How to Select and Buy a Domain Name

What Is A Domain Name?

A domain name is the address that people will type in their browser to find your website.

Example: www.google.com

Select A Good Domain Name

Here are a 7 things to keep in mind when selecting a domain name:

1. Keep it short. People should be able to easily remember your domain name.  All domain names of 4 characters or less have already been taken so I recommend a name of 5 to 15 characters.
2. Dot com.  When people already know a domain name but are unsure of the extension, they will almost always try .com first.  The .com extension should be your first choice.
3. Easy to spell. Choose a name that is easy to spell.   People should hear your domain name once and know exactly how to spell it.  Avoid double letters, dashes, long names and be careful with plurals. You should also buy the domain with a close alternative spelling. For example, I tend to type istockphotos.com but the site I am really looking for is istockphoto.com. The company istockphoto.com really should have purchased the domain istockphotos.com as well.
4. Brand Vs Keywords. Using keywords in domain names can increase the ranking  of your website in search engine result pages for those keywords. For example,  a dog clothing business might buy the domain uniquedogclothing.com.  Although this website is in 4th position when you google “dog clothing”  the top two sites don’t even have “clothing” or “dog” in their domain names.

   The ideal situation is to have your primary keyword (in this case it would be “dog clothing”) in your brand name and to use your brand name as your domain name.

   If your primary keyword is not in your brand name, use your brand name as your domain name (ruffknits.com, for example). Avoid using a keyword-filled domain such as buy-dog-clothing.com. You can always use a few keywords in your page and directory names instead.

5. Avoid Trademarked Names. Do some research online to make sure your domain name is not already someone else’s product or business name.
6. Ask Friends & Family. Ask your friends and family what their thoughts are.  Your domain name should be self-explanatory. If they don’t get it right away, visitors probably won’t either.
7. Don’t waste time. Don’t wait for your website to be ready to buy your domain name. There is nothing more frustrating than finding out your great domain name idea was  purchased by someone else a few days before!

 

Where To Buy a Domain Name?

I have tried many companies over the years, including the popular GoDaddy.com but at the time of writing, I buy all my domain names at Netfirms.com. I choose and recommend this registrar because it has four unique qualities:

1. Price – At $9.95 per year, it is one of the cheapest places to buy domain names.
2. Control – You have full control over your domains: DNS admin, MX Record, CNAME, A Record and sub-domains.
3. Free Privacy – You can make your contact information private at no additional cost.
4. Transparency – There are no hidden fees.

 

Let me explain reason #3 a bit more: when you register your domain name, your postal address and phone number appear in an online database called the WHOIS database. Everyone has access to this database and can look up any domain they choose. With Netfirms you are entitled to your privacy at no extra cost.

NOTE: Many hosting companies offer a free domain name with their hosting plan. So do not buy your domain name until you have verified if your hosting company offers a free domain name!

Make your Domain Private for Just $4.95*/yr!

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Make Money With Search Portals

You can easily make extra income or residual income with search portals. All you need is a domain name and to find a good parking company. Pretty simple. These are the steps you should take in making money from a search portal:

Find a good domain name. A good domain name is usually one that has one to three good keywords in it. For a quick search on whats popular, go to Google, enter a keyword and see how many results come up. I’m not kidding! This is one of the easiest and quickest ways of finding popular keywords. If you don’t already own the domain name, see if its available and or buy it on a domain registrar. Try GoDaddy, or NameCheap. *Note: You can use ANY domain name. But the people that make really good money, have really good keyword infused domain names. If you cant think of a domain name try a few domain name generators. This will be VERY helpful to you.

Once your done buying your domain name and setting it up (make sure you do the whoisguard), then you can find the parking site you want to go with. These sites are %100 free and if you see one that isn’t, I suggest staying away from it. Always follow all the Terms Of Service when joining these sites. You can get deleted if you go against what they tell you. Simply park your domain and direct traffic to it. You can contact the parking company and ask them what traffic you are and aren’t allowed to send. Try parking sites like Parked, Fabulous and Sedo.

Depending on a lot of different attributes, you can make anywhere from $1.00 to $1,000+ a month. It doesn’t depend on just one thing. Its a multitude of things. Is the domain good enough, is the parking site good enough, are you sending quality traffic, did you pick good keywords when setting the site up, did you optimize it? Most sites will help you with setting your account up. After all if you make money, they make money!

