In the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective visitor has no way of knowing what your site is all about until he/she finds it and reads its contents. Who can ever tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search engine?

 Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space.

The need to provide immediate clues to an online business led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names instantly provide the user with an idea of what a business is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. For instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.

The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful; that some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1 million.

However, generic names do not necessarily create the "buzz" that you'd like surrounding your website. Branding has always been about proper names: McDonald's did not name their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not Photographs. Microsoft is not Computer Software.

For better branding results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips when creating a domain name.

 * The domain name should be short

* The domain name should be simple

* It should be suggestive of your business category

* It should be unique

* It should be easy to interpret and pronounce

* It should be personalized

* It should not be difficult to spell

* It should not be difficult to remember

Domain names can be registered through many different companies (known as 'registrars') - a listing of these companies is available at ICANN:. You can register for 1 to 10 years - prices can vary anywhere from $10 to $20 per year.

Most web hosting companies, as explained later, will handle the registration process for you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not renewed in time.

 Using expired domains to skyrocket your traffic

At some point while you're building your website, you're going to have to buy a domain name. This is the address that users type into their browsers to reach your site. That takes about five seconds, and depending on the name you want and whether anyone else owns it, it won't cost you more than a few bucks.

But domain names are also a golden opportunity to make some easy money.

 I'm not talking about Internet real estate, where you buy up good names and sell them on for a profit--if you haven't got into that now, forget it. The bottom's fallen out of the market and the best domains are long gone. I'm talking about expiring domains.

Thousands of webmasters invest time, effort and money to promote their site and build up traffic. Many of them then lose interest and move on, leaving their site active. That means that although they still own the domain, they're not actively promoting it. But they don't need to. All the automatic marketing systems they've put in place are still bringing in traffic. The site runs itself.

Now, at some point the ownership of those domains is going to expire. If you snap up those domains once they come back onto the market, you've got a pre-built stream of customers. You can either rebuild the site or redirect the traffic to your domain. You could set up an affiliate program get paid for users someone else paid for.

It's that easy.

There are tons of options, and lots of easy ways to make lots of money with very little effort. Opportunities like these are everywhere.

Websites such as FreshDrop.com or Majestic.com actually do all the legwork and let you reap all the rewards. Expired Traffic even has an affiliate program and snapnames.com allows you to back-order a specific domain name.

Do be careful when using other sites though. There are some swindlers out there that will sell you subscriptions, provide you with outdated lists, take your money and keep the good domains for themselves. It happens, and there's little point in taking a risk when DomCop.com does such a great job.