Joining the Domain-A-Holics Club?

Ok. So I admit it. I don’t know if such a thing even exists, but my friends often tease me about being a card-carrying member of the Domain-A-Holics Club!

I actually own less than 300 domain names and I don’t think I own that many. I have one client with more than 700 domains, and another with more than 1,000 domain names. And, I know there are a lot of others in the Internet business world in the same boat!

When I talk about this with my clients and peers, I am often asked why I collect domains like some people collect stamps.

Now, the first thing I have to tell you is that the actual number of domains I own is constantly changing as I purchase new ones and let old ones expire. Recently I let so many expire at one time that my registrar actually called me with a real person on the other end to make sure it was on purpose!

Managing domains for me, and for many others, is like a game. Whenever I get a great idea, I register the domain name for one year. Especially if I have a great idea for a really good domain name. When the year is up, if I haven’t used it and I no longer plan to, I let the domain expire.

With that said, there are some instances where collecting domain names is a very smart decision for strategic brand marketing. You should own:

• The variations of and misspellings of your name and your business name
• Geo specific domain names for local search
• Product specific or service specific domain names
• Newsletter or book name variations and misspellings
• Competitive domain names

Once you have several domain names, it is important to put the domains to use for you. You can do this by:

• Forwarding appropriate domains to pages on your website and using them to drive traffic to the page
• Hosting very targeted, content specific landing pages and sales pages
• Hosting squeeze pages to access audio recordings, free reports, ebooks, and more

QUICK TIP: Practice defensive brand management by registering domains you do not want your competitors to use!