In order to find good info on domain parking, try DigitalPointForums & NamePros, they have lots of different information and people there that will help you out. Or do a search on Google for “Domain Name Help”, or “Domain Name Information.” To find domain parking sites, go to Google and try search terms relevant to Parking. Try “Domain Parking”, “Monetize Domains”, “Park my domain.”

Making Money with Affiliate Programs

If we are all honest, most of us would do anything to live a life where we work from home, decide what hours we will work, when we will get up in the morning to how much we earn, right?

Wouldn’t it be great to get paid based on how well you perform? Imagine going in to work and because you chose to give more than 100% that day, your boss decided to pay you more money!

Let’s face it as well, life is very short and you only get one chance to live it out the way you want to live it out. Doing a 9-5 job or pulling grueling 12hr shifts doesn’t add to your life it takes away from it.

That is why so many people today are turning to affiliate marketing for extra income. This billion dollar industry over the past year has soared in leaps and bounds with more people spending money around the holiday shopping season. So how you benefit from being an affiliate marketer?

It all begins with Getting Started!

Sometimes the hardest step is the first one we take.

That’s no joke, and being an affiliate marketer is no exception. When you set out to start your online career as a successful affiliate marketer, there are going to be many ups and downs that are going to make you want to give up. Let’s face it being your own boss, being strict with how you spend your time and balancing your home and work life is going to be a challenge at time.

Don’t be put off by that as their will be times when you are making money while you sleep and waking up in the morning to find you have made an extra hundred dollars or two is always thrilling. Keep in mind all the days you have made more than you expected as those times will help you through any rough patches. Believe you can do it, surround yourself with positive people and learn from those who are doing well at it, and do it on a regular basis.

One of the things you are going to want to do right at the start is get good information from an affiliate marketer who is working from home and managing to consistently earn a living from affiliate programs.

Also you will want to set aside time each day even if it is only 1hr to spend learning the ins and outs of what to do and what not to do. It is very easy to rush head first into something and end up on the other side out of pocket and frustrated.

Realize you will need to invest in your business

The phrase ” It takes money to make money” is without a doubt the truth, but that is not to say you can’t make money online without spending hundreds of dollars. There are numerous ways going about it, but the hard fast rules of advertising have always been the same throughout the ages.

If you don’t have enough money to buy software like a website creator, there are many free software packages out their though places like download.com which allow you to make a website. Heck even Netscape the free browser comes with a website creator.

So what things will you need to get started?

Well there are no hard fast rules but having a

Website editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver
Domain name through namecheap.com
Hosting through hostgator.com or one of the
various hosting companies out there.
Internet connection are really some of the main things, I mean you can use someone else’s computer if you really need to.

Realize that Affiliate Marketing is a booming industry that continues to grow everyday. A few resources you might want to check out when your first starting out is.
If we are all honest, most of us would do anything to live a life where we work from home, decide what hours we will work, when we will get up in the morning to how much we earn, right?

Wouldn’t it be great to get paid based on how well you perform? Imagine going in to work and because you chose to give more than 100% that day, your boss decided to pay you more money!

Let’s face it as well, life is very short and you only get one chance to live it out the way you want to live it out. Doing a 9-5 job or pulling grueling 12hr shifts doesn’t add to your life it takes away from it.

That is why so many people today are turning to affiliate marketing for extra income. This billion dollar industry over the past year has soared in leaps and bounds with more people spending money around the holiday shopping season. So how you benefit from being an affiliate marketer?

It all begins with Getting Started!

Sometimes the hardest step is the first one we take.

That’s no joke, and being an affiliate marketer is no exception. When you set out to start your online career as a successful affiliate marketer, there are going to be many ups and downs that are going to make you want to give up. Let’s face it being your own boss, being strict with how you spend your time and balancing your home and work life is going to be a challenge at time.

Don’t be put off by that as their will be times when you are making money while you sleep and waking up in the morning to find you have made an extra hundred dollars or two is always thrilling. Keep in mind all the days you have made more than you expected as those times will help you through any rough patches. Believe you can do it, surround yourself with positive people and learn from those who are doing well at it, and do it on a regular basis.

One of the things you are going to want to do right at the start is get good information from an affiliate marketer who is working from home and managing to consistently earn a living from affiliate programs.

Also you will want to set aside time each day even if it is only 1hr to spend learning the ins and outs of what to do and what not to do. It is very easy to rush head first into something and end up on the other side out of pocket and frustrated.

