Month: December 2008

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Free Domain Names: Give Them to Your Visitors and Reap the Rewards – Part 3

Today you’ll see that offering domain names for free is a good way to get more backlinks for your sites and/or make people subscribe to your content.

Link building

Since building links is a major concern for many webmasters nowadays, I chose to start with this topic. Here’s how you can use domain giveaways for link building purposes:

  • Create a contest (e. g., “write a blog post about my site”). Domain names will be the prizes.
  • Have contestants link to your site or blog. Make sure they use your desired anchor text. If I were you, I’d offer various anchor text options and let each contestant pick their favourite one.
  • It may be a good idea to limit participation to webmasters who own sites related to your niche.
  • If your contest is a one-shot event, those who don’t get any prizes may simply remove your links or add a no-follow tag to them afterwards. To avoid this, you could run periodic contests, so contestants feel encouraged to keep your links on their sites for longer.

Subscribers and members

Do you want to get more subscribers to your newsletter or RSS feed? Or more members for your forums and membership sites? Domain giveaways can help you a lot:

  • Offer free domain names to your most active forum members. Make it clear that only those who write quality posts will be awarded. Unless you really don’t mind having lots of “me too” messages on your boards.
  • Ask your blog readers to subscribe to your RSS feed by email. Then compile a subscriber email list and run a draw. The owner of the drawn address will be given a free domain.
  • The idea above also applies to newsletters. To ensure that your subscribers will actually open and read your emails, you could have them answer questions about each issue. Only those who sent you correct answers would be entered in your free domain draw.

These tips are enough to keep you busy until I publish the final post in this series. It will show you how free domain name offers can be used to generate more visitor activity on your site. Remember, you won’t miss my future suggestions if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog.

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Free Domain Names: Give Them to Your Visitors and Reap the Rewards – Part 2

I’m finally back and resuming this series on domain name giveaways. As promised in the first part, today I’m going to offer some suggestions regarding niches to which this tactic would be appropriate.

Audiences interested in domain give aways

If you own a blog, website or forum in any of the niches below, you’re guaranteed to catch your visitors’ attention whenever you offer free domains:

  • General Internet marketing
  • Make money online
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Article marketing
  • Ebook writing and selling
  • Blogging
  • SEO and SEM
  • Web hosting
  • Domains (duh!)
  • Webmaster tips and resources

This should go without saying, but just in case you’re wondering, the reason why domain name giveaways are successful in such niches is the fact that their typical audience already knows the value of a good domain name. So you won’t have to educate anyone. You won’t have to explain why your visitors should care for your offer.

Audiences that may or may not be interested in free domain names

Here are niches whose typical audience isn’t always aware of the importance of domains:

  • Small business
  • Work-at-Home Moms/Dads
  • Anime/Manga

If your site belongs to any of these categories, should you offer free domain names to your visitors? It depends on how educated they are. For instance, some small business owners don’t even realise the importance of a website for their companies. Others are partially or fully engaged in online marketing practices such as SEO and social media. If your typical visitors fall into the latter group, your domain giveaway will likely be successful. So the first step you must take is knowing your audience, really.

Subscribe to The WebMaster Blog so you don’t miss the next post in this series. It will contain some concrete examples of benefits you can obtain when you distribute free domain names.

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Finding Content for Your Blog

Knowing that I really needed to get a post up that had nothing to do with my December giveaway, and actually had something to do with blogging, I went searching eZine Articles for something to put up here fast. When you are rushed for time it is an appealing idea, and I have to admit I have done it more than once. It is not hard to tell on my blogs, I follow the rules and leave all the links. Usually it is a simple task. Select an article, cut, paste, done.

It didn’t work that way today. First off, most of the articles on blogging were “How To Get Rich Blogging” articles. I don’t believe many of the authors have actually gotten rich from blogging, so I am not all that interested in whatever affiliate program they are pushing. The rest of the articles were just rehashes of the same old stuff. Anyone who has been blogging for more than a week probably knows to find a niche, write great content, and write often. If they have been blogging for a month they probably have guessed that SEO is important, (even if they don’t know what that is, or if like me, they would rather write for readers than search engines!), pictures make your posts pop (apparently pictures of scantily clad women are best, even if your post is about SEO). Then there is always the self hosted vs free hosting discussion. Go ahead and bash whatever you are not doing.

So, because I have no time, the best thing to do is waste time, I go blog hopping. Entrecard is good for this. I’ll just do a little widget surfing and maybe some blog out there will give me inspiration and help me to write the post that Diggers will Digg, Stumblers will Stumble, and the almighty Google will put in the #1 position of every search. In addition the readers of this remarkable post will click every sponsored link and buy every affiliate product, making me an overnight millionaire.

I know my standards were high and I was asking the impossible. But it is hard to be inspired by a post on “I’m sorry I haven’t been posting”. Or the, “I need original content so I will scrap this post and run it through Google translator a couple times and the resulting gibberish is sure to bring tons of readers and instant wealth” posts. And the inevitable “make money online” posts.

Of course, my favorite posts are the ones on mesotheliomia. Because when someone clicks on an ad for mesotheliomia it pays really well so even if my blog has nothing to do with mesotheliomia I will make sure that I use the word mesotheliomia lots, because using high paying keywords, like mesotheliomia, are the best way to instant riches. (Of course it might help if I knew how to spell mesotheliomia.)

