“Save the Date.” How many times have you received one of these cards in the mail or seen an email in your inbox with this in the title? Angela Bauter owns SaveTheDateOriginals.com and runs here business from the domain. She spent some time answering my questions about the business and her domain.
Mike: Can you give a little background on Save the Date Originals?
Angela: Save the Date Originals is a graphic design a print business, run by me, Angela Bauter. I am a “solopenuer”. Given the scope of my website, customers do often assume that there are more people behind the business. While I do subcontract some of the work so that I can handle the volume, I really am the sole owner/employee.
I started this business while in college, back in 2004. My sister was in the process of planning her wedding. She told me about the “save the date” trend, and insisted that I help her with her wedding stationery. I ended up helping a few other friends with their wedding design projects, and, more than one said, “hey, you should charge for that”!
Starting up the business, step #1 was finding an appropriate domain name. This *decided* my business name. I myself wouldn’t take a online business seriously if they did not even have their own paid for domain and website. It is inexpensive to set up in the grand scheme of things. You definitely want your business name to match up well with your domain name. Only after my domain & business name were decided upon, did I register with the state and file my DBA.
Mike: How has owning the domain impacted your business?
Angela: Almost all of my daily traffic is customers coming straight from google after searching for “save the date”. I am listed on many wedding vendor directories, but rarely get traffic from them, comparatively. Most of my traffic is (in order) from google.com, referrals, forums/blogs, yahoo.com, and bing.com. Right after I started my business, of course I was not getting many referrals… Google rankings were key to getting the ball rolling.
Mike: Can you share the volume of traffic that your site receives?
Angela: About 267 unique visitors a day, on average. I use statcounter.com for my tracking.
Mike: What type of marketing have you tried for your site?
Angela: I have tried out google ads and facebook ads. Google ads start to get pricey if you want top positions. Facebook ads did actually get me a
few customers. Currently, though, I do not have any ads running. The traffic I am receiving from google is plenty for me.
Mike: Did you have another domain for your site before this one?
Angela: No. Though I did later snag savethedateoriginals.us and savethedateoriginals.net, both of which redirect to savethedateoriginals.com
Mike: Any advice for start ups, small business, or business of any size for that matter on choosing the right domain name?
Angela: Stick with something like your exact business name, so that customers can remember it easily enough. Otherwise, I would suggest focusing on your key product or service. Trendy names are always fun, but you really do want to focus on ranking well with keywords in search engines, and, with something that will tie in well to your business.
Mike: Do you think you would be willing to sell your domain at any point?
Angela: I probably would not sell my domain name; I plan on sticking with this business for a while, and the domain name is a big part of my business.
Mike: Any other information you’d like to share?
Angela: “If you build it, they will come” isn’t true. But if you pick a really good domain name, develop your site, and promote yourself, they might just start trickling in.
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cracklow/
