Thanks Trent,

I hope the information helps you.

Without getting into a full-fledged debate regarding the merits of affiliate marketing, suffice it to say that it is a rapidly growing field, and that you can become an affiliate for just about anything which can be purchased online. Because of that, we who choose to supplement our income with affiliate programs have the freedom to promote the programs and products we believe in.

I chose to mention Site Build It because I think it is an excellent resource which would be particularly useful to the “do-it-yourself” types of people that are here. The fact that the company will reward me for my referral is icing on the cake, to me.

The tracking involved is done with cookies on your computer, and only matters if you actually buy something. It’s simply a way to give credit to the person who referred you to the program. As I said, though, if people are uncomfortable with my affiliate link, they can just go to the main site to learn more.

Sure, I’d like the referral if someone buys, but I also want people to know about this program, because I think it can help other inventors take control of their product marketing and distribution.

I don’t believe that anyone on here is trying to harm anyone, but who knows.

Lane, I saw you were here and wanted to tell you that I got your helpful email. Thanks very much!

Trent

Hello Lane,

My name is Doug, and writing this under my wife’s account. I’m the person who sent Laura the the private email about SiteSell. I was only trying to help also.

I’m very Shocked at what she said about the SiteSell program. I do understand that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but WOW. SiteSell is the best thing since sliced bread!

And since this an inventing community let me put it this way. SiteSell is the best invention the E-business world has ever seen in my opinion. I too will leave my affilate link since it’s relating to the theme of the post. If the Edison Nation staff has a problem I won’t use it again in these forums again.

Welcome to the SBI Family Lane.

Doug
http://www.sitesell.com/rapture.html

Domain squatting is a old, but profitable venture if you get the right names for these scammers. I tried to register rogerbrown.com only to find it was purchased in 2000. They have paid for the domain through 2013. It still shows as under construction since 2000.
I contacted them in 2005 about purchasing the name. They wanted $5,000. I am very happy with rogerbrown.net that I purchased for $8.

To Laura,

I’m sorry you feel this way about my post. Contrary to what you may think, I was actually trying to help other people, because I believe this is a good product.

If you feel all affiliate programs are evil, that is your prerogative. I specifically posted the non-affiliate link as well, for those who are uncomfortable with affiliate marketing. I also pointed out that the first link I posted was an affiliate link. I wasn’t trying to get anyone to ‘fall’ for anything.

If the administrators wish to edit my post to remove the affiliate link, that’s fine with me. I still think Site Build It is a great tool for those who want to build their own site.

I have also received an email from someone else on this site referring me to “sitesell”. I don’t appreciate this-especially with their “tracking” methods. From the sitesell website:

“STEP 1 — You send visitors to our Web site, using whatever creative marketing ideas you can devise. You “warm up” visitors so that they arrive at the SiteSell sales site with an open-to-buy frame of mind. In other words, you “PREsell” and then, we “sell” SiteSell products.
STEP 2 — We identify and track those visitors (via a proven cookie/database-driven system) as belonging to you.
STEP 3 — If they buy a SiteSell product (now or in the future), you get a commission.
STEP 4 — (The best part) We pay you. "

Please everyone, don’t fall for this. Not everyone, even on this site, is out to help you.

I’ve learned that many people name their domain too early in the process of developing their website. Like Matt pointed out, a name which is more descriptive, like COMPANYNAMEscrapbooking.com can be more effective then COMPANYNAME.com, in terms of traffic generation.

I’ve recently found a great site building resource that walks you step-by-step through the process of developing a website, and it’s all based on sound marketing principles that dictate you develop quality content first and foremost. Coming up with a domain name is actually not done until the 5th step of the process.

You can go to http://www.sitesell.com/LaneRR.html to get more info. This is an affiliate link, so if that bothers you, just go to sitesell.com. I hope this helps.

This happened to me too but here’s the great news…it made me really put a lot of thought into the name and we ended up coming up with one that was much better and tested much better. I’m convinced that we are protected from making mistakes sometimes…you are in inventor, right? So just invent a better or “stickier” site name!

Laura,
Thanks for following up on your experience. Knowledge of the five-day grace period should help others who are in the same boat as you.

Thanks!
Matt

Sorry that happened to you, Lake. You may want to check again to see if it’s available. I researched into this and found that often these “companies” will only keep it 5 days so they don’t have to pay. They will keep canceling and re-buying it every 5 days if it gets lots of hits, so don’t visit the site. With no traffic, they may let it go after the 5 day grace period. I got to buy mine 5 days after they stole it. If you google “domain tasting” and “domain kiting” you will find all the dirty tricks people are up to…

Unfortunately, I was a victim of domain stealing just last week.
We did the same sort of search for a domain and only about an hour later we tried to purchase it. It had been snatched up in that hour by some off company.

Upon further investigation, the company who bought it wanted to charge us $70.00 just to find out if it was available for re-purchase. That’s really not worth it, so I just went with a .Net domain. Someone is making a lot of money on this gig.

We have an agent at GoDaddy that works with us since we have so many domain names.

We’ve also worked with Hostway in the past (at least several hundred domains there) but I couldn’t recommend them. They acquired several companies and merged them together and it seems that every tweak to a domain name requires a series of phone calls and emails because we registered the names before all of the acquisitions. I’ve always wanted to transfer all of them away and to GoDaddy but it’s such a daunting task that I usually just do them one at a time as I need them.

I got mine through dot5hosting.com
Their prices are very reasonable.

This is no legend…the person from Register.com admitted they are having a huge problem with this. This company is making a fortune reselling domain names. Also, they don’t register with Register.com-they spy on the searches from there and then register with another company www.name.net (who makes it difficult to contact them). Does anyone have a better idea of who to register a site with?

Hi Laura,
I’ve always thought that “spider” was an urban legend. Think about the millions of searches that are done each day – it would cost that company tens of millions each day if they really wanted to implement such a scam.

That said, I always register domains as I’m searching for them if I think I might use them. Before we ever name a product, we always make sure the domain name is available. We literally have thousands of domain names just to make sure that we don’t invest time in creating an identity or brand only to find out somebody out there picked up the domain. For $7 per year, it’s probably a good insurance plan.

By the way, one thing to think about: let’s say your product is a scrapbooking product… if you register the domain COMPANYNAMEscrapbooking.com, you’ll actually do better in the search engines for that category. It’s always better to have COMPANYNAME.com but you may not be in quite as bad of a place as you think. Plus, the jerk who registered will have to renew each year so put it on your calendar to check to see if it becomes available.

One other thing… There is a way that the domain companies who are “on credit” with the big registrars can actually register and “buy” a domain and then not pay, which returns the domain to the pool a couple of months later. Using a scam like that in conjunction with some sort of trojan that is sniffing the Register.com searches is the only way that they could get away with pulling off the scam you’re talking about. I won’t say it’s not possible, but I would think that Register.com (or whichever registrar they’re registering at) would know what’s going on and would put a hold on their account.