Domain Owl

This is the Christmas season. That means good tidings and wishes of good cheer and so on. But it is never to early to start next year’s marketing plan for your domains and developed websites. Here are five things you can do today, per domain name, to improve your domain name value, page rank concretely and provide better sales and traffic metrics through the next sell offer or buying negotiations. Santa could bring good things in his sleigh for jolly domainers next year.

1. Rent a browser and plant some homepages

Find five new users per domain name who will put your website as their home page. Every use of their browser daily updates and indexes as a searchability and web presence factor. Finding new users form Craigslist or sifting through email responses to target end users with more precise communications in mind should keep your site bookmarked. Make your bookmark digits the new year’s goal. Added features and ease of use can make some homepages permanent. Use a very positive and well thought out branding approach for this type of marketing.

2. Organize a Traffic Plan

The rainy-day project most domainers never get to is the upstream and downstream traffic click reports. These can be awkward to absorb and bulky to review. But they will clue the designer and webmaster in to where users are likely to be found. Market to those sites, and more clicks will come. Review an updated study of demographics for end users with holiday leisure Web traffic in mind. Got a gaming or entertainment site? School’s out and newly mobile teens and students will be looking for content to test their new devices on. Link up and seed new directory additions for domain exposure.

3. Create Button Sites

Button sites are dashboard pages organized so encouraged visitors can review your broad diversity of online content offerings and select the one closest to their heart for a closer look. But just links won’t do any good. Make some magic with a custom graphic for each link or site, (perhaps the logo), and provide connotative dimensionality like something “fun to drive”. A button is infinitely more fun to punch than a plain old link. End users can find news and RSS feeds from other sites at other sites. These are especially utilitarian for mobile users trying to navigate without knowing how to type in urls via text tools or work their sparkly new phone.

4. Utilize FaceBook Properly

FaceBook is a great medium for social marketing, unless there is value reward or functionality with your end user’s “Like” click. Do they get points, offers, free coupons, or something? Make sure the offer is blended into a slogan or some type of marketing text aimed at the recreational “Like” clicker. Make your ‘Like” message domain name related. FaceBook users want to be the first in their group to know about the cool new thing, class, event, hobby, charity, or website concerning anything. Their announcement or url promotion can bring end users in droves to see what’s up. A cute domain name packs a lot of punch here.

5. Devise a Campus Campaign

Schools and college campuses are the target institutions of choice these days. Find a way that your website and its functions creates value and pinpoint ways to market to those users. Some campus newspapers and institutional trade publications may accept your ad. Your domain name should be prominently displayed. Bored students and people looking for another way to spend their time scan even back pages of trade journals and newspapers looking for something interesting. Your site or its optional participation entertainment give people “something to do”.

Originally posted 2010-12-21 11:10:11.

Continue Reading

Remember when Groupon was just a funny little website with a unique sounding domain name? Groupon has now become the domainer’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the GroupOn story has grown and grown, until the tombstone headlines in the business journals have proclaimed it a blue chip investment worthy of underwriting on the metropolitan stock exchanges worldwide.

The ongoing opportunity in the online space for a domainer to build a brand, establish a service, deliver a product and find a market still exists. As many experts observe, the SEO search result B2B offering has barely been tapped, domainer clams to the contrary. The SEO business available online is a green market ripe for plucking. Domainers needy for SEO development and cementing into the virtual universe on the vine.

Domainers and their service providers have fallen short of delivering the full scope of SEO quality services, as one observer notes in an article “The B2b of SEO”.

“Even with the popularization of SEO value present in the current online media community, actual search engine penetration is rare. But the cause of this is more counter intuitive than even the most qualified experts can defend.”

GroupOn was smart enough not to listen to the naysayers who scoffed at their idea or nodded knowingly at one more undevelopable app coming down the pike. They ignored even further the people who said according to the extant rules GroupOn might fail. Every domainer should doff their cap to GroupOn for extending the domaining possibilities for every name in every domain portfolio in existence.

Yes, I am talking to YOU. Why aren’t you marketing your domain harder? Don’t you want an IPO? Get on the stick and get your marketing department clicking. It costs NOTHING to plant urls and post comments, yet so many ambitious domain owners haven’t posted a self-serving blog comment or forum post in YEARS.

Physician, heal thyself.

Continue Reading

One of the worst and most ignorant comments I heard this month about doing business online is that you “can’t promote your website on Youtube because you don’t have any videos to upload”. I had to stop laughing after a few minutes out of sheer disbelief. When you wonder why the competition isn’t winning inflating the value of their domain names, statements like this will emerge as big reason why the strategy bubble on the other side has burst.

