The
‘Sub-Domain’ - An Affiliate’s Friend
by Stephen Brennan
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It’s surprising, at least to me,
the amount of Affiliates who aren’t aware of the value and
flexibility that the ‘sub-domain’ can give their promotional
website activities. Set up in the right way, a single domain
through a host who includes multiple ‘sub-domains’ in their
hosting package can fill ALL the online needs of even the
busiest and most diversified Affiliate.
Firstly, for those who need to know, a ‘sub-domain’ is simply a
separate, individual web folder, which can be attached to a
‘main’ domain and treated in all respects as a separate entity
online. It is similar to a ‘sub-web’, which most hosting
facilities include except that it is, in it’s own right, treated
as a separate domain by the SEs rather than a sub-folder under a
domain.
The way in which they are represented online as URLs is as
follows:
For instance, if you have a domain name, ‘domain.com’ and you
add a sub-domain named ‘bubble’, the URL to that particular
‘website’ (which is what each sub-domain amounts to, a separate
website) will be ‘bubble.domain.com’. No doubt, many have seen
these types of URLs online and in promo emails etc. The ‘dot’
between the sub-domain and main domain is not to be confused
with the ‘dash’ that can be used as part of a main domain. For
instance, ‘bubble-domain.com’ would need to be registered and
propagated in it’s own right whereas, sub-domains can be created
under a main domain in a matter of seconds, with their own FTP
password, image, private and cgi-bin folders etc. |
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What makes them
so valuable a tool, if it’s not so obvious already, is that an
Affiliate can create a separate website for totally unrelated
products or services, fill each website with the necessary pages
of content, links and facilities etc and promote each to the
Search Engines and other directories, virtually as if it were a
different main domain. As I’ve said, the SEs treat each
sub-domain as a separate entity and categorize them as such. A
very handy ability when it comes to Affiliate programs that
supply a website or webpage for their Affiliates to use and
promote. In such a case, you can basically make that page or
site your very own in every respect, optimizing for SEs and
presenting it how ever you please (provided no agreements are
broken).
Obviously,
having a ‘generic’ main domain name is essential to getting the
best out of this cost, time and trouble saving method of
creating multiple websites. If you have a main domain name
‘pillshop.net’ (perhaps your initial Affiliate endeavor involved
promoting this type of product) it is really only going to be
useful for the one type of product or service.
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Alternatively, something more generic like ‘online-plus.biz’ is
going to be useful for promoting almost anything because it has
no specific meaning. For instance, in the case of promoting a
Singles Dating Affiliate program, something like
‘singles.online-plus.biz’ would work as well as
‘pills.online-plus.biz’ or even ‘dogs.online-plus.biz’. However,
‘singles.pillshop.net’ just doesn’t work, does it? (Although, I
have seen some pretty weird URLs around!)
The only problem you will be presented with, concerns the
traffic ranking facility Alexa. Alexa will read all sub-domains
as their parent ‘main domain’, so the traffic ranking for each
website will be the same, as will all the other Alexa
information. However, this isn’t such a great problem when you
consider that the total traffic indicated for each website will
actually be the total for ALL of them. In my opinion, not so
much of a problem, at all.
So, for the Affiliate at least, choosing the right type of
domain name and a hosting facility that includes multiple
sub-domains in their package is very important, especially if
there’s any possibility that you’re going to be venturing into
promoting unrelated products and services. The first hosting
facility I was involved with a few years ago, charged $10 to
create each sub-domain. The one I've been with for the last
couple of years, allows unlimited free sub-domains (contact me
at one of my websites if you want to know who they are).
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