The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (15 page)

Building Block One: You Need to Own a Good Domain Name

Before you can have a web site you real y need a good web address, also known as a

domain name. Right off the bat we have a myth to bust.

Myth Alert: “All Good Domain Names Are Taken”

I don’t care how competitive a market you’re in, that’s just nonsense. It’s either spoken by

people who want to keep the competition down or people who have no imagination or

creativity.

I agree that al the obvious stuff is taken like business. com or cars.com. No big deal.

The problem with real y broad names is they tend to attract a far too general group of

customers. If I knew nothing of what’s at the site cars. com and typed in that term, what

might I expect to find there? A Ford dealership? A car-buying web site? A used-car lot?

Maybe a car-part online-warehouse? A consumer-safety site with recal notices and

crash test results? The list is endless and it’s the same problem with other real y general

domain names.

Profit Principle

People who are on the Internet to browse around and see what’s out there tend to type in

general, one-word and two-word terms. People who are motivated to buy a product or

look for a solution tend to type in highly specific terms.

Using our car example, if someone types in cars.com, that person either already

knows what’s on that site or is just browsing around. However, if someone types in 2010

Honda Odyssey
EX-L in
Ocean Mist Metal ic, do you suppose that person is just

aimlessly browsing? I don’t think so. You have someone who’s already done a lot of

research and most likely is shopping for price or availability. That has implications for the

sort of descriptive domain name you might want to have.

The book you’re currently reading is not about maximizing the amount of traffic you get

to your web site. If that’s al you want, why didn’t you say so? That’s easy! Just advertise

Free Beer and you’l get al the traffic you could ever want. Instead, this book is about

getting highly targeted traffic to your site so we can get your product or service sold and

make you a pile of money.

Because so many of your very best prospective customers are the ones typing in

detailed search terms, that’s why not al the good domain names are taken. It just takes a

system for smoking out the good names and that’s precisely what I’l now lay out for you.

First, let’s discuss a series of rules that I recommend you fol ow when picking a domain

name.

Rule Number One: Stick with “.com” Names

To explain why I say that, let’s think about what happens when you’re driving on the

freeway and see a bil board. You’re doing 60 miles per hour and have a few seconds to

notice the cute babe on the bil board and you see the phone number: 1-888-Hot-Club.

“
Okay
, I’m gonna cal that number as soon as I get
home
,” you think to yourself.

Because you know that you don’t always remember stuff correctly you even repeat to

yourself a couple of times “
Hot
Club . . . Hot
Club
. . . .”

You get home and after taking off your coat you sit down and are pleased that you

remembered the number, so you dial 1-800-Hot-Club.

It’s a hot club al right, but not the one you saw on the bil board. No, it’s a competitor’s

hot club. You SAW an 888 number and REMEMBERED an 800 number because you’re

so accustomed to associating 800 numbers with tol -free numbers.

It’s no different with domain names. That bil board could just as wel have advertised

hotclub.net and you would most likely have gone home and typed in hotclub .com. Do you

real y want to go to al the effort to advertise with a non “.com” ending only to have a

portion of your audience remember someone else’s domain name? That’s free

advertising for them and bad news for you.

Rule Number Two: No Funky Spellings

The same “.com” phenomenon applies to crazy spel ings in domain names. If an

unimaginative person wants the name “homesforsaleboston.com” and discovers it’s

been taken, he’l grab “homes4saleboston.com” or even worse “homez

4saleboston.com.” He thinks, “So what? I can spel it for people and, besides, I’ve seen

lots of domain names with a ‘
4
’
instead
of
a
‘for’.”

He is destined for web failure, and so are almost al the other people with a “4” instead

of a “for” or a “u” instead of a “you.” Their customers are not going to remember that

nonsense and wil type the standard version instead.

Some people may tel you that funky, complicated names don’t matter because most

people don’t type names into their computers but they merely click on them.

Certainly, it’s true that many domain names get clicked on and not typed in, but why

handicap yourself? If your site is popular and one person is tel ing her friends al about

you, why risk having your name garbled at the very time you’re trying to spread it far and

wide?

Rule Number Three: Try to Anticipate Alternative Spellings and Either

Buy Those Names or Avoid Those Words

I was watching the network news recently and this particular show had seven mil ion

viewers on an average night. The host garbled a domain name of the guest because the

guest mumbled it and the host did not hear that the name included a “the” at the

beginning of it so he gave out the incorrect address. That was a superb opportunity for

traffic—ruined.

Therefore, if you’ve found a great restaurant domain name like “thebeststeaks.com”

you had better check to see if “beststeaks.com” is available and vice versa. If you only

own one of those versions the chances are excel ent that the owner of the other name

wil get some of your traffic. Perhaps you’l get some of his, but that may not be a good

tradeoff.

It’s the same with terms where the plural and singular forms are common or terms that

are frequently misspel ed. If you can get the name “Tal estSunflowerSeed.com” then also

grab

“Tal estSunflowerSeeds.com.”