I actually read an email where this man claimed that “nobody” could watch the content of the TV site on YouTube because it was ”all taken down”. I was gobstopped. I absolutely stared at the screen in horror at this comment. Since I had spent days watching films and clips and fan videos concerning the very subject, that would not be taken down, and been on Youtube for years, this guy was full of it.

I guess that’s why Google bought Youtube, because it would “all be taken down”. At this writing, Youtube has billions of videos up and people taking part in discussions and comment exchange worldwide. These are the kinds of statements that “ROFL” was invented to cover. All i could think of was that this client was so removed from the actual user experience at his website that he had no clue how organic web traffic actually grabs hold of one of his pages and stops by for a visit.

The opportunity to gain valuable first time end user feedback from YouTube contacts is one of the most exiisting online. Using the browser traffic to get a concrete opinion about how your site fits user needs, by users who have already passed the subject and interest test qualification, is priceless. This is specially true the when the domainer is the webmaster. The communication cycle is very shrunk indeed when a user says “that picture is awful” or “There’s no place to comment”. These golden kernels of user feedback can be directly incorporated into site redesign steps.

I could tell that the client not only had never traced the end user’s navigational path to the website, but had errantly shut out all related wisdom. This client insisted Youtube was not the place for any links back to his website. He also insisted that dropping links in forums was not a good idea either. Yes, these are usually the people who come crying to me at the end of the year saying they can’t figure out where the traffic is going.

Catch a clue, buddy. People search YouTube because they want video formatted content. They search YouTube because it is entertainment not found anywhere else. They look for the sarcasm, pathos, satire, comedy and witticism that makes human communication surprising and worthwhile. I know these entries stay up for a long time because I can get response emails from youTube a year after I commented. That’s the longevity of a YouTube link marketing effort.

Nobody goes to a search engine page looking for humor. But people online check out YouTube on the hour looking for diversion. But that’s not the only end user online at YouTube. The information from a slideshow or clip, video or narrated upload is infinitely more appealing to some than blocks of dry text. If you can engage even the operators of other channels that is a dozen more users watching your site, or citing it in communications than you had before.

Youtube is the most popularly used website on Earth. That’s the planet you are now on, by the way. People go to Youtube to look for things because going through a search engine is a needless extra step when they know they want video. And when users want video content, the default is all the content that Youtube has. Video has become the easiest information to digest, both visually and by audio “entertaining” an end user into learning or knowing more about any topic.

Any website owner who does have one single Youtube to their credit deserves a stay in the domainer’s penalty box. This is because even a narrated version of a slideshow of the website, images to match, or a progression of clicks through the site can work as the uploaded video content. Why would any website manager or webmaster not want a descriptive tour of their website ready for interested would-be visitors to assess? Why waste a search opportunity and gift-wrap it for your competitors?

YouTubes has all kinds of ways to put out the SEO sign. (They’re kind of in on the whole thing). Titles, search tags, captions, bubble comments, Facebook links and channel comments drive YouTube interaction. Getting the debate going and reacting to a comment from someone else is the most exciting social networking interaction happening online today.These kinds of content triggers are exactly what spurs web traffic in the first place.

What kinds of videos on YouTube might lure viewers to your website? While several thousand domainers believe users will visit their site for no reasons, using grass-is-greener techniques with game-the-system strategies for empty parked pages, several hundred thousand domainers know a YouTube link can only help traffic stats and end user satisfaction. In fact, by qualifying your next end user by subject type and word associations, clickthrough likelihood and overall site visit times will only rise.

Continue Reading

Once upon a time in domainland, a domain name such as a five character generic might be had for a song. Then came the land rush, the market flooded with buyers and sellers, arbitrageurs and entrepreneurs. The cycles of name selling fury and famine drove the domain name commodity around the globe. Soon, geographically specific domain names had their vogue. And target end user markets for every type of product or service, entertainment or activity rose just as geographically specific country codes came online as well.

Domain names today should come with a monetizing plan, a social network campaign, a end user participation strategy and a promotion timetable. The monetizing plan keeps the domain owner evaluating every effort to market and develop the site behind the name. A monetizing plan for the domain name should include the webmaster’s estimation of the earnings potential of a domain name as a resale target goal product, or a growing concern online. The social network campaign can reflect back on the system architecture and programming choices of the website developer.

