DOMAIN BUILDING FROM SCRATCH: Web Hosting by BEB's Fasturl Internet Domains and Virtual Servers

DO-IT-YOURSELF DOMAIN BUILDING FROM SCRATCH, WITH YOUR IDEAS.

There are two types of domains you are likely to build, depending on the objectives and the nature of your business. If you have an existing business venture, and have a product or service that you already market to the general public, chances are you're planning to build a domain that you can use to promote and market your existing product or service online. This is called a Storefront-Domain and some examples include:

www.toyota.com, www.pepsi.com, and www.disney.com.

The second type of domain is what we call a Venture-Domain. Your principal purpose for creating this domain is to create a business venture out of the domain itself. The product that you are selling here is the domain itself, based on the strength of its content or format. Examples of content-venture domains include virtual magazines, search engines, homepage-hosting domains, etc.

WHO'S YOUR AUDIENCE?

Once you identify what type of domain you are building, you move on to the next question:

Who's Going to Visit Your Domain?

If you are building a storefront, then the answer seems academic. After all, your web presence serves only as an extension of your real-word business and marketing activities. Whoever Toyota's products appeals to will likely be the same people their toyota.com domain will attract. On the other hand, if you are building a venture domain, who your audience will be will depend largely on the name of your domain, the style by which you design it, where you advertise it, and the content that you put in it. For example, if you are creating a virtual magazine and you want to attract pet owners for your audience, then you would want to choose a name like PETWORLD.COM for your domain name.

WHERE THE MONEY IS...

Some domain owners are accomplished programmers. They can design handsome domains with a lot of cool stuff. Unfortunately, some of them can't figure out how to make money with their domains. The solution is simple: Build a domain with a built-in audience and built-in advertisers in mind. Using our PETWORLD.COM example, you don't really need a slide rule to figure out what type of advertisers would be interested in placing ads in this domain. With an audience spelled out as clearly as the domain name itself, making money with this domain should be a cinch.

PROMOTING YOUR DOMAIN

You can list your domain with search engines, usually under a category that best describes your business. However, if your customers already know the name of your domain, they don't have to use a search engine. All they have to do is type your address to access your domain.

One of the best ways to advertise your domain is outside the Web. This follows the principle of "relative media advertising", the same principle by TV shows promoted in TV Guide magazine, and movies advertised on television. Again, using our example, we can advertise our pet-oriented domain in magazines that cater to pet owners. We can probably even offer a barter and place an ad of the magazine on our PETWORLD domain.

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