Domain Owl

A lot of people who come into contact with domainers misunderstand what domaining is all about. They assume there is a high-end technological ceiling that prevents the “common man” from getting involved. The domainers industry is filled with those who have an advanced knowledge of HTML, website design, and affiliate advertising, but the career of domaining can be accessed even without the experience qualified with coding and programming.
The ramp-up of introductory knowledge begins, as always, with a little history.  Researching the customers and clients that will evolve for any business, domaining include those entities and special rules and cultural traditions that must be navigated before admittance to the community of domainers occurs. There is no official roll of members of the industry, and there is no required educational requirements or certification need to participate, bid on, or buy domains.
The current customer base for domain name sellers includes both veteran domainers who navigated Darpanet before dial-up telephony was achievable, and teenagers following the domain sale market like a ladie’s stock picking club. Domain buying is done online or even in person at trade shows, private personal transactions, and special event sales. The set price of a new, untenanted domain can be precluded in cost by the  suffix, or TLD (Top Level Domain) that follows it. The TLD of any domain is a big tip to its price, value, and potential.
The portal though which domain names are vended is the registrar, the sale and buyer’s information is recorded into the registry record, and the recording of a new owner for the domain name is mirrored all  over the world in seconds. The computer servers these name records are located on are called nameservers. International banking and currency portals can also charge a surcharge for conversion of currency between buyer and seller, an auction listing premium, and/or local sales taxes and fees.
The listing of domain names for sale is published online, in event programs, and distributed via e-mail or auction house bulletins.

A number of domain name auction companies have emerged to govern the market, such as Sedo.com. Other registrars functioning online as domain name sales portals have daily, weekly, quarterly domain sales events or multi-tiered auction events live often. Bidders can bid through an established account, on the phone, or via pre-set bids and limits per domain name.
The buyers of any given domain name in a premium auction might be a investment group, a private individual, a partnership proxy, or just a hobbyist finding a bargain or a investor looking for a likely branch of investment opportunities. Many startup businesses begin with the purchase of a domain name which is also the name of their website, product, service, or company. A website that is not ready or launching will have a “parkgin” page until other content or organized visual material is composed.

A domain name does not need a business model or company name to match to warrant sale or be listed for sale to any buyer.
The rules governing certain TLD names abroad can change these parameters. Certain Country Code names are formed from the suffixes of Country Code TLDs, which have been expanded for resale and licensed for commercial resale worldwide by that country through a registrar or auction house. International use of such names does occur, but some countries have taken the step to limit exploitation of domain name usage by placing geographical restrictions on the sale. The valuation of any name is what the buyer will pay.
Conditions exist within the domain ownership purview such that a given domain name with a more popular or commonly used TLD, such as dot-com, dot-net or dot-org, is unavailable, in use, priced beyond the buyer’s budget, or owned by a corporate entity which refuses to sell it. This type of domain ownership happens often, and can be a spur to a copyright conflict between domain name owners. Administrators are well advised to research the copyright entities worldwide before launching a site, promoting it, or investing development resources.
Exceptions to this are explained at the sale point on any registrar or by any legitimate seller. Not all registrars are licensed to sell the domain names of all TLDs, and in the competitive selling market online for vending domain names, these sale or licensing rights can carry a premium. But the policy of any legitimate domain name vendor are such that a sale to an inappropriate party will not occur.

Ombudsman organizations such as WIPO arbitrate disputes between domain name owners when such conflict arises.
Domain evaluation and value assessment is a gray area within the field of domaining. The methods of evaluation for a buy price or sale price might be applied from various instruments and methods. Website visits or domain name lookups alter the value of a domain name for potential resale or product promotion. The records of these statistics may be featured for a domain sale or researched independently.
Grooming domain name values includes incorporating website content, search engine approximations, and commercial advertising options called affiliates. Affiliates generate payments from site visitation per domain name and traffic volumes predictive of probable advertising participation. User traffic and links to and from the domain name’s website can bolster a domain name’s value significantly.

