Domains 101

Alright, let's get to work.

A domain is a collection of english letters that describes a specific address on the internet. The average person tends to think of these letters or words as websites, but technically speaking, a domain name like "domaintreasuremap.com" represents the english version of a specific address on the internet - much like your street address describes the location of your property. There may or may not be an active website at this address - just like you may have bought vacant property before you built a house on the property.

A domain name includes two parts; the unique letters before the period, and the "tld" (top level domain) letters after the period. There are hundreds of tld's, the most common one being ".com". Tld's that are a distant second in popularity include ".net", ".org", ".info", ".biz", and ".name". In addition, there are all of the country code tld's (commonly referred to as "cctld"), one for each country in the world. For example, ".ca" is the cctld for Canada, ".in" for India, ".eu" for Europe, etc..

There is only 1 unique domain name for every piece of property on the internet. Additional domain names may be "forwarded" to the same piece of property if the owner desires, but we'll get to this topic later.

Due to the existence of so many different tld's, there can be a large number of unique domain names using the very same words before the period. In other words, "domaintreasuremap.com" is a different domain than "domaintreasuremap.info". Each one is registered separately, and can be owned by different people. This can present obvious problems, especially if this group of letters or words represents an existing business with a recognized brand.

As a domain investor you will need to consider which tld's you value higher when looking for specific domain names. In many cases, domain names with the most common tld's will be valued higher. In other cases, a particular domain name will be registered with a specific country code tld for example, but some of the more common tld's for that name may still be available.

The domain landscape is continually evolving, and there is considerable discussion about the value of the various tld's. In general terms, .com domains are currently valued at approximately 10x the value of .net and .org, and all other tld's are valued significantly lower still. However, there are exceptions, especially when dealing with cctld's.