What's in a Name?

Martin Wood

A name can make of break a web site. I am of course talking about a Domain name.

You may think there is nothing to it. Pick a catchy domain name that rolls off the tongue, check that it is available and if it is go ahead and buy it. It couldn't be any harder that that can it?

Well, yes it can. Just stop and think for a minute. You have bought the domain name, designed and built a great looking website, and launched it out onto that great world wide web. You have got a great Reciprocal Link Exchange on your site and you have reached a reasonable Google Page Rank.

Then you decide to get an Auto responder to have a mailing list, and that is when your troubles start! Let me tell you my story...

I don't know if you have heard of Stone Evans – the Home Biz Guy? He runs the Plug in Profit Site. http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-3509 Well I bought into his business. I had to decide on a domain name before he built my website. I chose the name martinsoffers.com. I though that was quite cool as my name is Martin and my site would be advertising offers.

Part of the Plug in Profit Site is you get your own Auto Responder, filled with a 360 day newsletter ready for when you sign up subscribers. I went ahead and bought a good quality leads package and loaded them into my auto responder.

All was going well. Or so I thought.

After a while, I noticed I was not getting any response from my good quality leads (on average you should expect around 1% sign up at the very least). I did some searching around, mainly in the Warrior Forum which is part of the membership package of the Plug in Profit Site. There I saw a series of posts on the American Anti Spam Laws and the effects it was having on the newsletters.

With the Auto responder, there was a spam check program. I'd never used that before, but I ran a few sample newsletters through the spam check. Boy, was I in for a shock. Every single one failed to pass the test. My auto responder is probably like most others, it has a scoring system and once it passes 5 it flags up that your newsletter would trigger the spam filters.

What I found most disturbing was that it was my domain name of martinsoffers.com that was scoring the most, 4.3 points each time it was mentioned. And 2.3 points because my email address was @martinsoffers.com.

Even a single word newsletter with just www.martinsoffers.com scored 6.6. Way above the threshold.

The cost to me, as a result of this has not just been to register a new domain name. I have had to completely redesign my website with my new name on it. Cancel and reopen a new account with my auto responder. And start again with my Reciprocal Links Exchange.

I have also had to start again from scratch with the Google Ranking. And I have a domain name that is next to useless to me or to anyone for that matter. I only use it now to direct traffic meant for martinsoffers.com to my new website.

So, that's my story, and my warning to you.

Before you go and register a new domain name, run it through a spam check. If you are going to use your web site for marketing the last thing you want is for the spam filters to stop your email getting through.

Martin Wood's newest report "What's in a Name? and many other articles, written by experts, are available to read on his website http://www.twahs.com . Don't forget to subscribe to his weekly ezine "Home Business Tips."

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Are You Master of Your Own Domain? This is an important topic for anyone who currently has a website and domain name, as well as for anyone interested in building an internet identity. I am sharing not only from personal experience (I have five active websites online at this time) but from my business, Connecticut Secretary, and the projects I have been involved with in creating and building websites for my customers. Oftentimes customers will approach me after they have already chosen a domain name. What I investigate first is who actually owns that domain name. I no longer ask the customer directly, because 99.9% of the time the response is always "I do!" when in fact many of them unwittingly do not. Determining this is an easy step; you simply go to an independent domain registrar such as Register.com, http://www.register.com, and type in the domain name and choose whois when the results pop up. Feel free to go and type in connecticutsecretary.com and choose whois. You will see that I, Kate Smalley, am listed as the owner and administrative contact for Connecticut Secretary. The technical contact is simply the hosting service I have chosen. The problem we run into is when individuals have chosen to purchase their domain name through a hosting service at a discounted rate. The hosting service is the company that purchases and owns your domain name, and in essence you sometimes just end up renting it along with your hosting service. This is a great way for the hosting company to ensure continued business. Think about if, in the future, you decide to change hosting services. Who do you think you will have to contact to have your domain redirected to another hosting provider? How anxious do you think they will be to provide service to you? How quickly do you feel they will redirect your url? What will happen if they forget to renew your domain name and someone else obtains control and ownership of it? What happens if that hosting company goes out of business? I have seen it happen. To take this conversation one step further, there are now hosting companies that will purchase the domain in your name, so you are the official owner, but they still retain control over your usage of the account. An important point to remember is that ownership of an account as well as having the ability to use the account are important features when deciding how to purchase your domain name. "...in essence you sometimes just end up renting... " I am not saying this is a fact with all hosting companies; I only ask you to consider it for your own well-being and future viability on the internet. Purchasing a domain name yourself is only a matter of spending a few extra dollars per year, and is well worth the security of knowing you are the owner and the one in control of your domain. Consider the amount of work that you have put in to targeting and obtaining traffic through the search engines on your keywords and search terms. Think about all the business you will loose if you have to start over again with a new domain name from scratch. More...