The value of a domain name  usually relates to traffic of web users to the site every day, links, and information therein. Various strategies and programs are used by site managers (called webmasters) to grow these statistics.
Thus, in the context of a domain name sale, the content which has historically been associated with the website or the domain name has value. Content is written material, text, caption, meta tags, video or audio files, or uploaded documents for visitors to view.

The organization of these elements of content can create a entity at a search engine known as a site profile which concords to the domain name. Thus, a search engine results page full of returned associated listing pertaining to the site name or from it, and/or the history for any domain name rich in content and development can inflate the name’s value.

The email addresses generated from the domain name address can also be of value in online communication and marketing. SEO value, or search engine result value for any domain name, is a hot topic amongst domainers.  New trends in domain name value leverage include social networking, Twitter, RSS feeds, and link exchange programs built to foster reflexive trade in web user visitation.

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The secrets of blogging are held fast so others can’t cruise on the hard earned success. Inasmuch as each blog should look different, too many look the same. The enthusiasm to start a blog is fine.
But in the haste to post frequently the blog administrator forgets basic rules.

1. Post Photographs

A well constructed blog template will ask for captions, meta tags, and keyword as well as a title for the photograph embedded in the blog post. For bloggers who don’t post picture at all, that’s lost search engine revenue and clicks that will simply go to the SERP for some other site. The use of a photo for each bog post can make the colors work on a site that doesn’t have anything else visual going on. A restrained or single color layout can showcase such pictures. This is why fancy templates don’t work in the long run. They look dated and the upgrades can be very difficult to make work.

2. Encourage Interaction

One legitimate comment per blog post is enough to stir a discussion from thirty or so readers. The cascade of comments can also be a reaction to a polarizing comment from one reader. Bloggers forget that the trail of a blogging post and the subsequent comments is something that can also fasten SEO results to the page by the way a statement is phrased, asking things in the form of a question, and citing sources or links to other related material. Pass your business card around when discussing pertinent topics for acquaintances to check into at their leisure.

3. Drive Your RSS Feed

The effort to launch an RSS feed is too many times pursued when there is little or no archive material, giving searchers little to grab hold of in a search engine query or Podcast list. The market for your content can come after you’ve written in. Actively searching compilers have to have something to evaluate to make your blog worth following. Making the blog complete with a density of keywords and timely updates can separate a real blog site from an autoblog. An autoblog is a blog site where unoriginal material is presented as news or articles but really comes from other site’s feeds. Identify or pursue particular RSS feed targets

4. Author Content Elsewhere

Being a writer has never been more important than in blogging. Many bloggers mistakenly believe if they write for their own blog site and website in general. nature will take its course and users will come out of hiding to visit their site. Sites such as Associated Content, Squidoo, and Helium can promote a site if they can incorporate the authority of the website in an article or quote. For this to take place, original material should be present posted on the blog site.

5. Target Social Network Messengers

It only takes one Twitter or Social networking post at the right time to grab a viral effect and break a site wide open. It is at these times when blog administrators wish they had taken personal photos down, fixed spelling errors, or combed their links and blogroll better. Fine tuning a site does not have to be an all day project. But one insightful comment can make a reader or visitor bookmark the site or sign up for the RSS feed. Let the messengers discover your site and time will do the rest.

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The eruption of twitter as a marketing tool has made for some confusion in the online ranks. What started out as a method of notifying people or pertinent news is now a channel for almost nonstop promotion and public relations. It was not meant to be a play by play or stream of consciousness narrative, but many use it that way. The webmasters, domainers and promoters I know tend to use the use Twitter in an indistinguishable way that means little to the end user.

1. Twitter Material must be palatable

The competition in the blogosphere for content based blogs is tough. The author has to have some credentials, style, a proven track records or basic skills to expect to get anywhere. It’s hard to find a public personality today who doesn’t have their own Twitter, Facebook, MySpace channel or vertical PR plane. that’s probably how they got famous in the first place. But for Britney Spears or Kanye West to have a Twitter audience, they need to be somehow relevant. A Twitter account that goes nowhere is evident fast.

