Letting domains expire could be a major security risk...are you one of them?

[Kurt]

All very true Kurt. I used to be what I call a 'Xreme Domainer. To me, the most important aspect of Domaining is what I call 'Xtreme Domain Research' wherein a Domainer conducts research throughly and after the research is complete is making an educated determination of the domain's value.

The bottom line is the value is what another person will pay for the domain. The value can be upscaled with good sales copy to the right target market.

For sure. Domains are really a great product for IMers to consider and now looks to be a good time to be a buyer of domain names. As a product they can be flipped, bundled or developed.

Things I look for in a domain name:

Traffic, links - This is where you need to do some serious research but there are domain names that become available all the time that already have links and/or traffic.

Keyword based exact match - Need to be very picky.

Vanity/Best - Sometimes these sell well..."BestDenverFlorist.com". These are often good to offer as part of a bundle with a more valuable keyword based domain name. Vanity domains are also good for developing and ranking to rent/sell. Having "BestDenverFlorist.com" rank high in Google is a valuable asset.

Short - This is important, especially for off-line like business cards, billboards, TV, pull tabs, etc. where people will type in your domain name.

A real word you can find in the dictionary -

Brandable - A short (7 letters or less) pronounable unique "word" like Google.com or Pheeds.com.   I've actually made the most money selling these types of domains.

There is software that looks for many of these domain names and checks for things like links and authority and serious SEOers are running them 24/7 on multiple servers. Then they check the results manually to make sure things are what they seem. There are still a lot of nuggets that can be found...you just need to be careful and check the results.

In the past there were between 70,000 and 100,000 newly expired domains on a given day. I wonder if we'll see an increase and how much of an increase there is?

Jeffery...are you thinking about getting into domaining a bit again due to the circumstances?