Get

both

“DelectablePies.com”

and

“DelectiblePies.com.” Then you can easily have the misspel ed version redirected

automatical y behind the scenes to the correctly spel ed one.

Rule Number Four: Try to Avoid Hyphens in the Name

This is not as firm a rule as the first two, because Google and other search engines

interpret a hyphen as being the same as a space. Therefore, if you’re trying to grab

hollywood-homes
.com because someone else has hol ywoodhomes.com, then you

may not have harmed yourself too much. On the other hand, the nonhyphenated name

could possibly be what people mainly remember. The other problem with hyphens is

you’l forever have to explain to people: “Okay, it’s hol ywood dash homes.com not

hol ywoodhomes.com . . . remember there’s a dash in there, you know a hyphen? . . . like

that little minus sign?” It gets old real y fast to explain a name al day long.

Rule Number Five: Think about Customer Benefits, Not about

Yourself

Maybe you spent a great many years in school and are proud of the letters after your

name, but resist the urge to screw up your domain name due to your pride.

As you’l read later in the section on writing your sales material, most people are tuned

to the radio station
WII-fm
. That stands for What’s In It For Me. They do not care that you

have multiple letters after your name—al they know is that their tooth hurts and they

would like it to stop hurting. Therefore, if you have a “DDS” degree, an “FAGD,” and

even an “FICOI” designation, do not clutter your domain name with

www.johnsmithddsfagdficoi.com. They wil not understand what that stuff is after your

name, but chances are excel ent they’l type it in wrong.

Dr. Smith would be much better served by naming his site:
SmithSmiles.com
or

SmilesBySmith.com
. That’s a benefit his patients wil remember and be able to type.

In addition to domain names with benefits like Organic
TomatoSecrets.com
or

FastPerfectPies.com
, another good term to include is a geographic name. So if

OrganicTomato
Secrets.com is taken and your info product is focused on how to grow in

the cold New England environment, then look for
NewEnglandTomatoSecrets.com
.

Try This Domain Name Technique

If you’re searching for a great name and have had no luck—especial y when you fol ow

my rules above—here’s something that works wel .

It al starts with thinking about domain names as a pattern in three parts—a beginning,

a middle, and an end. Each part has a certain function.

Before we look at an example, I want to mention that it’s almost always okay to

capitalize letters in a domain name because the Internet removes the capitalizations and

displays the names in al lowercase letters. The benefit of writing them with capitalized

letters to start each word is they’re more easily read by people. Occasional y, computers

wil be picky about capitalizations, so just check if your capitalized domain name works

on your site before publishing it on business cards or elsewhere.

Now look at the example of
OrganicTomatoSecrets.com
and let’s dissect its parts:

Part One is a prefix of Organic. Part Two is the middle section describing the main

topic of Tomato. Part Three is a suffix of Secrets. Let’s start a little table with that

information:

Prefix Main Topic Suffix

Organic

Tomato

Secrets

I left the “.com” part out because we know to use only “.com” endings, so that’s a

given.

Now let’s assume that OrganicTomatoSecrets.com is taken and we need to find a

great term for our info product. Here’s what you do: Start thinking of other prefixes that

could possibly work.

SuperOrganic

Healthy

Healthful

Wholesome

NonChemical

Powerful

Think of alternatives and use a thesaurus if necessary. I like the online tool at

www.visualthesaurus.com but a book or other online service is fine too. Now load those

terms into the first column and move onto the second column.

Because the second column is for your main topic there wil be less room for creativity.

Stil , depending on your actual info product you might come up with:

TomatoPlant

CherryTomato

BeefsteakTomato

Load those terms into the table and move onto column three. What might be similar to

the suffix Secrets? How about:

Tips

Techniques

Methods

System

Solutions

KnowHow

When you’re done loading into the table al the words for al of the columns your table

should look like this:

Prefix

Main Topic

Suffix

Organic

Tomato

Secrets

SuperOrganic

Tomato
P
lant

Tips

Healthy

CherryTomato Techniques

Healthful

BeefsteakTomato Methods

Wholesome

System

NonChemical

Solutions

Powerful

KnowHow

Now is when things real y take off, thanks to a little mathematical concept cal ed the

permutation. That refers to the process of creating every possible combination from the

terms above. In other words, any possible prefix can go with any possible main topic and

any suffix. Things stil must stay in their proper column sequence—you cannot move a

suffix to the front or a prefix to the end—but otherwise you’re looking for al combinations.

Don’t sweat the tedious work because a few mouse clicks wil do al the work for you.

Go to www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type the term “permutation” into the search

box. I’m not listing the name here because these permutation tools frequently change.

Now you should see a tool that al ows you to stick your first-column candidates into its

first column and then you can do the same for the other two columns. It should end up

looking like Figure 4.1.