Day 8: Refine Final Concept
And Register Domain Name – Part I
Goal-of-the-DAY... Narrow or broaden your Site Concept until it is, to quote Goldilocks, “just right.” Not too narrow... not too broad. Before you register your domain, consider Site Build It!.
It’s no longer about Web hosting. It's about success -- your success! SBI! Owners consistently build profitable businesses. Join the top 3%.
5.1. Refine Your Site Concept
It’s time to do some rigorous evaluating of the info you’ve collected in your MASTER KEYWORD LIST and to make any adjustments to your Site Concept.
Earlier in the course, we chose “fashion” as a Site Concept for our primary example. We also looked at other concept examples like “Botticelli” and “pricing.”
These Site Concepts were mere starting points. As you worked your way through DAYS 2 to 7, you built your MASTER KEYWORD LIST for the “fashion” Site Concept. This list is literally your site blueprint for each of your keywords, it...
• shows you SUPPLY and DEMAND data -- best idea is to start writing pages about words with the best numbers for profitability
• contains SUPPLY SITE INFO... information about sites that rank well
• suggests POSSIBLE PARTNERS, merchants with affiliate programs that you would be proud to represent
• gives you IDEAS FOR CONTENT -- possible topics for you to write about.
Now, is that a blueprint, or what?
Time to start building!
I once asked you...
How big should you grow your Site Concept? How much should you change it?
Only you can decide.
Now let’s use the info in your MASTER KEYWORD LIST to refine your concept.
Here are the factors to consider before finalizing your Site Concept…
1) Expandability -- Choose a niche that you can broaden. Remember the future -- you will very likely want to broaden your concept after you fill your niche.
2) Your passion and knowledge -- You’ll be much more effective if you stick to what you know and love.
3) Your available time -- If time is a limiting factor, stay narrow.
4) Profitability -- Review your SUPPLY and DEMAND data. Your niche Site Concept should have solid potential (i.e., loads of HIGH-PROFITABILITY keywords associated with it).
5) SUPPLY SITE INFO and IDEAS FOR CONTENT -- Read what others are writing about, and review any ideas that you have had. Do you want to cover similar topics (nothing wrong with that, especially if you do it better!), or do you see a niche or approach that has not yet been done?
6) POSSIBLE PARTNERS and Monetization opportunities -- How many solid affiliate programs are a good fit? Is Google’s AdSense right for this?
7) Search Engine “Winnability.” -- Three points here...
• It’s hard to win a Top 10 ranking in search results for broad-concept keywords.
• As we’ll see later, the Search Engines will be concentrating more and more on the theme of the overall site. So if you choose to develop a broad concept with several major sub-themes, it will be harder to win the war for the sub-themes than if you dedicated a single site to a sub-theme. In other words, the “nichier,” the better.
• Register a descriptive concept that is Search Engine friendly. It must contain your Concept Keyword.
8) The amount of content and number of keywords -- If you used all three WINDOWS (SUPPLY, DEMAND, and BREAKOUT) to their full potential, you should have no shortage of HIGH-PROFITABILITY keywords. But if your topic is just too narrow (ex., “Norwegian fashion models from the mid-1700’s”!), you may need to broaden the concept somewhat (ex., “Scandinavian fashion models”). And a final consideration if you sell your own product or service…
9) PREselling effectiveness -- Will broadening your niche dilute your ability to PREsell our product/service effectively? In other words, will it attract people who, for the most part, will not be interested in what you have to offer?
If that is the probable outcome, can you convert this traffic into secondary revenue streams? Generally it’s best if your Site Concept/theme has a clear connection to the products or services that you provide.
So...
“How broad should my concept be?”
The single best recommendation...
“As narrow as possible, yet... still with lots of profit potential!”
(Yes, I do want to have my cake and eat it, too.)
Seriously, every success story starts small, and then builds. And if you’re like most people, you don’t have the time to flesh out a huge concept all at once.
And it will actually hurt you at the engines if your concept is too broad.
It’s better to start narrow, but with enough profit potential (as determined by the above 9 factors), and then grow the concept.
Let’s use our earlier examples to illustrate how to finalize a niche Site Concept.
We’ll also develop your domain name at the same time, since the two go handin-
hand.
5.2. Develop Your VPP
Ideally, your domain should reflect your Valuable PREselling Proposition
(VPP). Your VPP answers, in very few words and hopefully with just a touch of character, the two critical questions about your Site Concept...
1) What specific and high-value information does your site deliver?
