To try and understand a domain in terms of its technical properties is to understand only half of what it really is. In order to appreciate the benefits of owning a domain, you have to dissect its economic advantages to comprehend why anyone doing business on the Internet, must sooner or later, have their own domain.
Therefore, aside from giving you the short textbook definition of what a domain is, we will use the following pages to explore the financial opportunities intrinsic to owning a domain. In the process, we will try to answer questions like: What do I really own if I own a domain? What opportunities are available to me? Can my domain really make money for me?
DIFIFERENT KINDS OF DOMAINS The Internet is made up of (or shared by) different types of domains, each of them identified by the three-letter code that follows the domain name:
.com Commercial (Business & Industry) .edu Education Institutions .gov Government (Non-military)
.mil Military and Defense (Military Research, Etc.) .orgOrganizations (Non-profit operations) .net Network (Service networks)
For obvious reasons, we will limit our discussions to commercial domains, which by themselves are diverse in format, structure and purpose. To illustrate this quickly, here are three different commercial domains, with different formats, structures, and purposes.
www.lycos.com This domain serves as a search engine. Its purpose is to help web users locate specific files or topics anywhere on the web. It is supported through grants and a small amount of corporate sponsorship.
www.toyota.com This domain serves as an advertising site for Toyota. Its purpose is to promote its products and services to people who use the web. The cost for maintaining this domain is financed by Toyota, as a public relations and advertising expense.
www.adpages.com This domain serves as a public advertising venue. Its purpose is to provide a medium wherein small businesses can place their corporate and product advertising on the Web. It is financed 100% by advertising fees by these small businesses.
Some domains are designed for profit. Others serve as a PR or a customer-service tool. Some domains are successful because they are artsy; some are successful because they are practical. Some domains are already profitable, while some expect to become profitable soon.
THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM (DNS)
A domain is the highest form of address on the World Wide Web. The reason is primarily the direct result of what is called first-position addressing. To illustrate what first-position addressing means, here is a comparison between a Domain address and a Website address.
Let us say that you own a company named, MYBIZNES , and you want to use this name as your domain name. This is how your address would look ...
http://www.mybiznes.com
If you don't want to have your own domain, you can rent website space on someone else's domain. Let us say you rented a website space from Brandel's ADPAGES.COM domain. Your address would be ...
http://www.adpages.com/mybiznes
Originally, computers connected to the Internet were identified only by their IP numeric addresses. For example, the numeric address of ADPAGES.COM is 204.91.84.76. Using IP numeric addresses can be confusing and difficult to remember. As a solution, a text-based addressing system was developed, called the Domain Name System (DNS).
The DNS system takes care of translating domain names into IP numeric addresses. When YOU type on your web browser the address "http://www.adpages.com", the DNS system knows that you are actually trying to call "http://204.91.84.76".
A VARIETY OF METAPHORS For people who consider the World Wide Web in terms of electronic real estate, a domain is considered a commercial building and a website is compared to an office space or a store within that building. Likewise, domains have been packaged in a variety of metaphors, such as virtual malls and electronic shopping centers.
What you do with your domain is entirely up to you. For example: If you already have an existing business and you are already successfully marketing your products through conventional distribution channels, you can use your domain two ways:
- (1) To promote and sell your existing product on the Web, and
- (2) Encourage other businesses to place advertising within your domain, giving you two sources of revenue fromyour domain.
In the same manner that you can build any type of building on a piece of real estate (a mini mall, a movie house, an office building, a hospital, a car dealership, etc.), you can design your domain to be anything you want, depending on your skills and your business objectives. You can build your domain as a search engine, as a technical showcase, as an online magazine, a catalog, a 24-hour customer service bulletin board, an automated order taking service, a package tracking service, an advertising placement service, etc. Since the Internet market is extensive and varied, the ideas and the opportunities of what you can do with your domain are limited only by your imagination.
In this report, we are going to explore your options for establishing a cost-effective Internet business presence, and building your own power domain.
TURNKEY OR DO-IT-YOURSELF DOMAINS You can design your domain from scratch and maintain its day-to-day operations. Or you can buy a pre-designed domain, with an existing business structure already built-in to it. In this report, you will see the advantages and disadvantages of both.
This report will also discuss domain management strategies that can guide you in creating your own domain, using your ideas and doing it on your own, regardless of your technical expertise. The web has an abundance of talent, extremely capable of providing you technical services in areas where you may need assistance. (For example, we at Brandel farm out some of the work that comes to our shop. Aside from our in-house staff, we also use the services of a virtual staff of HTML typesetters, programmers and designers from all over.)
IS THERE A FUTURE FOR DOMAINS? We at Brandel believe that "domains" are the future of the World Wide Web. For instance, a March 11, 1996 Time Magazine article outlines AT&T's introduction of its new Worldnet Access service. At first glance, the news of AT&T's entry into the already overcrowded access-provider business may appear like it was no news at all. After all, this is one rumor a lot of Internet watchers were anticipating to happen. In short, it was inevitable.
What is most amazing, though, is AT&T's rate structure. AT&T announced that it would offer its regular residential telephone customers - all 80 million of them - five hours of Internet access each month - FOR FREE.
In a single stroke of its marketing wand, AT&T will deliver the Internet to 80 million people. And a price that the market can't say "no" to. This will simply speed up the growth of the World Wide Web. As a domain owner, this means that the World Wide Web will eventually become ubiquitous, and its use as a vehicle for mass information will be commonplace.
OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS This report covers key topics sufficient to give you a well-rounded glimpse at domains, as well as your opportunities and responsibilities as a domain owner. What we will not cover in this report are the technical aspects of creating a domain. That's the job of a programming book, which this is not. Instead, we will cover management and marketing issues by which you can chart the direction of your domain. Remember, creating a domain on the World Wide Web is a complex process that requires careful navigation through ever-changing, intertwining technical, financial and management issues.
Whether you want to build your domain on your own, or decide to purchase a turnkey Power Domain package, the opportunities domain ownership brings remain the same. The race is on for virtual commerce on the Internet. Having your own domain is your hot ticket to this new economic bonanza.
Good luck.
Next Article : DO-IT-YOURSELF DOMAIN
BUILDING FROM SCRATCH WITH YOUR IDEAS
