Can’t Get Rich

When you have a tiny budget, buying a new domain name for every landing page you create just isn’t an option. This is doubly true when you don’t know what you’re doing and have no idea whether or not you’ll be able to recoup the $10 domain name registration fee. That’s why I’d recommend purchasing a neutral domain name to serve as a test bed for landing pages. That way, if it looks like the campaign is doing well, you can always move it to a more specific domain name. If it fails, well, you haven’t really lost anything but your time.

What do you mean, “neutral”?

A neutral domain name is something than can encompass a wide range of offers, regardless of their niche. With a well-picked name, you can simultaneously run campaigns for potted plants, iPods, and credit cards, all on the same domain. Put something generic on the domain’s index page and go wild with the subfolders.

A few guidelines

• Don’t use your name as a domain name. Why would I want to buy an iPod from tomjones.com?
• Don’t limit yourself to one niche. Stay away from domain names that reference one type of product. Ie, you may be able to promote laptops, iPods, and flying saucers from electronicgizmos.com, but what happens when you find an offer for home gym equipment that you really want to try? http://www.electronicgizmos.com/weightlifting doesn’t really fit.
• Do use broad words. Marketing, industries, associates, all of these words work well when picking a broad theme. You can promote whatever you want from xyzmarketing.com or zomgindustires.org. Just be sure to pick a name that you can turn into a brand down the road, if you happen to become successful.
• Don’t link to all of your landing pages on your index page. It may be tempting to give the search engines a helpful push when your site gets crawled, but you’ll want to keep your promotions a secret. If you stumble upon a goldmine that nobody else has found, you’d want to keep it to yourself, right? Besides, I’m assuming you’re getting all of your traffic via PPC, so who cares about the search engines?
• Don’t brag - Treat this site like it’s a business. You don’t want all of your ‘customers’ seeing your profit reports, do you? Unless you’re publicly traded, keep those big numbers to yourself (or to your blog if your really want to).

There’s a wide range of affiliate marketing offers I’ve been itching to try, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go register a domain name.

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