Got a Small Business Choose the Right Domain Name – Domain Name
Got a Small Business Choose the Right Domain Name
Blake Kritzberg
Choosing a domain name can be daunting. Research the subject after all, youre the type of marketer who researches, right and youll be hit with a landslide of opinions, most contradictory. There is, however, two points that everyone agrees on:
Pick your domain before you launch your business.
This is especially true if your market niche has lots of competition. Research your domain before you commit to a business plan.
Dont wait too long if you like a domain.
While youre researching, youll likely come across a couple of domains that attract you. You might be tempted to wait, since you havent finalized or refined your business plan. Dont. A handful of domains isnt going to cost you much at an affordable registrar like GoDaddy, and once theyre gone, theyre gone. Chances are you can even resell the rejects at cost, if not a profit. Or "develop" them with unique content and point them to your main site for extra traffic.
Now that we have the easy part of the way, lets wade into murkier waters.
Q. Which TLD top-level domain is best
A. If youre a juggernaut in the business world with a giant ad budget, the answer is dot-com .com. If youre a smalltime business struggling for search engine positioning, the answer is still dot-com.
People do disagree on the value of a dot-com TLD. Some assert that dot-coms have no particular value in the search engines, which may be true.
However, the fact is, if you havent yet seared your brand on the collective brow of the planet, dot-com makes you easier to remember. If you eschew dot-coms, then in some deep dark place inside, people will remember you as "that hard-to-remember URL with the ending that isnt dot-com." Whats worse, if you pick an otherwise memorable domain ending in dot-net, -us, or God forbid -tv, some of your traffic will end up at that competitor who snagged the dot-com version of your domain.
Marketing Automation For Small Businesses And Web Entrepreneurs – Site
Marketing Automation For Small Businesses And Web Entrepreneurs
Abe Cherian
Many Internet marketers wonder how they spend less time marketing their website so they can focus on delighting their clients and developing better marketing strategies to improve sales.
They often ask:
How can I be efficient as possible so that I dont waste time and money
How can I spend less time on activities so that I dont like e.g. marketing and sales and more time on activities I love. e,g. delighting customers, improving sales materials and products
Every time I get busy with clients, marketing falls behind, so I end up with a "feast or famine" cycle. How can I avoid the frustration of being swamped with sales one month and famished the next
How can I get prospects, leads, customers, signups, and referrals come to me instead of having to chase them
How can I build a substantial "contact list", fast, and manage it effectively
How can I organize my contacts, in one palce and build lasting relationships with them
How can I turn visitors into qualified leads automatically -- instead of losing them to my competition
How can I follow-up with my prospects and turn them into paying customers, even if I am on holiday
How do I organize my ad-copies/sales materials all in one place, and use them whenever I need -- from any computer, anywhere in the world
How do I schedule an update/mailing for a future date, and have it delivered even if I am not in front of my computer
How do I know which advertising is pulling better results for me
How do I know the cost of getting a prospect, and the cost of getting a paying customer
How do I know what my time is exactly worth
One answer to the above questions is to develop "Automatic Marketing Systems" that do your marketing for you while you do other things.
Marketing automation and CRM customer relationship management is not just for big corporations -- it must be implemented to your marketing even if you run a home-based business or promote an affiliate program.
When your marketing is effective and runs on auto-pilot, you enjoy a number of benefits:
You spend more time on the tasks that you like to do, which usually are those that got you into the business in the first place.
Clients come to you, and already know about your products, services, or an opportunity, so you dont have to chase them.
While youre busy delighting current clients, youre still getting the word out about your services, so you can smooth out the "feast or famine" cycle that plagues so many Internet marketers.
You get leverage to grow your business faster.
Marketing is a science.
Everybody has a marketing system -- manual or automated. Yet, all results are not equal. Some marketers emerge as giants, and others, including those that started marketing at the same time as the giants, either give up and go out of business or struggle to stay afloat.
