If you're going to introduce a new product or service, or choose a new company name and plan to promote it heavily, you should consider getting it trademarked. The above site, along with a trademark lawyer can help you do that. This will give you greater legal protection for your mark if there's ever a dispute later.

Many people are already making money buying and selling generic domain names for a profit. This is much like people who invest in real estate, hoping the value of the property will increase down the road. For example, loans.com sold in January for $3 million dollars. Drugs.com sold for $823,456 last fall and HappyBirthday.com sold for $55,000 in December. These transactions were facilitated by a domain broker called GreatDomains:

http://www.greatdomains.com

They claim to have over 295,000 domain listings for sale with an average selling price of $14,500. In my opinion, you are unlikely to become a millionaire from reselling domains, but there are certainly opportunities out there for those who are savvy and willing to take a business risk.

Besides GreatDomains, there's also Ebay.com where thousands of domains are up for auction each day. In my opinion, the most important thing you should do to promote a domain is to park it at a hosting service (some will do this for free or require a small fee if it points only to a single page). Post a professional looking page that advertises that the domain is up for sale. Be sure to include contact information to make it easy for an interested buyer to reach you. You could either post an asking price, or point to your listing on GreatDomains or Ebay.

I recently found myself searching for a domain for a new product we're developing. (Sorry, I can't provide product details at this time). When I was searching for available domains, I found some that I really liked, however, they were owned by others. Interestingly enough, some didn't even have a home page up on the domain that had been purchased early last year. I didn't know if they would be interested in selling it or whether they were committed to building a Web site there. Rather than considering it further, I moved on to other possible names though they were less attractive. Those sites lost a potential sale by not advertising the inactive domain.

One idea I had for a domain reseller would be to advertise in the look up database. This is what everyone uses to see if a domain is available or if not, who it belongs to. You could create a company name like "Domain Bargains-R-Us" that implies the domain can be purchased when someone views the contact information for your domain. All you have to do is enter the company name you want to "do business as" (DBA) in the company name field when you purchase the domain. It doesn't matter whom you purchase the domain from since this information eventually gets distributed to all the various domain look up services.

I've not tried this technique myself yet, but I believe it would go a long way to help promote the domain without spending a single dollar on advertising. When you purchase the domain, it will help to include a good toll-free number and contact e-mail. You could set up a special e-mail address that has an auto-responder that would thank them for their interest in your domain name and assures them you'll be in contact soon.

If you were interested in reselling domain names, it would be wise to pick up a good book on negotiation tactics at your local bookstore, or from Amazon.com. Being a savvy negotiator can mean all the difference in your final selling price.

You can check domain availability as well as purchase domains for $60 for 2 years at:

To find popular phrases that may sell for more than your $60 investment requires some research. If you don't have any ideas, browse through a list of category names found on Yahoo or Open Directory. You could also flip through your local Yellow Pages. For example, if a category was named Construction Contractors, then constructioncontractors.com might be a domain to consider investing in.

Once you find some contenders, use a keyword search service, like Goto.com, to check the popularity of the keyword or phrase. For more information on using this service, see:

http://www.marketposition.com/keywordgenerator.htm

Besides the domain broker service, you should contact some of the larger companies that may be interested in your domain. Make them a proposal. Let them know why this domain would be perfect for their business and worth every penny of your asking price. You never know -- You might just make some money!

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