While doing research on the Internet for things that looked interesting and had some moneymaking potential I stumbled across a website dedicated to domain names. There are many, but that particular site had loads of articles and helpful hints. One of the articles caught my attention when it mentioned dictionary domain names.

I immediately started thinking …yes; maybe I could register some valuable dictionary domains and somehow make money from them. That potential bubble was quickly burst when virtually everything I could find about domain names indicated all the good names had been registered. It seemed to be true. I spent hours thinking up names, then checking, only to find they had already been registered.

Now, true to all I'd read, I was only attempting to come up with .com domain names since by now I too had come to believe the best chance of making money from domain names was to own names with the much more popular .com extension. There are, however, significant exceptions but that will not concern us here.

After my initial failure to find decent domain names… almost all the first two hundred names I thought were good were already taken, I decided maybe I should take a different approach. I had read several articles indicating dictionary domain names had intrinsic value compared to non-dictionary URL's. I agree, however it still is not easy to sell a dictionary domain name, or any domain name for that matter, in my experience. Even more so, it seemed like all the single word dictionary names were already registered, adding to my dismay in trying to find good names to register.

It now became a challenge to find unregistered dictionary domain names, with the dot com extension. I vowed to find some, no matter what. Being a researcher at heart, but not totally sold on pure Internet research, I decided to straddle the fence. I would think up words and write them down on paper, then check them out on a popular Internet website for correct spelling, then check with a registrar to see if they were available to register. It was rare to find any single word domain name that was not already taken. Exceptions were very long undesirable words.

Ok I thought, back to my college days. I got one of my original college dictionaries, now some decades old, and started looking up words. I started with the letter Z since I figured there are fewer and less common words beginning with that letter. Knowing it would be unlikely to be able to register any word I already was familiar with I quickly scanned for unknown (words I did not know) words. Bingo! Almost immediately, when I entered the word zebeck.com to register it I was shocked to find it available to register. I double-checked the spelling and the definition. When I was sure there was no mistake I registered it.

After the initial shock of actually finding a dictionary word I could register I made it a goal to spend several nights a week for a month or more to try to find new words. I tried the F's and almost immediately found floccule. Looked up T's and found thulia. To make matters interesting I found javary, kamacite, togate and others in my dictionary, but they did not show up in the dictionary on the Internet. Double-checking for correctness, I verified they were indeed true dictionary words and proceeded to register the .com version of them.

In the process of using my old dictionary I noticed many alternate versions of common words. Some I registered, such as tythe (usual spelling is tithe), some I did not. You will also find words not in one well-known dictionary but in another popular dictionary. The word may or may not be in the Internet dictionary(s). I haven't used the dictionary (a real printed dictionary) so frequently since I finished college. Because of it my vocabulary has just expanded by probably a thousand or more words.

As it turned out I was able to register many dictionary domains using this method. Almost every sitting I was able to find one or more words to register as a .com address. These were all single word dictionary words. I usually spent from one-half hour to once almost three hours at night, each time I checked my trusty old dictionary. My goal was to find at least one word to register. I think I only failed to do that once in many sittings (actually I laid in bed most of the time). Now, as you can imagine, each time I registered a name I felt good knowing I was the owner of a domain name that had a real meaning. It was a single word domain at that. Later I decided to find and register hyphened dictionary words such as scrub-up, jury-rig, two-cycle, puff-ball and others.

Lately I have been too busy to use this method. I have, however, developed an effective shortcut or two. Try these if you want dictionary words without spending too much time searching for them:

1) When reading books, magazines, web pages, watching television, etc. take note of any new or uncommon words. Check to see if any are available to register. I registered UIIR (urotensin II receptor), an acronym, and futzed using this method.

2) Subscribe to a domain name service (contact me for a recommendation) and look to see dictionary domains that have very recently expired or are expiring within the next few days. You can find names still available to register but you have to act fast because most decent names usually get snapped up quickly.

3) You can sign-up with many registrars to get expiring dictionary domains, for a price. However, now I believe there is an auction on them if more than one person applies for the same name. Using this method I was able to get yolky and waeg dot com names by paying less than $70 each.

Each of the above three methods have yielded good results for me whenever I used them; resulting in dictionary domain names I never would have thought were available. Words such as stellary, sexological, chinless, radishs, and shrilly, although not so common, were easily registered.

As to the value of over 75 dictionary names I have registered using the above three methods there is some uncertainty as to what they are worth. This is an unanswerable question until they are sold or otherwise used. A future article will detail some of my research to see what potential value lies in these dictionary domain names.