Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Interesting article in today’s Boston.com about the practice of domain name tasting.  I’ve gotten to know a little bit about this practice as a result of my work with Portland’s SnapNames, a domain name auctioneer who offers “dropped” or expired domain names for sale. Marketers need to know more about this whole domain name ownership area…

Here’s an excerpt that  explains how domain name tasting works:

Entrepreneurs profit from free Web names - Boston.com
Cybersquatting has been around for more than a decade, and scores of entrepreneurs have made thousands and even millions of dollars reselling names they had bought for as little as $6 each. With tasting, entrepreneurs generally aren’t grabbing names to resell but to generate traffic and share in online advertising revenues.

The Internet’s key oversight agency for domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, has for years required operators of major Web suffixes such as “.com” to refund cancellations within five days. Tasting became more practical about two years ago when automation allowed newly available “.com” names to go live almost immediately, providing an additional half-day for sampling.

The practice has spiked, with an average tasting of 1.2 million names each day in December, compared with 7,200 two years earlier, according to data from Name Intelligence Inc., which analyzes domain name patterns. Legitimate registrations made up 2 percent of the registrations at the end of 2006, down from about half in 2004.  

Yes, this is a common practice among those who buy domains for the traffic (and subsequent ad revenue or resale value) they can generate. After all, a $6 purchase that can generate at least twice that revenue within a short period of time is a pretty good investment. No wonder the practice has exploded.

But it’s not for the faint of heart.  The pros are really good at grabbing these domain names, sampling them, and moving on.   

I’m still stunned, though at the number of really good domain names that are available on the market every day in SnapNames’ auctions. 

Let’s say I’m a florist, and I want to offer flowers for sale online.  Here are some of the 105 .com domain names that will be available in the next five days with the word “flower” in them at SnapNames:

• bleuflowers.com
• bulktropicalflowers.com
• lowestcostflowers.com
• lavenderroseflowers.com
• wildflowerunlimited.com
• windowflower.com

There’s a reason people taste these dropping domain names - they can be pretty darned good!

Consider setting up a search to be automaticially notified if domain names containing your ‘target’ words are about to come on the market. If you need help doing so, let me know.

You might be surprised at the quality of names that people are willing to let go.  Why? 

Well, that’s another post all together…