With domain tasting nearly dead, there seems to be a lot of opportunities today to register some decent new domain names as the tasters aren’t keeping everything. In the past several months, this hasn’t really been the case. I’d find decent names, but not really at the volume as I am now. Perhaps this has to do with people trimming down their portfolios and not renewing domain names, but whatever the case is, there seems to be more good unregistered names than before.

When you search for domain names to register by hand, always keep in mind two questions:

How can this be used commercially?
Would a person or a company legitimately spend hundreds or thousands of dollars building a website on this domain name?

If the answer to either one of these questions is “no” I recommend not registering it. I will use two recent registrations I made as examples:

1) Fireproofers.com – Although this isn’t a commonly used term, there are a considerable number of companies in the fireproofing business. They are paid to make sure newly constructed buildings are built with fireproof materials. It’s not a huge industry, but it is lucrative. Individually, each company/person is a fireproofers, and collectively they are fireproofers. This could be used as an industry site.

CigarEnthusiasts.com. I could easily see a cigar lover buying this name and building a cigar directory site. I wouldn’t sell it for thousands of dollars because nobody would pay that, but for a few hundred dollars, a person could buy a meaning full name that has cache.

There are tons of names like these out there available to register for under $10/each that can be flipped for a tidy profit. In a difficult market, it’s tough to acquire $5,000 domain names and hope to flip them. It’s much easier to buy a $7 name and sell it for $30 – $500 though.