2) What is your unique positioning for this delivery (i.e., what is your angle of approach)?
A good VPP transmits these answers loud and clear to your visitor so that she immediately understands what your site is about. And the single best way to do that?...
Include your VPP in your domain name!
There’s no room for “cleverness” or subtlety here. Leave that to the moneylosing dotcoms. Include your Concept Keyword in your VPP and add a “marketing angle/theme” to it. That way, your concept is clear to your visitor, and your Concept Keyword is clear to the Search Engines (the engines will rank your site a touch higher for your Concept Keyword if it is included in your domain name).
Focus your efforts on developing a VPP that is “not too narrow, not too broad” -- it needs to be just right.
Would an example help to clarify? How about three?
5.2.1. Example 1 -- A Tight Niche
“Pricing” is a nice, tight concept. You can use your SUPPLY and DEMAND WINDOWS to brainstorm many HIGH-PROFITABILITY keywords that are directly related to pricing. And, as we saw, you can also BREAKOUT into other areas, too... areas that would be of interest to serious business people (ex., “fulfillment” or “copywriting” or “product development”).
Here’s the problem, though... if you developed many Keyword-Focused
Content Pages about fulfillment within your pricing site, you’d dilute that site’s Search Engine effectiveness for pricing issues. So “concept-level” keywords like “fulfillment” really deserve their own sites.
Keep your theme pure. You will do better with the engines and you will be more credible to your readers, too.
Business people who are interested in fulfillment will also be interested in pricing.
Well, the reverse is true, also. So your pricing pages can also refer people to a good fulfillment company... not to mention a company with a good solution for customer support!
Since “pricing” is wide enough to be profitable and narrow enough to be winnable, make “pricing” your Site Concept Keyword for your new Theme- Based Content Site.
Now let’s develop your “pricing” Concept Keyword into a Valuable PREselling Proposition (VPP). We’ll explore three different directions…
i) pricingadvisor.com, or THEpricingadvisor.com
VPP = pricing advisor. This says that you are delivering pricing information.
(Your Concept Keyword must, of course, be included in your domain.)
And the "advisor" part establishes you as the expert -- it tells your visitor that you'll be delivering some great pricing advice!
ii) pricing-on-the-net.com
VPP = pricing on the Net. Again, it’s clear that you are delivering pricing info.
The “on the Net” part says that you are specializing in pricing info specifically on the Internet. Since there is not much info about pricing on the Net and since your potential visitor is certainly there looking for Net-specific info, this is a good approach.
Same idea for “netpricing.com” and “cyberpricing.com.”
iii) perfectpricing.com
VPP = perfect pricing. Again, it’s clear that you are delivering pricing info.
This time, though, the VPP implies that you show people how to price optimally -- also something that people would definitely want!
Bottom line?
Same Concept Keyword, but three different VPPs that outline three different Site Concepts.
Which of the above approaches is best? Ahhh... my work is done. You know your prospective visitor best. Which approach do you think works best?
5.2.2. Example 2 -- A Bit Too Narrow
Now let’s look at a few possibilities for our second Concept Keyword example, “Botticelli” (you’re pretending to be a big fan of his.) Only one problem...
You find yourself in a bit of a bind. Now that you’ve done DAYS 4 to 7, you can’t find enough profit potential (HIGH-PROFIT KEYWORDS and related POTENTIAL PARTNERS) to make a pure “Botticelli site” sufficiently profitable.
So you keep doing DAYS 3 and 4-5 on progressively broader concepts until you find enough profit potential to proceed. Work your way up from Botticellli, to
Renaissance art, to all artists, to “everything art.”
What to do? At this stage, you have four options...
OPTION 1) Loop back to DAY 6-7 to grow your list of POSSIBLE PARTNERS.
OPTION 2) LOOP back to DAY 4-5 and brainstorm more high-profit keywords, and
find more POTENTIAL PARTNERS for those new keywords.
OPTION 3) Loop back to DAY 3 and develop a whole new Site Concept.
OPTION 4) Recognize that you’re “in it” more for the passion than the money.
Botticelli rules!
For this example, let’s assume that you’ll widen the concept and then use the BREAKOUT WINDOW to find more keywords. Then find more POTENTIAL PARTNERS for that wider concept.
How broad should you go?
Remember the single best recommendation…
As narrow as possible, yet... still with lots of profit potential!
In other words, work your way up from Botticelli, to Renaissance art, to all artists, to “everything art.” Stop as soon as you find a level that has solid profit potential. Keep your niche as narrow as possible, so that you can build a site “to fill that glass,” yet still make good profits.
