There’ll be lots of generic domain names, too. Look for .realtor, .food, .green, .wine, .nyc, .boston, .music, .hospital and others. They won’t come cheap: The application fee will be $185,000 even if you use godaddy coupons =). That will cover legal costs, processing fees and work needed to ensure that an applicant is legitimate and technologically capable of running a separate domain.

To stave off disputes about what company or organization will get a prized domain name — .airline, for instance — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit global traffic controller of Internet assignment matters, will aim to award proposed names to logical recipients, such as giving the domain .realtor to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), even if several independent realty firms bid for the rights.

The NAR would then be empowered to manage the domain and allow interested real estate agents, for a fee, to sign up and be part of the domain. It’s expected that many companies in a given industry will want to be part of the custom domain to show customers and clients that they are legitimate industry players.

Cities may also see a custom domain name, such as .kansas-city, as a revenue raiser, enabling officials to charge merchants — a barbeque restaurant, for instance — that want to be identified with the city for marketing purposes.

ICANN will hold a tight rein on the process. It may approve .restaurant, for instance, but not endless variations, such as .restaurants or .dining or .formal-dining.

ICANN is expected to formally approve the initiative later this year and begin accepting proposals for custom domains in the first six months of next year. In some cases, ICANN will use an auction (after the application fee) to determine what company or organization may be awarded a favored domain name, such as .fourseasons for either the gourmet Four Seasons restaurant or the Four Seasons hotel chain. ICANN will retain the right to reject applications rather than get bogged down in endless disputes over names such as .islam or .einstein, or whether a proposed domain may be seen as offensive. The organization is also setting up a dispute arbitration and appeal process in anticipation of hard to resolve domain right issues.

In domaining, tears could mean joy as well as dreams can turn into nightmares. Buying the wrong names. Selling the wrong price. I’ve been there, done that. I even ate my shoes several times.

But, I believe that a true winner is determined by overcoming defeats. That’s why I’m going to list some of the famous quotes in domaining world for those who need inspiration.

Believe me, in domaining, ANYTHING can happen in a split second.

• “Domains have and will continue to go up in value faster than any other commodity ever known to man” — Rick Schwartz
• “They’d say (the investors), ‘No one will ever have a TV and a computer in the same room,’” — Shelby Bonnie, CNET Co-Founder.
• “Another example of this is the word ‘ringtones.’ It is worth millions right now, but five years ago, it wasn’t worth 50 bucks. If you see a trend or something that you see coming out that the next guy doesn’t–spend ten bucks and buy up that name.” — Marc Ostrofsky, President of Internet REIT
• “If you ask 10 different experts, they are sure to tell you 10 different things (about domain’s value).” — Christian Kalled, director of brokerage for Sedo North America.
• “We got something for $150,000. If they had wanted $5 million, I would have done it in a blink of an eye.” — Call Tabibi, founder of UnRealEstate.com.
• Dotcom will become in our corporate language like Inc. or Co. or Corp. – a generic way of describing a company, in this case a company that does business on the Internet. (Clive Chajet)
• The classic development questions need to be reformulated for a 21st century economy . . . will the poor continue to be left behind, will the wealth of information be hoarded by an elite? (K Y Amoako)
• Broadband is like a narcotic. Once you have it, you won’t be able to give it up. (Lynn Forrester)
• We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on one million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. (Robert Wilensky)
• We are all unrealistic domain owners. (DotComGod)
• Brother, can you spare a domain? (Acroplex)
• “We grew up in a working class neighborhood of Vancouver and then gradually moved to better neighborhoods, but during that transition, I saw that to really do anything, you need to not only work hard, but also think about how you work.”

  Kevin Ham quoted on DNJournal

• “If you have the money, purchase the best domain name you can get your hands on. But remember the golden rule: a domain name is only worth what you can do with it. We’ve turned down $5,000,000 for PalmSprings.com and didn’t think twice about it because we’ve monetized it so well. However, in someone else’s hands, PalmSprings.com could have been parked or less developed and worth nowhere near as much. If you have the talent and vision to develop a generic mega-domain, please give people like us a call.”