Realize you will need to invest in your business

The phrase ” It takes money to make money” is without a doubt the truth, but that is not to say you can’t make money online without spending hundreds of dollars. There are numerous ways going about it, but the hard fast rules of advertising have always been the same throughout the ages.

If you don’t have enough money to buy software like a website creator, there are many free software packages out their though places like download.com which allow you to make a website. Heck even Netscape the free browser comes with a website creator.

So what things will you need to get started?

Well there are no hard fast rules but having a

Website editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver
Domain name through namecheap.com
Hosting through hostgator.com or one of the
various hosting companies out there.
Internet connection are really some of the main things, I mean you can use someone else’s computer if you really need to.

Realize that Affiliate Marketing is a booming industry that continues to grow everyday. A few resources you might want to check out when your first starting out is.

Buy Hand Picked Domain Name for your Business

A main Domain, an alternative domain or an additional domain for your online business must be a generic domain. While branding domain name for your business, Professional generic domain name acts as a representative for your product or service to the entire industry. For example: Loans.com , Books.com , Tv.com , Movies.com and Baby.com E.T.C. These are one word generics.

When you buy a generic domain to build your website, you are aligning your self as business leader of your sector either product or service. Researches from 2004 onwards showed that around 20% of daily global Internet users arrive at websites through “direct navigation” by browsing. Direct navigation means typing the URL [domain name] into a browser address bar / use a bookmark. 20% of the traffic for life long, just for a one time investment i.e Generic Domain Name that also a hand picked domain name.

Direct navigation traffic is possible if you own a Generic domain only. This type of high quality traffic is extremely valuable for the domain owner. Marketers and online businessmen have found out the value of type in traffic from direct navigation, they purchase generic domains at any cost even for millions for their online presence. Direct navigation will ensure that your visitors are actively interested and looking for the product or service related to your domain name, and will find your website without an agent.

More over such domains are hand picked and they are clear dictionary words. Words with numbers , hyphens and typo’s are not at all considered as Generic domains, It must represent a product, service in a clear manner. It is a goldmine if you own a keyword domain, Even if it is a three word domain it is valuable. Such domains are generally normal in length, easily memorable and sexy so once a visitor visits your site, the visitor may revisit with out any distraction i.e repeated high quality traffic is got without any floating expenses.

At present domain market is quite dull means sales prices are quite low and not up to our expectation , But soon it boom up,i feel with in two years and the prices of domains will hike up like a sky rocket it is not easy to find a Creative Generic keyword Domain name. It involves Creative thinking and a lot of worthful brain storming process to pick a Generic Keyword Domain name for your business or service related industry. Software searches wont provide worthy Domain selections, Hand picking is found to be the best from our experience. But it takes several hours to find a good quality Domain name.

Already best easily known keyword generics were registered by domainers, They acquired these domains few years back and renewals paid for more than five years with a knowledge in market trend. This foresight made them millionaires, because the Cost of Generic top level Dot Com Domain names is millions worth.

If you have a glimpse to few of the Leading Domain Seller Market places and Auctions, You may find even non Generics, bids up to hundreds and thousands of Dollars, Then the only way to acquire a high quality Generic Keyword Domain is to buy at after market. Learn the Market Trend and grab a Creative Generic Domain Name, before any one else.

some domainers say you can acquire good names from expired domains, please note it is just a bluff mostly all of them are just waste rags. if a good domain gets expired there is a bidding on that and softwares are available to find them and they are proxy bidded so the prices will hike up.It is almost worthless when it is open for public registeration. This is the situation for normal domains then how can you get a genetic key word domain. It is almost a tough game.

There is one more joke when you register domain names i.e up to 100 domains you will be just registering thats all, and after you acquire some 100’s of domains and if if you look back your domains, You feel that how foolish i am just registered so many worthless names. Even very good domainers feel like this. General concept is 4 out of 5 domains would worth less than the expectation , even if you work hard for 1 1/2 shift per day and collide with tons of key words to get a key domain for your product or service, you can find a real diamond from the junk, even now real gems are available. But most of them is over, As domainers scraped their heads for more than 10 years in this business.

