Covering the Basics About Domain Names
Learn what a registrar is and what some best-practices are regarding domain names.
Cindy: Hello and welcome to E-Marketing Talk Show. Today, August 4th, 2006, we’re going to be learning all we can about domain names, what to do with them, how to buy them, how to sell them and everything you ever wanted to know, so stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
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Todd: Hello and welcome to the E-Marketing Talk Show. I’m Todd Serouhan, I’m here with Cindy Turriatta and today we’re going to be talking about domain names. We have a special guest with us here today and he’s actually CEO of Moniker.com and its Monte Cahn.
Cindy: Cahn.
Todd: Is that right, Monte?
Monte: That is correct.
Todd: Sorry about that.
Monte: [inaudible]
Cindy: [laughs]
Todd: [laughs]
Cindy: I didn’t mean anything by that correlation. I was just trying to think like
Monte: [inaudible] yeah, that’s why I said that.
Todd: So, Monte, correct me if I’m wrong, it started off as DomainSystems.com in 2000 and in 2002 you acquired the name Moniker.com?
Monte: Well, actually, it started out back in 1996 and [inaudible] starts the first online domain brokerage firm for domain names and it was originally called NameShop and then moved to a name called HitDomains and then eventually to DomainSystems through a merger.
Todd: Oh, okay. Cool. And, how long have you been with Moniker.com domain name.
Monte: Uhm, well, I founded DomainSystems back in 1999 and we bought an ICANN accredited registrar, which was called MrDonReg, which was a horrible name. Bought it from a hosting company in Canada because we were a major reseller for five other registrars at the time and decided to find a very unique, professional name for the registrar and renamed that registrar Moniker.com in 2000.
Cindy: And you selected Moniker because there’s some meaning behind that, isn’t there, Monte?
Monte: Yeah. Moniker is means name or nickname; it’s an Irish slang for name. A lot of people in Europe ask what their moniker is when they’re on the street and also a lot of company identities are, you know, monikerized or monikered and so we thought that was a very unique name in our space and everybody else has other types of names for their companies that has the word domain or domain name or other types of names like that, so we tried to eliminate confusion and have something that stands out.
Todd: Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t know it meant anything but now it all makes sense.
Cindy: It does. It totally does and its perfect name for what you do.
Todd: So, I’m sure a lot of our listeners know, but can you just briefly explain what a registrar is?
Cindy: Registrar and a domain name. I mean, you know, there’s IP addresses, domain names . . .
Monte: Right, right. Well, lets start off with a domain name. A domain name is a text name corresponding to a numeric IP address of a computer on the Internet. And, a domain name must be unique and the Internet users can access websites using a domain name. So every domain name has to be unique in order to find the address.
Cindy: And the domain name includes the extension at the end, the .whatever, right?
Monte: That is correct. And what it is, is the domain name is the face of where the address actually is. If you looked at a big grid, wherever those two IP addresses cross, would be where that IP address is or the location of that domain name. So that’s kind of an easy way in layman’s terms to describe what a domain name is.
Cindy: Now, when you say two IP addresses, which two?
Monte: Uhm, well, there’s two separate IP addresses or an IP address is the sign of a domain name but when it lands on a location, it’s mapped by two IP addresses, which is what the DNS (Domain Name Server) then direct that website to a set of IP addresses give it its final location where you can view and download content.
Cindy: Gotcha. Now, anybody who ever wondered why they call it the Web [laughs}, this is exactly why, because it turns into being this one big huge mass of numbers and names and . . .
Monte: . . . [inaudible] big huge mass of numbers crossing IP addresses that map to locations and that’s kind of why it’s the World Wide Web. And a registrar is an organization that’s been accredited or assigned to be able to register these domain names through the central registry and there’s now several registries for each of the extensions that are available today. Back in the old days, in the early ‘90s, there was just one registry, which was Network Solutions or a lot of people like to remember it as InterNick, then it became Network Solutions and they supplied all the .Com, .Net, and .Org addresses for the entire world, including .Mil and .Edu and some of the names that the regular population can’t get. But, then it further evolved into other extensions: Affiliates is a registry that supplies the .Info brand. New Levels supplies the .Biz and .Us brand. And then there’s .Mobi and several other registries and of course there’s all the ccTLDs or the country code domains. So a registrar is the facilitator of mapping those domain names into the central data bases at each one of these registries, so that people are able to see whether a domain name is available and then those particular registrars take care of that customer and make sure that they bring those domain names to life and their identifies to life. And so Moniker is a ICANN accredited registrar for 54 country code extensions and every major TLD that’s available today.
Cindy: Okay. So each country (sorry Todd) [laughs] doesn’t have its own registrar, necessarily.
Monte: Each country doesn’t have its own registrar but each . . . 243 countries have their own registries.
Todd: Meaning . . .?
Monte: Which is the central database that distributes those extensions out to the world public for those domain names.
Todd: So, who owns the actual domain names before they’re purchased?
Monte: Well, every domain name is in the central database, so let’s just talk about .Com and .Net names just to make it easy; but all .Net and .Org names are in a central database that’s run by a company called Verisign right now; they operate the central registry and they work closely with ICANN which is the Incorporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is what the government has assigned to monitor and manage and basically empower the registries and registrars to work together to serve the public community and allow the Internet to actually live.
Todd: So its then government . . . not government run but the government has a say in it.
Monte: The government has some say through ICANN and ICANN is an International organization; however it is based in the United States. The World Wide Web started in the United States through our invention of the Internet, so right now the United States does govern the DNS server and the ICANN operation. However, ICANN is a multi-national facility that operates all the major TLDs and basically is assigned to govern the Internet in general.