2. Twitter News and Tweet material text should be important to the recipient.

I am not sure what user base Charlie Sheen thinks is on his Twitter account. He might have over 900,000 names in his old black books alone. They may be his “end users”. The name assciated with the blog author or Twitter composer should be a status association conferring a kind of authority to the Twitter. With equal access to every piece of media, nobody needs to Twitter about anything. Yet the actual deed of sending out a Tweet makes news.
But the rest of us are enjoying (or enjoy being appalled by) the ridonkulous spectacle Sheen is making in his career and in the media regarding his TV shows and it’s producers. Poor Emmy voters thought they were showing him some good times after his endless addictive battles. But Charlie Sheen isn’t Robery Downey Jr. He isn’t climbing on the wagon. He’s actually throwing his career under a bus. (His lawyers earn more money with every embarrassing statement he makes).

3. Twitter Content must be important to the recipient.

Too many emails that come into my inbox are trailing feathered off leads form ,ong ago ffers I signed up for or blogs I signed up for to comment, or even forums and buletin boards whose newsletters I thought I might enjoy. When you have fifteen minutes to crack open and shut a piece of business and you are weaving through piles of junk mail to find the critical data bit, it all seems worthless. if your Twitter channel and notifications aren’t relevant and related to somethig the end user cares about, your Twitters will start hitting the Recycle Bin.

4. Tweets Must be Exclusive, Timely, and Pertinent

We’ve all seen websites and blogs that intend to be relevant to subjects A, B, and C, but cobever news bytes and sound snippets and video uploads of almost any kind of news a loaded keyword or meta tag category can cement in their autoblog. The reasons autoblogs don’t work is becase the content is unoriginal. Coupons, deals, savings, special offers, these things take on a nightmarish cast when anything labeled a service is a deal and any price at all is featured as a value.

5. Be the First to Market or Not at All

Google is cracking down on unoriginal content and source blogs may resent you capturing their news and delivering down the line to autoblogs who follow your chain of content so they don’t have to credit originality from the original source. Try to find new ways of promoting your central idea, keywords, or product without seeming to echo what everyone else is saying. While that seems to be the point of Twitter, what people should be doing is analyzing and delivering their own message or reaction in a statement to something else.

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Domain name buying and selling is an industry, with good luck and bad luck and hard times like everything else. Long Term domain investors have learned by now not to put faith in empty promises and get rich quick schemes.  Quick recovery financially is not a guaranteed result nor is a cash windfall for every domain purchased and developed into a website.

New domainers should evaluate their best method to break into the domain name game and crack open some profit possibilities. Various approaches can be performed to break into domaining, and some are better for an individual or for a group of investors or a team of web promoters. Marketing can get the word once a site is developed and launched, but that has to be a preplanned adjunct to site development and launch.

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The speed of the investment capital outlay on a domain name will start the clock on the return of investment-plus-profit scenario. Therefore a conservative domain investment strategy will put less pressure on the individual operator or project team members. A more aggressive capital recovery strategy makes every keystroke operate at a higher premiums that some campaigns cannot equal.

Different domain names will have a wider audience at different times, such as annual sporting event (Olympics) or in certain seasons (travel sites).  Ongoing steady url advancement is  the ultimate goal. The investment in time and resources during different times of the year and in anticipation of a wider and faster clicking audience online should be integrated into the domain name publicity and marketing plan.

Achievable goals in traffic building, social network attention and link building can set the stage for larger campaign to follow. Each name may have different attributes better for some methods of domain promotion than others. A catchy buzzword and flashy logo will draw some users out of curiosity, while other sites may bring only discoverability with intense keyword seeding and SEO element density.

Monetary clickthroughs trail from these dynamics. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Google, Ebay, or Yahoo. Each of those domains started as press releases and conversation starter tidbits about what the site was all about. Breaking down results from day to day domaining tasks can bring the domain name owner’s value growth goals to fruition.

