When is a phone number more than a phone number? When it’s a domain name, a 5 year old established website and a business all in one. 1-800 MED JOBS and 1800MEDJOBS.com http://www.1800medjobs.com are For Sale. The owner can be reached through the website for more information

Can you tell me if 888-639-4663 (NEW HOME) is available or any pre-fix with new-home?

You have as much chance of getting 8**-NEW-HOME as you do of getting NewHome.com or NewHome.net. And you also have as much need for a generic domain name as you do for a generic number. It sounds like it would be the best but if it’s not available which the most obvious terms never are, that doesn’t mean you can’t make a good website for your business or that you shouldn’t have a website because you can’t get the perfect name. You just have to be a little more creative and try more things.

That’s why we make the best tools available right online for you. Play with the look up tools and look for things more specific to you, your name, your personal name, your state and your strongest selling points. You don’t eat generic cereal or wish for a generic car. So don’t try to make your business sound generic, which usually means the opposite of “brand name‿ and tends to blend into the background and be unmemorable.

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Hello Mr. Quimby

I found your web site when searching for toll free numbers and used your lookup tool to search for a number that spells billboard. You say that the phone company that has 800 and 888 billboard has a bad reputation. Could you negotiate for the use of the number for me somehow?

Thanks
Donald Williams

Hi Don,

We really can’t help you very much with that. The last time I talked to Loren Stocker of Vanity International, I told him never to call me again and that I was going to pay for my friend’s attorney to sue him for stealing my friend’s domain names. It really wouldn’t help you very much anyway. He’ll act like it’s worth well into six figures and it’s the only number for a billboard business and it’s definitely not!

I realize that 1-800 BILLBOARD might sound like the best number for the Billboard business but it’s NOT. You do NOT need to have the most generic term for your business. It’s not that it’s not a valuable number but it’s ultimately not the most valuable number just because it’s the most obvious number. You don’t need Billboard.com to have a good website for your business, and you wouldn’t name your business just the word “Billboards” because it’s not unique enough. It just doesn’t sound like a name.

Continue reading about my advice for 1-800 BILLBOARD

888-8-HOME-THEATER and 8888hometheater.com are Available!

I saw the page below suggesting that another service is getting new numbers from Disconnect. They say that “Every week a new group of highly desirable vanity toll-free numbers is released into the marketplace. They’re freed up by companies that may have changed business or gone out of business.” This makes it sound like these numbers were disconnected and just became available but they didn’t.

CustomTollFree.com claims to get numbers from Disconnect

I looked up the history of all three numbers they gave as examples 1-800-HOME-OWNER, 877-MAN-POWER, and 888-OUT-OF-DEBT and none of them were disconnected at all. I don’t know why they would misrepresent them like this but none of the numbers CustomTollFree.com gave on their page about a window of opportunity for numbers like these that just became available were disconnected. They may be good numbers that they would like to rent to someone. But they weren’t disconnected as their post suggests.

There is no oversight so unfortunately people tend to get away with anything and CustomTollFree.com does more than their share of crap. CustomTollFree is one of the worst companies in terms of hijacking numbers you find available and then saying they are their numbers and offering to rent them to people that don’t realize that they only reserved them because of their own inquiry. So I guess in a sense, it’s no surprise that they would put misleading descriptions.

See the original post and the history of 1-800-HOME-OWNER, 877-MAN-POWER, and 888-OUT-OF-DEBT

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You don’t need a generic name to have a good toll free number, but a pure generic number can be huge marketing advantage that creates an industry leading appearance right out of the box. 1-800 PRETZEL is one of those unique numbers that almost instantly suggests an exciting business concept. The owner Dave Blackstone is looking for someone with the right vision for it. He about 200 pretzel related domain names too.

The toll free business tends to have a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities and this could definitely be one of the sweetest. Post a question or comment if you’re interested.

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I was talking with Alan Cline recently regarding his toll free number, 1-800 PLUMBING. It’s obviously a very prime number and he’s been building a whole network of plumbers in different areas over the past 5 years to make use of the value of the number. We had an interesting conversation after which I asked if we could do a quick interview for our website. I asked him a few questions about his business and what he’s really trying to do. It’s just a half dozen questions that are interesting for a plumber or anyone building a shared use business. Read the full interivew with Alan Cline and 1-800 PLUMBING

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Bill,
I’m really trying to find 800-EDUCATE. That’s really the only number we want.

That’s nice, but the question isn’t whether you’re going to be able to get your dream number or not. You don’t need to worry about whether or not you’ll get that. The question is what’s the best POSSIBLE number. Because 1-800 EDUCATE is obviously not possible.

