“I think if the names are flipped – if your company was named mint.com, theirs wesabe.com, then quite possibly you win.”

Wow! Not really sure I agree with that (even though I do absolutely detest the Wesabe.com domain name and always have from the first moment I saw it – AND I love the Mint.com domain name) but definitely some food for thought. What do YOU think?

This tool is useful both for people looking to capitalize on type-in traffic by having a domain spelled similarly to a high-traffic domain and for people just looking to grab common typos for a domain name they already own.

We currently calculate typos using a variety of rules including:

• Missing Vowels
• Transposed Vowels
• Forgetting to double consonents
• Forgetting the last letter

Feel free to let us know if there are some other kinds of typos or options you’d like to see included in the tool. Try out the Typo Domain Finder today!

Our tool looks at the trending topics in real time, and since Twitter is constantly updating their trending topics, it keeps the list of domains pretty fresh.

Check out the Twitter Trending Topic Domains tool today and let us know what you think!

CREDIBILITY = MORE LINKS

What do I mean by this?

Well, chances are that whether you have one website or hundreds of websites then you get an enormous amount of spam email from other webmasters and linkbuilders asking you to link to their website. You most likely delete every single email the moment after you scan over it for one reason: you have no incentive to link to them (and you have no incentive to even see what they might be able to offer you because they come across as not very credible).

Now there are many different things that you can do when you craft your pitch to other webmasters to build links but in all honesty unsolicited emails attempting to get links rarely work anymore as even the most novice webmasters now understand the value of a link (and thus are not willing to give them out as freely as they once might have).

This is not a link building tutorial as there are many other good ones out there that will tell you that these types of unsolicited emails begging for links are rarely a good idea BUT if you are going to craft a pitch to a potential link source then whether you are using a service like helpareporter.com or prleads.com (both great places to pitch to potential high quality link sources) or you are doing your run of the mill contact form spamming (usually NOT a great idea) one key thing that you will need in order to even get your foot in the door (i.e. cause your target to actually read over your email and give it some thought rather than just deleting it sight unseen) is credibility.

Here are some ways that you can look more credible in the eyes of your link target:

1. Domain Name – This is mentioned in the title of the post because this one is so important. Even if you get everything else on the list wrong then having an awesome domain name for your website can get some people to assign a level of credibility to you that you wouldn’t see otherwise (i.e. “Hi, my name is Bob Smith and the founder of the website AutoLoans.com…” vs. “Hi, my name is Bob Smith and the founder of the website ez-autoloan-quote-ratez.info…” – come on, which one would you maybe give the benefit of the doubt to even if there are other things wrong with the pitch?)
2. Title – It’s no secret that if you want to get great links then being seen as an expert can help. If you are building out a health website then it sure would be nice to have some kind of certification or master’s degree or doctorate in the health field that you could put in your email signature. I know for certain that me having my MBA and being a Certified Financial Planner™ certainly opens doors to me when I market my finance sites that others with my exact same pitch minus the credentials would have difficulty copying.
3. Professionalism – It is amazing to me to see some of the partnership/link building pitches that come in via email. The lack of professionalism and just overall lack of attention to detail is amazing. Granted, many of the link building requests I receive are probably from individuals where English is not their primary language but regardless of language skills one thing is for certain and that is that overall professionalism is important across all cultures. A simple thing like having a professional email signature with full contact details can go a long way.

Choosing the right domain name for your website can have an enormous effect on your overall credibility which can either help or hurt your link building efforts. What other ways do you know of to boost credibility in the eyes of potential link targets?

Sign up today for full access to all of the domains in the Keyword Domain Repository!

The biggest update is that we’ve added .ORG lookups to our Type-In Traffic Finder, Bulk Keyword Checker, and Geo-Domain tools for premium members. A lot of our users have been asking for this feature for a long time, and we were finally able to get access to the .ORG zone file which enables us to locally keep track of all available domains.

We’ve also added some other incremental updates

• Added Snapnames and Auction Pus to our All-In-One Auction tool
• Added advanced search options for our Keyword Domain repository
• Moved to faster servers

We’re also researching new tools to build and are applying for zone file access for all of the different TLDs, which will allow us to provide nearly instantaneous lookups for domain availability checks.

Lastly, we’ve introduced a $10 day pass which gives premium access to all our tools for 24 hours. This option works nicely for those who aren’t domaining every day, but would occasionally like to use our tools to find some premium domains.

We hope you like the updates and look forward to seeing you on our site! Feel free to leave any new tool ideas or features you’d like to see in the comments!

Picasso's Angel Fernandez de Soto (courtesy of Reuters)

In a recent Wall Street Journal describing how the ultra premium art market is benefiting from the recent downturn in the economy, Godfrey Barker points out how there seems to be a “flight to tangibles” like art by many wealthy investors. Are ultra premium domain names next?

It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that many wealthy investors could flood the premium domain name market looking for a safe haven that has many of the same characteristics as a premium piece of art.

What do you think?

Will traditional investors become more web savvy and invest in premium domain names as another alternative investment class?

Is premium art a sound comparison to a premium domain name? What are the similarities? What are the differences?