In 1999, Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton bought Business.com for a cool US$7.5million – a world record. Now, the two entrepreneurs, who were something of a laughing stock for their huge payout at the end of the 20th Century, are hoping to cash in on the name by selling it at auction in the near future.

Dow Jones and the New York Times have hinted at an interest in the domain name. It is rumoured that Winebaum and Dayton are intending to start the bidding at US$300million, and are hoping for a payload of something in the region of US$400million.

Why is Business.com such an attractive proposition? Being a generic domain name, it's likely to continue to top the listings on a search for "business", as it does now. Search engines do lend considerable weight to the relevance of domain names themselves.

But even better is the type-in traffic that Business.com is bound to attract: there's a strong chance that people will just type "business.com" into their browser address bars in the hopes that it will be the sort of website they are looking for. When they're familiar with the website, they'll remember the domain name easily because it's so simple and recognisable.

We can't all have a domain name as valuable as Business.com, but we can learn some lessons from it. Descriptive, relevant Domain Names attract traffic from search engines, returning visitors, and people typing in your domain on the off-chance.

When you're choosing a domain name, particularly if you're a small business without the cash to build a powerful brand (as Google, eBay and Amazon have done), a name containing two or three specific keywords may be perfect. If the one you want isn't available, be creative by making the domain name more specific to your business. You could, for example, put your company's location in, particularly if yours is the sort of business where customers will be coming to your premises.

By Helena Henderson