I have a post with an analogy for that it’s called Are You Trying To Date Britney Spears? I use a dating analogy sometimes because everyone can relate to that. We’re kind of like Match.com. You can’t go to Match.com and ask them to set you up with Britney Spears. That just aint happening, any more than you can ask GoDaddy.com to get you Educate.com for a domain name.

Use the Keyword Lookup Tool and look through the options there to figure out which of these “possibilities” would be the best. And if Britney Spears comes along you can still date her too, the best one you can find now won’t get jealous! And in the mean time you’ll probably realize that you don’t have to marry Britney Spears to be happy too.

Be more creative and look for something less generic and more specific to you and your business. You don’t need educate.com to have a good domain name and you don’t need 1-800 EDUCATE to have a good phone number.

A former client wrote me asking how he could “unload‿ the number I got him. I don’t promote or advocate getting numbers for the purpose of reselling them. That isn’t appropriate or especially good for anyone. This reply and post also doesn’t address any of the issues about selling 800 numbers. I don’t want to go into this in great detail but I thought at least the short answer I gave him might be helpful.

I hope all is well with you. As you may remember about 5 years ago you helped me secure the # 800-527-3737 (800-Laser-Dr) and I think it may be time to unload the number but I would like to try to at least get back the money I spent in the acquisition of the number. What is the best route to do this and could you help if necessary? The number is currently ported to Teligent.

Unfortunately I can’t act as a broker because of the fcc regulations and I really can’t market specific numbers like that very well either. If I could I’d make a lot more money. But unfortunately it’s not as easy as you would think. There are a few things you can do.

Make a website about the number and the opportunity it represents. Then do some press releases which will give it some credibility. Put it on ebay and at the same time do some advertising in trade or industry journals. The PR gives it credibility, the trade and industry advertising gives it some targeted exposure and ebay gives it a platform people are comfortable with. This could be a lot longer but that’s the short answer for a targeted number like that.

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Jenny’s phone number got listed on ebay again by a DJ in north jersey. They got some media attention including a CNN feature. It’s had 122 bids and is already at $410,000, 5 days before the end of the auction.

History Repeating Itself

Most people seeing this probably don’t remember that the next door neighbor to this 201 NJ number, the 212 NY version was on ebay on almost exactly 5 years ago on February 19, 2004. The famous number from the Tommy Tutones, 1982 No. 1 hit “867-5309/Jenny” is one of the most memorable phone numbers ever. After being mentioned in the news, the NY attorney’s ebay auction received over 350,000 visitors, over 170 bids and was bid up to $80,000! The auction for 212-867-5309 was taken down only halfway through after Verizon spokes people claimed, “You can’t own or sell phone numbers”.

So the new listing for 201-867-5309 includes the owner’s DJ business too. That’ll definitely make it harder for Verizon to complain and ebay to take it down. (especially given Verizon’s announcement yesterday that it now has and is ready to start using 1-800 VERIZON for it’s customer service, since they probably didn’t get it from AT&T for free) I wonder if they would think they “own” 1-800 VERIZON?

Read the rest of the story about what this could be used for and what phone numbers can be worth.

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1-800 BATTERY launched today offering a wide variety of batteries, adapters and electronic accessories specializing in hard to find battery components.

This is a short two and a half minute video about what 1-800 SUICIDE does and also about how the federal government is trying to kill it and take their phone number. Should the government have the right to take YOUR 800 number if it’s for their definition of the higher good? This is definitely worth watching. This is our previous post about 1-800 SUICIDE. It’s also online at NowPublic and there’s another previous 800-SUICIDE video at politicstv.com

This number has been used for some time but may be available from Tim. 413-624-3927

I just saw a cute website that is a great example of a site and brand name built on a good vanity number. I believe 1-800 MUFFINS is just rolling out today. We didn’t get them the number directly but we did get them the number that got them started into the vanity business. So they’re not our direct customers but they’re a second cousin, and have done a nice job with their website and I just thought they deserved a short plug.

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1-800-ASSISTANT  has partnered with  Search-To-Phone mobile. Search-To-Phone’s new voice-driven search platform is designed to match callers and service providers in several yellow page categories. 

This new field is growing but has gotten the attention of several major players such as Google and 1-800 FREE-411.  Their challenge will be differentiating and showing enough unique value to gain enough vendors to make their service valuable to the callers.

The technology and potential market and uses for this type of service are certainly exciting and will help to propel this great brand name number.

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