New to Domains? Baffled by all the terminology? Look no further...

We've compiled some of the most frequently used terms that you may find helpful as new members of the domain investment community.

Domain: A web address. Also known as a URL

Domain parking/Domain Monetisation: domain owners can use domain parking to lease out online real estate to advertisers by using a landing page.  These pages contain highly targeted advertising and the domain owner earns a commission from the advertiser for every visitor conversion. This is a form of PPC advertising.

Domain Investor: a domain owner who invests in generic, dictionary-term URLs and builds up a domain portfolio to resell or “park”, with the purpose of achieving a ROI.  This is comparable to a property investor building a portfolio of property and securing a return with a combination of resale and leasing.  Domain investors are NOT cyber squatters.  Domain investors channel funds into acquiring generic names that depend on type-in traffic. Also known as a “domainer”.

Cyber squatter: A cyber squatter is someone who registers a name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.  They “squat” on the name, often with the aim of selling to the rights holder at an inflated price. This word is sometimes mistakenly and incorrectly applied to domain investors.

“Domaining”: the business of acquiring and monetising Internet domain names for their use as an advertising medium. Also known as domain investing.

PPC: ‘Pay per Click’ - a way to monetise traffic.  Refers to the “per click” commission that domain parking clients earn via a domain parking company for using a parking page on their domain name
An average domain portfolio of 500 names can earn about $2 per name per month – resulting in $1000 per month in advertising revenue for the domain owner.  This income forms part of his/her ROI strategy as it covers overheads (e.g. Domain renewal fees, domain management and optimization, etc.) and is supplemented by selling a % of the portfolio on regularly.

Domain secondary market (also: Domain aftermarket): A market where people trade in registered domain names.  Participants in the secondary market include domain investors (domain owners) and potential buyers, made up of domain investment professionals, branding agencies, companies looking for a domain for a new ad campaign and new businesses seeking the ideal name for their online presence.

Domain primary market: domain names that have not previously been owned by anyone else, and are available to register at a registrar

Registry: the responsible person or entity for providing services such as customer database administration, zone file publication, DNS operation, marketing and policy determination.  The registry for .uk domain names is Nominet (www.nominet.org.uk)

Registrar: The Company that has a direct relationship with the domain name registries and is authorised to sell domain names to Registrants.  This distribution platform for available-to-register domains is known as the primary domain market.

Domain Auctions: public sales in which domain names are sold to the highest bidder. 

WHOIS: A simple request/response information retrieval protocol. Its most common use is to retrieve contact information for domain owners.  An example is www.whois-search.com

Domain tasting: the practice of a domain name registrant using the five-day ‘grace period’ to test the marketability of the domain

Web hosting: A type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organisations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web.  Web hosting services are provided by many registrars. 

TLD: top level domain - the last part of a domain name, such as .com and .net

ccTLD: country code top level domain - e.g. .uk,

gTLD: generic top level domains – eg. .com

sTLD: a TLD that has a sponsor representing a specific community that is served by the TLD. The sponsor thus carries out delegated policy-formulation responsibilities over many matters concerning the TLD.  E.g. .mobi

IP law: Intellectual propertylaw applies to creations of the mind such as names, images, and designs. This includes copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights

Generic domain names: domain names that describe a geographical area, a generic product or service or a dictionary word. e.g. www.groceries.co.uk and www.trainers.co.uk.

Type in Traffic: Visitors landing at a web site by entering a word or phrase directly in the browser and adding .com or any other gTLD or ccTLD extension.  

Direct navigation: Method of arriving at a website without using a search engine, rather by typing the address directly into the address bar.

SEO: Search engine optimisation – the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via ‘natural’ (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results for targeted keywords

Domain Acquisition: Buying a domain from the secondary market.