Savvy Affiliate

You Have A Great Idea, Equally Important Is A Great Name

Day 2 of The 100 Days To Webpage Excellence Guide

Once you have decided on what your webpage is going to be about your next step is going to be picking a domain name for your site.  Although some people start their page on a free hosting service, i.e. Blogger, this is a mistake!  You should start your webpage on its own domain from the beginning. 

Here are several reasons why it is important to start your page on your own domain

• Keep It Unique - A webpage that has its own domain stands out much better than just another Blogger Blog. Creating a profitable webpage is all about establishing your identity online.  It is much easier to do that with a stand alone page
• Be In Control - When you host your own domain, you are in control of all the decisions affecting your blog.  You can choose how much bandwidth to use, how you want your site to look, what you want to display, etc.  If you run your site on another hosting service you run the chance they can shut you down or shut down themselves, losing all the work you’ve put into your page.
• Selling Your Site - If you ever decide to cash out, stand alone webpages have a much better resale value than single webpages.  Since selling your website can generate a lot of money for the savvy webmaster, this should be an important consideration for you when you are starting your page.
• Moving Your Site is Hard - If you are planning on starting on a free service and moving once you get bigger, forget it.  Moving your site is extremely hard.  You are likely to lose many of your visitors, most of your search engine rankings, and there is a good chance on losing some of your posts.

So now that we established that you should pick your own domain, what should it be?

There are basically two schools of thought on picking domain names.  The first is that you should pick a name which makes it obvious what the site is about.  i.e. Poker.com is a site about poker.  Although it doesn’t have the best user interface, that site has flourished solely on its domain.   The other thought process being picking a domain is to get one that is completely unique.  i.e. Google.com.   Google probably would not have done so well if it was just Search.com.  Google allows people to easily remember the name, and not confuse it with a copycat.

So which should you pick?  If you are going to be The Definitive site on a subject you can get away with a unique name, otherwise go with a topical name.  Although people remember Google, and it has profited from that, there are thousands of pages with weird names who people don’t remember because the site doesn’t have unique value.  If you aren’t planning on creating a site which will be one of the definitive sites on the internet, go with a topical name.

Here are some tips on picking your domain name.

• Shorter Domain = Better Domain -  The shorter a domain name is the more valuable it generally is.  I would much rather have a domain like BlogGuru.com than ExpertBloggingAtYourService.com
• .Com > All other extensions - Although there is a lot of hype over some extensions such as .mobi, .com extensions are still the best.  Find a .com extension for your page if you possibly can
• Avoid Mis-spellings- Avoid registering a domain that is a mis-spelling of another page.  Don’t get a site such as Amzon.com You have too much chance of being sued for copy-write violation.  Plus, even if your site becomes popular, there is a good chance that people will visit the other site by accident.

Having trouble find a good domain?   Godaddy.com has a handy domain helping tool