Friday, September 26, 2008

The Power of a Domain Name

You may think that having your own domain name is expensive or unnecessary but the truth is, a domain name can be exploited in so many different ways than just as a web address. For starters a domain name can give a more professional look to all your marketing tools resume, business cards or any other medium you use to promote yourself or your services for just a few bucks a year!

What can I do with a domain name? you may ask. There are so many uses besides the obvious —having a website behind it, for instance:

URL Redirect/URL Frame:

You don't need to have an actual web site to market yourself or your services. You can set up your domain so when people type it on their browsers it redirects them to a profile you have in a network web site your blog or any other page you have set up with information about yourself or your services. It can also be an affiliate web site. Many affiliate marketers use this powerful tool.

When people join an affiliate program they are given a URL that starts with the company's domain name but ends with a number or code ID for instance:

http//:AffliateCompany.com/?agentid=11254

This ID at the end of the URL is used to tracked the visitor's referrer and compensate him or her if the visitor decides to purchase something from the web site. As you can see this URL would be very hard for potential customers to remember. Moreover they might forget to even include it and just type the company's domain name and the marketer would never receive credit for the sale. All these problems can be avoided by having a domain name that you can use to point people to the specified URL.

With the URL frame feature, your domain name stays on the user's browser's address bar and they never see the actual URL. But the cookies that track the agent are already embedded in their computer.

Email Forwarding:

Email forwarding can help you give your resume or business cards a more professional look. Instead of using a free email from Yahoo or Google which sometimes are not taken seriously by employers, potential clients or associates and can make you lose a job or business opportunity, you could set up an email like this: name@yourdomain.com and set it up to forward all emails to your free email account.

It can also be a virtual email address for temporary use and reduce spam in your inbox. This feature can be used with online forms that require you to give them your email address and you don't trust the site owner completely with your personal email. But still you want to know what the website is about to then trust them with your real email address.
You can set up as many email accounts with your domain name as you want and change the destination at any time.
Domain name with a Gmail account.
Now you can also use a domain name with a Gmail account and use all the features that Gmail offers for free. There a few steps to it but it can be done. To learn how to use your domain name with Gmail click here.
Price :
Domain names range in prices from $3 up to $15 dollars a year. The lower the price the fewer the services included. Some web sites offer domain names for about $3 but they charge you extra for the features mentioned above. T1-Plus Communications just welcomed 1&1.com to its family of telecom providers. Domain names at 1&1.com are only $6.99 and it includes all the features. Plus, for a limited time 1&1.com is giving all its customers a FREE .biz domain name for a year for every purchase.
Sometimes is a good idea to get 2 types of domains with the same name to secure the name of your company for example:

YourDomain.com
YourDomain.net

Visit 1&1.com to secure yours!

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