Let’s say that you have a national commercial that is airing in 50 different states (or regions) and you wan to maximize the effectiveness of your advertising. If you knew that there were states that were sucking your profit high and dry and you could do something about it, would you? Of course you would! But how can do effectively analyze the statistics from a television or radio ad?

I’ve seen this technique a few times and it has been proven to be extremely effective. What advertisers are doing is really clever! They’re registering several different domain names and airing different commercials for each region with a special domain name. So if you were trying to advertise Jamorama via a commercial, you could tell your viewers to visit 123PlayGuitar.com in Virginia, 456Playguitar.com in California, and so on. I’ve seen advertisers who have hundreds of domain names to sell their products and maximize their advertising dollars.

Another way to use this method is to have a different advertisement on each network. If Lifetime isn’t producing very good results, perhaps you should spend more money on ESPN instead. One company who does this is CrazyFox.org, who have a number of different domain names to test the effectiveness of lead generation: 296crazyfox.com, 45crazyfox.com, 199crazyfox.com, 86crazyfox.com, etc.

Why is this method so effective (and why is it necessary)? The first rule in business is to get rid of your bad customers. These are the ones that are costing you more in advertising to bring in than the profits that are returned from them. They if people in Hawaii don’t buy your product, simply don’t advertise to them. Sometimes loosing an entire market of bad customers can take your business to new heights!

Buying a domain name and web hosting can be done bundled together or separately. Sometimes, you can get a better deal if you purchase the products bundled together. However, if you were only really interested in making a small investment to start, I would recommend securing your domain name first and signing up for web hosting separately at a later time. That way you only have to invest around $10 in your website, and pay the rest when you’re ready to launch your website.Buying a domain name is pretty easy, but there are some things you should know. You need to make sure that your domain name is catchy so that your visitors will remember it. It is also important, for Search Engine Optimization purposes, to include your highest incoming traffic keywords in your domain title. So, if you have a website devoted to learning piano, “learnpiano.com” might be a great domain name for you. Isn’t that so much more relevant than “cindysmusiclessons.com”Here is a list of great domain name registrars:

• www.namecheap.com (best deal overall)
• www.godaddy.com (second best deal)
• domains.yahoo.com (third best deal)

There is a lot involved in the web hosting aspect. You need to choose a web host that is going to fulfill your needs. If you were a Microsoft ASP.NET developer (which I’m going to assume you probably are not, but many of my customers are developers wanting to get a better grasp for design and marketing), you would need a web server that would support that. For purposes of this course, you will most likely be okay with the following web hosts:

• www.hostmonster.com (my personal favorite and all around best deal)
• www.ipowerweb.com (another affordable web host)
• www.godaddy.com (great web hosting provider as well)

Lastly, you need to make sure that you have a web design in mind that is going to make you money. Take a look at your competitors website and draw your ideas out on paper. If your competitors are making money off of a specific layout or format, don’t reinvent the wheel-go for it! It will cost you nothing and it’s the best time saver you’ll find in the web design business!