I have collided my head with the four walls of my room, my computer , books ETC to build my small domain portfolio even best webmasters and SEO’s stunned when they visited my domain portfolio and mailed their congrats that ” most of your domains are very valuable and you will end up with potential end users who will be ready to pay up to six figures so you just wait for an end user to contact you, keep your mail up to date and respond properly when you receive a mail” I feel very thankful to those kind hearted friend who have spent their precious time to review my site and respond for my future endeavour. I personally feel that it is purely Gods grace, As almighty has his own power to activate each and every aspect of this mighty world

I place a humble request to all my friends and community members to make a review on my site and post their valuable comments to improve the site statistics. My domain URL is : www.collisiondomains.com if you are interested in the purchase of generic domains just mail me from my website.I also request to recommend my site if your friend, neighbour or cousin is in want of generic domains

I whole heartedly thank the webmasters as they mailed me to edit my article and resubmit to publish

Finding an Appropriate Domain Name for Your Website

You need to be aware of different languages used in creating a website; that is easy to access and browse through for the average web-user and have sufficient knowledge of web standards compliance. It is tremendously hard to find a good domain name that’s short, easy to remember, and relates to your website, business, or product. In fact, by the end of the week you could publish a highly enticing report and offer it through your website (in exchange for a newsletter subscription or some other form of lead capture).
 
Computer companies like Dell and Gateway allow their customers to custom build PCs on their website. Henry’s website is a contented rich site where you can get free and objective information on mastering all aspects of law firm marketing. Search engines send out spiders or robots to evaluate the words you have on your website.

The costs of hosting your new domain property is also relatively inexpensive, ranging from $10 to $40 per month, depending on the company where you buy hosting and the features you would need with your website. Simply having a website will not mechanically result in visits to your website, no matter how compelling the content.

Most likely the work does not come with any of these things and either will your website if it’s designed by a part time website designer or someone offering cheaper services. A few days later you get complaints about some other question and you again react quickly to fix the website.
 
Possibly you would like some help in writing proposals, designing a latest website, or sending out press releases. You can find freelancers to take on just about any other non-administrative project you can think of – designing your website, writing a business plan, sending out press releases etc.
Doing freelance graphic designing without having your own website is suicide. One week, for instance, you could be networking, another designing a leaflet, another distributing it, and another updating your website. Website redesign firms use high speed connections while designing their original store so they rarely see the increase in page load times.

You can assemble customer information online, post your detailed privacy policy on an easily-accessible page on your website and ask those giving you their information to read it. Before you hire a website designer/developer or SEO expert ask for some case studies of sites they have optimized. If you get a chance, check out their new website.

Be the content creator, not the distributor – Instead of publishing other people’s news on your website think about how cool it would be to have your own feed in print on thousands of other sites.

If a business is serious about breaking into foreign markets, it is imperative that the website is translated into languages of target areas. Website’s reach, when marketed properly, is far greater; and with brilliant web site design, your business can even look bigger and better than your top competitors in your industry.

Six Ways To Create a Keyword-Rich Domain Name

An effective domain name can help to brand your site. It can
also communicate to your customers the types of products you
sell online. An easy to remember domain that describes your
services should be the goal of every site owner. Here are some
techniques that you can use to create the best domain name for
your company.

Describe your products or services One way to come up with an
effective domain name is to describe your product or services.
Write down every word or phrase that comes to mind when you
think of your product or service. The easiest way is to keep
writing for two to five minutes without stopping. It’s a
creative writing technique that can yield a huge cache of
keywords that you can plug into any registration application
until you find a domain name that fits. This technique is
effective, quick and free.

English has a large vocabulary list The English language has one
of the largest vocabulary lists in the world. If you can’t find
a way to describe a product or service, take a break, come back
in a few minutes and try again. Try to see how many different
ways you can say the same thing. You already have access to the
vocabulary list and ideally you will know your product or
service better than anyone else. Pretend that you’re describing
it to a friend and in a few minutes you will have a long list of
words that you can use as your domain name.

Most short words are taken Yes, many of the shorter words such
as “men”, “women” and “book” are taken. In today’s marketplace,
you can’t rely on such generic terms to bring in traffic. An
effective, memorable domain name must go beyond being a novelty
to being an asset that helps customers remember your site and
your product. Try putting two or three words together. This will
make it easier for them to come back to your site and make a
purchase.

Brainstorm your way to a great domain name Brainstorming is the
only way to get a good domain name. Whether you write, use a
name generation software, a dictionary or try random words, it’s
your creative approach that will give you quality results in
less time.

Here are 4 easy domain name generation ideas: 1.Write about the
product(s) that you plan to sell 2.Write about the topic or
theme of your site 3.Write about the type of customers you want
to visit your site 4.Start with one word descriptions and then
add secondary words until your get an effective word or phrase
that you register as your domain name.