Why What are the variables that make a difference in the same thing
Ill tell you why...
The successful ones are better able to relate the needs of the marketplace by using the right automation tools and analytics -- which helps them save time and money and make good judgments.
Tools To Automate Your Web Business:
There are several affordable from $20/month to $149/month Marketing automation websites/services that can help small business owners automate parts of their marketing chores and save time and money and increase your return on investment ROI.
Some websites do part of the automation for you like follow-up auto-responders, and ad-tracking services -- but very few will satisfy all of the above concerns for a small business Internet marketer all in one place.
A service specifically targeted towards small businesses, home-based entrepreneurs, and affiliate marketers will be www.iMediatools.com.
iMediatools provides a solution to all of the above concerns that is affordable $39.99/ month and practical for Internet Marketers. You can even try the full version for a period of 15 days before you get the Enterprise version.
Having total control over your marketing, lists, databases, and leads pays off thousand times over.
About The Author
Abe Cherian is the owner of Multiple Stream Media and publisher of weeklytips.com newsletter, where you will find hundreds of Internet business building tips. Visit www.weeklytips.com to read more tips like this one.
submitnotify@weeklytips.com
7 Essentinal Resources for Small Business – Domain Name
7 Essentinal Resources for Small Business
Jinger Jarrett
So you want to start a business but you dont have a lot of money Start your business online, and it wont be a problem.
There are some pretty terrific resources you can use. Some of them you have to pay for, but they are inexpensive and can get you started quickly and easily.
1. A domain and web hosting. If you want others to see you as a professional and take you seriously, then you need to invest in your own domain and web hosting.
Purchased separately, the cost can add up very quickly. Here are some very low cost solutions to help you put your name on the map.
Dot Easy - http://www.doteasy.com - For only $25 per year, you can purchase your own domain. The web hosting is completely free. Although this hosting account is stripped of all the bells and whistles like CGI, you still get 15MB of bannerless hosting for free, and if you build minisites, this is a really cheap way for you to get started. Buy a domain a month, and before you know it, you have your own empire of products set up for a lot less than if you had bought all of this separately.
Go Daddy - http://www.godaddy.com - Although as far as I know they offer domain names for the cheapest price on the Internet at $6.95, their service is pretty good. I buy all of my domains here, and Ive never had any problems.
Free Web Space - http://100best-free-web-space.com/ - If money is a real problem right now, but you still want to make a good impression, then this site can help you find the most affordable web hosting or even bannerless hosting thats free.
Remember, you get what you pay for, so eventually, when you can afford it, upgrade. There are some good budget web hosts out there like Dot Easy, but for the most part, you get what you pay for.
2. Web Site Creation Tools.
There are some fantastic tools on the Internet you can use to build your web site, and theyre all free.
Considered to be the best HTML editor online, Front Page 2000 will give you hundreds of scripts, as well as a free FTP client you can unzip into the directory and upload your files directly from the HTML editor.
There are four different modes, including beginner and expert, so no matter what level at creating HTML you are, this free editor will definitely help you.
Youll find it here: http://www.evrsoft.com.
While youre there, make sure you check out the free metatag creator, as well as some of the other great free online tools youll find there.
3. Scripts.
If you want to get the most from your web site, scripts will help you do this. You dont have to be an expert in installation either. You can quickly and easily learn how to install them. I taught myself from reading some of the webmaster sites online.
You have two choices when it comes to installing scripts on your site:
You can install them yourself, or you can use remotely hosted scripts. Remotely hosted scripts are great when you dont have a CGI bin on your site.
This site is offering scripts for free: http://site-by-design.com/affiliates.php - Scripts include: Autoresponder Script, Fly-In Ads Script, Paid To Read Emails Script, Safelist Script, Rotator Script, Homepage Traffic Script. Definitely worth a look.
