When you develop a new Web site, you’re starting from scratch. The site can take months to get indexed by the search engines, and acquiring links is time-consuming and expensive. Although it’s great to have a blank slate to work with, a new site needs intensive marketing work before you start getting traffic.

Therefore, clever Web developers kickstart a new site with an old one — or at least the Web URL of an old site. They buy an expired domain and hitch the new site to it. Bingo, instant traffic.

If you haven’t heard the term “expired domain” it’s a domain which the owner has failed to reregister, for whatever reason. Hundreds of thousands of domain names are registered every day; millions are registered, and bought and sold every month. But when you “buy” a domain name, you’re not buying it – you’re registering it (leasing it) for a set period: a year, two years, ten years.

If you’re VERY lucky, you can snap up an expired domain the instant it expires, but if you really want a name, it’s best to register with a company called a “drop catcher”. These companies have software which “catches” an expired domain for you the instant it expires. There are three major domain catching companies. It’s best to register for all three if you really want a particular domain: Snapnames.com, Enom.com, and Pool.com aim to be the first to grab an expired domain.

DomainInformer gets you up to speed on domain names.

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