An end user strategy for site interaction and participation can include social network promotion and communication throughputs, but it part of a larger whole. Who tells their friends about the site, and how? What kind of content prompts the reference of an article or url via email, Twitter, or FaceBook? What sets of users are evangelists, which digest the material and act on it, and which form a passive set of visitors? This brings into focus the change in available end user niche demographics now trolling the Web looking for place to surf.

The millennial niche consumer markets is reshaping food chain revenue volumes and it may be affecting small device and computer sales as well. Millennials are coming of age postcollege consumers with recreational incomes to spend but caveats previous groups didn’t have. The optimization of any such website marketing to Echo Boomers should integrate these factors into the look and feel of the website.

DINKS, Yuppies, and Baby Boomers did not have as many environmental and sustainability concerns in there foods as millennials. And a millennial niche market consumer will not be as likely to ignore chemical or medicinal warnings or aftereffects of certain types of chemical or preservatives in foods, products, home cleaning products, or clothing manufacturing processes or big box goods.

Millennials are also called Echo Boomers. The website of choice for a millennial will likely cater to a cause, which limits interaction to brief comments, ‘Like” actions, or donations, or will entertain the end user, with video or gaming content. Millennials are much more likely to type in a gossip website url as a news source than two thirds of older Internet users. Brand awareness of such a user group will include more website names than legacy product brands and site visits and searches shift toward clothing and media brands and trendy retailers than older groups.

The web user of today will likely expect a rationale behind a website and a way to interact with site instead of just encountering information and content the are expected to read. Audio and video enhancements flavor the experience in a way millennials like. The younger Internet user will be coming from sites where they are actively engaged in gaming, clicking, and watching moving pictures and animated ads. A site with “nothing to do” will bore this user from an interactivity standpoint. Millennials have a strong resonance with “MTV style content programming.

Webmasters can utilize ens user potential of millennials by exploiting the design to appeal to ease of use from mobile phone devices, cellphones, tablets and content enriched by updated media player upgrades. But millennial end users are also not shy about obtaining knowledge and participating in political or economic causes akin to their core values.

But future planning, like insurance and estate or financial affairs are not likely advertising successes for this user group. Matching millennials appeal website content and affiliates in site architecture that rewards search result lookups for this niche is key. i.e., Someone spending $6600 on a graphite hunting bow is not a match for a user who will spend $100 a month on digital downloadable game content.

Ad design and revenue potential for millennials sites should be carefully considered. Affiliate ads featuring teenage smartphones or senior disability living accessories are not good matches for content designed to attract millennials users. But products that utilize technology like digital or Mp3 content will be much more in line with this end user’s expectations and desires. Ads for TV shows or digital content can be very strong affiliate performers for programs and films that are marketed to this World Wide Web user segment.

Knowing which likely advertising offer users will click is key to implementing a monetization plan for a website or domain name. Since any buyer for that name will likely also intend the domain to be user for a similar purpose, grooming search engine results and navigable traffic to the site should be tailored to a likely demographic profile.

Social networking and TV-based content is a likely win for sites and domain names tailored to this group. Since millennials grew up with the Internet, likely sites to appeal to them will feature next-stage technology, products, and site design. Ad the entitlement so many critics attribute to this group with can work for domainers looking for product-related clicks and service offers on their millennials based web sites.

Continue Reading

Many domainers can exercise options in their Facebook account for their own business benefit. The use of Facebook as an online graph of the social appeal and marketing utility of their brand message is part of the new business model of e-commerce and promoting services online. But for many business process vendors and business to business product launches, the challenge of effecting Facebook conversions is daunting.

Facebook is an excellent testing tool for promotion since it already has a high guaranteed traffic of all demographics. The graph of traffic from a variety of social users can be as useful as a domain value assessment, and these instruments of measurement can be website based applications themselves. This is a business-to-business type of domain development investment. B2b domains furnish portals for sales vectors into mass purchase business product sales to all kinds of companies.

But the identification of a domain name as a potential business and the development of the website to support that domain name does not complete the business model of bringing a contemporary product or service to the online and e-commerce market. Tangents of message overlap, vectors into mass entertainment and publicity channels for viral marketing, and entrance into key networks of likely customers and buyers is critical.

Professionals in the online domain industry can testify that unique url addresses do not guarantee user purchase volumes or visitor traffic without consumer sensitive development of a website and promotional campaign to alert potential customers of their offering. But domainers can market their domain and use Facebook to test the appeal of the domain name. The sale of any domain name might include a Facebook account for that domain name with a marketable number of Friends.