Let’s say that…
As you work your way up the Botticelli concept, you find that you have solid profit potential for some broader, related concepts…“Renaissance Art” and other Concept Keywords at this level (ex., ancient art, cubism, impressionism, etc.).
So you register renaissance-artchive.com, ancient-artchive.com, cubismartchive.com, impressionism-artchive.com, etc., etc. And you also register artchive.com and artchives.com.
Once you establish renaissance-artchive.com, and then ancientartchive.com, and then cubism-artchive.com, you’ll launch a master home page, artchive.com, to tie it all together as “the place to come for all things art.”
This home page will contain a global “what's in it for you” message and then provide links to all your other domains that are already up and running and successful.
One more domain -- register store-artchive.com. This could either be an affiliate-based store where you will PREsell the products of your merchantpartners (including a bust of Botticelli!), or it could be a true online store (Store
Build It!).
Just before we move on to our last example (“fashion”), let’s review our artchive.com domains to make sure that they meet our VPP (Valuable PREselling Proposition) needs...
Your VPP answers, in very few words and hopefully with a touch of character, the two critical questions about your Site Concept...
1) What specific and high-value information does your site deliver?
2) What is your unique positioning for this delivery (i.e., what is your angle of
approach)?
Artchive.com is a smart, but not too clever (i.e., so subtle that many visitors would miss the point), play on words that tells the visitor immediately, and with character, that it is a place to come for all things art. It contains your Site Concept word, “art,” and each of your “lower level” domains do, too (ex., renaissance-artchive contains the “renaissance art” keyword.)
Bottom line?
What started with Botticelli now has a clear do-able step-at-a-time plan to become an art mini-portal. And you start at a level that you know will be
profitable.
Best of all worlds.
On to our final example…
5.2.3. Example 3 -- A Bit Too Broad
With “pricing,” we found ourselves at just about the right profit potential level. So it was not necessary to grow the concept.
With “Botticelli,” we needed to widen the concept to capture more profit potential.
With “fashion,” we’ll need to do the opposite -- narrow it down to a “do-able” yet profitable level.
Heck, “fashion” is just too broad...
• You won’t be able to develop the unique positioning required by a good VPP.
• It will take forever to fill a general fashion site with enough content so it does
not look bare.
• Winning the Search Engine wars for a General Keyword like “fashion” will be extremely difficult. And even if you do win it for your home page, people searching for “fashion” are so non-specific, looking with so many possible different topics, that your site is unlikely to meet their needs.
And that’s why...
The only strategy on this over-congested Net is to target a specific niche with a specific Site Concept and a strong VPP that tells people quickly what specific and high-value information you are delivering.
When you start with a wide-open concept like “fashion,” you have two basic choices...
1) Narrow down to a “fashion”-containing Site Concept that excites you...
something about “fashion design” or “fashion model” or “fashion designer.”
2) Change course somewhat, based on your BREAKOUT research.
(In fact, while you’ll start with one or the other, you will quickly end up using both choices, as we’ll see now...)
Let’s cover each quickly, from a VPP point of view...
OPTION 1) Narrow down -- Remember some of our HIGH-PROFITABILITY
“fashion”-containing keywords?...
fashion magazine
fashion model
fashion designer
fashion design
Let’s focus on what excites you... designing and publishing. You decide to publish an online magazine about fashion design and designers... fashion-designers-magazine.com
The domain contains your VPP. It says exactly what your site delivers, and that you’ll be delivering it through the format of an online magazine/Web site.
No, the name is not particularly clever. Using words like Herald or Express would sound and look much slicker (ex.,FashionDesignExpress.com). But using “magazine” gives you a better edge with the Search Engines, for two
reasons...
i) There’s a slight advantage to having your keyword within the domain name.
But more importantly...
ii) You’ll be using your name over and over in your copy. No one searches for “FashionDesignExpress.” But lots of people search for “fashion magazine.” And, since few people use quotes when they search, the “fashion” and the “magazine” do not have to be together. So this gives you “findability” for “fashion magazine” and “fashion designers” and even “designers magazine.”
Add a byline like...
“The Fashion Design Magazine
By, About, and For Fashion Designers”
Include this on every page, under your logo.
Your magazine format gives you the flexibility to cover a wide range of topics related to fashion design and designers. Use the BREAKOUT techniques described in DAY 4-5 to generate more and more topics related to fashion design and designers (jewelry topics, famous designer bios, etc., etc.).
You’re off and running with a great concept like this. Just one more thought...