Having a site is essential in today’s domain market. For those domain investors relying on parking and traffic hits, the risk is palpable. Now more than ever web users and browsers online are looking for a content result or website experience with depth and individualized options. The most basic web user is puzzled and disappointed by a parking page online, and they know they can find amusement and information elsewhere and navigate owner

A parking page or registrar sponsored landing page signals disinterest on the webmaster side, and is matched by a complementary response in the end user. the template and site builders available inside virtually every hosting plan make a index page or parking placeholder a statement of neutrality that forms an assault on an expectant end user.

Searching end users will refer to buzz already being reported about the site from other channels.  If no press release or meta tags exist, the discoverability  for the site  (and the domain)  is too low. There must be a plan to cement the domain’s footprint with associated text and keywords in dozens of spaces online before true stickiness can be tested. Patterns of clicks online from the promotional material to the destination site must be grooved for future users and search engine bots to follow.

Simply trying to monetize a domain with no site behind it is risky and leaves  a bad taste in the mouths of end users looking for a online destination and a web experience. Guerrilla marketing works best with some “flavor” behind it, something to do or see when typing in the domain name as an url address online. Intense investor or sponsor efforts must be matched by a seamless, clean designed site with solid content elements to recommend it.

A projection of formal development of a domain name, and the tools and individuals using them should be assigned and plotted. Even a pencil and paper three month plan can get the wheels rolling under a domain inspiration or grassroots blog project. These calendar notations can be edited and rescheduled.

Domain promotion and marketing is time consuming. Just organizing a SEO optimization strategy draws time and energy from team members or the individual webmaster or site programmer. Milestones such as traffic peaks and click volumes should be the goals. Revenue of the affiliate and offers links will follow if the primary goal of site traffic and domain discovery is developed.

Some investors take the plunge into immediate name investment, sometimes in the auction and premium domain name arena. The investment scenarios should be matched with equal investment in formal link exchanges, content adding, text SEO and code density keyword optimization, and clean design for end users. For domain value growth, marketing and promotion benefit when there is more site product to to “sell”.

Each domain project is different, but the thirst for success is the same everywhere. Working through the various challenges and domain name elements is what distinguishes experienced domainers and long term domain investors from hobbyists looking to strike cash flow without effort. When online traffic, public interest, SEO value and a launched site follow the domain purchase, the domain name  investment is sure to pay off.

This article was previously posted.

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The number one secret to successful blogging is the stream of words necessary to make the domain and website blog brand grow. But so many domainers try to evade the serious contribution. The attempts to outsmart the search engines and supercede the legitimate basis for discoverability happens every day. The SEO seeding and the keyword inclusion take an effort.

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The blogs that work have interesting and topical things to say. Yet so often people I know who blog or try to do it end up defeating themselves because they underestimated the amount of work that goes into it. Successful blogging, and successful domain promotion via blogging, must execute certain skill sets and parameters of effort. There is no free lunch in Blogville.

If you see someone decrying the lack of Internet connectivity, he isn’t working on his blog. If you see someone watching a repeat of a television show they’ve already seen, they aren’t working on their blog.That guy sitting by the pool, flipping through a magazine about celebrities and their foibles? Not blogging. The lady waiting in line at the checkout stand, texting her friends.

They aren’t working on their blog. They don’t feel like they are working at all. But they are expending effort unproductively. They’ll type more keystrokes into their cellphones, PDA’s, digital devices and Ipods and Blackberries than might stuff a half dozen blogs. But if you suggested they fulfill a thousand word count writing assignment every day, they’d laugh out loud.

Blogging is industrious work that ages daily. the product is the process, and today;s process will become yesterday’s news all too quick.  In fact, if you ever watched Sex and the City, it’s impossible to believe Carrie and that her blog could support a Manhattan lifestyle or require nothing but stream of consciousness. Blog writing takes a strategy, a focus towards content that transcend randomness.

