Tips: Five for free

There are not many things available for free in this world, not even lunch, so these five free services related to domain names are very welcome.

Vanity email address
Pick up a free vanity email address from a company such as iName or StarMail -- or why not get one from each? This email address can be used in place of your normal email address, but will let you to choose a much more personal, more memorable address.

Free domain name listing
LawOffices.Net has set itself up as a free display site for people and companies trying to sell their domain names. Simply enter a few details about your name, and it will be added to the lists of available name. And let me tell you, when you are trying to sell your domain name, every possible form of publicity helps! LawOffices.Net is not a domain broker, just an information service..

Bulk domain name search
123-DomainMe offers a bulk domain search facility. Use a text editor to draw up a list of potential domain names you want to check. Then cut and paste this list into the form on their page. Quick tip: you don't even need to specify the extension. 123 DomainMe will send you back three lists within 24 hours: a list of taken domain names, a list of available domain names and a list of domain names it was unable to check due to a problem at InterNIC. You can use this service to look up hundreds of domain names in a single operation!

Domain name suggestion service
123-DomainMe has a second impressive free service that deserves to make it onto this list: a domain name suggestion service, to help you think of that elusive domain name. Just enter a few details, and some keywords, into their online form, and they will send back a very long list of domain names made up of combinations of those keywords. The service tests each keyword alone, and combinations of pairs of keywords, with and without hyphens. It also attempts to abbreviate the keywords to form new combinations. Some of the results are spurious, others amusing, but there may well be one or more usable combinations you had not thought of.

Domain registration
The Global Enterprise Network is offering free domain registrations for a limited period of time. All you need to do is fill in the form on their site. Of course, you will still have to pay the annual fee to InterNIC separately [$100 for the first 2 years, then $50 a year] In exchange for this service, the Global Enterprise Network will send you selected information about the services they have available.