Related Tag Articles: domain

How to Use WHOIS to Learn about Your Competition

11 April 2012

As you will learn when building and promoting a website, the internet is extremely competitive. In fact, the World Wide Web is probably the most competitive industry in the history of mankind. And it’s not because big companies spend big money; to the contrary, it’s more the fact that anyone can start up a website with little capital and use common sense methods to market within their respective niche.

This means that the internet is also a cutthroat place, where some pry, lie, steal and cheat in order to get ahead. At the very least, you will have to put on your detective hat to do a lot of research on the competition if you hope to succeed in your chosen marketplace.

To research your competitors out there, WHOIS is undoubtedly the strongest resource you have at your disposal. WHOIS is a free-to-use database that catalogs every single legally registered domain in the world. By searching for a domain via this directory, you can learn a lot of details about the site. Needless to say, this information can be vital to your own campaign; learning details about your competition can help you propel past them

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How do you choose brand vs domain name for your new website?

18 January 2012

A lot of people ask me this when starting a new website, and I usually give them the same answer: Go with keywords. There are many reasons for this, which I’ll get to in a minute, but first let’s have a look at the case for using a catchy brand name as your domain.

There are plenty of websites that use a phrase or name that isn’t a common English word, and they are wildly popular. But they’re popular because they’ve spent millions of dollars on above-the-line advertising to associate that phrase or word they’ve made up with their business activity. A classic example is Wonga.com.

Wonga.com is a microlender - one of the first to gain a real foothold on the internet. You’d never naturally associate the meaningless word “Wonga” with borrowing money, which is why Wonga has spent so much money on catchy jingles, expensive TV ads, content network banners, etc. Personally I think they could have got a lot more bang for their buck by calling their business “QuickCash” or something - but they didn’t ask me for some reason.

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