The best part about blogging is the freedom. In past centuries, even millennia, people were limited in their social congress and imagination by what they could see and touch. Recent decades of technological change have tightened social networks still based around background, taste, preferences and locality. Conversations start and end the same way, except online, because the geographic limitation is not present.

Only online can people find the base of what interests them and watch it flower from there. Only online can individuals find what they truly want to know without peer pressure, familial limitations, or economic structures. Even political and socialist restrictions, as today’s Russian and Chinese movements show, can only stagger what is a prurient human instinct to know more.

People are always curious about what they don’t already know about. Find about new science, reported information, developing cultures, evolving habits, cooking innovations, technological breakthroughs and government actions are not even the full scope of what people care about. Orchestrating the keywords and terms and search engine bots is just part of the game.

Most people are willing to chat about what they care about, in some horrible cases more than willing. Composing paragraphs of these discussions can lead to profitable revenues if the right efforts are completed. Adding in keywords and SEO tricks is just a hopscotch version of high school English, the modern version of hopscotch with a computer keyboard.

I personally notice when people describe a pain point or a problem in everyday life. I realize when there is a glitch there can also be a solution. A blog is a destination online even I visit, not for SEO tricks or discoverable keywords, but for insight, new snippets of knowledge, and decipherable bits of reason. Blogs are not meant to be textbooks. They are simply letters to an unknown friend whom one has yet to meet.

And there are people out there, Google searching and Yahooing and looking up words they don’t even know, who want to get that letter. They will scan directories and they will look for rated sites and they will read other posts to see where the good information is at. And they will find those messages, if only the world would put down the recreational stuff and get down to blogging.

From a previous post.

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Goal setting is important in any business enterprise. But when resources and ongoing fees are involved time is of the essence. Organizing your time with respect to domain management and domain development should play a role in appraising. Here are  five things to consider when making a development plan for a domain you own or when looking an extra name acquisition or a renewal for an existing domain name.

1. Estimate Daily Time Contribution

Too many domainers try to make new websites on the fly, skipping steps and cutting corners. These shortcuts are taken for reasons of time. Better sites in more critical stages of development will get robbed for this “extra child”.If there is a better time to put pressure on yourself or your team for launch mode, then reschedule the buy or delay the domain development project start date.

Set goals for future domain value, progressive page rank, Google SERP result position and ad revenue which are realistic in scale to the time devoted to that single website. Have a completeness in your domain marketing plan and business agenda that provides elasticity for best decision making for development resources like hosting, link promotion, and content planning.

2. Handoff Support

Look for ways to get exterior contributions made to the site without you logging in  for a few days. This gives the domainer a break and allows them to get some perspective. Handoff support can mean that the domainer can absorb a new technology, attend a trade conference, and or spend time with the family/staff without being a slave to the mobile phone. But the overall site development impetus is not lost as a hidden cost.

3. Dot to Dot Domaining

This is like the fast-track product development model, with a twist. By quick hitting on everything from website design to web hosting to SEO building to content spinning, a site can be up in no time. Improving the site is always an option. But many ops forget the elastic nature of the web and stall a site launch over endless “tweaking”. Fast tracking a domain to a site can free up time for real required development, such as link building, product fulfillment, or communication with clients and customers.

4. SEO Strategy

So many theories abound on how site optimization for search engines works today it’s almost a lucky guess. The basic domain development model that never changes is to build a site with unique content and individual participation options for eligible site visitors.This should not be overly ambitious and should be based on research.

Theoretically the search engines should assign premium values to such a site. But the plan for the site should include benefits and rewards from user participation and content authoring, not just dollar signs.

Understanding the relationship of your site’s SERP ranking and the stages of development it must pass through is key. Search engines don’t like colors or Flash or any particular theme. But the calendar has to have a start date to establish beginning metrics. Hanging up site launch for some hidden x-factor that will punch your site to optimum results is unrealistic.

