--get-rich Can Toll Free Number Domains Pay Off?

The toll free number --Get-Rich belongs to the Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. Perfect vanity number for a casino, right? Well apparently not. Their website shows the actual numbers, --- for the marketing department of Resorts Atlantic City. Those NUMBERS are nowhere near as memorable as is the mnemonic device of letters representing those numbers on the telephone keypad. It makes you wonder, did the casino have bad luck (no pun intended) or receive bad publicity for their -Get-Rich phone number? Doing a Google search for --GET-RICH returns several spoof articles using the toll free number to make light of get rich quick schemes. Seems as well suited to a casino as to satire, since gambling represents the ultimate get rich quick scheme. But on the web there's a another element to toll free numbers you must consider. numbers are used as domain names which seem to stick in our memory as a web address just as well as a phone number. Resorts Atlantic City Hotel Casino should buy the domain name www.getrich.com and assign that marketing department toll free vanity number to the Casino. The domain name is for sale as of this writing if you visit that web address. You can be certain that the current domain owner knows that the toll free vanity telephone number is owned by Resorts International Hotels www.resortsac.com which matches the domain www.getrich.com. It has to be enticing to think a large corporation may want his domain. The casino owns the toll free number but isn't using the mnemonic for it. Makes you wonder about the history of the domain name, since WHOIS records show it was reserved only this past May of , AND the history of the vanity number since it is going unused, at least on the web site. Hmmmm... There are vanity phone number resellers online that actually specialize in providing numbers with matching domain name for those seeking the consistent branding for their business. Clearly this is simply a marketing ploy by savvy number vendors, as those domains may be full of hyphens and may cost more than they should due to the perception of value-added. An interesting aspect to toll free numbers as domain names is that of - copyright and trademarks. Take for example, the well known flower retailer --FLOWERS.com where they use both the domain name and the toll free number. Both are copy- righted and trademarked names and essential to the business. Legal precedent allows trademark owners to confiscate domains from "cybersquatters" who buy domain names containing trade- marked or copyrighted words and phrases hoping to sell that domain back to the trademark holder. But it is less clear an issue when it comes to descriptive toll free and vanity phone numbers. How about --PINDROP.com - which you would think would be registered to Sprint Communications? Curiously, as of October of , this domain was available. What do they use? www.pindrop.com (without the ) goes to Sprint.com. It appears there are wide inconsistencies in using toll free phone numbers as domain names but they can be memorable, which is one measure of a good domain name. They also aren't limiting as to word length. I've always felt it's a bit odd to type in keywordphrase.com as a domain name, but only because there is no hyphen in it. looks like eighteen hundred and is just as strange as typing for domains as a suggestion they are always open, more often seen as /, but domain names can't have that slash mark in them. As a matter of fact, I've always disliked numbers of any kind in domain names - especially those using numbers in place of the words "to" (upme.com)& "for" (goodyou.com) But, as owner of http://website.com I'm at odds with the dislike for numbers in domain names. Still, it works better than website.com or --website.com, both owned by Verio Web Hosting and both purchased in August of , but neither have web sites configured at those addresses. They must not have been a worthwhile domains, yet they keep them. If it offers you another option for a memorable web address, number domains may be worth considering.