http://www.insurancequotes.co.uk is a great buy.

Good luck!

1. When searching for domains, 99% of the ones that are taken are just parked. In time these often don’t get renewed and become available. Sites come and go, people get bored. Who knows, maybe undeveloped sites will be forced back into the market with your reg fee returned.

2. Google is constantly revising its algorithms. It seems very possible that they won’t assign so much value to the domain in the future as they get more sophisticated. I mean we’ve all seen rubbish sites that rank well just because of their name. If Google is trying to deliver great results then surely this is something they will “solve” eventually. The first search engine that actually picks out the best sites is on to a winner and Im sure Google will want to be that engine! New startup sites will have to use creative names and if Google doesn’t rank them then people will lose trust in their search engine.

3. Again, on the lines of thinking ahead, the internet is bound to change massively in the next 10 years. Why wouldn’t it? Why would we want to constrain ourselves to a limited set of names. This is a solvable problem and although those with a vested interest will campaign to keep the status quo (ie those with keyword .com domains) sooner or later this will change. It has to. And there is no reason it can’t. The obvious solution is the expansion of TLDs. Again it is tempting to think Google will always value .coms but only until enterprising people start using other TLDs to host great sites and other search engines return these new resources accurately. We all know how quickly Google appeared and I think if they chose not to rank new TLDs they’d quickly disappear! When the time is right Google will adapt. They have to.

Like I say, I have a few domains myself and wouldn’t want them to turn out to be “worthless” but there is no doubt in my mind the internet we know today will be massively different from the one we know tomorrow. Even slow moving industries turn around in 10 years, the Internet will have shifted through several paradigms by then – don’t fight it – or get left behind!

John Essex’s last blog post..Permitted Development Regulations Update

Unfortunately for me, having to work overseas during the week for 12-14hrs a day means that my research time is really limited, as a result I end up looking at domains owned by domainers who seem to ask for huge money for even average names.

Mikael’s last blog post..Hvorfor du ikke skal sprede dig over mange nicher

I take on board your point about buying one really good domain and really focussing on developing that, in light of this, I’d really like to know your current thinking on the whole minisite thing, particularly for us newbies who are still learning the ropes? Rightly, you are focussing on much bigger projects now, but do you still think there is some value in developing small minisites on lower quality domains or do you think everyone should focus on something larger? Is it still possible to make some income from small sites such as phraseoftheday?

Cheers Rich

Justin Cook’s last blog post..What is Google’s new SearchWiki?