I should have known better but my excitement got the best of me. An affiliate came out for a timed product, one that was a limited edition. Immediately, I grabbed the [keyword][product].com and developed a fan central related site. The first week of trials were basically a bust. Although the site was getting traffic, fan submissions and affiliate click throughs, it was getting no sales and performing poorly on search engines. What happened?

When mixed with limited edition affiliate products, time limited domains do not make sense. Literally, my domain would be no good here in a few months even if the content was basically timeless. What I needed was a URL that could last even after the affiliate's special had expired. I could keep my content and marketing efforts but simply change affiliates.

The domain I was using was a good set of keywords related to the affiliate BUT I was literally competing with the affiliate's efforts. It made no sense. Instead, I could target the keywords and audience I wanted in other manners and not be stuck with a domain that would lose traffic months down the road. Plus, the keywords had low search volume on search engines.

Once I changed the URL, results were almost immediate even though I am using the same content and slightly tweaked marketing efforts, however, the domain keywords are very different which describe more of the content and not the affiliate.

Here are a couple of good & bad examples related to the above:

Affiliate: Easter Discounts 
Bad:  Easter2010.com 
Good: EasterCoupons.com 

Affiliate: Star Wars Limited Edition Candy 
Bad:  StarWarsCandy.com
Good:  StarWarsFans.com

Sure, when you already have the URL this becomes less of a problem. My problem was reverse: there was a unique, time limited affiliate that I wanted to help promote and needed a domain for. If you find yourself in a similar situation remember to carefully choose your domain so that you can keep monetizing it a year from now ( unless your affiliate happens to be related to $5 million dollar golden rabbit eggs and you are very good at selling $5 million dollar golden rabbit eggs :D ).

Comments (6)

The Fromainer June 24, 2010

Good advice Tia, thanks. Are you using services such as Hot Trends to verify the...well, hotness of the keywords or are you going solely by the available time sensitive affiliate products. Does that question make sense?

TWood June 24, 2010

Thanks, Fromainer. Didn't use Hot Trends for this one (although I do sometimes) but happened to stumble upon this particular affiliate. However, when getting the better URL I doubled checked a few things in Adsense keyword tool.

Mano

I'll stick to goose eggs...

TWood June 24, 2010

Mano, that reminds me of another domainer's site: DuckEggs.com

The Fromainer June 25, 2010

@Tia, I see, and how extensive is your marketing/SEO strategy, given the time sensitivity?

TWood June 25, 2010

So far: adwords and social networks.

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