HOW TO CASH IN WITH YOUR FIRST DOMAIN

HOW TO CASH IN WITH YOUR FIRST DOMAIN

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

This report is for people who want to cash in by having their own Internet domain... but who have never had a domain before. Its objective is to show you where to get your domain and how to set it up for maximum return as quickly as possible. If that's you, listen you. This report could both save and make you tens of thousands of dollars!

What Is A Domain Anyway?

Let's start right at the beginning, with a definition of what a domain is. A domain represents a part of the Internet. It is your own grub stake, a portion of virtual real estate where you can say what you want to say, present what you want to present about your business. It's www.yourbusinessname.com

Why Do You Want A Domain?

My Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines domain as "a territory over which dominion is exercised." People want an Internet domain for the same reason as they want any other kind of domain: because it's theirs and they can do with it what they want.

You've got to think of an Internet domain as a property. It's a property that can become anything you want it to be: a store front, a mall with a series of stores, the ultimate repository of information on any given set of products or services, the headquarters of a cause. A domain is your own personal empire, waiting for your energy, imagination, and determination to shape it into being whatever you want. What it will be, how big it ill get, how profitable it will be depends on you. A domain is your ticket to dreaming and achieving big things.

Where Should Your Domain Be?

Start from the assumption that there are lots of sharks on the Internet. More people want to be on the Internet with their own domain than understand how to achieve that objective. Knowing this, some people with advanced technical skills but without moral grounding take full advantage of this fact to fleece the newbies. When you get your first domain, consider yourself a tenderfoot and act accordingly; unless you've had experience, tread carefully.

The first red flag is when a company tells you they'll register your domain name for $50-$75. Watch out!Registering a domain name, which means you own the name, takes 24 hours to achieve and costs the provider nothing but about 5 minutes of time and one e-mail message. There is no cost to the provider.

Keep in mind that when you register a name, that's what you've got -- a name. Nothing more. Many newbies think that by registering a name, they get a domain. Not so. Domains are provided by Internet Service Providers who are actually renting you a portion of space on their server. These portions are represented by numbers assigned by the ISP. Thus, http://www.worldprofit.com is actually http://207.153.23.2

Clients are charged a fee not for name registration but for hosting. If you're not careful you can get badly taken advantage of by unscrupulous companies which may even charge you nothing for name registration... but thousands of dollars, or more, for hosting services, domain design charges, monthly maintenance fees, hit limits, etc. Quickly you'll find any hope of profit evaporating.

This is why you've got to go with a reputable company, like Worldprofit, to ensure that you're not confused and taken in by things like these: you're told you need 150 megabytes of space with your domain. One way ISPs take advantage of the unsuspecting is by offering them more space than they need. With 150 megabytes of space, you could post the equivalent of over 10,000 pages of information. This is more space than 99% of domains will ever need. In fact, 99% of domains will never even use 5 megabytes of space. Disreputable companies make you feel you're "getting it all" by selling you 150 megabytes of space; what they're really doing is selling you space you will never need. They can then turn right around and sell this space again and again to others, who won't need it either!

You're told you can sell subdomains to others. This doesn't work, since other people want their own name --www.yourownname.com -- just as you do. If they take a subdomain from you, they're stuck using your domain name. Whereas the primary domain name might be www.yourcompany.com, when Joe purchases a domain from you, his name will be joe.yourcompany.com. . you're given traffic limits. The name of the game for Internet success is traffic. Yet some companies basically say, "If you get any hits over a certain number, we're going to assess you an additional fee based on usage." This is highway robbery! You should never have to pay a fee based on hits.