  David Castello

• “You can be the king of any industry you want online with the right domain name…
  even if you know nothing about it!.”
• “This is my final offer!”
• “Good Names Are Not Cheap – Cheap Names Are Not Good”
• Most of what you have is only really valuable to you.
• interested party: “We are prepared to offer you $800 for your domain ###.com” (### represents a premium LLL.COM)

  me: “Add another zero to the end of that offer and maybe we can talk.”

• No one wants to buy this adress. Be smart please and reduce the price…
• “what’s the value of a click, if that click leads to the sale of a $20m plane…?” Rick Schwartz.
• “You are what you register.” — Seminarist.com
• “I would never sell my Children” Kevin Ham – TRAFFIC Las Vegas Feb. 2008
• Whats the BIN?
• What does BIN mean?
• No BIN yet
• $1 to start
• “You’re a cybersquatter!”
• “Participate and prosper.” -tekz999
• “All PMs replied to.”
• “I don’t think you should have sold that domain.”
• “You stole my domain !”
• Lowballs will be ignored.
• “Will Google’s Omnibox search have an impact on typo domains”
• “You can’t fix stupid”
• “I guess I was afraid to smile because I was worried the audience would not bid if I looked like I was happy about making money.” — Rick Latona
• “I don’t think you can go wrong with .com no matter what you do.” — Elliot J. Silver
• “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
• “You know that day you once told me about, when Domainland would no longer need ICANN? It’s coming.”
• “I’ve never seen so many domains wasted so badly.”
• “Tyler sold his domains to department stores at $2,000 apiece. It was beautiful. We were selling rich companies their own expired domains back to them.”
• “The first rule of Domain Club is – you do not talk about Domain Club.”
• “Well, Clarice – have the domains stopped screaming for renewal?”
• “I’ve seen domains… domains that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a cybersquatter. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what domaining means. Domaining. Domaining has a face… and you must make a friend of domains. Domains and traffic monetization are your friends.”
• “Smell that? You smell that?
  -What?
  Dropping domain names, son. Nothing in the world smells like that. I love the smell of dropping domains in the morning.”
• “You’re gonna need a bigger portfolio.”
• “All those domain names will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to expire.”
• “Cole Sear: I see expired domains.
  Malcolm Crowe: In your dreams?
  [Cole shakes his head no]
  Malcolm Crowe: While you’re awake?
  [Cole nods]
  Malcolm Crowe: Expired domains like, at SnapNames? At Pool?
  Cole Sear: Walking around like regular domains. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’ve expired.
  Malcolm Crowe: How often do you see them?
  Cole Sear: All the time. They’re everywhere.”
• “It’s not the years, it’s the Archive.org age.”
• “Ladies and gentlemen… I’ve traveled over half our state to be here tonight. I couldn’t get away sooner because my new domain portfolio was coming in at Moniker and I had to see about it. That portfolio’s traffic is now flowing at two thousand unique type-ins and it’s paying me an income of five thousand dollars a week. I have two other transfers pending and I have sixteen domains producing income at SedoPro. So, ladies and gentlemen… if I say I’m a domain man you will agree.”
• “Payment should be made by Paypal within 24 hours of purchase.” (By sellers on eBay posting mystupidandmeaninglessname.biz for $9,995,000)
• “95% of all the domains I get are hand registered.” — Rick Schwartz, interviewed at dnkitchen.com
• What the heck was I drinking when I bought these???”
• “I would build my foundation with the domains i bought”
• “Only selling this domain name to fund another project!”
• “if this doesn’t sell today…I’m going to develop it”
• “there is no email without a domain name”
• “offer good for 24 hours only”
• “I received two offers at 50k last year for this one, BIN $13.00 plus paypal fees”
• “Buyers pays escrow fees”
• “the “bot” appraises it at…….”
• “$$ to kick it off”
• ” I turned down two offers 5 years ago in the mid xxx,xxx range.”
• “Sale ends friday”
• Will you take less?
• “Will you take any domains in trade?”
• “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” — Unknown
• “Please delete this domain from the WHOIS database.”
• “He who owns the traffic owns the transaction”.
• Just like in the days of the bible, the written word is just as prevalent on the internet” (ie- domain names)
• “What doesn’t sell for a dollar today may sell for ten dollars tomorrow” — Unknown
• “The sales I most regret are the ones I don’t make.”
• “Don’t buy a name you aren’t willing to own if you aren’t able to sell it.” – Rick Latona
• “We (me and my wife) ended up selling as much of our stuff as possible to invest in domains. The magical point came when our living expenses were covered and we just kept on reinvesting to grow the cashflow.” — Michael Gilmour
• “okay I’ll be right there…just give me one more second”
• “Sure, there are a lot of guys trading them like baseball cards, but why would I want to invest?”
• “I’m selling to fund another project”
• “I’m thinking of sending this to auction”
• “Give me numbers not excuses”