Site SEO begins on day 1 of your site, and it can never begin if you have no site up. Reworking a site map later is a task for a rainy day. But getting the message out should be a full time job if you have researched your site purpose well. Many anterior networks of marketing and domain promotion require site urls and a domain to register them properly.

5. Deputation

Learn to deputize. Holding on tight to the project until it screams for mercy annoys all your team members. Unless you can let others lead, learn to assign areas of responsibility to others and allow them to grow into positions of accountability. This imputes distrust and a tendency to implode and play drama queen. Nothing says trouble like this.

Everyone has a personal boundary in a collaboration. When it is crossed, some individuals try to save the situation. Others become angry. Some may actually leave. Every domain development project should have assigned backup areas and cross training to prevent an entire site from depending on the wellness, attitude and availability of one single person.

If you think alienating contractors is a never ending privilege, guess again. Those horror stories about people taking off or quitting in the middle of the project usually involve clients who make demands so over the top the provider gives up and flees. All the brainstorming and all the communication has just walked away with no intention of coming back.

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Every blog owner has now come to know that a necessary chore of every blogista or blog owner is to weed through the spare comments on the blog. But the cryptic inattention to detail is confounding. When people with keywords that fit your site insist on leaving links of unrelated topics and material on still a third topic, it’s fit to cause blog rage.

I am also enraged to find that on many of my blog sites the submitted comments are argumentative and rude, as if there is any value at all to my posting this? This kind of comment is guaranteed to be deleted. So why bother leaving it? No blogger wants that kind of material on their site. How can links which are never accepted help anyone’s SEO?

Furthermore I am getting comments where blogs I have under development are being submitted. This is surprising since the posts they are writing comments to don’t exist. The blog posts they are “replying” to are listed as “coming soon”. There is no content to read or respond to.

I can only conclude that the software submission used for this type of blog comment must be verified and only these type of comments stand out. Pity the poor clients who think they are really purchasing SEO. I can also infer that these visits are intended as malicious. For some motivation of their own, submitters are using my url for target practice.

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A client of mine many years ago invested in a body of about 500 forum names. His plan was to bulk build out the forums for these domain names and then sell them to individual handpicked buyers. This effort met with the expected land rush of ambiguous ambivalence. With little t no promotion of the forums as individual entities with passion and special interest, there was almost no site growth. The clones just attracted spammers.

Forum themes and mods make forum website planning fun. But just establishing a forum application install is not “all she wrote” when it comes to forum domain names. These domainers appear to me like reclusive botanists who expect their exotic orchid to flourish inside a protected greenhouse sheltered from organic activity. Parking a domain name to me is the equivalent of locking the greenhouse door.

Domain values don’t grow in the dark. They need energy and light, vibrance and electricity to grow in value. End users must enjoy visiting the site and have something to do when they get there. Registration-enabled perks or features should reward new fans of the forum site. Promotion and marketing at certain key times can make a forum flash overnight into an online destination with demographics worldwide.

The forum itself needs to be fleshed out with topics and categories and posts. A sample batch of enterprise user names and sample posts sets the stage for a community to evolve. But encouragement is necessary. And imitating another board only works if the mania for the topic is white-hot (like for Twilight fans) or the graphic design and forum theme attracts fanboard moths (like for Twilight fans).

A domain name for a forum does not have to have the word “forum” in it. The words community, group, or board (or even bb) do tend to crop up. Any short niche word plus the “bb” in a dot-com domain name makes an extremely attractive and typable domain investment. The logo itself will be dynamic and fresh, even it is only a Cooltext.com conversion.  One forum needs active linking to grow and find new viewers, if only to get palpable feedback on the site experience from a new visitor.

Forums were the way most online users hooked up with fellow fans before social media took over. But now that advertisers have soured the FaceBook game, MySpace has died a premature death, and hackers focus their lenses on  FaceBook as a mining ground for individuals, online users are being interested once more by the semi-anonymous world of the forum posting again.

