Good Website Names – Tips on how to register website names

If you’re looking to find good website names to register, I’ve got surprising news for you…

… In most cases, purchasing a domain name is a fantastic waste of your time and money. Even worse, it’s a surefire way to add stress to your life

Sure, every online business needs to have a domain name. And that’s great. Try to find a short, memorable and keyword-rich web address to acquire.  But if you’re one of those addicted to the idea of owning virtual real estate and gobbling up every web address you can (since it’s so cheap these days), I recommend you put an end to your buying spree RIGHT NOW!

Is it worth going after good website names?

Let me walk you through the typical scenario:

You rent a domain (yes, I said rent… because you technically don’t own a domain name) and you have to wait for the stars to align (i.e. get your host to setup the technical stuff and get your domain name registrar to point DNS to your new hosting company). While you wait, a bunch of business issues come up and you get distracted. Hours turn into days as you put out one fire after another. Weeks go by and your things to do lists grows exponentially. Soon months go by and you’ve totally lost interest in creating content for your new virtual real estate “empire.”

Fast forward a few months and you get one pitch after another in your snail mail to renew your domain (even though it’s many many months before the domain actually expires). But you don’t know this because your memory is like Swiss cheese, and you panic a bit. Now you’re totally distracted and waste your time worrying about renewing your domain (even though it’s been sitting empty for months now). You get further distracted rethinking what content to add to the site that you never got around to the first time you dreamed of owning your “virtual internet empire.”

And all of this stress is for just one domain name. Imagine the headaches you’re going to experience once you have multiple website names in your “portfolio.”

Purchasing a domain name as an investment is a sucker’s game. In the vast majority of cases, a purchased domain name sits “parked” and idle. Hardly anyone sees it, let alone clicks on your AdSense ad or buys from your recommendation with your affiliate link.

I had an old friend who purchased thousands of domains as an investment (and this is when they were $70.00 each). He got distracted and never did anything with them. He even tried to sell them, but since there was no traffic, he couldn’t find any buyers. He wasted many many weeks on this (instead of growing his already successful business) and in the end just let the domains expire.

With that said, there is just one major exception to the rule… investing in domain registration for SEO.

If you’ve discovered a popular search phrase that would double as a good website name to register, you might consider renting it. The top search engines seem to give these websites a big boost in rankings. In fact, it’s not unusual to rank first in Google with a three-word domain name and a webpage title that includes the same three words. This is a powerful (and cheap) SEO strategy. And it works. I had one domain like this. I was number one in Google just 4 days after registration… beating my competition that was first in Google for many, many years.

But other than that, if you’re looking to invest in domain names, you’re better off flying to Vegas and betting it all on number 37 (and there’s no such number on the Roulette wheel). Because unless you’re a professional “domainer”, investing in website names is a surefire way to get distracted and lose a lot of money — year after year.

So what if you’ve already made the mistake of investing in a bunch of website names that are sitting “parked” and not generating cash?

You could certainly try to sell these domains. But you’re only going to make back any real money if your site is either profitable or attracting visitors via search engine referrals. (And if you’re making money or getting a steady stream of visitors coming to your website, you probably don’t want to sell… unless you’re retiring). But the VAST majority of domain renters have their website name parked… sitting idle… not generating much in the way of profits or many visitors.

So how do you get rid of idle domain names in your “portfolio?”

My solution is simple (yet slightly painful to your ego). Just let these website names expire and forget about it. Write it off as a loss.

I know, I know… it’s going to kill you to lose that big investment of $9 or $10 per domain (sarcasm intended), but it’s the best and least painful business loss you’re ever going to take. I know business owners who lost their good credit standing, their homes and even their favorite cars making a bad investment on their business. I’ve seen lives ruined investing in the Great American Dream.

But at worst in this case, you’ll lose less money than it takes to buy a Big Mac Value Meal for you and a friend.

The bottom line is this:  registering web names is almost always a bad investment. Even professional “domainers” struggle to acquire domain names that pay off as an investment. And quite frankly, writing a 975-word blog post wrapped in Google AdSense ads (just like this) is a FAR more profitable venture than playing the domain name game.