects. These Web Content Management systems are great for the average user, but for those who want more control over their website design, this feature may not be adequate.
Most modern desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) are also capable of running web server software, and thus can be used to host basic websites.
One may also search the Internet to find active webhosting message boards and forums that may provide feedback on what type of webhosting company may suit his/her needs. However some of these message boards and forums will require not only registration, but a paid subscription to be able to access the sections and sub forums with such information.

Domain Names

2009-02-21T15:34:00.000-08:00

Domain name
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article primarily discusses registered Internet domain names. See the Domain Name System article for technical discussions about the Domain Name System and the hostname article for general discussion of naming aspects of Internet hosts.
The main purpose of a domain name is to provide symbolic representations, i.e., recognizable names, to mostly numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet, in effect changing the IP address. This translation from domain names to IP addresses (and vice versa) is accomplished with the global facilities of Domain Name System (DNS).
By allowing the use of unique alphabetical addresses instead of numeric ones, domain names allow Internet users to more easily find and communicate with web sites and any other IP-based communications services. The flexibility of the domain name system allows multiple IP addresses to be assigned to a single domain name, or multiple domain names to be services from a single IP address. This means that one server may have multiple roles (such as hosting multiple independent websites), or that one role can be spread among many servers. One IP address can also be assigned to several servers, as used in anycast networking.
Contents[hide]
1 Defined
2 Examples
3 Top-level domains
4 Second-level and lower level domains
5 Official assignment
6 Abuses
7 Generic domain names—problems arising from unregulated name selection
8 Unconventional domain names
9 Premium domain names
10 Resale of domain names
11 Domain aftermarket prices and trends
12 Popular domain prefixes - "E" and "I"
13 Branding with a domain name
14 Domain name confusion
15 References
16 See also
17 External links
//

[edit] Defined
By definition (RFC 1034, updated by RFC 1123), domain names are made of non-empty labels separated by dots (.); labels are restricted to the ASCII letters a through z (case-insensitive), the digits 0 through 9, and the hyphen (-), with restrictions in terms of name length and position of hyphens. Namely hyphen cannot appear at the beginning or at the end of a label, and the length of a label should be between 1 to 63 with total length of a domain name not exceeding 255 (a restriction of the Domain Name System, see RFC 2181, section 11). Since this definition does not allow the use of many characters commonly found in non-English languages, and no multi-byte characters necessary for most Asian languages, the Internationalized domain name (IDN) system has been developed and is now in testing stage with a set of top-level domains established for this purpose.
The underscore character is frequently used to ensure that a domain name is not recognized as a hostname, as with the use of SRV records, for example, although some older systems such as NetBIOS did allow it. To avoid confusion and for other reasons, domain names with underscores in them are sometimes used where hostnames are required.
Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the name, only an exclusive right of use.

[edit] Examples
The following example illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:
URL: http://www.example.net/index.html
Domain name: www.example.net
Registered domain name: example.net
As a general rule, the IP address and the server name are interchangeable. For most Internet services, the server will not have any way to know which was used. However, the explosion of interest in the Web means that there are far more Web sites than servers. To accommodate this, the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) specifies that the client tells the server which name is being used. This way, one server with one IP address can provide different sites for different domain names. This feature goes under the name virtual hosting and is commonly used by web hosts.
For example, as referenced in RFC 2606 (Reserved Top Level DNS Names), the server at IP address 208.77.188.166 handles all of the following sites:
example.com
www.example.com
example.net
www.example.net
example.org
www.example.org
When a request is made, the data corresponding to the hostname requested is provided to the user.

