Today I received a $50 domain inquiry for a top 3 word .com.

I’ll take a few moments to share a few thoughts for domain buyers and sellers.

I’ve received a few offers on this same domain over the last year, so I knew that I was not going to rollover and blindly accept this offer without doing a little research.

Just based on the previous domain inquiries and offers, the lowest price I was willing to accept was $25K.

As I do with every domain and right from the start, I also checked to see if the other domain extensions where registered, available, or developed.

And to my surprise and advantage as a seller, all other domain extensions were registered and a few had fully developed websites belonging to thriving businesses.

So I did what anyone should do, which is performing a few business searches to be sure that those businesses were legit.

Like most domainers, I’ve been watching and reading about the new gTLDs, also known as general top-level domain names or new domain extensions, for over a year now, following TheDomains.com, Rick Schwartz, Morgan Linton, and other domainers.

I’ve also followed GoDaddy’s new extensions promotion as well as 1And1.com’s new gTLD promotional commercial.

1And1.com created a great commercial that was well positioned, but what a waste of time and money in my opinion.

To think that 1And1.com wasted nearly 50 million dollars in one-time new gTLD advertising just baffles me to no end.

And for the record, I’ve not seen that same 1And1.com commercial advertising for new gTLDS since my post.

But I digress.

Personally, I’ve taken the stance that domain names, especially premium and super-premium keyword domain names, using new gTLDs are not going to be as successful as .com domain names.

Let the latest Internet fun begin: Here’s to the latest land grab of new internet domains!

There has been much talk and hype centered on how the new internet domains, technically known as generic top-level domains (gTLDs), will impact the current 22 domains that have been known by most since the mid 90’s.  

Afterall, internet users have become quite accustom to typing .com on the end of everything as it relates to the Internet.

Most people that know anything about domains question whether the new internet domains will cause .com to lose or gain in its luster, value and dominance.

From the existing .com to .net to .org to .me domains and on, the latest batch of new internet domains to be rolled out is somewhere near 1400 hundred new .whatevers.

I say or reference the new internet domains as .whatevers, because there will be a wide range of options for individuals, professionals and businesses entering into the internet space going forward.

No longer does a business have to depend on being the first to stake claim to .com domain either taken by a competitor or common person.  If you’re a plumber, there will be .plumbing.  If you’re a lawyer, there will be .lawyer.  If you are a tattoo artist, there will be .tattoo.  If you a shop of any sort, there will be .shop and the list goes on.

No matter what you feel nor how you feel about .com addresses, the new internet domains are yet another option for many people to bring their businesses online.

Which this brings us to the ask the question of whether or not existing businesses, as well as new small businesses, should be wary of new internet domains?

I receive a few domain name inquiries a week. Quite often, most inquiries are tire kickers, yet there are a few that do turn into nice 4-figure sales.

All in all, most domain name inquiries I receive are asking the same question from the same point of view and the question is: how little can I spend to buy a domain name?

I’m not sure of the identity of most inquirers although I do take the liberty to research most emails and names via the internet.

There are those who are *real* people and quite easy to research to see if their story checks out while others play a game of incognito.

Either way, the domain name will cost them. How much it costs is only a matter of who I perceive is telling the truth.

And with that, allow me to share with you how I determine the good, bad, and ugly when assessing domain inquiries.

I received an email from a regular blog reader of Kickstart Commerce.

This person totally stoked about how they read my latest blog about finding and buying domain names.

They found an expired domain name to die for, let them tell it.

I was super excited, as I usually am, to hear from our readers about this reader’s good fortune find.

I was elated until I researched the readers’ good fortune domain name.

The reader did almost everything correctly based on their email.

The one missing piece the reader did not note was performing a search on the domain itself for negative or scam reviews using Google or another search engine.

Had the reader performed this simple step, the reader would have figured out that another company had used their so-called good fortune of an expired domain name to run a scam.

I was surprised and heartbroken for the reader when I searched.

Exact match domains (EMD) is a difficult conversation to have for many website owners, developers and SEO professionals.

Each has their own isolated experiences of success and failure when using exact match domains, both pre and post Google EMD update.

If you don’t know about the Google EMD update, then I suggest you do a little reading on how Google released an exact match domains update.

In short, Google created a filter to remove low/poor quality websites using exact match domains from ranking in search engine results.

Because websites using exact match domains contained the keywords in the domains that users used when searching, they were easily ranked as authoritative websites in search results.

With the intro of the Google EMD update, many website owners and developers were hit hard in loss of rankings, traffic and revenue.

Others were penalized to the point of de-indexed in some cases for their websites using exact match domains, also known as keyword domains.

From sea to shining sea, you’ll read and hear mixed reviews when attempting to find a final resolve for whether you should or should not use exact match domains.

However, my hope is to help you thoroughly understand why and how exact match domains can be used effectively and ineffectively.

(Credit: Jason Cipriani/CNET)

I recently read an article, Apple drops .com button in iOS7, written by Andrew Alleman over at Domain Name Wire. 

A short read, Andrew talks about how his daughter was using the iPad with iOS7 and went to press the .com button, and it was nowhere to be found.

Puzzling if you ask me as I