Todd: Okay. And does the government get a kick-back on the price of a domain when somebody buys one?
Monte: No, they do not. They don’t get the price, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, however you want to look at it. But right now Verisign gets all the money for domain names that are registered through the central database. And then ICANN gets a tax or a fee for every domain name that’s registered and that helps pay for their budget and their operations.
Cindy: Right.
Monte: So, registrars are actually charged each of those fees and then we have to pass those fees through our registration process to our customers.
Todd: So, who you want to be is Verisign.
Monte: Well, when its all said and done, you want to be a central registry, yeah.
Cindy: [laughs]
Todd: [laughs]
Monte: . . . [inaudible] build an infrastructure and now it doesn’t hardly cost you anything to operate it, really . . .
Todd: Because everybody else does it for you.
Cindy: Now, d . . .
Monte: Now, if you’re a regular registrar and you’re trying to make a living on just selling domain names, it is kind of hard now ‘cause there’s 575 ICANN accredited registrars that all register domain names and everybody kind of looks the same on the service but some of us specialize in other types of things that actually bring value to customers in bringing their identities to life.
Cindy: Right. And we definitely want to get into that a little bit later. But, domain names used to cost, like, 45 bucks a year to register . . .
Monte: Actually, domain names when they first came out were free . . .
Cindy: Oh!
Monte: Back in 1992, 1993, domain names didn’t cost anything. Then they were charged $100 and then they became $70 for two years . . .
Cindy: That’s right . . .
Monte: . . . and then $45 per year. But the actual cost now to registry is $6 to the registry and then there’s about 36 cents that goes to ICANN for taxes and operation fees. So, its basically $6.36 before you even turn your lights on as a registrar for each domain name.
Cindy: Wow. So GoDaddy does domains at like $8.95 or something like that, so they’re not making very much.
Monte: Nope, they’re not making very much at all. GoDaddy is an example of a company that uses the domain name as a kind of a loss leader to bring people into their hosting environment.
Cindy: Right.
Monte: And then you see a lot of companies, even like Yahoo!, who isn’t even a registrar at all, selling domain names for $2.99 to get people onto the Yahoo! network for hosting and also for email. So, lots of people use the . . . lots of companies use the domain name as a loss leader to get into other services and then there’s some registrars like us that actually use the domain name as an asset and help it grow in value and become very valuable for the long term.
Cindy: Right. Now those people that got them free at the very beginning, are they grandfathered?
Monte: They are not grandfathered through the renewal process; they are grandfathered on the initial registration. But, now every domain name has to . . . whatever registrar you’re assigned to, you now have to pay your renewal fees.
Cindy: Gotcha. Gotcha. And . . .
Monte: Whatever registrar that, you know, every registrar charges something different.
Cindy: Gotcha. Now, do people need to get - I know this kind of comes up a lot – do people need to get a .Com extension they’re going to run a business, do you think? Or is .Net and .Biz okay? If they’re domain . . . the words they want to use in their domain are taken, you know, do they go a different avenue or do they go ahead and try dashes or underscores or something like that?
Todd: And there’s even the .Info and .Tv and some of those country ones are actually sold out, right?
Monte: Well, first of all, underscores do not work with domain names, but dashes do.
Cindy: Okay.
Monte: Dashes are not the preferred method to try to register a domain name in due to the fact that most people don’t type a dash in when they’re naturally typing in your domain name into an address bar. So, what happens is that if you have dash in your domain name, you really have to make sure people know there’s a dash there or they’ll by nature type in the full name without the dash. So that’s not recommended to really brand yourself with a dash unless you have no other option and you can really do a good job with branding yourself that way with your customer base. Dashes do have some meaning and some value, however, when you’re using it as other supplement domain names that leave your website. They actually work as search engine-friendly domain names because the dash actually separates the key words in a domain name, so you could have two different words, like “auto-sales” and you can search on . . . in a search engine, both auto and sales comes up as a preferable, searchable term inside your domain name.
Todd: You know, I’ve seen it in a recent, ah, what am I trying to say? Recently, I’ve seen, even if you don’t have dashes, the search engines kind of figure it out, I think, because . . .
Monte: Yeah, well, if you don’t have dashes the search engines figure it out if you’re seated in the search engines or if you have good content in your site. There’s other ways to get placed in the search engine. Or of course, if you buy key words, you’ll be seated in the search engines. Now, if you can’t find a name in a .Com address and most of the good .Com addresses have been and are gone, if you’re looking for short, descriptive domain names. However, there’s a limit of 64 characters that you can have in a domain name and now people are extending that boundary quite a bit because they’re getting a lot more descriptive for their domain names and for their brands than they were in the past. So, something related to auto-sales, for instance, is now people are, instead of getting the domain name auto sales, they’re getting NewJerseyAutoSales.com, which is a much longer descriptive domain name but its being more directed to their business and the type of business that they’re doing.
Todd: It looks like domain names are getting harder and harder to find, so I mean, I think that’s the next logical step.
Cindy: Yeah. 64 characters . . .!
Monte: And you can get domain names in the aftermarket, which is something that we specialize in, where you go out and acquire a domain name that someone else owns that may not being used or not using in the way that you want to use it, so you can pay, just like you would buy a piece of property and pay a little bit of a premium to get those domain names. And, also, you can go with other extensions that you mentioned earlier.
Cindy: Right.
Monte: Other extensions such as .Biz and .Info and .Us and you can get into the country codes and all kinds of other extensions, depending on what your business model is.
Cindy: Let’s pick up with that in the next segment, ‘cause we got to take a quick break. You’re listening to E-Marketing Talk Show with Monte Cahn today, and we’ll be right back.
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