Ideally, your domain should reflect your Valuable PREselling Proposition (VPP). Your VPP answers, in very few words and hopefully with just a touch of character, the two critical questions about your Site Concept...
1) What specific and high-value information does your site deliver?2) What is your unique positioning for this delivery (i.e., what is your angle of approach)?
A good VPP transmits these answers loud and clear to your visitor so that she immediately understands what your site is about. And the single best way to do that?...
Include your VPP in your domain name!There’s no room for “cleverness” or subtlety here. Leave that to the moneylosing dotcoms. Include your Concept Keyword in your VPP and add a “marketing angle/theme” to it. That way, your concept is clear to your visitor, and your Concept Keyword is clear to the Search Engines (the engines will rank your site a touch higher for your Concept Keyword if it is included in your domain name).
Focus your efforts on developing a VPP that is “not too narrow, not too broad”-- it needs to be just right.
Would an example help to clarify? How about three?
“Pricing” is a nice, tight concept. You can use your SUPPLY and DEMAND WINDOWS to brainstorm many HIGH-PROFITABILITY keywords that are directly related to pricing. And, as we saw, you can also BREAKOUT into other areas, too... areas that would be of interest to serious business people (ex., “fulfillment” or “copywriting” or “product development”).
Here’s the problem, though... if you developed many Keyword-Focused Content Pages about fulfillment within your pricing site, you’d dilute that site’s Search Engine effectiveness for pricing issues. So “concept-level” keywords like “fulfillment” really deserve their own sites.
Keep your theme pure. You will do better with the engines and you will be more credible to your readers, too.Business people who are interested in fulfillment will also be interested in pricing. Well, the reverse is true, also. So your pricing pages can also refer people to a good fulfillment company... not to mention a company with a good solution for customer support!
Since “pricing” is wide enough to be profitable and narrow enough to be winnable, make “pricing” your Site Concept Keyword for your new ThemeBased Content Site.
Now let’s develop your “pricing” Concept Keyword into a Valuable PREselling Proposition (VPP). We’ll explore three different directions…i) pricingadvisor.com, or THEpricingadvisor.com
VPP = pricing advisor. This says that you are delivering pricing information. (Your Concept Keyword must, of course, be included in your domain.) And the "advisor" part establishes you as the expert -- it tells your visitor that you'll be delivering some great pricing advice!
ii) pricing-on-the-net.com
VPP = pricing on the Net. Again, it’s clear that you are delivering pricing info. The “on the Net” part says that you are specializing in pricing info specifically on the Internet. Since there is not much info about pricing on the Net and since your potential visitor is certainly there looking for Net-specific info, this is a good approach.
Same idea for “netpricing.com” and “cyberpricing.com.”
When do you use dashes in your domain name? If both versions of a 3-or-more-word domain are available, use dashes if it helps readability. For example, which is easier to read?...
pricing-on-the-net.com or... pricingonthenet.comGenerally, do not use dashes if your domain name has only two words in it. See how “netpricing.com” and “cyberpricing.com” don’t really need the help of a dash?
Do use dashes (even if the domain has only two words) if the non-dash version is already being used by someone else. But be sure that you are not violating anyone’s trademark.
NOTE: Since your affiliate business is 99%+ online, the offline issues of dealing with dashes are not so important (i.e., telling people how to spell it, people forgetting to put the dash after reading your print ad, etc.).
Here’s the bottom line... domain names are so cheap that it’s a good idea to take both versions (with and without the dash), just to make sure that a competitor does not take names that could be confused with yours.
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iii) perfectpricing.com
VPP = perfect pricing. Again, it’s clear that you are delivering pricing info. This time, though, the VPP implies that you show people how to price optimally -also something that people would definitely want!
Bottom line? Same Concept Keyword, but three different VPPs that outline three different Site Concepts.Which of the above approaches is best? Ahhh... my work is done. You know your prospective visitor best. Which approach do you think works best?
You find yourself in a bit of a bind. Now that you’ve done DAYS 3 and 4, you can’t find enough profit potential (HIGH-PROFIT KEYWORDS and related POTENTIAL PARTNERS) to make a pure “Botticelli site” sufficiently profitable.
So you keep doing DAYS 2 and 3 on progressively broader concepts until you find enough profit potential to proceed. Work your way up from Botticellli, to Renaissance art, to all artists, to “everything art.”
