Niche Rivalry 004 – Purchasing a Domain
Posted by TheLostCyclingDude | Posted in Niche Rivalry | Posted on 01-02-2012
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It is surprisingly easy to buy your own domain.
$10 buck later you own a piece of the web! Oh yeah!
I think the first domain I bought was “lil-grabber.com”. I set up a webpage on it using FrontPage 2003 and started selling this little device that could pull out fence posts. My Grandpa had invented it years before I was born and had several hundred copies made.
I sold like 10 of them . If only I had the web marketing experience that I have now…
Here is a quick video to walk you through my the screen shots of choosing and buying a domain, and how I finally settled on kitchengadgethq.com
You want your domain name to be brandable
I really went after this with the domains “nomorewhitesocks.com” and “lostcyclist.me”. Memorable. Now my goal is to build a brand around it.
You want your domain name to help you get ranked
In internet marketing, we call these “exact match domains”, or EMD’s. For example, since I am targeting “helpful kitchen gadgets”, I might try to buy helpfulkitchengadgets.com. There is some evidence that having an EMD can help you get ranked.
I should know. I have reaped their benefits before.
Oh My? Should I buy a .com? .info? .net? .org? .me?
Sometimes it seems that every domain name has been taken, and all you are left with is the .net or .info derivative. Should you do it?
Here’s my thoughts — and more FAQ on domain buying:
.com is the best
It really is — followed closely by .net and .org.
How do I know this? Because I have connections to a google manual evaluator. Basically, if you have a website that is .info, they are more likely to take a closer look at the quality of your website. The .org is not too bad, but they typically expect to see those associated with an organization.
That said, a .net makes most of my money.
What is your competition?
If helpfulkitchengadgets.com is taken, should I choose helpfulkitchengadgets.net? I would first look at the other website and see how much they have built it out. There is a good chance that they are just “squatting” on it in the hopes of selling it.
You want to avoid it if they have clear plans of being your competition. What if your visitor misstypes and ends up at a better site?
Avoiding dashes
I’ve seen some high-quality sites still ranking even though they have dashes. However, the big G is leaning away from trusting those sites, according to its handbook.
Avoiding the .info
I’ve said this before, but let me clarify.
The .info is tempting because you can buy them for $2 all day long.
If that’s all you can afford, go for it. But I wouldn’t build a .info site if you paid me $2 and double-dared me. I’ve got better things to do.
So here is my ranking of favorite domain extensions:
#1 .com
#2 .net
#3 . org
(lostcyclist.me was just something I really loved so I did it. I’m still waiting for Lars to let his lostcyclist.com membership to expire. I’ve been waiting for 5 years.)
Interesting about the reviewers, didn’t know that. Still I think a site should always be built to stand up to review, so I wouldn’t personally worry about that aspect of a domain extension. (Right now the site of mine that gets the most impressions in Google is a .info… go figure!)
I’ve recently had some fun buying .US sites. Most of the traffic I go after is US anyways, and GoDaddy was selling them for $3.95 throughout December (no longer it looks like). Plus I’ve gotten a few 8 letter EMDs (not my IM one obviously) because it’s pretty easy to find an open .US still.
.US can be fun for domain name hacks since there’s lots of words that end in us as well. I have one ****nex.us for instance. (Not profanity! I just typed the stars)
Thanks to your comment, I just discovered that my theme is doing the commenting date in “euro-mode”. grr.
I really like your .us idea. Kind’ve like how they do Youtu.be . Very ingenious.
I think you pretty much summed it up right here: “Still I think a site should always be built to stand up to review”. As long as you answer the question that brings people to your site (and looks respectable ), your basis are covered.
That said, the .info will likely mean that if the site ever comes up for review, the rater will spend time looking for hidden links and clicking through the affiliate links to see if they are relevant. That’s all.
I suppose I should try building up a .info sometime. I’ll add that to my list.
By the way, I am following your relaunch with great interest. Ever since you took that site to $700 in 4 months, I’ve been a fan. Keep us posted!
What you say makes sense. I think there are some other reasons to stay away from .info in general. I know I never click on .info sites unless I’m looking at competitors. It’s just so rare to find any useful info on .info domains.
The .info I have is actually a Postrunner site with about 18 posts on it, one of my own. I spruced up some of the PR submissions, but it’s still not as good quality as most of my other sites. I doubt the .info has anything to do with it, but perhaps the number of outbound links is the difference. Most of my real sites have little to no outbound links, which might be something of a “tell”. I need to remember to link to more authoritative domains in my articles.