Promotion World ARCHIVE Tutorial December 27, 1999 Your Own Domain Name This is another one that helps to build trust with your visitors, and potential customers. If you haven't figured it out, building trust is a very important part of having a website. If people don't trust you, they won't buy from you. Anyway, getting your own domain name really helps. It is very bad for your image if you have a website hosted on one of the free webpage hosts. It may be fine for a personal homepage, but for a professional business trying to make a living, you really need to get your own domain name. I don't know if you've been over to one of them lately. It seems that four out of five of the websites hosted there are MLMs or business opportunities that don't look "on the level". It just seems to add an element of trust if someone has a domain name. Also, most of the free services make you display ads. Some of them popup ads. That's a great way to drive away visitors. Think about it. Someone who is willing to invest $70 (plus hosting fees) for a domain name looks a lot more serious about his business than someone on a free hosting service. I know I probably wouldn't buy from someone on a free host. There are so many of them that are fly by night operations. Also, which is easier for your customer to remember, the URL http://www.yourname.com or http://members.yourfreehost.com/~yourname? Which would you remember? I know that for most of the sites that I visit on a regular basis I just punch in the domain name. I don't want to bother trying to find where that bookmark went... So getting a domain name builds trust and helps to increase repeat visitors. Maybe you decide that you will wait until you have tried out the waters a bit. Fair enough. But I wouldn't. You will most likely spend hours promoting your site that is hosted on a free service, and then decide it's time to get your own domain. Oh, the hassles! For one thing, you have to convert all your pages to the new URL. But worse than that, all your visitors will have to be redirected. You will have to go through the job of promoting your site to the search engines again... If you are serious about starting a business on the web, you should get your own domain name now.