• * The average sale price so far this month is almost $2500.
• * Going back to July the average sale price is $1,394. And that’s *without* including three $50,000 plus sales from August.
• * All combinations of numbers and starting digits are selling.

I’ve mostly kept quiet about 4N names and only talked about NNN.com names. But now it should be clear to everyone that we are seeing a pattern of solid baseline reseller value growth, along with many, many high priced sales. This is *exactly* what hapened with NNN.com domain names about 4 years ago when they went from occasional decent sales to solid growth and high liquidity. 4N names are now poised to replace NNN.com in the very same category, the $2k to $7k sweet spot for scarce, commodity names. The future should be clear to even those who doubted that plain old numbers could be worth anything. Just check out how many bids they now get at places like Sedo.

I’ll try to put out an in-depth report of the numbers in the next month. Meanwhile, here is the list of sales I have since the beginning of July. If you know of a 4N sale not on this list send the info to me right away!

0057.com
0215.com
0216.com
0332.com
0491.com
0600.com
0742.com
1159.com
1280.com
1326.com
1637.com
2411.com
2494.com
2506.com
2555.com
2723.com
2845.com
2930.com
3591.com
3591.com
3597.com
3669.com
4010.com
4609.com
4987.com
5543.com
6125.com
7109.com
7465.com
7660.com
7777.com
7831.com
7834.com
8008.com
8426.com
8808.com
9137.com
9137.com
9145.com
9436.com
9772.com
9876.com

Another tip to pick up good domain names is to pay close attention to what is happening in the country where you live with sites that have a country ending, like .de, .at, .br, .es.  Here is what I mean.  I was searching Alexa ranking for “.at” sites (.at is for Austria), and I registered a few of the top “.at” sites as “.com” and they have done really well for me.  This works especially well because the “.com” is where your browser will take you by default if you just type in a name on the browser.  Like if you type “adbux” on your browser you probably wanted to go to adbux.org, but your browser will take you to the parked page of adbux.com.  Which is actually kind of funny since I just noticed that adbux.com is a parked domain on NameDrive (I recognize the template).  This is even better since all things being equal, the “.com” domain name is more valuable that any other one.

To end this post I would just like to post a screen shot of two parked domains I have on NameDrive, that yesterday on 4 clicks gave me about $10, and one of the clicks was worth more than $4.  Since I get about 150 to 200 clicks a day wouldn´t it be nice if they were all worth this much

I would also like to remind everyone of the challenge I put out to try out domain testing for free.  I was expecting to shell out $1000 for this exercise but I have only had two takers so far.

I have also read somewhere, not exactly sure where, that 99% of all domain currently registers are then canceled. Yes, thats 99%! By this I am trying to tell you that if you registered one, two, or three domains, and haven´t had any luck, that is not a reason for you to quit. For me to get to the $1500 I made from domain parking last month took me about 9 months, and I have done it gradually. I have also purchased about $1000 worth of domains over the last few months that bring is about $120-$150 dollars a month. It will be very hard, especially at the beginning, for you to find domains that will give you a lot of money per month, so its really a question of giving this activity some continuity.

Like in any other business new to us, in the beginning it usually requires a bit more time, but after a while it becomes more automatic and it almost seems we “see” names to domain test everywhere. Today I do not spend more than half an hour a week on domain names, and I can still register a hand full every month. Here is a list of some of the names that I registered over the last month or so and that are profitable. I am not including domains I opted to use for mini-sites.

derStandrd.at, edscho.at, CurvadoraValenciana.com, riffeisen.at, TotalRewords.com, wbesingles.at, StndVirtual.com, freenet-homepage.at, disenyrewards.com, telefonoya.com

