“If I Just Had that PERFECT Domain Name”
Here’s a dirty little secret. In this day and age, if you’re starting a website for affiliate purposes the domain name you pick is nearly meaningless. Yes, in some very rare cases you can do much research and unearth a peach of a domain name, but it’s almost always wasted time.
A “perfect” domain name would be one that has your key topic in it (or, in affiliate marketing parlance, your “targeted keyword”), as well as one that gets type-in traffic and is memorable. So let’s say you wanted to promote affiliate programs for cigars, and somehow, in a magical world, no one had registered cigar.com. That’s a perfect domain name for you, as it has your targeted keyword plus people simply type in “cigar.com” into a search engine if they’re looking for a cigar but have no idea who sells them online, just like horny monkeys type in “sex.com” for the same reason.
So that’s the theory of the perfect domain name. Now let’s bust it to pieces.
Search engines continue to move away from attaching any value to terms in your actual domain name (such as ranking you higher on search terms for “widgets” if your domain name is “justgreatwidgets.com”), because even a retarded chimp can game that system.
People like to pretend that understanding the inner workings of search engines are some secret, alchemical art, but in many cases it’s common sense. If you rank pages higher if they have the keyword in their domain and suddenly see an onslaught of domains and pages like “http://www.widgets-buy-online-great-super-widget.com/widgets.html”, well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that you should move the other direction, and stop rewarding spammy pages like that.
(Sure, argue with me all you want that Google still gives you a boost if your domain name has your targeted keyword in it, but I’ll bet you a box of doughnuts that over time that will steadily dwindle to nothing, if it isn’t already there.)
As far as great type-in domains and/or memorable ones, well, this one is obvious, as they’re pretty much all taken. The only ones not taken are too obscure to do you any good. Sure, midgetgoatsex.com is still available, but what in the world are you going to do with that? Umm, forget I asked.
People waste far too much time when getting started with affiliate sites searching for that perfect domain name. The reality, too, is that you’ll crank out mnay sites over your affiliate career, and it’s often better to launch new ones as stand-alone domains. If you’re about to start a new site and are struggling for a domain name, don’t sweat it. Just pick something. It matters very, very little.
Gadooney.com is a good example of the above. When faced with possibilities like “makemoneyfromaffiliatemarketing.com” or something equally silly, I couldn’t help but throw up in my mouth a little. So I picked a random nickname for a coworker that developed from Jebus only knows what dumb inside joke we were riffing on at the time. Within ten minutes from the decision to launch this site I had the domain registered, added to my hosting account, and was up and running.
Don’t get bogged down on choosing the “right” domain name. There is no “right” domain name. Grab something and get to work.
“If I Just Had that PERFECT Domain Name” and related information can be found in Getting Started, Quick Tips, SEO, Search Engines