I've just purchased speakpr.co from godaddy and it prompted me to review the important elements in making a purchase of a domain name. Marketing, technical and financial concerns determine the address of companies big and small all registered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
I talk about the 2012 Google update and how it impacts on the value of owning exact match domains, mistyped domains and the importance of remembering just how many sites you will be able to actively manage. I also mention the importance of then using a submission engine like entireweb.
SPEAK|Pr is for business owners to unlock the value in their organization for free with effective communication and is hosted by international Pr agency owner and entrepreneur Jim James.
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
I've just purchased speakpr.co from godaddy and it prompted me to review the important elements in making a purchase of a domain name. Marketing, technical and financial concerns determine the address of companies big and small all registered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
I talk about the 2012 Google update and how it impacts on the value of owning exact match domains, mistyped domains and the importance of remembering just how many sites you will be able to actively manage. I also mention the importance of then using a submission engine like entireweb.
SPEAK|Pr is for business owners to unlock the value in their organization for free with effective communication and is hosted by international Pr agency owner and entrepreneur Jim James.
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Today, I'm going to talk about domain names, what is in a domain name, and some aspects that you should think about if you're looking at buying a domain name for your business or your organization. This is based on experience, because I've just bought the domain name for the SPEAK|pr podcast today, and I've bought a handful of domain names in the past as well. So, we're going to look at how many should buy, how much you should pay, how you should protect it, and what Google looks for. As William Shakespeare says,"What's in a name? That which we call a rase rose by any other name would smell just as sweet." Is it true that you have to own a vanity domain name or not? My view, personally, having bought domain names since 1995, is that the most important part about a domain name is the marketing, but there's a little bit more to it than that. Today, I purchased the speakpr.co domain name using GoDaddy. The first year will cost me 9.99, which for the succeeding years, it will be 29 a year. In the past, I have bought all the domain names that complement each other, like eastwestpr.tv, eastwestpr.com, eastwestpr.com.sg, eastwestpr.com.uk, eastwestpr.live, and so on. What I found, though, was that I was only putting content on the EastWestpr.com website. The idea I had that search engines would find all these other domain names, and I would route the traffic through to my final destination proved to be untrue, because the search engines don't just register and look for domain names. They only look for domain names with content on them. My first choice for a SPEAK|pr domain name was speakpr.com, but it wasn't available. If I'd be willing to pay $48 to GoDaddy Plus, 20% of whatever I was charged for buying the domain name, then GoDaddy said they could help me with that. I looked at speakpr.biz and speakpr.info, and I could have bought those two for an extra 19 a year. I did look at speakpr.co.uk, but then I thought we'd end up with subdomains. And as I've already got listeners to the SPEAK|pr podcast in over 55 countries, I really want this to be a global offering, not just a local domestic one. I thought that I would stick to speakpr.co, and then I also found speakpr.inc, which I thought would be quite fun because of the reference to getting print and getting ink in PR which is the old expression for PR. So, for 9.46, I bought that as a little bit of a gift to myself. What I didn't do this time was buy any of the add-ons offered by GoDaddy. You have to be careful with GoDaddy, because you can end up buying a 9.90 domain name and spending over$30 because they have you buy domain name protection, auto-renewal, multiple years and so on. Now, I just went for the very basic one-year plan to see if it's going to work, and I didn't buy any protection. They say 150,000 domain names are under threat each year. I'm assuming probably my fairly invisible domain name is not going to be one of them just I bought speakpr.co, because eastwest pr.com is a domain yet. focused on international public relations, while the SPEAK|pr program, which is a Mastermind, is really starting to distract the main message of the PR firm, for which we work for international companies in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, and more. We work for multinationals and smaller companies, and we do media relations, LinkedIn management, digital marketing, and it's a network of consultants that I have around the world who are able to deliver this work. Meanwhile, the SPEAK|pr Mastermind is a training program for all those entrepreneurs or organizations that don't have to budget yet for an agency, or would prefer to manage it in-house. It's my way of helping 98% of companies that are less than 250 people and can't afford an agency. That's why I've decided to separate it out into its own domain, but there are some things that I've learned over the years about buying too many domain names. Back in the mid-90s, when I started goevents.com, I bought a whole slew of domain names. Paying $10,000 to someone who had bought goevents.com without the hyphen still makes me shudder. So, I bought goevents.com and go-events.com. Of course, in all of my marketing material, I could only promote one of those, and the investors at the time rightly questioned my judgement on buying the extra domain name. At the time, it seemed it was the fashion. But