Once a domain expires one of two things will happen. Firstly the domain will expire and become available to register as a domain name through the normal registration process. If the domain has any value then it is likely to be picked up by a name drop registrar.

Before we go deeper into the world of dropped names you may want to know what an expired domain name is and how you go about getting hold of an expired domain name.

You may have noticed that your registrar offers a back ordering service. A Back order service allows you to pay your domain registrar to try and acquire a specific domain name once it expires.

There are drop registrars whose sole purpose is to try and register a domain name once it has dropped. These expired domain name catchers work on behalf of individuals and other domain registrars to acquire domain names on their behalf.

Expired domains are a big business as webmasters and large corporations try to grab as many valuable domains as they drop. The reason for this virtual land grab is that many domain names can fetch high resale prices on the open market or have valuable existing traffic or type in traffic potential.

Author Allan Burns at NameSearchDomain.com.

This is of quite an interest while you are selling a domain. It’s unlikely that anyone in the African sub continent would buy a .co.uk domain unless he has a very good reason to. And this makes the value of the domain quite low as you would guess that most search engines would rank the domain lower for people searching in Japan. You would hardly see a .co.uk domain while you are searching something on Google from Japan. This is because almost always people in Japan use google.co.jp. And google.co.jp would give first preference to .com and .co.jp sites. Simply stating, all TLD except the global ones are sold at a lesser price than their counterpart.

.com Domains are the most valued followed by

.edu

.net

.org

.co.uk, .us, .co.in, .co.jp etc

.biz & .info

Though the value for an .edu site is more as compared to the .net and .org, you would be amazed that the .net and .org sites sell faster than the .edu site.

Choosing your TLD is very important if you intend to sell the domain. You should always know the value of the domain name and trend of the business the domain is intended to sell. For instance, you cannot sell a benzautoparts.co.za to someone in UK and you would find very few buyers in the South Africa who will buy the domain too. On the other hand benzautoparts.co.uk would be a better option as you know there will be someone in the UK who may buy the domain from you for a good price.

SO… to wind it up, get to know your TLD well and also give the best preference to your .com domains. It’s worth every penny you spend.

Author Rajiv Sahadevan runs PowerScribe.com.

Firstly, congratulations for reading this article. This shows that you actually care about your online business and you want to improve your life. The question is…why should you choose your own domain rather than use someone else’s? Here are 3 reasons why:

1. Having your own domain name is more professional, and it looks better than using a subdomain. (www.subdomain.domain.com) If you are serious about having a long term presence on the internet it is better to have your own domain name. (www.domain.com) Plus, having your own domain is easier to memorize. You should choose something simple, yet descriptive enough for customers to know what your site is about just by looking at your web address.

2. It is cheaper to order domain names in bundles.

If you have a web hosting company, they should be able to let you order domain names at a discount, and sometimes for free. To pay a small monthly fee to keep your own domain name is a worthy tradeoff, and you get to keep your domain name for 10 years. After 10 years, you can choose to renew it or buy a new domain name.

3. You have more control over your domain name. If you are using someone else’s domain through free web hosting, you have little or no control over your domain name. If their servers are down, you are pretty much screwed, and you can’t do anything but wait for the servers to go back up. You have no choice but to follow your web hosting company’s policies and procedures, and you have no say in the decision making.

Author Ben Louie runs WebHostMaster.org.