Check out your competitor’s websites. Are they using words that
fall into a specific category like product names, rhyming words,
or names of cities? These can all give you clues about what
types of words and descriptions that make the best domain names
for your type of service. It can also give you some clues into
what works best with customers and search engines. In this case,
you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you just tweak it a bit to
get better results.

You’ll also have words for your Search Engine Marketing Campaign
The cool thing about this technique is that it will also help
you to generate a list of words that you can use later on as
part of your search engine optimization campaign. Whether you
plan to do this on your own or through a Pay-Per-Click service,
you will be ahead of the game with a long list of keywords to
choose from

The Little Extras That Come With Domain Registration

When business sites are being planned, the business owner will try to get the most value from the services that are available for their business. This is especially true if the business is going to be operated online through a website address that the business owner obtained through the domain registration process. Most business owners are pleasantly surprised to get more than a domain name when they register.

Some of the little extras that come with domain registration are available through other means and these domain name sources will cost the business owner a monthly expense that is unnecessary. For the low price of a domain registration though the business owner has the opportunity to shave operating costs by using extras such as email capabilities offered through some domain registrants. The free email addresses could help the owner create an internet presence that seems very established.

The email addresses will also serve as alternate addresses for customers to use when they want to correspond with the business directly. The customer will be able to remember the email address because it will typically be the name that a business owner chooses and lists as the customer service department on his business website. The customer does not ever see that it is an internet address that is tied to a domain registrant and is considered to be one of the little extras that they choose to use to grow their domain registration business.

Most business people think that the domain registration process is complicated. In all actuality, registering a domain name is a very simple process and is one business expense that is very affordable. For a monthly contract fee, this business extra will give the business owner control over the domain name that they want to use for their business and the contract will ensure that they can operate under that domain name for a specific period of time.

The business owner will not have to wait very long to find out if the domain name that they want to use is available. The domain registrant uses specific software that connects to the final authority for domain name registration. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will do a database check for the requested domain name and if that site relays back that the domain name is available, then the business owner simply has to register it in their name.

Other registrants might offer little extras like internet chat capabilities that allow business owners to install virtual assistants on their site. Any question a customer has about products or policies on a business website can be answered quickly and efficiently and will most likely entice the customer into transacting some level of business on the site. These little extras are provided at no charge to the owner of the business which makes operating a business less costly each month.

Domain Registration – Choosing a Good Domain Name

One would think that registering a domain is the first step when setting up your website. This is not quite true. Hopefully you had done your research first to identify your niche keywords, in other words, the primary key terms that people are looking for in relation to your business.

Your domain name should reflect what your site or your business is about. It should be descriptive and easy to remember. If you can register your domain name by using your best niche keyword you will also score a few points in trying to get your site high up in the search engine rankings.

Just note, however, that while this was especially true a couple of years ago, the prevalence of garbage made-for-adsense type of sites to try and register a domain name with keywords in have led to this factor being overused and abused. Search engines are wising up to the fact that a domain name like www.red-widgets-blue-widgets-purple-widgets-cheap-widgets.com might not really be a real business and you should therefore be careful not to STUFF your domain name with keywords.

Here are some tips to choosing a good domain name:

1) If your company has a distinctive name that you use in your marketing campaigns, and if your company is well known among your customers it is best to try and register your company name as your domain name. For example, it will be better for Standard Bank to register standardbank.co.za as opposed to bankingservices.co.za. Branding yourself as a company that provides a specific service is very important.

2) But if your company does not have such a strongly branded presence in the market, or if you are offering a product or service that you specifically want to market through the internet without even HAVING a company, then a descriptive name might be a better option (e.g. www.health-products.co.za)

3) Hyphens are easier to read in print, are easier to ‘understand’ by the search engines (remember that a key linking strategy is to have text links contain your targeted keywords. If your domain name is legible to search engines and it is used to link to your site, you score some points since your keywords are already contained in your domain name), and gives you more choice. The negatives about hyphens are that they are difficult for people to hear! You will probably have difficulty in spelling out your domain name over the phone or in conversation when it contains hyphens.

It is also true to say that a name without the hyphens are also seen as being more professional (often the hyphenated name is seen as being a bit johnny-come-lately as well as spammy due to the reasons mentioned above). Search engines are also getting more and more proficient in understanding text that are embedded within domain names (even without the hyphens) and using a hyphenated site purely so that the search engines can understand them is probably not necessary these days.