Forums can be references that get a lot of SEO query results. Posting articles and quizzes can make for a fun site walkthrough. Game cheat and directories of hard-to-find resources make excellent forum features. Community searchers are looking for the same thing. To get content ideas, Google search your site keywords and review the existing results and buld a better body of reference text.

A forum as a subfeature of a larger site is an excellent way to improve SEO. Hot topics are (ironically) Farmville and Mafia Wars. Quick blurbs of information come across as natural chat, and don’t need the support of a 500 word article around them to make the bots crawl faster. By making dsense code into posting incidences, and by incorporating posting tags and images (with tags), the SEO of the forum name and the parent site grows appreciably.

The one component for the potential success of a forum is that the user base is a prurient target. Some demographics, even niche user bases, don’t get online that much. Some professional groups and age layers in certain tranches of the consumer population either don’t have time or spend their texting social media. Luring away those users can be a futile effort, since the interactivity with their cellphone or mobile device is what empowers that traffic.

Certain user groups are always going to drill a little deeper. But enabling your forum to be mobile device accessible makes for even more potential visitors and members.  But for the Internet surfer looking to make their mark or learn something about their favorite topic, the community website, bulletin board model, and forum domain are still a good choice for domain creation, name investment, partner project launches, and website development.

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Sometimes business domains get personal. And you’d think the personal involvement would concentrate the effort, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Many of my clients and acquaintances have websites for their home business or personal businesses but never “get to them”. This wastes time on the clock for both the personal business and the individual’s capitalization of the domain market.

If the independent contractor or home CEO could follow some motivational guidance, both the domain and the business would grow. If every effort toward the business website builds domain value and the business profile, that’s half the work for twice the gain. If your business website needs “rescuing”, put a positive spin on the enterprise and polish your product or service shingle.

Naysayers may scoff at this idea. But the drive to capitalize on a website will improve the overall business profile.  Industry contacts, acquaintances, and friends will notice a new energy and drive behind the home business. Daily blog output or personal evangelism don’t hurt either. Here are some smart moves for the personal business website.

1. Make a Timetable

When a business is self-managed, the impetus is less powerful to deliver a finished website since the “in development” stage can last months, perhaps years. A proper strategy advances the personal business agenda to greater productivity. Set some traffic goals, build advertising plans, muse on some comments elicitation metrics, and set about achieving them. The home business webmaster will fritter away less time with a laundry list of HTML tasks in their mind.

2. Expand The Site Offering

Is your home business site one dimensional, flat, and have nothing of interest to differentiate it from a parked page or template except some geo data? Change up the mix and bring some widgets and fresh flavor to your message. Online visitors will have a chance to react to content or participate in surveys, whereas before development a mere name and address might have been available. That is the equivalent of a “Gone Fishin” sign.

3. Enable Registration

Think nobody will sign up? You’re wrong. I get one or two registrations a day from websites I made years ago and never change. Think what reg volume an updated active website could bring!  By growing traffic and developing a core list of subscribers, the home business manager can get ahead quickly. But visitors can’t sign up if there is no way to do it. Look for forum builds or open source applications. Simple Machines Forum and DotNetNuke are examples.

4. Get Out Your Credit Card

Online services for link promotion and directory listings can cost pennies a day and increase your SEO rank every minute. Spend a few bucks here and there to make sure when the quality keyword density comes of age (in a 30-60-90 day cycle) your links and abstracts are as present online as your closest competitor’s. Got no time for the basic tasks? Hand out the piecework to online contractors at Guru.com, ODesk,com, GetaFreelancer.com and other sites.

5. Blow Your Own Horn

Submit service or product reviews, website reviews of your site, or evaluation and/or articles online with your site url as the backlink. Mention, embd, or refer to your site link often and use relevant keywords to make the SEO values higher. Make sure most or all of your distribution of this material is at relevant sites with search engine spiders and bots scrubbing daily.