You're told that registration with major search engines will solve your traffic problems, especially if your domain is linked to one of their main pages. There's an enormous amount of misinformation floating around about search engines. Sure you want to be in them. Equally, you can't base your success on being in them. Think for a minute! You want to be in search engines. So do the millions of other people who have Internet web sites and domains. People are registering their sites every minute of every day; this will continue so long as people want web sites and the search engines offer free registration. By the same token, being linked to a main page of your ISP may not mean very much. How much traffic does that page, and the domain overall, get? Most ISPs are in the business of POSTING information. They're not in the business of domain/mall promotion. At Worldprofit we're very interested in what other ISPs and malls do to promote themselves. We've been doing an ongoing survey about this for several years now. Whereas three years ago in any given opportunity tabloid you could find advertisements for a half dozen ISPs and their malls, today you'll generally find an advertisement for just one -- Worldprofit. The other companies stopped advertising for traffic... their traffic fell accordingly... yet they continue to sell domains and links to their main pages. Unknowing newbies get fleeced because of this all the time.

To summarize:

You need a lot less space than you think you won't sell a lot of subdomains traffic limits are always a no no search engines are fine as far as they go but will never provide all the traffic you need links only work if the domain you're linked from has substantial traffic.

Be clear what fees you're paying for everything and anything before you sign on the dotted line.Unfortunately, once you've signed things can -- and often do -- get sticky. If you're unhappy with your ISP and want to change, they often make that as hard as possible, up to and including making it difficult for you to transfer your domain name to a new ISP. Beware!

Thinking Through What You Want Your Domain To Do For You, Setting It Up Accordingly From my standpoint there is one reason and one reason only to have a domain: to make money. A domain is not a toy or a status symbol. It's a tool, a tool designed to make your business more money at less cost.

When you're clear on the objective, it's easier to evaluate whether a thing should go in your domain or not... and easier to evaluate the outcome to see if you've achieved the objective.

In this connection, consider this question: do you have the time and inclination to manage your domain yourself? If so, the first thing you need to get is a copy of Microsoft Frontpage 98. Frontpage enables you to most easily manage your domain by allowing easy presentation of material. It includes such features as counters (so you know how many people have visited), forms, discussion groups, protected web sites, and much more. For details visit http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage

If you're not going to manage your own domain, you need to be clear on what the party contracted will do, how long it generally takes, and what the charge is. My recommendation, however, is this: get Frontpage and learn to do things yourself. In the long run, it's faster, easier and more economical. And you won't be held hostage to some techie with attitude.

Your Number One Objective: Capturing The E-Mail Address Lots of newbie domain owners can't wait to fiddle with music, color graphics, etc. But this isn't where you should focus your attention. A domain can either function as a passive presentation of information.. or it can enable you to capture each visitor's e-mail information so you can launch a sales sequence with this individual and stay in control of the entire marketing process.

It's clear to me that your first and most important objective when you've got a domain is to capture the visitor's e-mail information just as quickly as possible. This means thinking through what will induce the visitor to give you this critical information... and then arranging things accordingly at the site so he does so.

If you look at most domains, getting the vital e-mail information clearly isn't a high priority for the owner. They want to impress you with their wit, wisdom, products, services, etc. This is silly. In the real world most people don't buy the very first time they hear about a product or service. They have to hear about it over and over again before finally acting. The same is true on the Internet. If people merely visit your domain, look around and leave, you've accomplished nothing. You need them to stop by, get pitched on you about why they should fill out your guest book, leave an e-mail address, etc.

A domain should be set up so that a prospect is immediately sent information about the benefits of doing business with you. When prospects add their names to a listserver at your domain, the listserver will automatically e-mail up to five pages of information to them as well as store their e-mail information for your ongoing use. When a prospect unsubscribes your list, the listserver will similarly send up to five pages of information to this prospect, a sort of "going away" present. This information should be "timeless" so that you don't have to keep changing it.

What gets visitors to give you this crucial e-mail information? A free subscription to your newsletter. A free report on a subject of interest to them. The prospect of getting special offers in the area of their interest. In short, benefits. Don't just ask prospects for their e-mail information; make it clear just what kinds of benefits they get when they leave this information with you.

Posting Information Which Will Help You Sell Your Products And Services Faster A domain is not a billboard. It's a storefront. That means you need to think far more about exciting the interest of the prospect/visitor and much less about the act of passive information presentation. Go to most domains and the owners have no conception of what their domain should be doing. It's just information piled on information.

Because you're a store owner, you need to focus on exciting the prospect, catering to his needs, and giving him what he wants. Or else this is an exercise in futility.