[edit] Top-level domains
Every domain name ends in a top-level domain (TLD) name, which is always either one of a small list of generic names (three or more characters), or a two-character territory code based on ISO-3166 (there are few exceptions and new codes are integrated case by case). Top-level domains are sometimes also called first-level domains.
The generic top-level domain (gTLD) extensions are:
[hide]
v • d • e Generic top-level domains
[hide]
Current
Generic
.biz · .com · .info · .name · .net · .org · .pro
Sponsored
.aero · .asia · .cat · .coop · .edu · .gov · .int · .jobs · .mil · .mobi · .museum · .tel · .travel
Infrastructure
.arpa
Deleted/retired
.nato
Reserved
.example · .invalid · .localhost · .test
Pseudo
.bitnet · .csnet · .local · .root · .uucp · .onion · .exit
[show]
Proposed
Locations
.berlin · .lat · .nyc
Language andnationality
.bzh · .cym · .gal · .lli · .scot
Technical
.geo · .mail
Other
.kids · .post · .shop · .web · .xxx
Country code top-level domains
The country code top-level domain (ccTLD) extensions are:
[show]
v • d • e Country code top-level domains
Active: .ac .ad .ae .af .ag .ai .al .am .an .ao .aq .ar .as .at .au .aw .ax .az .ba .bb .bd .be .bf .bg .bh .bi .bj .bm .bn .bo .br .bs .bt .bw .by .bz .ca .cc .cd .cf .cg .ch .ci .ck .cl .cm .cn .co .cr .cu .cv .cx .cy .cz .de .dj .dk .dm .do .dz .ec .ee .eg .er .es .et .eu .fi .fj .fk .fm .fo .fr .ga .gd .ge .gf .gg .gh .gi .gl .gm .gn .gp .gq .gr .gs .gt .gu .gw .gy .hk .hm .hn .hr .ht .hu .id .ie .il .im .in .io .iq .ir .is .it .je .jm .jo .jp .ke .kg .kh .ki .km .kn .kp .kr .kw .ky .kz .la .lb .lc .li .lk .lr .ls .lt .lu .lv .ly .ma .mc .md .me .mg .mh .mk .ml .mm .mn .mo .mp .mq .mr .ms .mt .mu .mv .mw .mx .my .mz .na .nc .ne .nf .ng .ni .nl .no .np .nr .nu .nz .om .pa .pe .pf .pg .ph .pk .pl .pn .pr .ps .pt .pw .py .qa .re .ro .rs .ru .rw .sa .sb .sc .sd .se .sg .sh .si .sk .sl .sm .sn .sr .st .su .sv .sy .sz .tc .td .tf .tg .th .tj .tk .tl .tm .tn .to .tr .tt .tv .tw .tz .ua .ug .uk .us .uy .uz .va .vc .ve .vg .vi .vn .vu .wf .ws .ye .za .zm .zw
Reserved/unassigned: .um .bl .eh .mf Allocated/unused: .bv .gb .pm .sj .so .yt Phaseout: .tp .yu Deleted/retired: .cs .dd .zr
See also: Generic top-level domains

[edit] Second-level and lower level domains
Below the top-level domains in the domain name hierarchy are the second-level domain (SLD) names. These are the names directly to the left of .com, .net, and the other top-level domains. As an example, in the domain en.wikipedia.org, wikipedia is the second-level domain.
Next are third-level domains, which are written immediately to the left of a second-level domain. There can be fourth- and fifth-level domains, and so on, with virtually no limitation. An example of a working domain with four domain levels is www.sos.state.oh.us. The www preceding the domains is a host name of the World-Wide Web server. Each level is separated by a dot, or period symbol. 'sos' is said to be a sub-domain of 'state.oh.us', and 'state' a sub-domain of 'oh.us', etc. In general, Sub-domains are domains subordinate to their parent domain. An example of very deep levels of subdomain ordering are the IPv6 reverse resolution DNS zones, e.g., 1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.ip6.arpa, which is the reverse DNS resolution domain for the IP address of a loopback interface, or the localhost name.
Second-level (or lower-level, depending on the established parent hierarchy) domain names are often created based on the name of a company (e.g., microsoft.com), product or service (e.g., gmail.com). Below these levels, the next domain name component has been used to designate a particular host server. Therefore, ftp.wikipedia.org might be an FTP server, www.wikipedia.org would be a World Wide Web server, and mail.wikipedia.org could be an email server, each intended to perform only the implied function. Modern technology allows multiple physical servers with either different (cf. load balancing) or even identical addresses (cf. anycast) to serve a single hostname or domain name, or multiple domain names to be served by a single computer. The latter is very popular in Web hosting service centers, where service providers host the websites of many organizations on just a few servers.

