When Selecting A Domain Name, Think Big
By Brandon Drury
While, it can be
important to fill a niche with your domain name, it may be
more important to choose a domain name that will allow you
to expand in the future. I've created a number of websites
where I was shortsighted at first and later regretted it.
You've had an idea for a website for a long time and you
finally have the time to start building it. You are serious
and you intend to build a website that will be filled with
content for your visitors. You want this to be a website of
real value. You actually want to people to get something out
of your site and in exchange you would like to make a few
bucks. This seams like a fair deal.
Niche vs Everything The beauty of the way a website / domain
works is it's versatility. You could have a very broad
domain name and still cover niche topics via the use of
subdirectories. Let's say you want to create a mainstream
music site. You could go with mainstreammusic.com or
something similar, but would this be too limiting? If your
music site takes off, you may find other things that your
target demographic is into. For example, I'd guess that the
mainstream music crowd is typically under 14-25 years old,
give or take. What else to 14-25 year old people like to
purchase besides music? You could be getting affiliate
commissions off of blue jeans, perfume, McDonalds (I'm not
sure about that one), etc. By limiting your site to just
music, you are missing out on a large chunk of visitors.
Getting Started In the beginning, you must focus on your
niche. In fact, it's critical. If you spread yourself too
thin too fast, you'll be in trouble. So focus on whatever it
is that you are doing, but keep the future in mind. Take
"Baby Steps" from "What About Bob?". Start small. After you
conquer your music subdirectory, you can then create your
fashion subdirectory, but not until then. Launching a
fashion portion of your large site will be much easier. You
will already have traffic coming to your site. Members of
the forum will automatically see it and visit it. You'll get
a boost right off the bat. Then when you start your comedy
subdirectory, just think how easy it will be to get that
going. You already have two fully function websites (but
under subdirectories) One mass email to your members and
you'll get big time traffic the first day.
The Advantages of Big Websites Here's more food for thought.
Would you rather have one hundred websites that all fulfill
one niche or would you rather have one astronomical website
that has one hundred niche subdirectories inside itz/ The
laws of synergy kick in. Your site will be much more
successful if you can house anything under one roof, or in
this case one domain. Users only have to join one forum or
one mailing list to use everything in your site. You can
still cater to each niche specifically, but it sure would be
nice to have a sitewide mailing list that mailed all of your
members.
You also have to remember that people like to stay where
they are comfortable. You know it's very annoying to start
using a new graphics program, for example. It's sometimes
hard to navigate through a site that you've never been to
before. People enjoy familiarity. If you can give this to
them, you will be more powerful and more successful.
When it comes to search engines, they like sites that have
lots of content. So why would you build one hundred sites
with 1,000 pages when you could build one site with 100,000
pages? You can quickly see the power in this setup. Why have
one hundred PR 6 sites when you can have one PR 8 or PR 9.
Imagine how difficult it is to start up a new forum. Some
experts say that developing a successful forum is one of the
most difficult tasks for a webmaster. Why would you want to
do that one hundred times? You would do it just once! Even
if your music site doesn't explode your forum, chances are
that a comedy site, a fashion site, and a music site will
explode your forum....Synergy.
The next time you consider buying a domain name, think long
ahead, and think big.
About the Author
Brandon Drury has a paid the bills using the internet for
years. If you want more traffic for your website, check out
theseoplace.com |