6.  Get Some Education

If you need to augment your IT skills or learn some business methodology, working with the local college or online courses can help. If the website development or advertising arm is moving slowly, find a way to capture small bits of the necessary knowledge to make more informed design and development website decisions. If you have a dollar amount in mind consider hiring a site developer to hand you a packaged site to get to the next step.

7. Rates and Pricing Feedback

Use surveys to determine what keeps your customers from clicking ‘buy”. If they have an online store, is the merchandise too repetitious from other sites? Squeeze pages and popup windows allow frustrated visitors to explain why they didn’t find what they wanted (and what it was). Use the marketing data to form a follow up mailing list announcing website changes.

8. Buy a Complimentary Domain

If you have a personal business, let’s say “McMillan-Meier Printing Company” then buying a generic name makes sense. People will remember a shorter, snappier name than the business name converted to a web domain. If FastPrintShop.com or another name that complements your business functionality and core services/products is available, forward it or organize the host name data to arrive at the McMillan-Meier Printing site.

9. Hand Out Business Cards

Yes, it’s old school. Every personal network is budding with needs to buy products, get stuff, obtain items, or secure services. In conversation, in a coffee house or at a party, folks can pull your card out even if they themselves don’t need it. But they can’t do that if you don’t order them and get them into circulation. This way people who have never even seen your website can enlarge your business prospects and publicise your domain.

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In stirring up the latest batch of sites I thought I’d extol the main sifting, sugars  and shortening of making a website. Nobody wants to lay an egg in this critical domain market. The proliferation of minisites makes me wonder where the line is drawn between full web sites and “minisites”.  So as I begin a new site, look over my shoulder and see what the secret is. If your mouse is your mixing spoon, preheat your hosting account to 360 degrees and let’s begin.

Assignment of the domain to the proper hosting resource and name servers is essential as greasing and flouring the pan. While the registry servers and name records “preheat”, get your mixer ready to churn some code. Now, choosing a recipe. Open source apps and blog engines generic and specialized. What to do, what to do. Some recipes work with some ingredients and with some others the cake falls flat.

The basic flour of any website is its content. This can be pre-sifted, keyword dense, flaky, or sweetened with adsense. Shortening keeps many readable blurb choices on the front page instead of having one entry overmaster the entire landing page. Too much of any domain flavor gets old, keep the stirring brisk. Site browsers can “crack the surface” of the site with links and categories to the side. Images can soften hard columns of prose. SEO chips and text emphasis to taste.

The site architecture answers first of all to the web administrator. Ease of use is critical when pounding out submission, editing, publishing RSS and user management tasks. These tasks will always take more time than you think they will and will almost never be done until the next month end or week end. Then the cycle starts anew. Sites with aging content make me sad. The web hates a quitter.

I recommend selecting an app you know like the back of your hand. Hobby applications learning can be done on downtime. WordPress hides the fact you have only one channel of update a day. DotnetNuke and Joomla have many portals of publications and many containers for collaboration and mass publication. MovableType or Serendipity or DruPal only if you love the interface. I don’t.

Next consider nutritional value of the website. Mixing proteins with healthy carbs and necessary fats is required. Some ads, lots of healthy content and some high-protein blurbs can make a balanced meal of a website. Some people are strictly meat and potatoes browsers who want density and a strong keyword mix. Some like the carb dishes served up next to graphics and widgets. Website fats are videos and sound bites.

Combine the elements, mixing them together so they rise to the occasion in the application engine and form a sticky site. Leave a few lumps to catch the eye. Don’t over mix. The batter will be textured and more than one color. If the taste of the raw material in the text form is different from the finished product, consider packaging the dough in a less high-finish shape.

Get some domain tasters and fellow chefs to give some feedback on the new recipe. Mix in batches. Stir in more video, some Youtube, some tunes or product tie ins. Take a survey regarding site appeal. Everyone agrees every dish can be improved or spiced up a little. And no enterprise lives up to the maxim “too many cooks in the kitchen” like web site design.

Serve as desired.

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