Thus, as you post information, think in terms of benefits -- what the prospect is going to get -- not features (that is what you're selling). Say you're running a garden center (and there isn't a garden center in the world which shouldn't have its own domain). You could merely post information on spring flowers or you could entice visitor interest and action by getting prospects to click on this link: "Complete details on your spring flowers: when to plant, how to plant, how to get the best deals, secrets for early gardens." Get the picture? The one is just information; the other is about truly helping, truly assisting the visitor/prospect to get results. Obviously, to achieve these results you'll include complete order details. But you won't lead with these. First you'll excite; then you'll close and make the sale.

Lots of domain owners are so enthralled with the fact that they've got a domain and the technology they're using that they lose sight of the objective: capturing e-mail information, selling more products and services faster, getting one-time visitors to become ongoing visitors and customers.

In this connection, focus your domain on VALUE. What is it that people get from you that they cannot get elsewhere? The Internet works because you can give people just as much valuable information as they need to take action... and can make the taking of that action incredibly fast and easy.

In this regard, pictures clearly help. If a picture enables you to show the visitor just what kind of value he gets through his connection with you, include it. But don't include slow downloading graphics just for the sake of having a graphic. Have a graphic to portray value, not to take up space.

Key Features Of Your Domain

Your domain must be composed of elements to capture the prospect/visitor's e-mail address . client-centered information, information which talks about what the prospect wants to achieve and shows him how your products and services will help him achieve just that . interactive devices designed to get the prospect involved with your site and spend more time at it, including chat rooms, searchable databases, domain search engine, guest books, web discussion groups, job boards, etc.

You want people to be clear that they get VALUE when they visit you, that you have thought through what they want and have worked hard to give it to them. A domain is not merely an opportunity for you to post information; it's your chance to capture the prospect's e-mail address and to establish a long-term relationship which will pay off for you for years by showing the prospect all you can do for him, all the valuable information you have available, constantly being updated and improved.

Developing Your Traffic

While you must never lose sight of content, you must always be aware of traffic development. If you've gotten your domain through a company like Worldprofit, which has a major interest in ongoing traffic development, your domain has come with a link from Worldprofit and its traffic to your domain. This is a very good thing to have.

Equally, however, you must also ensure that you do what's necessary to develop your traffic. One good way of doing so is to create a free classified ad system at your domain; a system which enables advertisers to get a free ad by posting at your site and in your system. You can sell the availability of this free service and capture thousands of e-mail addresses, adding them to your ongoing marketing program.

This free classified ad system offers many advantages: it's an ongoing traffic generation tool . people visiting your domain are offered the ability to submit a free classified ad whenever they want . these people can update their listing whenever they want, thus bringing them back again . the system runs itself 24 hours a day, maintenance free . you are able to access the name, address, e-mail and phone/fax information of everyone submitting a free ad . those who submit this free ad are given the opportunity to voluntarily submit their e-mail information to you so you can immediately begin your follow-up marketing to this prospect . you have the ability to use the information collected in a database file for your own personal use or sale . you have the option of selling banner space and sponsor ad links on the system as an immediately and ongoing income source. (For information on adding your own free classified ad system to your domain and for a sample demo, visit http://www.worldprofit.com/classifieds/default.asp)

Last Words

As more and more people become comfortable with the Internet, more and more of these people are going to want their own domains. No wonder. A domain gives you a piece of virtual real estate which you can transform into the income-producing property of your dreams; a property which can be continually expanded, continually improved. People who are starting their domains now are like the western pioneers who took raw acreage and, by dint of their own brains, determination, commitment and unconquerable spirit, turned it into productive farms, orchards, ranches, and plantations, doing what was necessary to ensure every greater productivity and prosperity.

People just like you are doing this right now on the Internet with their own domains. It is a very exciting period, a period when the basis of millions of new Internet-related fortunes are being established right before our very eyes. The only question is whether you'll do what's necessary to build your domain and your fortune. Or whether you'll merely watch others seize the initiative and do it.

Dr. Jeffrey Lant is Co-Founder of Worldprofit at http://www.worldprofit.com

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