There is a secret war going on over rights to your Domain Name. Your Domain Name rights are currently being ripped off by major Domain Name registration giants. This rip-off is affecting your Domain rights NOW!

Your Domain Name can become a casualty of Domain Name Registrar's Renewal War. Reading this article and understanding your Domain Name rights can prevent you from losing your Domain Name altogether, and can at least save you about 50% on your Domain Name renewal.

This is real and it is scary. As to not mislead you, I am Tag Powell, CEO of DomainNameVault.com, and I have been drafted into this battle against my will. DomainNameVault.com and our service Renew-Your-Domain-Name.com is on one side of this war. We do have a vested interest in this battle's outcome.

First, let me give you short background story to get you up to speed.

Until a couple of years ago ALL Domain Names had been registered and managed by one company, Network Solutions. Network Solutions made billions of dollars on this market for years. All .COM, .ORG, .NET Domains were held in one master database exclusively under their control. They, as a monopoly, could charge anything they desired. Originally they charged $50.00 per year (two year minimum). Then after registering millions of Domains and fielding massive complaints of over-charging, they graciously reduced fee to $35.00 per year (two year minimum).

For first few years, Network Solutions did a good job, but as Internet mushroomed database problems grew. Hackers entered database and caused problems. Domain ownership's were illegally changed. Other Domain Names were rerouted to open to other companies. Domain Name security became a joke. Trying to get through to Network Solutions was a nightmare, getting email answered took weeks and they were often ignored completely, and getting through by phone took days. We speak from experience as we have been assisting Domain registrations since 1995. We helped Network Solutions register many hundreds of thousands Domain Names.

By way, it still could take hours today to get a phone answer from Network Solutions.

A couple of years ago government, after many public complaints, broke up monopoly to exclusively register and renew Domain Names in to master database. This gave public, for first time, right to chose who would manage their Domain Name.

New rules allowed applications from other companies to manage new Domain Name registration and renewals into master database. After a serious background check and a lot of money some of these companies (over a hundred to date) are allowed to become registrars, and are able to add and subtract Domain information to master database.

This new ruling allowed our company to put Domain info in and take information out of that master database for our clients, and we are also allowed to set our own prices for this service.

(Instead of Network Solutions' charge of $35.00 (per year) for .COM, .ORG, .NET Domains and $55.00 for .BIZ and .INFO Domains, our fee is only $19.95 per year for all extensions.)

Shortly after breakup Network Solutions was sold to VeriSign Corp., a giant multi-conglomerate. At this point their policies seem to have degraded to several quasi legal processes. I can only suppose that suddenly VeriSign must have become aware that millions of their clients (the same clients they had paid big bucks to collect yearly fees from) were transferring (renewing) through other registrars. This will cost them millions.

VeriSign filed a complaint with ICANN, official ruling body over Domain Names, that competition (they named Register.com and our partner Tucows) was "slamming" and stealing Domain Name management against will of public. "Slamming" as you may know is an expression of illegal process of switching telephone companies without permission of customer.

Below I will tell you everything you need to know, including where to find good domain names that are still available for registration (for as low as $14.) This used to be one of hardest and most frustrating parts of domain investing. In past to find good domain names you would have to search, one by one, until one came up that was available. But now there are research tools and compiled lists that do this for you! You can also get lists of domains that have expired, due to non- payment, and have been put back into available pool. More on this below, but first lets discuss what makes a good domain name.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD DOMAIN NAME:

The suffix is most important factor. .COM, .NET, and .ORG are by far most popular. Other alternative domains like .WS, .TV, .FM, are becoming more and more popular because they are wide open. For example where you couldn't get DW.com you can still get DW.ws (well maybe not anymore). For now, I would stick with .COM because they will be easiest to sell.

Would a webmaster or business want it? Ask yourself that question and if you can't instantly say "Yes!" than don't buy it. Also more generic domain name better. And remember it is illegal to register a business name or trademark that you do not own. This is called "cyber-squatting" and tough laws are now in place to protect against this.

The shorter name better. These are most memorable and easiest to market. At time of writing this, there are only about a thousand three character domain names left. To find out how to get a list of these and four-character domain names see below.

What names are selling? Do some research on Ebay.com or Afternic.com (popular domain auctions) and see what names are selling and for how much. Below are what some domains recently auctioned for or have current bids at Afternic.com:

Internetbank.com $92,800 E-Privacy.com $35,080 eloans.net $6,060 Ez-HomeLoans.com $4,725 venture-capital.net $14,510 officetravel.com $2,625 qalaxycafe.com $1,890 a1restaurants.com $730 stormnews.com $765 SkinCleanse.com $2,885 LADoctor.com $15,000 MrAirline.com $15,000 Engineering.org $198,895.00

HOW TO FIND HIGH QUALITY DOMAIN NAMES: