As with traditional advertising, domaineering is considered part art and part science. Often to be the most effective as an advertising tool, the domain names and their corresponding landing pages must be engineered or optimized to produce maximum revenue which may require considerable skill and keen knowledge of search engine optimization ( SEO ) practices, marketing psychology and an understanding of the target market audience, including demographics and buying habits. Creative use of color and landing or webpage design graphics may also be involved. Domaineering generally utilizes firms offering domain parking services as advertising aggregators to provide the sponsored “ad feed” of a word or phrase searched for thus creating a mini-directory populated largely by advertisers paying to promote their products and services under a relevant generic keyword domain. Occasionally content is added to develop a functional mini-website.

The new breed of online marketers who are in the business of domaineering are referred to as “domaineers”. Ethical domaineers contend that their product, i.e., “domain advertising”, is a bona fide offering of goods or services in and of itself which provides rights to and legitimate interests in the generic keyword domains they use. This serves as a rebuttal or defense in addressing occasional spurious accusations of cybersquatting particularly on famous or registered trademarks. Cybersquatting can be illegal and is to be avoided! Domaineers and others who advertise online using generic keyword domains believe domaineering provides a useful, legal and legitimate Internet marketing service while opponents of domaineering decry the practice as increasing the ubiquitous commercialization of the world wide web. Those same opponents suggest that a better use would be for one firm to develop a website for it’s products using a relevant generic keyword domain pointed at or as it’s url oddly for the same commercial purposes they cite the domaineer using it for, i.e., advertising. However, having one firm control a industry relevant generic keyword domain in this way to exclusively market it’s own products under could be viewed as a significant barrier to entry by denying potential or actual competitors the same advantage to penetrate a new market, maintain or increase market share. Domaineers instead can offer their generic keyword domains to several or more firms to advertise under thus promoting healthy competition and making markets more elastic than they otherwise might be which usually is of benefit to consumers.

Domaineering aka “domain advertising” is practiced by both large organizations which may have registered hundreds or even thousands of domains, ( example: toothpaste.com ), to individual entrepreneurial minded domaineers who may only own one or a few. Initially occupying only an e-marketing niche, it has now become a widespread practice as domain advertising becomes better understood. If fact, any business or non-commercial entity that incorporates the generic name for the product or service it purveys as or in it’s website’s address / url for the purpose of attracting customers who are searching the Internet for said product or service is engaging in domaineering to some degree! That’s because of the tremendous advertising power inherent in certain generic keyword / keyterm domain names which can be harnessed and put to work through domaineering. The identification and defining of domaineering as a distinct Internet advertising practice is attributed to Canadian Professor William Lorenz’s pioneering work on evolving trends in ecommerce marketing.

Some of the usual steps involved in how to do domaineering:

1) Open an account an at a domain registration company. Shop around for the best deals.

2) Open an account at a domain parking company. Tip: Consider opening several accounts because some domain parking companies do better with certain domain names than do others.

3) Think of a word or phrase to register as a domain name. The more generic the better and TLDs do matter.

4) Check the trademark registries to see that the word or phrase is not a registered trademark. Consider obtaining professional legal advice about this as it can be tricky.

5) Register your word or phrase as a domain only if you are certain it is not infringing on a trademark.

6) “Park” your domain with your domain parking company of choice.

7) Where you registered your domain, point your domain’s dns to the domain parking company.

Customize the landing page for your domain at the domain parking company if necessary.

9) You are now ready to collect PPC advertising revenue.

Want to know more? Start by viewing the various domaineering, domaining and domain parking websites or blogs for more tips.