[edit] Official assignment
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has overall responsibility for managing the DNS. It administers the root domain, delegating control over each TLD to a domain name registry. For ccTLDs, the domain registry is typically installed by the government of that country. ICANN has a consultation role in these domain registries but cannot regulate the terms and conditions of how domain names are delegated in each of the country-level domain registries. On the other hand, the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are governed directly under ICANN, which means all terms and conditions are defined by ICANN with the cooperation of each gTLD registry.
Domain names are often seen in analogy to real estate in that (1) domain names are foundations on which a website (like a house or commercial building) can be built and (2) the highest "quality" domain names, like sought-after real estate, tend to carry significant value, usually due to their online brand-building potential, use in advertising, search engine optimization, and many other criteria.
A few companies have offered low-cost, below-cost or even cost-free domain registrations with a variety of models adopted to recoup the costs to the provider. These usually require that domains be hosted on their website within a framework or portal that includes advertising wrapped around the domain holder's content, revenue from which allows the provider to recoup the costs. Domain registrations were free of charge when the DNS was new. A domain holder (often referred to as a domain owner) can give away or sell infinite number of subdomains under their domain name. For example, the owner of example.edu could provide subdomains such as foo.example.edu and foo.bar.example.edu to interested parties.

[edit] Abuses

This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (May 2008)
As domain names became interesting to marketers because of their advertising and marketing potential, rather than just being used to label Internet resources in a technical fashion, they began to be used in manners that in many cases did not reflect the intended purpose of the label of their top-level domain. As originally planned, the structure of domain names followed a hierarchy in which the TLD indicated the type of organization (commercial, governmental, etc.), and addresses would be nested down to third, fourth, or further levels to express complex structures, where, for instance, branches, departments and subsidiaries of a parent organization would have addresses in subdomains of the parent domain. Also, hostnames were originally intended to correspond to actual physical machines on the network, generally with only one name per machine.
As the World Wide Web became popular, site operators frequently wished to have memorable addresses, regardless of whether they fit properly into the structure; thus, because the .com domain was the most popular and therefore most prestigious, even noncommercial sites began to obtain domains directly within that gTLD, and many sites desired second-level domain names in .com, even if they were already part of a larger entity where a subdomain would have been logical (e.g., abcnews.com instead of news.abc.com).
Shorter, and therefore more memorable, domain names are thought to have more appeal. As a convenience methods were implemented to reduce the amount of typing required when entering a web site address into the location field of a web browser. A website found at ''http://www.example.org'' will often be advertised without the http://, since the HTTP protocol is implicitly assumed when referring to web sites. In many cases, web sites can be also be reached by omitting the www prefix, as in this given example. This feature is usually implemented in DNS by the website administrator. In the case of a .com, the website can sometimes be reached by just entering example (depending on browser versions and configuration settings, which vary in how they interpret incomplete addresses).
The popularity of domain names also led to uses which were regarded as abusive by established companies with trademark rights; this has become known as cybersquatting, in which a person registers a domain name that resembles a trademark in order to profit from visitors looking for that address. To combat this, various laws and policies were enacted to allow abusive registrations to be forcibly transferred, but these were sometimes themselves abused by overzealous companies committing reverse domain hijacking against domain users who had legitimate grounds to hold their names. Such legitimate uses could include the use of generic words that are contained within a trademark, but used in a particular context within the trademark, or their use in the context of fan or protest sites with free speech rights of their own.
As of 2008, the four major Registrars have all sub-contracted their expiring domain lists to certain reseller and auctioneer partnerships, for the purpose of keeping the domain name at the original registrar and continuing to extract revenue off the renewal of premium registered names. Since this policy is not explicitly banned at ICANN, the practice has become more commonplace and as a result, complaints from individual registrants about losing their domains has tracked higher over the past two years [1].
Laws that specifically address domain name conflicts include the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act in the United States and the Trademarks Act of 1999 in India. Alternatively, domain registrants are bound by contract under the UDRP to comply with mandatory arbitration proceedings should someone challenge their ownership of a domain name.
Often email phishing scams will abuse subdomain names to appear to be a legitimate site. For instance, an email might purport to be from Bank of America, and include a link to a fake login screen hosted on http://www.bankofamerica.com.abc.def.ghi.jkl In this case, the actual domain is ghi.jkl, but appears at first glance to be bankofamerica.com.

