Is Your Own Domain Name Really That Important?
(A message from personal experience)
by Pam Jones

I know this may seem redundant to some of you and in a lot of the marketing information you are told that you need your own domain name. How do you know if you really need your own URL? If you have just a personal page with pictures of your family vacation you probably don't need your own domain. Or if you are just testing the waters to see if your product or service will fly on the Internet, you might not need a domain.

However, if you are serious about marketing your product or service on the Internet and plan to make a long-term venture of it, I would strongly suggest getting your own domain right from the start.

Before I put my first site on the Internet I went through a very strenuous "information overload" stage. One of the things that really stood out to me was the importance of a domain name. My partner and I purchased our URL and set up our site. Later, I started Pam's Internet Promotions with the intent of working with local merchants on their Internet marketing strategies and, with my partner's permission, just added my promotions site on to our previous site not thinking too much about it. I promoted the promotion section of my site to search engines, etc. and did all of the things I preach in my newsletters. Ok, now I have my site submitted everywhere as http://www.freinetworks.com/pip. I have it on my brochures, business cards, everything.

As time went by I changed the name to Profit Power Internet Promotions and decided that it was time for me to get my own URL and purchased profitpowerpromo.com. Now, do you see the problem this created for me? If I have advertised a link to one of my pages to the freinetworks site, the visitor will receive a 404 error. The index page does direct visitors to my new site, which helps. What about all of the promotion that I have done previous to the change? Every press release sent or submission I have placed has the wrong url and I now have to go back to all of those places and request a change, or leave it and take the chance that visitors will actually find the new site. I have to change all of my offline materials to reflect the name change, etc. It's not an impossible situation, just a nuisance-to put it nicely.

The moral of this story - if you are serious about marketing your product or service on the Internet, do it right from the very beginning. It only costs $19.95 per year. Think of it as your online business card. 

Click here to register your domain name now.

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Pam Jones specializes in offering quality information and services that will keep you on the right track with your online marketing to help you increase your profits. Visit the Internet Marketing Resource Center at http://www.i-m-r-c.com, for tips, tools, resources and helpful articles. Or find out about web hosting, website design or redesign, domain name research & registration, online marketing & promotion and website maintenance services at affordable prices for small to medium sized businesses at Clearwater Web Solutions at http://www.clearwaterwebsolutions.com.