What to do? At this stage, you have four options...OPTION 1) Loop back to DAY 4 to grow your list of POSSIBLE PARTNERS.
OPTION 2) LOOP back to DAY 3 and brainstorm more high-profit keywords, and find more POTENTIAL PARTNERS for those new keywords.
OPTION 3) Loop back to DAY 2 and develop a whole new Site Concept.
For this example , let’s assume that you’ll widen the concept and then use the BREAKOUT WINDOW to find more keywords. Then find more POTENTIAL PARTNERS for that wider concept.
How broad should you go? Remember the single best recommendation…As narrow as possible, yet... still with lots of profit potential!
In other words, work your way up from Botticelli, to Renaissance art, to all artists, to “everything art.” Stop as soon as you find a level that has solid profit potential. Keep your niche as narrow as possible, so that you can build a site “to fill that glass,” yet still make good profits.
Let’s say that… As you work your way up the Botticelli concept, you find that you have solid profit potential for some broader, related concepts…“Renaissance Art” and other Concept Keywords at this level (ex., ancient art, cubism, impressionism, etc.).
So you register renaissance-artchive.com, ancient-artchive.com, cubismartchive.com, impressionism-artchive.com, etc., etc. And you also register artchive.com and artchives.com.
Once you establish renaissance-artchive.com, and then ancientartchive.com, and then cubism-artchive.com, you’ll launch a master home page, artchive.com, to tie it all together as “the place to come for all things art.” This home page will contain a global “what's in it for you” message and then provide links to all your other domains that are already up and running and successful.
One more domain -- register store-artchive.com. This could either be an affiliate-based store where you will PREsell the products of your merchantpartners (including a bust of Botticelli!), or it could be a true online store (Store Build It!).
Just before we move on to our last example (“fashion”), let’s review our artchive.com domains to make sure that they meet our VPP (Valuable PREselling Proposition) needs...
Your VPP answers, in very few words and hopefully with a touch of character, the two critical questions about your Site Concept...1) What specific and high-value information does your site deliver?
2) What is your unique positioning for this delivery (i.e., what is your angle of approach)?
Artchive.com is a smart, but not too clever (i.e., so subtle that many visitors would miss the point), play on words that tells the visitor immediately, and with character, that it is a place to come for all things art. It contains your Site Concept word, “art,” and each of your “lower level” domains do, too (ex., renaissance-artchive contains the “renaissance art” keyword.)
Bottom line? What started with Botticelli now has a clear do-able step-at-a-time plan to become an art mini-portal. And you start at a level that you know will be profitable.
Best of all worlds. On to our final example…With “Botticelli,” we needed to widen the concept to capture more profit potential. With “fashion,” we’ll need to do the opposite -- narrow it down to a “do-able” yet profitable level.
Heck, “fashion” is just too broad...• You won’t be able to develop the unique positioning required by a good (VPP).
• Winning the Search Engine wars for a General Keyword like “fashion” will be extremely difficult. And even if you do win it for your home page, people searching for “fashion” are so non-specific, looking with so many possible different topics, that your site is unlikely to meet their needs.
And that’s why... The only strategy on this over-congested Net is to target a specific niche with a specific Site Concept and a strong VPP that tells people quickly what specific and high-value information you are delivering.
When you start with a wide-open concept like “fashion,” you have two basic choices...1) Narrow down to a “fashion”-containing Site Concept that excites you... something about “fashion design” or “fashion model” or “fashion designer.”
2) Change course somewhat, based on your BREAKOUT research.
(In fact, while you’ll start with one or the other, you will quickly end up using both choices, as we’ll see now...)
Let’s cover each quickly, from a VPP point of view...OPTION 1) Narrow down -- Remember some of our HIGH-PROFITABILITY “fashion”-containing keywords?...
fashion magazine fashion model
fashion designer fashion design
fashion-designers-magazine.com
The domain contains your VPP. It says exactly what your site delivers, and that you’ll be delivering it through the format of an online magazine/Web site.
No, the name is not particularly clever. Using words like Herald or Express would sound and look much slicker (ex.,FashionDesignExpress.com). But using “magazine” gives you a better edge with the Search Engines, for two reasons...
i) There’s a slight advantage to having your keyword within the domain name.But more importantly... ii) You’ll be using your name over and over in your copy. No one searches for “FashionDesignExpress.” But lots of people search for “fashion magazine.” And, since few people use quotes when they search, the “fashion” and the “magazine” do not have to be together. So this gives you “findability” for “fashion magazine” and “fashion designers” and even “designers magazine.”