[edit] Generic domain names—problems arising from unregulated name selection
Within a particular TLD, parties are generally free to register an undelegated domain name on a first come, first served basis, resulting in Harris's lament, all the good ones are taken. For generic or commonly used names, this may sometimes lead to the use of a domain name which is inaccurate or misleading. This problem can be seen with regard to the ownership or control of domain names for a generic product or service. By way of illustration, there has been tremendous growth in the number and size of literary festivals around the world in recent years. In the current context, a generic domain name such as literary.org is available to the first literary festival organization that is able to obtain the registration, even if the festival in question is very young or obscure. Some critics argue that there is greater amenity in reserving such domain names for the use of, for example, a regional or umbrella grouping of festivals. Related issues may also arise in relation to noncommercial domain names.

[edit] Unconventional domain names
Due to the rarity of one-word dot-com domain names, many unconventional domain names, domain hacks, have been created. They make use of the top-level domain as an integral part of the Web site's title. Two popular domain hack Web sites are del.icio.us and blo.gs, which spell out "delicious" and "blogs", respectively. Delicious.com later reverted to a normal domain name, as the unconventional one was difficult to remember.[1]
Unconventional domain names are also used to create unconventional email addresses. Non-working examples that spell 'James' are j@m.es and j@mes.com, which use the domain names m.es (of Spain's .es) and mes.com, respectively.

[edit] Premium domain names
In the business of marketing domain names, "premium" domain names are often valuable, and have particular characteristics. For example, the names are short and memorable, or may contain words that are regularly searched on search engines, or keywords that help the name gain a higher ranking on search engines. They may contain generic words, so the word has more than one meaning, and they may contain common typos.