But FaceBook is a very broad amphitheater of public taste and communication. Narrowing the channel of focus between technology and business professionals can slim the chaff from the overly spammed profile of every online business social network user. Long term use of hand edited use groups on Facebook can make any domainer a public relations end user and broadcast channel all by themselves.

The appeal of a website or a domain name can stem from the country of origin, the language of a domain keyword, the number of letters in the domain, the country code or top level domain dependent after the domain word, or previous ownership and page ranking in the search engines. But since Facebook is now worldwide, the need to be effective in broadcasting the message for your product or domain market is spread over multiple languages.

Using Facebook as a global touching point for marketing and promotions means any person in any country that can navigate the Facebook search bar or user interface can find your brand product or service. Promotion of a domain name for sales of that domain or website or even the social network conduit itself can now be done using metrics of usership and visitors. And a domain is the very best way to pique the interest of any online browser.

Continue Reading

Getting started on a business blog can help with future projects down the road. Even if the new idea is not ready, you can build a community and start your readership now. The collaboration between partners on global scale efforts, be it coding, organizational, environmental or business motives is an everyday reality bloggers can exploit. A blog can have an impact on your reputation in your current business community as well.
The idea of a blog has evolved from a technological communications to a stream of consciousness tool. Now the world sees the Internet not as a potential marketing tool but a required one. Woe betide the businessperson who can’t wield a Twitter or sling a Podcast, or at least author a blog. The information inside blogs is not necessarily permanent, and regarding its being time sensitive, content only has a few years before it is eclipsed from the Internet entirely.
Blogging as a profession is not for everyone. And blogging daily is not required. the blog software available today answers to its operator’s commands. The weekly blog post or even biweekly update may be all that’s necessary. A blog makes an excellent journal for feedback. The communication capability of a blog, especially when augmented by social networking, can create new discussions and conversations that otherwise might never have taken place.
The drive towards SEO has changed the way the public reads a blog. The blog can be a source of feedback about the way a businessperson intends to go forward with a project. Before they commit resources they can test the waters. The reading community of global individuals cruising the Web for information and discussion about their favorite topics will never be stronger than right now. People are more educated and in search of the next step than ever.

But many excellent would-be bloggers get caught up in design and template issues. All that is really important to get the message out there is a functional blog, and WordPress has set a very high standard. The etiquette of speaking to a public can be very natural and not at all like some authors fear it “must” appear. Other would be bloggers fear they have no authentic credentials. But the beauty of a blog is that anyone can cement their opinion simply by having one and posting it.
Moderating comments on a blog can be an enlightening way to find out what people really think. And these contacts can be followed in email communication. Online users are much more likely to find a blog and follow after deciding if it speaks to their interests. And a lurker can become a commenter when the blog post moves them to the effort. Passions really come to the fore once the blog channel is opened up, it’s the way humans are wired to interact and verbalize what they care about that makes blogs so successful.
The research capabilities of a blog can be extremely rewarding if the blogger makes very specific requests about what they are looking for. Blog readership can be an amazing resource for disseminating data, finding discounts, forming new partnerships, and getting a debate going about topics in the news. The transparency and impression of leadership afforded by a blog can become a a very valuable credential in the new online marketplace. And someone who means business today can’t afford not to have one.

Continue Reading

Feel like your site has all the elements for success but it somehow remains a secret? Tired of hearing about social media but not sure if it can work for you. Use these methods to get get your online site message across when just owning the domain name and launching the site isn’t enough.

1. Tagline Your Hook

Get your site’s basic point into small simple reductio that travels well on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The domain itself should point the way. Get ready to have it translated into other languages. Facebook is not only an English language site. The business card and the motto should quickly broadcast an available end user market and speak to them simply and  well. This will be instantly obvious to potential advertisers.

2. Look for New Niche User Groups

Skip personal network friending for people and their babysitter and their neighbor and their Farmville friends. Find the people the other sites are to big or too ignorant to find. The tattoo removal seekers who want Vegan options, The Linux programmers who want Linux only games, corporate human resources associates looking for software aptitude testing, pick your market. Think hard about who might feel your site is worth their interest, then leave no stone unturned finding them.