Actually, since I have already talked about StumbleUpon as a good tool to get visitors to your sites, let me tell you that I also use StumbleUpon to find domain names.  First you have to download this plug-in for Firefox, which is almost a must to find domain names for domain parking.  Once installed, the plug-in, called SearchStatus, displays on our toolbar the PageRank and Alexa ranking of the site we are currently on.  If you put the mouse pointer over the toolbar we get the exact Alexa rank for the site we are visiting, in this case it says my blogs rank is 432200.  This way, when I visit any site, be it from using StumbleUpon, or any other reason, I immediately know if the site is a candidate for domain parking.  We don´t even need to search for domains, they come to us

This plug-in only works for Firefox, so you can use my link to download the faster, and safer browser today

Main Source: from-home-make-money-opportunity.com 

Here then is an updated field guide to some of the activities of “domainers,” as they call themselves, with references, mainly from Wikipedia.

Cybersquatting: Buying domain names that include names of existing companies or brands in hopes of reselling them to the companies that use those names.

Typosquatting: Buying domain names that are misspellings of the names of frequently visited sites, hoping to profit by showing ads to people who visit the site by accident.

Domain name speculation: Buying generic domain names in hopes of selling them to some company that wants to use them.

Search arbitrage: Attracting traffic to your Web pages by buying advertising on search engines, in hopes of profiting by displaying ads, often sold by Yahoo or Google.

Made for AdSense sites: Sites with little or no original content that are designed to rank highly for certain terms in search engines, generating profit from text ads such as those sold by Google’s AdSense service.

Domain parking: Buying domain names that describe common things people may be looking for, hoping to profit from ads related to that topic.

Direct navigation: This is not properly a business in itself. Rather it refers to the behavior of some (probably ill-informed) users who type what is in effect a search query directly into the address box of their browsers. Those in the domain parking business often profit by buying domains that are common terms typed into browsers.

It is this domain parking business that Marchex and others are trying to build upon by adding content and features to accompany the ads on their pages.

These practices vary on a number of dimensions. Cybersquatting can be illegal, for example.

But I’d suggest that there is at least one question that should be asked about all of them: Would users want to go to these pages if they understood in advance what was on them?

If the answer is no – and in many cases I suspect it is – how sustainable a business is this sort of domaining?

Main Resource

One of the less reputable sectors of the Internet economy that has been growing rapidly is domain name parking. Entrepreneurs register names that are either misspellings of common domains, like amazo.com or generic titles like www.chicagodoctors.com. They fill these sites with ads from Google or Yahoo, getting paid for every click. This game has morphed into what is know as Google arbitrage, filling the page also with just enough content that it will actually be found by search engines, and in turn attract users who simply see ads and click again to get somewhere useful.

As often happens with questionable but profitable businesses, a different class of entrepreneurs is now coming in trying to clean up domain parking and conduct it on a larger scale. They have also come up with a more respectable sounding name for their industry: direct navigation.

One attempt unveiled today is by Marchex, a Seattle-based company that owns 200,000 domain names. Until now these pages have been filled only with ads. Now for 110,000 of the sites, it will add listings of local merchants it has found by crawling and copying information from other Web sites. Someone looking for a veterinarian in San Francisco, for example, can find copious information focused solely on that topic at Marchex’s site www.sanfranciscoveterinarians.com. The niche sites summarize their findings from around the Web and link to those other sites.

Ads appear on the right and sometimes top, sold by Yahoo, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com unit, and Marchex itself.

“We see search technology as publishing, as creating new kinds of content that didn’t exist before,” said Matthew Berk, lead search architect for Marchex, which runs the sites through a subsidiary called Open List.

But much of the content on Marchex sites is actually not new to the Web. On www.newyorkdoctors.com, for example, lots of the consumer reviews are pulled from Citysearch, a local online search company owned by IAG/InterActiveCorp. Marchex’s site does link to Citysearch, and Marchex executives said their use of Web content provides brand exposure and links to other sites and is no different from that of larger search engines like Google and Yahoo. The sites also invite users to contribute their own ratings.

“What we do is well within the norms of the industry and analogous to how Google and other search engines crawl,” Mr. Berk said.

It is no accident that Marchex owns so many niche domain names. Two years ago, the company negotiated a deal with Name Development, a company run by Yun Ye, a software developer in California who had collected hundreds of thousands of domain names. Marchex paid Mr. Ye a reported $164 million for 100,000 sites. Meanwhile, Marchex bought up the rest on its own, including sites associated with most zip codes in the country, like 10003.com.