[edit] Resale of domain names
The business of resale of previously registered domain names is known as the "domain aftermarket".
Various factors influence the perceived value or market value of a domain name. They include 1) the natural or "organic" traffic that can be attributed to web surfers typing in a domain name in their web browser as opposed to doing a search for the site through a search engine. 2) Branding Opportunity. The ability to have a term recognized and easily recalled as a brand for a company or entity. 3) Re-sale value. The ability to spot trends and predict the value of a name based on its length (short is preferred), clarity, and commercial use. The word loan is far more valuable than the word sunshine.
Generic domain names have sprung up in the last decade. Certain domains, especially those related to business, gambling, pornography, and other commercially lucrative fields of digital world trade have become very much in demand to corporations and entrepreneurs due to their importance in attracting clients.
The most expensive public sale of an Internet domain name to date, according to DNJournal, is porn.com which was sold in 2007 for $9.5 million cash.[citation needed]
There are disputes about the high values of domain names claimed and the actual cash prices of many sales such as Business.com. Another high-priced domain name, sex.com, was stolen from its rightful owner by means of a forged transfer instruction via fax. During the height of the dot-com era, the domain was earning millions of dollars per month in advertising revenue from the large influx of visitors that arrived daily. The sex.com sale may have never been final as the domain is still with the previous owner. Also, that sale was not just a domain but an income stream, a web site, a domain name with customers and advertisers, etc. Two long-running U.S. lawsuits resulted, one against the thief and one against the domain registrar VeriSign [2]. In one of the cases, Kremen v. Network Solutions, the court found in favor of the plaintiff, leading to an unprecedented ruling that classified domain names as property, granting them the same legal protections. In 1999, Microsoft traded the name Bob.com with internet entrepreneur Bob Kerstein for the name Windows2000.com which was the name of their new operating system. [3]
One of the reasons for the value of domain names is that even without advertising or marketing, they attract clients seeking services and products who simply type in the generic name. This is known as Direct Navigation or Type-in Traffic. Furthermore, generic domain names such as movies.com (now owned by Disney) or Books.com (now owned by Barnes & Noble) are extremely easy for potential customers to remember, increasing the probability that they become repeat customers or regular clients. In the case of Movies.com, Disney has built a stand-alone portal featuring branded content. More and more large brands are beginning to employ a more comprehensive domain strategy featuring a portfolio of thousands of domains, rather than just one or two.
Although the current domain market is nowhere as strong as it was during the dot-com heyday, it remains strong and is currently experiencing solid growth again. [4] Annually tens of millions of dollars change hands in connection with the resale of domains. Large numbers of registered domain names lapse and are deleted each year. On average, more than 25,000 domain names drop (are deleted) every day.
It is important to remember that a domain (name, address) must be valued separately from the website (content, revenue) that it is used for. The high prices have usually been paid for the revenue that was generated from the website at the domain's address (URL.). The intrinsic value of a domain is the registration fee. It is difficult to appraise a current market value for a domain. The Fair Market Value of a domain can be anything from nearly nothing to millions of dollars. Factors involved may include previous sales data of similar domains, however a single letter difference can completely alter the value. The value of the domain (or any sum resp. division etc.) are usually added to the current or expected revenue from the web content (advertising, sales, etc.). The price of a domain (name + ext.) should not be confused with that of a website (content + revenue).
An estimate by an appraiser is always the addition of what they would like a domain to be worth together with the effective/expected/desired revenue from the web content. Some people put value on the length of the SLD (name) and other people prefer description capability, but the shorter an SLD is, the less descriptive it can be. Also, if short is crucial, then the TLD (extension) should be short too. It is less realistic to get a domain like LL.travel or LL.mobi than a domain travel. LL or mobi. LL. This illustrates the relativity of domain value estimation. It is safe to say that the revenue of web (content) can be easily stated, but that the value of a domain (SLD.TLD aka name.ext) is a matter of opinion and preference. In the end, however, any sale depends on the expectations of the domain seller and the domain buyer.
A webmaster creating a new web site either buys the domain name directly from a domain name registrar, or indirectly from a domain name registrar through a domainer. People who buy and sell domain names are known as domainers. People who sell value estimation services are known as appraisers.

[edit] Domain aftermarket prices and trends
Domain name sales occurring in the aftermarket are frequently submitted to the DN journal. The sales are listed weekly and include the top aftermarket resellers which include but are not limited to Sedo, Traffic (auctions), Afternic, NameJet, Moniker and private sales.
To date, and according to Guinness World Records and MSNBC, the most expensive domain name sales on record as of 2004 were[4]:
Business.com for $7.5 million in December 1999
AsSeenOnTv.com for $5.1 million in January 2000
Altavista.com for $3.3 million in August 1998
Wine.com for $2.9 million in September 1999
CreditCards.com for $2.75 million in July 2004
Autos.com for $2.2 million in December 1999
The week ending January 27, 2008, DNJournal reported that CNN, a cable news channel purchased iReport.com for $750,000. This signifies another turning point in domain name sales. This name has neither organic traffic, nor does it have a dictionary term alone. Instead it is a highly brandable domain name utilizing the second most popular prefix for a "dictionary" and commercial word.