3. Tap The Trouble Nerve

People get anxious and motivated to act when they have a worry or concern activated. Transforming the site message into a warning (Clickjacker.com, Who’s Using Your Mouse Besides You?”, can bring users and originate a referral email sendalong. People flock to trouble faster than they flock to charity sites or feel good blogs. Make  a road accident disaster scenario and envelope your site’s solution into it, and let the end users come to rubberneck.

4. Provide a Solution

Find a way to get a demographic interested in your site to solve a problem, and power up the elbow grease to find them and notify them of your site’s existence and what it can do for them. The path to the solution should be gimmick free and easily navigable from the landing page. Is there a cost? Who does it help? Why does it work? A quick scan of the home page should let anybody solve the mystery.

5. Delegate the Message

Any website with a serious effort towards a social media marketing campaign needs ambassadors, messengers and key influencers. Guerrilla domainers want niche users and their broadcasters who will spread the message of your site in their own personal networks. Facebook is saturated with direct marketing everybody ignores. Let the key players and pied pipers do the work for you.

Continue Reading

I don’t know who said it, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. While every web developer in existence today spends their time trolling the forums and talking up their sites, in my opinion the best way to gather new visitors to your website is to rely on tried and true thirty year old marketing methods. Because the tech and site might be new, but the way people interact and communicate is not. And those basic spurs to relating your website name and domain are what site traffic is made of.

Imagine you talk to a neighbor this morning briefly about your new website. This guy has fifteen things on his mind and nods comprehendingly to everything you say. But ten seconds after his Prius disappears out of view, he’ll have forgotten you conversation in the impending rush to take care of the items on his own agenda. But if he reached for a pencil, a Post-It, or a packet of instant coffee with your sites name on it, you’ve become the center of his universe.

In this day and age of ultra-mobile devices, everybody still wants to write things down. They scrabble through their purse, car, briefcase, sofa, anything to find that elusive writing device to jot something down. And later on, in a moment of boredom or metaphysical malaise or general pondering, the text of the url of your domain will reappear in front of their eyes. Those 3 a.m. breaks from World of Warcraft or raids on the refrigerator might give someone a new chance to check out your site.

Maybe it’s a TiVo episode number. Maybe it’s the name of that cool song third from last in the playlist. Maybe it’s the license plate of that guy who just cut him off in traffic. Or perhaps a critical phone number or two. But the universal need for a writing device remains the same. And the beauty of website advertising pencils is that they get passed on and re-used by entirely new sets of eyeballs who also wonder what that suite is about. This can start a conversation about the uses of such a site and build an expectation about what such a site can deliver.

Bumper stickers are the cheapest advertising in the world. This is the perfect solution for clients who cry foul at the cost of any manufactured promotional items. They are also the type of marketing domainers ignore.

Most domain name owners will stop short at actually printing materials or distributing items with their brand on them, even though every website worth its salt cries out to be seen and heard of. But the use of one pad of paper as a quick-and-dirty message pad in a large company for phone messages and reminders can generate a dozen or more unique page views. And these cost about the price of a flavored latte.

For the following example, assume the existence of freehubcaps.com. Hypothetically, if the domain owner of freehubcaps.com makes a template of a sticker or font size logo for the site,distant marketing contacts can print out their own stickers. The cost of marketing just went down to pennies a day.

That’s when writing the ads for Craigslist to advertise get very easy. When the marketing contact for a given website meets their target goal for their area (say 100), they receive a Paypal payment or Starbucks card charge or mailed gift card in the mail. A website owner with a similar site contacts 100 people who drive on crowded freeways in crawling rush hour traffic daily. It is likely that a bumper sticker featuring the website name would get a lot of eyeballs.

People are bored to distraction during work commutes, any website that looks like fun can be instantly dialed up via smart phone netbook or tablet. At the very least, twenty bumper stickers promoting a website in a given metro market could show targeted traffic. Just handing out business cards on a crowded subway train in a major metropolitan market can earn some great geo-based clicks easily trackable back to the promotion.

These types of promotion will always work in conjunction with the subject matter of the website and the attractiveness of the domain name. Having the site optimized and ready is a absolute prerequisite to any domain name (website) promotions campaign. this makes the distribution of business cards to niche users easy.

A sports site might have a group of business cards distributed at a sports bar. Gaming site cards can be handed out where ever gamers are found (libraries, schools, coffee shops). Shopping websites might be handed out in parking lots or left on car windshields. These are old school tricks for new era traffic farming. And so on. Finding clicks from that niche market just got easy, and doable.

Continue Reading

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.

Wordtracker Customers Get More Visits to their Websites… Find Out How.

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading