Free Websites and Blogs - Bad For Business

by AJ Farro

 

Free websites and blogs can only take a serious entrepreneur so far.  They’re a great sandbox for getting your feet wet and figuring things out, but they’re full of advertisements, gaudy templates and themes that reek of “free”.  It’s like doing business out of the back seat of your car - with a Hannah Montana sticker on the bumper.  Few people, if anyone, will take you seriously.

 

If you build your business on free sites, you risk losing everything because you do not own the site and it can be taken away from you for any reason.

In May 2009, Facebook disabled accounts with, what it “assumed”, were fictitious names.  People with legitimate accounts that have spent years building personal or business relationships had everything disappear in the blink of an eye.

When I first started using free blogs, Blogger shut down one of my blogs and to this day I don’t know the exact reason why.  It could have been because I was using it to pre-sell affiliate products.  It could also be because I hyperlinked every occurrence of my main keyword to my main website and they considered that spammy.  What did I know, I was a noob.  I couldn’t get back into the blog to fix it.  No amount of contacting them ever got an answer and I was forced to abandon it.  Can you imagine if I had built an entire business around that blog? 

I also know that using free WordPress.com blogs for business purposes is a violation of their terms and they will shut you down, too.

Many people starting out don’t know that because they never read the terms of service.  Stay away from free blogs.  You need to own your own blog or website.  Always remain in control of your business.

Before you can run your own website or blog you need your own domain name and web hosting.  The good news is, it’s cheap to get started and I’m going to give you my personal tips for doing it.

Warning:  Do not take advantage of “free domain names for life” when you buy web hosting.  They are only free if you keep your hosting account with them.  Plus, you will not own the name, the web hosting company will.  Always remain in control of your business.

Domain Registration

I’m not going to get real deep into selecting a domain name because that’s beyond the scope of this material.  However, I will leave you with a few guidelines. 

If you want to be found in the search engines, it only makes sense to include a keyword or two that people are using to find what it is you’re selling.  So if you’re an affiliate selling outdoor furniture, incorporating “outdoor furniture” into your domain name is nothing but beneficial.  BestOutdoorFurniture.com beats TomsDeals.com.  No one is going to be searching for outdoor furniture using the words “toms deals”, but they will be searching with “outdoor furniture”, even “best outdoor furniture”.

Only use a .com name.  Stay away from .net, .biz, .info and all the other dots if you can help it.  People don’t remember extensions so when they type in your domain name they will be typing your domain name and automatically adding .com to it.  So get found.  Don’t be invisible. 

Make a list of several domain names because the chances of finding something that isn’t already taken is going to be slim.  Oh, and to stay out of legal hot water, do not use trademarked names in your domain name. 

A great example of that is new businesses that come on board at Commission Junction or other affiliate networks frequently have no restrictions on their name.  Then affiliates will go hog wild snapping up domain names with the vendor’s name in them and spend weeks or months promoting and establishing an online presence.  Then sooner or later the vendor modifies its terms and suddenly bans the use of trademarked names.  It’s happened to me more than once.  It’s a knife to the core of your business.   

Hot Buying Tip

• Get your domain name at NameCheap.com. 
• $9.69 for a .com name, but use the coupon code and get it for $8.81.
• They don’t sneak stuff into the shopping cart during checkout like other registrars.
• They have a very easy to use Domain Manager interface.
• NameCheap is a great domain registrar, but don’t buy web hosting there because you pay too much.  Just get a domain name.
• Be sure to enable the free privacy manager on the domain.  It will hide your personal details from spammers.  goDaddy charges $8.99/year for privacy protection.  At NameCheap, it’s free for the first year and renews at only $2.88/year after that. 

Web Hosting

In order for your new domain name to be seen online, you need to have it hosted by a web hosting company.  It pains me to see web hosting companies take advantage of their customers, so I will only recommend companies with outstanding customer service and reliability.  I also wouldn’t recommend something I don’t use myself.

Hot Buying Tip

SuperGreen Hosting- Unlimited green hosting with cPanel.  Very reliable.  My WordPress blogs run at lightning speed and customer service is quick and courteous.  Easy blog setup.

I hope you found these tips helpful for getting your business off on the right foot.

 

 

Redirect Domains For Affiliate Profits

When you are doing affiliate marketing one of the most helpful techniques you can use is the Domain redirect.

Here’s how it works.

You have an affiliate program that you want to promote. While you could use the long, ugly affiliate link, it’s much better to use a “cloaked” or disguised link. Not only does it look better and fit better into an email, but it is less likely to be “hijacked” by someone who replaces your affiliate ID with theirs.

Cloaked links are fine for online promotions. After all, someone is just clicking on them, so they don’t need to be easy to read or pronounce.

However, you sometimes have affiliate links that you promote when you speak in front of an audience or on a teleseminar or webinar. When this is the case, you want the link to be easy to say and easy to remember. That’s when you want to use a domain redirect.

You first purchase a domain that you can remember easily and that can be readily understood by your listeners. Plus it needs to relate to the topic of the link. For example, I recently purchased MySecretCopywriter.com to point to a copywriter who will write $97 sales letters. Now that’s a secret!

Next you log into your domain registrar and choose to forward the domain name. Now you have a choice of a 301 or a 302 redirect. A 302 redirect is a temporary change. You might use it if you’re building a new site and want to temporarily send traffic somewhere else in the meantime.

The 301 redirect is considered “permanent” and tells the search engines to go to the site from now on. Naturally you can change it. But if the affiliate program is paying well, you probably will keep it. So the 301 redirect should be your choice for a domain redirect.

Regardless of the type of redirect you choose, you also have the option to “mask” your destination. That means that instead of the ugly affiliate URL or the product’s actual site showing in the browser’s address bar, your domain name will show there. The visitor doesn’t know there’s another site behind there. Plus you get to add the page title, keywords and description to the masked domain, which is likely to result in better search engine positioning.

It takes less than a minute to redirect and mask a domain. It may take another 20 to 30 minutes for it to “resolve” across the Internet. So if you’re planning to use one on a live program, plan to make the change at least an hour ahead of time.

Start today to use domain redirects for your affiliate marketing and watch the ease with which you refer visitors to paying links. You can watch a video of the process as well.