Hey all,

Just wanted to touch on domains here. Are you picking the right domain for your adsense site/ebook/membership site/product, etc? If not, you know you could be in severe trouble!!

A domain is usually one of the first things people pick when they are making a site or product. This is WRONG!! Stop doing it already! Just because you thought of a great domain and it is available, doesn't mean that someone else has the exact same idea and they are just waiting to take it out from under you.

The domain is the very first thing people see about your site. It is the link they click on, type in, digg, or stumbleupon. So make sure to give it a little love.

Some things you should always consider when it comes to picking the right domain are:

* Keyword rich domains
* Readability
* Potential Traffic

Your domain should always contain your main keyword for your site. Adsense sites and content driven sites should use this. If your site is about hiking backpacks, your domain should be hikingbackpacks.com.

If you're going for branding, make sure to include branding in your domain as well. If people are looking for you via your brand, you need to make sure they can find everything about you.

If your brand is Pepsi, you would have pepsi.com. You could also inforce your brand with pepsicommercials.com which has your brand as well as the focal part of your site in the url. And it is easy to remember.

Another thing you need is readability. If your domain is: mycooldomainthatisreallyhardtoread.com, no one is going to be able to decipher that. On the flip side, you can use hyphens, but that will make your customers have a really hard time typing your domain. Imagine trying to tell someone over the phone "type m y 'hyphen' c o o l hyphen...". Not so effective.

Make your domain short an punchy. Like my domain is "BAM!". Get a domain that is as short as possible. I don't care if your product is "Shortening Really Long URL's For Better Use On Twitter", it shouldn't be your domain name. Your domain needs to be something more like tweetsnip.com or twitsnip.com. 1 to 3 syllables is best.

Ready for the Twist? Let's Go...

The last thing you can do is see the potential traffic your domain gets. Not everyone knows about this. ICANN (don't worry about what that means) has a "Create Grace Period" holding domains for 5 days before you are locked into having the domain for 1-5 years. Think of it as a car's 72 buyer's remorse rule.

If you are purchasing a domain for sale, you can do some traffic analysis before you go forward with your domain. If you see it gets a decent amount of traffic on it's own for whatever reason, and that is one of your traffic strategies, then you are good. If not, it is ok, but keep it in mind in case you change your mind about the domain before the grace period is over.

All in all, don't jump into the domain selecting process. Just like a great headline, it takes time to find the perfect one.

Until next time...