now, I think the rule is quite different. Certainly, for me, I'm just buying the one domain that I need, and it seems as though many of the big companies like Sony, IBM, and Apple are just buying the one domain that they can promote. They're not necessarily worried about all the other domains. Now, let's look at some of the other tools and tips that you might want to think about when you're looking at buying a domain name. First, think about if you want to create, for example, a campaign-specific or a product-specific domain. That's great as long as you've got the marketing resources and the content to go on it. Buying a domain for a unique site for the purposes of owning the domain name may only cost$9-$15, but it does rack up if you buy them up over multiple years. One lesson that I've learned is not to buy a domain name if I can't support it. I started a project called Silver Fox Entrepreneurs, and I bought silverfox.entrepreneurs.life. That's been very successful. I also bought maturepreneur.com and maturepreneur.net, because they are similar in meaning for the Silver Fox Entrepreneur, but I didn't have enough content to run across all these sites. In the end, I tried to auction those off. Another point is that for"generic" domain names like dogs.com or pets.com, it's actually hard to brand those if they're worth quite a lot of money, like insurance com. Remember, those are nouns. They are the name of a particular industry. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can sell products off it. It may be great as a directory website, but it may not be a great brand website. There are also premium domains. When I was buying this domain for SPEAK|pr, I could have bought getnoticed.com for$2,500, and there are a number of other domains out there to do with public relations, and courses, and so on. My experience is that I am better off to spend the 9.99 on the domain name and spend $2,000 on promoting it. Another element that comes up is this idea of exact match, that if you own the words that are frequently searched like"restaurant near me," for example, that that would then come highest in the search engine rankings. But in September 2012, Google issued a software update that explicitly devalues domains with exact match domain names. Another consideration is not buying misspellings. In the past, it was fashionable to buy every domain that was a derivation of your own if there was a typo. The challenge with that is you have to do lots of redirecting, and these things do add up. In the first year, this one domain is only 10, but then it'll be 29, so you could be spending 200-400 a year just on domain names, and that's without the protection and all the other widgets that people try and sell you. Apparently, short domain names are good, preferrably those with six or seven letters, probably because it's easier to type. I've gone for speakpr.co, because that represents the company, and I'm working in the business-to-business space. I've made the brand very straightforward. I'm telling people what to do, which is speaking about PR. I'm making it less complicated because my experience, especially with international marketing, is that the more variations you create, the more niche it becomes. I've also trademarked the speak PR name, and my understanding is that you can also complain or take action against people that use a domain name that is a contravention to your trademark, but that would probably be a lot of hassle. What you might be able to do is to prosecute someone for promoting a good or service. You probably couldn't take the domain name away from them, but you could prosecute them if they're trying to use your trademark. There are some issues there about protection of the brand.".net" and ".com" are the main domain names, but I think that going for something a little bit different like ".co" could be quite interesting. There are some nice ones now like ".ai" and ".io" for people in artificial intelligence. Along with the country ones, those are becoming popular. In trying to get your domain name noticed, there is a website called Entire Web, and you can enter the domain name for free, or for$29, and they will submit the domain name to other people. What's in a name? A lot. Having had quite long domain names in the past, one of the functional problems with that is typing it in. Another one is that when you have your own email account attached to the domain name, you end up needing to have an abbreviation because it is frankly just unwieldy. I've also gone for speakpr.co, because it's not too long on the business card, it's not too cumbersome when it comes to setting up email, and it says what I do. I think the domain name is another example in internet marketing where it's worth just keeping it simple. Especially at the beginning, when I don't really have much of a business, just an idea, I want to protect the basic idea, but spending too much money on registrations and protections and all kinds of offerings that people like GoDaddy or Network Solutions have can just increase the budget that is better spent on promotion. There are people that make a living off domain names. You can also auction your domain names. I've been trying to do that with some of the domain names that I bought for the Silver Fox Entrepreneurs. Apparently, you need to pay to become an auctioneer, and you pay a commission for doing that. Some domain names are worth having and selling, but most of them seem to be just cannon fodder. Eastwestpr.com is a domain name that is now worth over $2,000, which is great, because I need that for my own business. If you're looking at buying a domain name for your business, buy one that describes what you do, buy one that you can put content on, buy one that makes your life simple, and then move on and get on with putting out the content. There are many simple and effective ways of getting your business or organization noticed, and having a domain name that speaks to your brand is one of them.