.US Story

**crabby** · 11-09-2002, 01:35 PM

I own a company that manufactures custom lighting fixtures. The other day I went to a marble/stone/onyx dealer, to buy some onyx for some custom fixtures. This was my first time buying from this particular onyx dealer, so they wanted to know something about my business:

Me: "You can learn more about my company at www.customlighting,us."

Onyx Salesperson: "www.customlighting dot us com, got it".

Me: "No, not com, customlighting dot us".

Onyx Salesperson: "dot u.s.", what's that? I never heard of that.

Me: "Yeah, theres .... blah blah blah .... "

Neulevel and Afilias need some Superbowl ads. They'd really pay off.

**Duke** · 11-09-2002, 01:41 PM

Things don't get nationally branded over night that's for sure. It takes time and millions of dollars to get it done. I think .US will get there so it's a good thing you got your name now while it was still available. But the scenario you describe will recur for the next few years. I'm looking 5 years out at a minimum, but I will take good names now because when they are gone they are gone.

**bidawinner** · 11-09-2002, 01:51 PM

Crabby.. YOU are the superbowl ad.. that store now knows .US ..simple as that..

Didnt you as a Business owner hand him a business card with your stores address?
You know what would have been even better..if you actually had a site up at http://www.customlighting.us :(

Is your host just down or dont you have a site up yet ?

**Duke** · 11-09-2002, 02:09 PM

Good point Bid. The best advertising is word of mouth. When I say it will take millions of dollars that is true - but that doesn't have to be spent on a couple of Super Bowl ads. That can be the cumulative amount spent by small businesspeople putting up sites, handing out business cards, running local ads etc. It all adds up to the same effect - making people aware of the name. It will still take time but it will get there.

We're talking about the official country code for the largest market on earth. I think it will do very well after seeing how popular codes llike .de and .co.uk have become in their countries. .de (Germany) has the second largest number of all regs, behind only .com! The U.S. is a far bigger market than Germany so if Americans jump on board, this extension will be huge a few years from now.

**crabby** · 11-09-2002, 02:12 PM

Bid,

There's a working site at customlighting.us. It resolves fine for me. Anybody else having trouble seeing it?

Maybe bid's New.net plug-in is screwing up his machine. lol

**Duke** · 11-09-2002, 02:15 PM

Crabby your link is not working because you put a comma after customlighting, then a period at the END of .us - looks like even you are confused about it!

**crabby** · 11-09-2002, 03:17 PM

Yeah, sorry about screwing up the link. The site should resolve fine. If anyone is having problems, let me know so I can choke the host.

**bidawinner** · 11-09-2002, 06:00 PM

Crabby I still cant see your site because you have it redirected to a .com ? the redirect is "hanging" why would you do that ? thats as lame as new.net

and please dont tell me
http://roibot.com
is the site ..

Cheap Hosting abounds everywhere...

**bidawinner** · 11-09-2002, 06:02 PM

Originally posted by Duke of Earl
Good point Bid. The best advertising is word of mouth. When I say it will take millions of dollars that is true - but that doesn't have to be spent on a couple of Super Bowl ads. That can be the cumulative amount spent by small businesspeople putting up sites, handing out business cards, running local ads etc. It all adds up to the same effect - making people aware of the name. It will still take time but it will get there.

We're talking about the official country code for the largest market on earth. I think it will do very well after seeing how popular codes llike .de and .co.uk have become in their countries. .de (Germany) has the second largest number of all regs, behind only .com! The U.S. is a far bigger market than Germany so if Americans jump on board, this extension will be huge a few years from now.

like .de yeah that would make me

We should fly past even .de numbers..

**crabby** · 11-09-2002, 10:33 PM

Bid,

roibot.com is the site through which I channel customlighting.us, and forward it to functionalmetal.com .

roibot.com is a hit tracking service. When you type www.customlighting.com into your browser, it should forward to www.functionalmetal.com . If not, something is wrong. That's the way it works for me.

Sorry about forwarding it to www.functionalmetal.com . Functionalmetal.com was built long before .us was available.

If you click on or type www.customlighting.us into your browser, you should end up at www.functionalmetal.com . If it's not working for anybody else, I'd appreciate knowing about it. It should work fine. So should www.lighting.us , www.customlighting.com , www.customlighting.biz , and www.customlighting.info .

www.customlighting.org is available, but useless to me.

**bidawinner** · 11-09-2002, 10:45 PM

Sorry crabby..not getting there at all.. none of your sites..

"channel" ..personal opinion..drop that junk.. drop all this redirecting nonsense.. on sites that are "important" to you anyways..

I am assuming you really are in the "lighting" business.. whether affiliate or full fledge

My approach would be EACH of these domains have their own site and perhaps lighting "themes"

Make each site main lighting "stuff" differnt from each other.. you can cross market products but just dont make each site identical to each others (very bad for SE's)

Hosting can be found very inexpensive.. and your REACH more of your market because you'll have 5 sites running instead of 1 site with 4 redirects..

I dont always check all these threads if you have any specific question you can PM me.

Good Luck..

Duke you were able to reach one of his sites earlier ?

**mole** · 11-09-2002, 10:57 PM

Great link, this ROIbot.

**bidawinner** · 11-09-2002, 11:08 PM

You're joking right mole ?

it's JUNK !

Your first clue should be that Google has them "greyed" out...

**mole** · 11-09-2002, 11:10 PM

I know they offer FFAs, but I'm interested in their traffic verification system. Does it suck?

**crabby** · 11-09-2002, 11:23 PM

mole,

when you type www.customlighting.us into your browser, or click on the link, where does it take you? I need to know if it's working properly.

Thanks.

**bidawinner** · 11-09-2002, 11:27 PM

traffic verification..I have no idea..
What I do know is if Google has it banned they consider it a bad "neighbor" and if you are using it ,then google considers you hanging in a "bad" neighbor and your site gets knocked down and can even be banned from Google..

Google's algo is getting totally out of control because you could be totally innocent ...you simply want to try out their SE tools you dont know they are considered junk by google or are on Googles banned list ..

But at the same time Google has gone from being cool to being a monster monopoly.. If you have any ranking at all (google)stay away from anything that looks to good to be true..

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/

Let me ask crabby this: any of your sites that use roiBOT have any ranking in Google ..please show us the link..?

**bidawinner** · 11-09-2002, 11:29 PM

Yeah Mole.. hanging in FFa directorties are a sure way to make sure you lose your Google ranking..

I assume thats what you were pointing out..

**mole** · 11-10-2002, 12:34 AM

Originally posted by crabby
mole,

when you type www.customlighting.us into your browser, or click on the link, where does it take you? I need to know if it's working properly.

Crab, it goes to roibot.com then to functionmetal.com.

Bid, thanks for the advise.