Add a byline like... “The Fashion Design MagazineInclude this on every page, under your logo.
Your magazine format gives you the flexibility to cover a wide range of topics related to fashion design and designers. Use the BREAKOUT techniques described in DAY 3 to generate more and more topics related to fashion design and designers (jewelry topics, famous designer bios, etc., etc.).
You’re off and running with a great concept like this. Just one more thought...Let’s say that fashion-designers-magazine.com succeeds really well...
Hey, it should! You’re doing everything right. But...
It will be too late to register related domains later. Do it now, with an eye to expanding your concept in a few months or so (as discussed above for artchive.com)...
• fashion-model-magazine.com• factory-outlet-stores-magazine.com (see below)
• And, of course, tie it up all together with a Master Domain, fashionmagazine.com or THEfashion-magazine.com. This Master Site will be launched once your other sites are all up and running, much the same way that you did for artchive.com above.
Do you see the difference from these vague, more general, wide-concept, standalone “fashion” approaches?...
Let’s discuss your second option when dealing with a wide-open General Keyword like “fashion”...
OPTION 2) Change course -- Earlier, we used Search It! to find other “fashionrelated” words like “factory outlet stores,” which was searched for 6,020 times and has only 1,820 competitors! Hey, that’s a far better DEMAND-SUPPLY ratio (searches compared to competitors) than “fashion design.”
Research like this may even point you towards changing your concept away from the “concept-level” keyword of “fashion,” perhaps aiming more toward “discount” and “outlets” -- run these two keywords through Search It! to check both SUPPLY and DEMAND. Your best Concept Keyword may actually be...
discount outletsor…
factory outlet stores (that’s where we got that domain, “factory-outlet-storesmagazine.com,” above).
Surprise, surprise!
Of course, you also have to consider...
i) whether this different direction excites you as much
and…
ii) the nature of the kind of customer who will search for your keywords. Make sure that you aren’t marketing to a personality type that is hard to convert, no matter what you do... ex., the “freebie-seeking tire-kicker” or the “marketingphobic tech-type.”
You want to attract a personality that is open-to-buy. In other words, you want people who will buy something after reading your content and clicking through to your merchants.
People searching for outlet malls are certainly doing so for a reason... to save on buying! And you find lots of good online malls and other merchants that fit with your Site Concept. And you can still marry your concept of fashion to “factory outlet stores” like this...
• WORLDSBEST-FashionFactory-outlet-stores.comGeez, if this goes as big as you think it could, you could expand this concept, too! So you also register...
• WORLDSBEST-SportsFactory-outlet-stores.com
And you’ll register a strong Master Domain to tie all your successful niche sites up into one big mini-portal. So what if that’s a year or two down the road?...
• WORLDSBEST-Factory-outlet-stores.comAnd think of all the creamy topics!... Articles on shoes, fur, dresses, etc., etc... leading to great outlet links (and other affiliate links, of course).
Then you do the same for basketball, football, golf, etc., etc. My goodness! You’ve found the mother lode.
Bye-bye fashion magazine. Hello world of discount malls!
Here’s the whole point of DAY 5...
Take your time on the domain name and the concept -- the choice you make here will literally make or break your results. Remember what Danny De Vito said in “The Renaissance Man”...
“The choices we make dictate the lives we lead.”If I had to summarize the entire Affiliate Masters Course into just two lines, it would be the two you just read...
*************************************************** Pick something you know and love...
One without the other is much less likely to succeed.
Yes, you can win by doing something you don’t enjoy doing. But it’s a heck of a lot harder.
And sure... you could just say, “Hang what people will pay for. I want to do what turns me on”... and that would be OK. You might even “luck into” a winner of a concept. But it would be luck. On the other hand, if your payoff is the sheer enjoyment of doing a hobby, that’s great, too.
It takes a cold-hearted businessperson to make money at something that he does not particularly like. Few of us qualify. Of course, if you do, don’t hesitate to go where the profitability seems to be, first and foremost!
But, for most folks...Pick something you know and love...
You believe you have the right domain name, but wait… Don’t rush out to register it just yet. Your domain name will be with you a long, long time, showing potential visitors just what you have to offer. Take one more step before you make the final decision…