Marchex says that about 30 million unique visitors per month land on one of its sites simply by typing in the domain name. Those Web users guess that there is a site out there that fits their particular needs, and they type in the most obvious Web addresses. Marchex now hopes that more people will return to the sites on a regular basis because of the new content.

Other entrepreneurs are interested in creating vertical content on sites with obvious domain names. Richard Rosenblatt, the former chief executive of Intermix, is running a new company called Demand Media that will use user generated content to fill such sites.

Peter Christothoulou, Marchex’s chief strategy officer, acknowledged that his company’s approach is a bit backwards. Most media companies put content up first and then add the advertisements.

“We have a business, and now we’re building a product around it,” Mr. Christothoulou said.

Main Source

The wish list method can also be used for arbitrary or suggestive
dictionary words. Go though a dictionary or thesaurus and develop a
list.
It is advisable to keep a written list to avoid rechecking domains that
were previously ruled out. After looking at a few dozen names, it’s easy
to forget especially if the naming project is done intermittently in
between other work.
The other way is to see what domains are for sale cheap. I call this the
thrift-shop method. You will find great bargains but your
choice will be limited. You will also end up looking at a lot of junk
domain names for sale.
One can use both the thrift shop and wish list method to search, but
the best method largely depends on what you are looking for.
If you are looking for something specific, such as a painting by a
specific painter, you would have to be rather lucky to find it in a thrift
shop. On the other hand, if you just want any painting of an ocean,
you are more likely to find one in a thrift shop. And if you are willing to
take any great looking painting to fill up an empty wall, you can always
find something bargain-priced.

1. Dueling Trademarks. Many of the high prices paid for domain
names in the past were paid because trademark owners wanted the
domains. Trademark infringement, now known as cybersquatting, is
illegal, but if one legitimate trademark owner, such as Gateway
Computers, wanted a domain name (Gateway.com) from another
legitimate trademark owner (Gateway Consulting), they often had to
pay six figures. These high-priced sales reflect the value of the
preexisting brand and not the value of similar domain names.
2. Fake Auctions. Many of the reported sales and auctions are
fraudulent. In the 1970s, unique historic cars were auctioned off
several times to fake buyers, creating the impression that the cars were
worth many times their true value and obtaining publicity. Eventually a
victim became interested and purchased at an inflated price. Today, it’s
the same scam with domain names. Since scammers can bid on their
own auctions with multiple online names, it’s even easier online. It has
been my observation that over half of today’s domain name auctions
have fake bids by the seller or his friends.
3. The Top 100 Names and Sales for Stock. There are a very few
domain names that are worth six figures. There have been a few dozen
high-profile sales, but most of these were for stock, not cash. I might
even pay “$1 million” for Sex.com if they took near-worthless stock in
my private company.
4. Outright Hoaxes. Then there are outright hoaxes done just get in
the paper.
In short, the perceptions of many domain name speculators are warped
by some examples that don’t apply to them.

Does the average 15-year-old make $10,000 a week selling drugs in the
ghetto? Does the average domain name sell for $10,000?
There are two ways to look at this. One way would be with statistics.
It would be rather easy to show that nurses don’t earn $10,000 a week
with statistics. However, drug dealer don’t report their income.
Likewise, there is a dearth of statistical information on domain name
sales.
There are examples, but no comprehensive statistics. It may be
possible to point to a few true cases where teenage drug dealers
actually earned $10,000 in a week. Likewise, it is possible to point to
the many cases of teenage drug dealers earning only $100 per week.
But without comprehensive data or some knowledge of the distribution,
it’s difficult to determine the average from small biased samples.
Likewise, it’s possible to point to examples of similar domain names
selling for $100 (a fire sale at an auction), $1,000 (the most common
price), $10,000 (one out of a thousand) and $100,000 (one out of a
million).
The other way is to look at the supply and demand. Is $10,000/week
an equilibrium price for teenage drug dealers? The supply of teenage
drug dealer – at any high school in the country – is so large that no toplevel
dealer would pay them $10,000 per week. In economics terms,
it’s not an equilibrium at $10,000 per week. Likewise, the high prices
reported for domain names are not equilibrium prices.