4) But a good piece of advice is that when you register a domain name is to register as many variants (with hyphens as well as without hyphens) and as many domain extensions (.com, .net, .info, .biz) as you can afford. Registering domain names are really not that expensive and you will be protecting the investment into your company and your website brand. Remember that there are unscrupulous domain squatters (typo squatters) out there that will register variants of your domain name to either try and sell it back to you at a high cost, or to try and capture some of your traffic.

5) It is extremely difficult to come up with a good .com domain name these days. Most good domain names have been taken already. Here is a good resource page that contains a list of language tools that you can use to try and mix and match words or portions of words to come up with a good domain name. http://marcusvorwaller.com/blog/archives/2005/08/09/how-to-find-a-great-domain-name/

6) If you are located in a country other than the United States, always try and register your domain name with your local Top Level Domain extension (e.g. .co.uk, .co.za) since the local version of Google will give preference to names with extensions matching your own country.

7) Always try and register your domain with an independent registrar and NOT with your hosting provider. If you ever want to move your website to another hosting provider, it will just be easier to do it if your domain name registrar is also not your hosting provider. You might find it more difficult to get your website away from a bad hosting provider if they have control over your domain name as well.

Domain name registration and copyright infringement

A very important question arises in the early stages of
development of a web site – what would be the most appropriate
domain name? Domain names are representative of the address for
a web site, and there is a rising trend of incidents of disputes
over domain name registration with increased usage of Internet.

There are numerous factors that have led to a crisis of domain
registration disputes and this, in turn, has led to a rapid
increase in the reported cases of infringement of domain names.
Several companies have taken legal action against other
companies or individuals over alleged copyright violation on the
domain names.

There are some basics that you should understand before choosing
a domain name registration:

1. Use of two similar trademarks should not confuse customers
about the products or services.

2. If there is a legal conflict over use of similar trademarks,
the first user is likely to win the case.

3. The later user would to give up his claim if he cannot proves
his point and may have to pay the first owner damages.

You should apply these principles to your domain registration
selection process:

1. The best method to avoid conflict of trademarks is to search
the trademark database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
at www.uspto.gov. It provides you with all registered and
pending trademarks. Try to search for your proposed trademark as
well as other similar names and variant spellings. 2. You must
be able to justify your reason for using the name. Your domain
registration should principally consist of a name you are using
as a trade name, trademark or corporate name.

3. It is better to select more than one name since you are not
sure about the availability of the required domain name.

If on searching for the desired domain name, you find that the
name has already been registered but there is no content being
displayed at the domain, try to find out the details of the
owner of the domain registration. It is possible that he/she may
be genuine and have yet not published any content.

But it is equally possible that the owner does not plan to
develop a web site and is willing to give you the domain at the
original price. You must confirm that the seller has ownership
rights for that particular domain name registration.

The regulations governing copyright issues for domain names are
governed by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN).

It is very likely that you would lose right of your domain name
registration if you have intentionally chosen a name similar to
another domain name so as to confuse potential visitors to the
site. For example, if your site deals in consumer electronics
goods made by a Samsung competitor, do not choose the name
“samsungbusiness.com” since a court is most likely to pass a
verdict that you selected this name to divert attention of
Samsung customers.

There could be others reasons of losing a domain registration:

1. You have never carried out any business under that name 2.
There is no person in your company similar to that name 3. You
are planning to sell that domain name to your competitor for
financial gain.

If your domain name is same as your name then you may be allowed
to continue to use it, despite of the fact that it is similar to
someone else’s domain name. But the usage of such a name is
governed by certain condition set by court. For example, Mr.
Suki Nokia, who runs a cosmetics business, may be allowed to use
the domain name “nokia.kr” but he would barred from using his
site to demonstrate any electronics-related information or
advertising.

A very useful tip to buy all three of the top level domains -
..com, .net and .org. You should buy all possible misspellings of
your domain name before anybody else takes advantage of this
fact.

If on searching, you find similar names, ask yourself the
following questions:

1. Will the products/services on your site compete with the
products/services on similar domain names?

2. Will your distribution channels for products be same for
products being sold under the similar domain names?

3. Will your site distract business away from the site with the
similar name?

4. Is the other name quite famous?

If you get negative answers to all these questions, you can feel
confident to go ahead with your domain name registration without
any worry of a legal hassle.

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