Two resources that offer a wide variety of scripts in different formats are:
http://www.cgiextremes.com/ http://www.hotscripts.com
If you want remotely hosted scripts, the best sites I have found are:
http://www.cgispy.com http://www.bravenet.com
4. Autoresponders. Autoresponders will help you in two ways: you can use them for your opt in lists and ezines, and you can also use them to follow up with your customers.
With opt in lists and ezines, an autoresponder will save you the trouble of handling subscribe and unsubscribe requests, which can become very tedious after awhile. This will allow you to automate the mundane part of building a relationship with your customers and newsletter subscribers, providing you with the credibility you need online to make the sale.
Two sites that offer free autoresponders that are very reliable are: http://www.getresponse.com/ http://www.sendfree.com/
Please note: when using free autoresponders, the site owner will send his/her ads with your messages. This is valuable message real estate. Its better to pay for your autoresponders, if possible, so that you can place your own ads in the headers and footers of all your messages.
5. Online Tools.
There is a whole host of online tools you can use to help you with your business including email formatters, newsletter formatters, sales letter and press release formatters, as well as wizards to help you build your web site.
Below are some of the best:
Pertinent Inc. - http://www.pertinent.com - Offers a free press release creator, as well as a sales letter generator.
Free Online Wizards - http://www.thesitewizard.com/wizards/index.shtml - This site offers everything from a wizard to help you syndicate your content to form creators and drop down menu creators. Lots of tips and articles too.
Email Formatter - http://www.formatit.com - Tired of getting emails with a ton of >>>>> in them You can use this site to strip those tags out, as well as reformat your emails to any width. Great for formatting articles too.
6. Business Software.
You can find thousands of dollars in free software to help you build your business by searching through software sites online.
My favorite is Freeware Home: http://www.freewarehome.com. Youll find over 7,000 applications at last count here, and theyre all free, full sized versions of the program.
Two applications you wont want to be without are:
Open Office - http://www.openoffice.org - Formerly Star Office, this open source application is the best rival to Microsoft Office. You can use it to do everything from convert your documents to PDF, to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Theres also a version for MAC, making this a must see application when you cant afford other expensive applications.
Banana Cash Books - http://www.banana.ch/banana4/eng/bc4_cashbook.shtml - Although this single entry accounting program accepts just about any currency, if you want to use the accounting method the IRS recommends for small business, this nice little free program will definitely do the trick.
7. Business Education.
Once you have your business up and running, its a good idea to stay up to date with your business and marketing knowledge.
There are a lot of great ways to do this including forums, article directories, mailing lists, and newsletters.
There are also some great resource heavy sites out there you can benefit from. Below are three of my favorites:
My 1st Business - http://www.my1stbusiness.com - Run by Ben Botes, youll find plenty of ecourses, seminars and more covering small business, ecommerce, marketing, and other topics. You need to sign up for an account, but its free, and definitely worth a look.
Free Marketing Resources - http://www.jdbmail.com/ - Run by Jimmy D. Brown, one of my all time favorite marketers, and quite frankly, one of the best, youll find audio, ecourses, and other resources in plain English that can teach you how to market online. Jimmy doesnt just teach you what to do; he shows you how to do it, and he spells it out. It doesnt matter if you are a complete newbie, or if you have been marketing for some time. Youll benefit from Jimmys excellent teaching.
Ebook Directory - http://www.ebookdirectory.com - Run by Noel Hynes, this is the most comprehensive collection of small business and Internet marketing ebooks on the Internet, and theyre absolutely free. Youll also find plenty of other ebooks here including motivational, writing, and a whole lot more.
There are plenty of free resources on the Internet to help you build your business. The trick is learning when you should buy products and services for your business and when you can get a freebie that will do the job just as well and sometimes better.
A quick search of Alexa, http://www.alexa.com, will help you find some of the best.
About The Author
Jinger Jarrett is a former military journalist and newspaper reporter who teaches and consults on article writing. You can get her latest ebook, its free, "100+ Best FREE and Paid Resources for Writers, Internet Marketers, and Small Business