So, my poor readers, still believing that any post is better than no post, I have subjected you to over 500 words of pretty useless ranting. But I know that I read somewhere that between 525 and 550 word posts are the best for SEO, keywords and instant riches, so I’ll just leave it at that!

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More Winners!

Dec. 9   BobbyT, the only commentator who hadn’t already won!

Dec. 10  No comments

Dec. 11 No comments

Dec.12 Bloggernoob

Dec.13  Only one comment, from someone who already won!

Dec.14  No comments

Dec.15 Escarlata

I haven’t been getting very many comments lately. That is bad for me, but good for you!  Your chances are pretty good to win a domain!  I’ll be contacting the winners by email to tell them how to claim their domain!

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I Feel The Need For Speed

The number one complaint that I hear about web pages is that they load too slow!  In fact, people have said that to me about this page.  (I’m working on that!)  But how do you know if your site is a turtle when it comes to loading.  You can’t always tell by your own experience.  Your website or blog is probably cached on your computer, making it load faster.  You may have a faster internet connection than most.

I have found  a useful tool that can tell you how fast your pages load, and even offers suggestions on how to speed up the load times.  Using the tool I have found that there is lots of room for improvement on The WebMaster Blog!

Run your site through  Web Page Analyzer and see how fast it loads.  Leave a comment here, and maybe the fastest blog will be the next domain winner!  We will use the speed your blog loads at 56K.  The home page of this blog loaded at 102.11 seconds. I am not too happy about that, but I will use the suggestions from Web Page Analyzer and see if I can improve that!

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Time For More Giveaways! Dec. 6, 7 & 8

It is time for me to catch up on my giveaways! The winners will be able to pick either a domain or a banner ad on TheWebmaster Blog!

The winners are:
Dec. 6 Hudpost
Dec. 7 Health Info
Dec. 8 Man In The Moon

Watch your email for details on how to claim your prize!

I have lots more domains to give away so keep commenting!

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Do You Like To Make Money?

I promise I will get back to the domain give away. And I will be giving away one domain for every day of December until Christmas.  So keep commenting! But for right now I want to let you know about another contest/opportunity I have for you!

If you read this blog I think I can make a a few assumptions about you.

  1. You like to blog.
  2. You like to make money.
  3. You don’t really like to pay for hosting or for domains.
  4. You don’t want to pay for the “opportunity” to make money.

So what if I tell you about a way that you can have a blog that costs you nothing. You don’t have to pay for a domain or hosting or for the “opportunity”.

  • You will earn at least $1 for every post you write. (Up to one post per day.)
  • You will get paid $2 for every 2000 uniques.
  • You will have the opportunity to make even more money.
  • You will help me earn more money so I can keep giving away domains, even after December!

Does this sound good to you?  Then please use my affiliate link and sign up for a free blog at Today.com.  Then make 10 posts of at least 100 words each.  When you do that, I will earn a commission and you will have earned at least $10!

Now, let’s make it even better!  If you sign up for today.com, using my affiliate link, and you make at least 10 posts then I will give you a few extra bonuses!

  1. If I win a bonus for most referrals for the month of December, I will share that bonus with everyone that signed up with me!
  2. I will give you a 90 day blogroll link to your today.com blog on The WebMaster Blog
  3. I will write a review of your today.com blog on my blog Review Me Today!
  4. I will visit your Today.com blog frequently, which will increase your earnings!

So what more do you want? (Seriously let me know!) Then click on the banner and get yourself a free blog!

Don’t like banners, can’t see the banner? Then click here for Today.com.

Then, once you have your free blog from Today.com leave a comment here with a link and we will all go and check it out!

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Giveaway for December 4 and 5

Somehow I got behind a day for this giveaway. So for today I am giving away 2 domains!

However, I don’t have a lot of time so the winners are just going to be a random pick.

For December 4 the winner is  Escoofield and for December 5 the winner is Mike.

Thanks everyone for all your kind comments!

For everyone coming in late, this giveaway isn’t over!  I am giving away a domain a day until December 25! Winners are picked from everyone that comments that day.  So keep commenting!

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December 3 Giveaway

Well, I got a lot more comments yesterday, and it was hard to pick a winner.

John was real nice, left 2 comments, and hinted that he might write about the Giveway on his blog. Very tempting.

Mike said my site looked awesome, and I love compliment 😉

Escoofield commented all over the blog, he left 7 comments, that was great!

But the winner for Dec. 3 is going to be Charles.  I checked out his blog, and it is pretty good, but right now he has a Blogspot blog.  You know he really needs his own domain, so he wins brandingyp dot com.  I think it will make a good fit.

It is not too late to comment for today’s giveaway!

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Day One of the December Giveaway

We are off to a slow start. Only 3 commentors, but one left 3 comments on the blog.  So our first winner is Mark. He was also the first to comment.

He wins a domain, and gets to choose between salesyp dot com, (exp 02/23/09)  or adoptionnews dot info (exp 04/04/09)  So which would you choose.  The dot com with one key word and a couple extra letters? Or the dot info which has two good keywords?