Let’s say that fashion-designers-magazine.com succeeds really well...
Hey, it should! You’re doing everything right. But...
It will be too late to register related domains later. Do it now, with an eye to expanding your concept in a few months or so (as discussed above for artchive.com)...
• fashion-model-magazine.com
• fashion-products-magazine.com (your future store?)
• factory-outlet-stores-magazine.com (see below)
• And, of course, tie it up all together with a Master Domain, fashionmagazine.com or THEfashion-magazine.com. This Master Site will be launched once your other sites are all up and running, much the same way that you did for artchive.com above.
Let’s discuss your second option when dealing with a wide-open General Keyword like “fashion”...
OPTION 2) Change course -- Earlier, we used Search It! to find other “fashionrelated” words like “factory outlet stores,” which was searched for 6,020 times and has only 1,820 competitors! Hey, that’s a far better DEMAND-SUPPLY ratio (searches compared to competitors) than “fashion design.”
Research like this may even point you towards changing your concept away from the “concept-level” keyword of “fashion,” perhaps aiming more toward “discount” and “outlets” -- run these two keywords through Search It! to check both SUPPLY and DEMAND. Your best Concept Keyword may actually be... discount outlets
or…
factory outlet stores (that’s where we got that domain, “factory-outlet storesmagazine.com,” above).
Surprise, surprise!
Of course, you also have to consider...
i) whether this different direction excites you as much
and…
ii) the nature of the kind of customer who will search for your keywords. Make sure that you aren’t marketing to a personality type that is hard to convert, no matter what you do... ex., the “freebie-seeking tire-kicker” or the “marketingphobic tech-type.”
You want to attract a personality that is open-to-buy. In other words, you want people who will buy something after reading your content and clicking through to your merchants.
With this in mind, think about this possible new direction...
People searching for outlet malls are certainly doing so for a reason... to save on buying! And you find lots of good online malls and other merchants that fit with your Site Concept. And you can still marry your concept of fashion to “factory outlet stores” like this...
• WORLDSBEST-FashionFactory-outlet-stores.com
Geez, if this goes as big as you think it could, you could expand this concept,
too! So you also register...
• WORLDSBEST-SportsFactory-outlet-stores.com
• WORLDSBEST-ElectronicFactory-outlet-stores.com
• WORLDSBEST-FurnitureFactory-outlet-stores.com
• WORLDSBEST-MusicFactory-outlet-stores.com
• WORLDSBEST-WhateverElseExistsFactory-outlet-stores.com
And you’ll register a strong Master Domain to tie all your successful niche sites up into one big mini-portal. So what if that’s a year or two down the road?...
• WORLDSBEST-Factory-outlet-stores.com
VPP = world's best factory outlet stores. It says that you have done all the research for your cost-conscious reader and will be delivering only the cream.
And think of all the creamy topics!... Articles on shoes, fur, dresses, etc., etc... leading to great outlet links (and other affiliate links, of course).
Then you do the same for basketball, football, golf, etc., etc. My goodness!
You’ve found the mother lode.
Bye-bye fashion magazine. Hello world of discount malls!
Here’s the whole point of DAY 8...
Take your time on the domain name and the concept -- the choice you make here will literally make or break your results. Remember what Danny De Vito said in “The Renaissance Man”...
“The choices we make dictate the lives we lead.”
If I had to summarize the entire Affiliate Masters Course into just two lines, it would be the two you just read...
***************************************************
Pick something you know and love...
... AND that has excellent PROFITABILITY!
****************************************************
One without the other is much less likely to succeed.
Yes, you can win by doing something you don’t enjoy doing. But it’s a heck of a lot harder.
And sure... you could just say, “Hang what people will pay for. I want to do what turns me on”... and that would be OK. You might even “luck into” a winner of a concept. But it would be luck. On the other hand, if your payoff is the sheer enjoyment of doing a hobby, that’s great, too.
It takes a cold-hearted businessperson to make money at something that he does not particularly like. Few of us qualify. Of course, if you do, don’t hesitate to go where the profitability seems to be, first and foremost!
But, for most folks...
Pick something you know and love...
... AND that has excellent PROFITABILITY!
You believe you have the right domain name, but wait…
Stay tune for Part II of Refine Final Concept And Register Domain Name
Relevant Posts:
Achieve Financial Freedom Thru Affiliate Masters Course
Achieve Financial Freedom Thru Affiliate Masters Course - Day 1
Achieve Financial Freedom Thru Affiliate Masters Course - Day 2
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