How do you make your small business grow to a profit-building machine? The key is Internet Marketing. It will aid you in drawing attention to any product or service you want to sell, and the first step is Read more…
CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME
The number one rule here is to choose carefully; because a good one will help you rank more highly in the search engines. Short domain names work best, but you should try and use either the complete title of your eBook or a segment of it that makes sense and includes relevant keywords relating to the subject of your book. It will get you some cheap (i.e. free) hits from the search engines once your site has been indexed.
Okay, so that much we know. What else should you bear in mind when you are thinking about which domain name to go for?
It’s worth reiterating what I said much earlier in the book about sticking to the dot com suffix when you choose your domain name. The dot com suffix is regarded as being a global site, and since you are selling eBooks you will want to make sure that people aren’t left in any doubts about the global appeal your book has.
If you use a .co.uk name, or a .com.au name, or any other variation, then people might make the wrong assumption that your book is only aimed at people in those countries. Worse still, they might assume it is a tangible paperback book, and you will only mail it to people in your own country.
So go global and make sure everyone knows they are welcome to buy a copy.
HYPHEN OR NO HYPHEN?
Before you rush into choosing a domain name, think about how it will look.
One of the biggest questions that people ask is whether they should put hyphens in between the words the domain name is made up of. Of course this only applies if you have more than one word in between the www and the dot com parts.
For example www.example.com doesn’t need hyphens anyway. But what about www.thisisanexample.com? What would you do there? Would www.this-is-an-example.com be better?
There is no right or wrong answer to this, but I know which one I prefer. If you want to know which one I hate the most, try typing those two web addresses out right now on your keyboard. Which one is the faster one to type? And which one takes ages and usually results in you having to hunt your way around the keyboard to type it in?
For my money I wouldn’t use hyphens because it makes the web address look very long and clunky. And if you take a look at plenty of big name businesses online, you will find that the majority of them don’t use hyphens either.
And it’s not just because of the hassle it creates in typing it into the address bar in your browser either. Let’s say you’re talking to someone about your website and they want to know what the address is. Which one of the following things would you rather say?
1. “Oh yes, my website is called www dot this is an example dot com…”, or
2. “Oh yes, my website is called www dot this hyphen is hyphen a hyphen example dot com…”
My guess is that if you had chosen the second example, they would have walked away halfway through you trying to get the sentence out!
The moral here is that you should always write down your domain name and say it out loud before you actually buy it. If you don’t, you might regret it later on. About the only time that a hyphen is okay is if you only have two words in your domain name. Then it can work, but if you can get away without them, you’re better off doing so.
This information is one of 305 pages of detailed steps for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and now you can receive a FREE 110 pages ABRIDGED VERSION just by clicking Work From Home Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.
To view the unabridged version and the 17 video tutorials see The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks
