Split Testing Your Domain Name!

Domain names are often overlooked by a ton of new affiliates because honestly it’s a pain in the butt trying to find a good one.  Often, it’s a step that is taken very quickly as most affiliates feel that it’s not something that has a huge impact on your affiliate earnings.  However, one thing I’m realizing more and more in this industry is that it’s not the big things that make you a successful affiliate marketer, it’s the little things.

You see, it’s not that the big things don’t matter the most…in fact, they are the most important steps, the problem is that most other affiliates now that the big stuff is important too!  So, if everyone is focusing on the big things, it’s the guy that does that stuff and then focuses on the little things as well.

I know that may sound a little crazy, but throughout my years as an affiliate marketer it hasn’t been coming up with the best keyword lists, or making sure my landing page was perfect from day one, or any of that stuff, it’s been the split testing of small things over time that have made me as successful as I am today!

Domain split testing is no less important!  Did you know that testing an ad with two different urls can have a huge impact on your CTR%?  In fact, in one niche I was in, I worked for hours trying to figure out ways to increase my CTR%, however all of them failed, that is until I decided to try some different domains.  After going through a couple domains, I went from a 4% CTR% to a 9% CTR% and double my profits!

So what should you test when you are split testing domains?  Here are just a few things I try out when I’m split testing domain names.

1. .com .net or .org – One of the first things I always test is to see what domain extension works the best in any given niche.  Surprisingly it’s not what you’d think.  .com’s do not always work the best!  However, most of the time .com’s and .org’s do work the best.  .net’s very rarely work well for me compared to .com’s and .org’s.
2. Call to Action Domain??? – Try using Call to Action words within your domain…  Domains like LoseWeightToday.com or LoseWeightFast.org tend to work really well in certain niches.
3. Try Capitalizing the First Letter of Each Word – Sometimes Capitalizing the first letter of each word in a domain works really well in niches, in fact, for my own stuff, it almost always does better!  SomethingLikeThisWorksWell.com is an example.
4. Using www or not? – Including the www. or not including it is another small thing that can have a huge impact in certain niches.  Typically in niches where the people are more technology inclined it’s better to leave out the www.
5. Using domain extentions besides the big three… – Every once in a while using a domain extension that is not one of the big three (.com .net or .org) can work really well if it allows you to snag a really good domain.  If you have something like GetWeightLossTrialPackagesNow.com and you can’t find anythign shorter, it may be better to try something like WeightLossProducts.us  Especially if you’re only promoting it to the United States which is what most offers are.

So there ya have it, 5 very easy things to split test when it comes to your domain name.

UPDATE: Some people have told me that you are no longer allows to split test domains in Google Adwords…That’s not true…

From April 1st, 2008 Google will no longer allow you to post a display URL in your Google ad that is not your own website’s real domain name. This means you can’t use automatic redirects.

You can still use multiple domains but with no redirects.

There is also another way to get around the redirect problem…

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