[edit] Popular domain prefixes - "E" and "I"
In addition to a domain placing value on the shortness of the word, ease in spelling, commercial appeal, and organic capacity to generate natural traffic, today's domain names are being valued for the branding potential. The domain name sale iReport although not an organic or dictionary term alone, is actually preferred as a highly brandable term, in that it is has a popular pre-fix "i" which indicates the "report" to be online.
The prefixes and dashes between words were once considered second, but now due to brandability, if the term is a commercial term, a prefix is often preferred. Example eLoans markets with an e to indicate to its potential customers that a loan may be obtained online.
The two primary prefixes are "E", for electronic, and "I", for Internet. Both indicate the word or phrase to be accessible online. Because of that, in terms of branding, an i or e combined with a commercial term are highly desirable. In domain sales typically an e has been preferred, and i slightly less in terms of demand. eBrooklyn sold for approximately $2500 whereas once it would have been available to register at the price of a domain name (which ranges from $8 to $30 us dollars depending on the registrar). The rapidly increasing use of prefixes in conjunction with main dictionary and or commercial terms is here and for some predominantly internet based companies, or high technology, high profile companies, the prefix is now preferred.
One of the details that make a domain with a prefix more valuable for a brand, is the ability to simply promote the name without the use of ".com" in the promotion. If a domain owner had report.com he would be forced to use the .com to indicate it was on the net at that address, however a domain name with a one letter prefix does not need to use the ".com".
Someone could promote "iReport" as a brand, and assuming it was a world class brand, visitors would know they could find it at "iReport.com without seeing the .com. However if it was a .net, it would be wise to state iReport.net. This option to simply state the name of the company or entity is particularly valuable in that it is brief and clear in indicating that a report can be either made or found on the "i"nternet.
eLoans similarly does not have to state "eLoans.com". eLoans, in the minds of most is clearly an online entity offering electronic loan applications.
Some alternative domains that avoid the use of ".com" in their promotion are "WebMD" as the word web as a prefix suffice to indicate the information is online and likely at a .com extension.

[edit] Branding with a domain name
Brands are greatly affected by the ability of the company to obtain the matching domain name. If a company builds a brand around a name to which it does not own the domain name, it can end up directing traffic to another domain owner's site. If it is a competitor, this would be a problem.
Today's advertising development of a great brand is strictly confined to the availability to synchronize the brand with a domain name. Any confusion might result in a competitor gaining valuable internet traffic and possible customers.

[edit] Domain name confusion
Intercapping is often used to clarify the meaning of a domain name. However, DNS is case-insensitive, and some names may be misinterpreted when converted to lowercase. For example: Who Represents, a database of artists and agents, chose whorepresents.com. Which can be misread as whore presents dot com. Similarily a therapists' network thought therapistfinder.com looked good; and another website operating as of August 2007, cummingfirst.com, website of the Cumming First United Church in Cumming, GA and powergenitalia.com, a website for an Italian Power Generator company. In such situations, the proper wording can be clarified by use of hyphens. For instance, Experts Exchange, the programmers' site, for a long time used expertsexchange.com, but ultimately changed the name to experts-exchange.com.
Leo Stoller threatened to sue the owners of StealThisEmail.com on the basis that, when read as stealthisemail.com, it infringed on claimed trademark rights to the word "stealth". [5] There is no word mark for "stealth" in the USPTO trademark database and Leo Stoller's trademarks on this term were canceled.

[edit] References
^ http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2008/07/oh-happy-day.html
^ Sex.com Settles With VeriSign
^ Windows2000.com owner sells domain to Microsoft
^ a b Domain name sells for $2.75 million
^ Steal This v. Stealth Is: Community Technology Collective Bullied Over Misreading of URL

[edit] See also
Domain hack
Domain hijacking
Domain name warehousing
Domain tasting
Domaining
Fully qualified domain name
Geodomain
ICANN
Internationalized domain name
Name generator
Public domain issues of domain names
Uniform Resource Locator
Web page
Web site
World Wide Web

[edit] External links
IANA generic TLD
IANA Two letter Country Code TLD
ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Internic.net, public information regarding Internet domain name registration services.
RFC 1034, Domain Names — Concepts and Facilities, an Internet Protocol Standard.
RFC 1035, Domain Names — Implementation and Specification, an Internet Protocol Standard.
UDRP, Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.

2009-02-16T04:01:00.000-08:00

Paid-To-Click is an online business model that draws huge amounts of online traffic from people aiming to earn from home. Paid-To-Click, or simply PTC websites act as middlemen between advertisers and consumers; the advertiser pays for displaying ads on the PTC website, and a part of this payment goes to the consumer when he views the advertisement.
The viability of the PTC business model has been questioned, as fraudulent clicks have ramped up the expenses for advertisers.[1] With lawsuits filed against the internet search companies, the burden has been placed on Google, Yahoo and others to determine the valid clicks from the fraudulent ones.