WholesaleCarvingSupply.com - Make Offer

FishCarvingIllustrated.com - Sold

DuckCarver.com- Make Offer

SongbirdCarver.com -Make Offer

BirdCarver.com - Make Offer

LureCarver.com - Make Offer

FishDecoyCarver.com - Make Offer

SpearFishingDecoys.com - Make Offer

SpearingDecoys.com - Make Offer

DarkhouseDecoys.com - Make Offer

ThroughTheIce.com - Make Offer

AntiqueFishDecoys.com - Make Offer

AusableRiverBoat.com - Sold

CrawfordPublishing - Website coming soon.

ArowanaCarver.com - Sold

CustomFishCarvings.com - Make Offer

KoiCarver.com - Website Coming Soon

KoiCarvings.com - Sold

CedarStripCanoePlans.com - Sold

Lowest-Hotel-Rates.com - Make Offer

Lowest-Airfare-Rates.com - Make Offer

Fish-Carving-Classes.com - Make Offer

GardenGlassWorks.com -Sold

 Notes on choosing a good domain for your website by Ed Walicki

User/Advertising Friendly Domain Name

If Uncle Frank wanted to register an easy to remember domain for his website selling fish carvings he would do well with  www.FranksFish.com.  Its easy to remember, common spelling (less chance for a spelling error) and relatively short, all good features in a domain name .  This domain applied to all of Uncle Franks advertising will help send people to his site for a closer look at what he has for sale.  The drawback is the domain name is not search engine friendly.  Since most search engines use domain names as a priority in a search, followed by META tags second and site content last high ranking on the searches will require some additional work.  Since the average web surfer who has never heard of old Uncle Frank would more than likely enter "fish carvings" in a search engine instead of "Franks Fish" Franks website would more than likely appear near the bottom of the search results.  Uncle Frank could write intensive HTML coding to boost his rating in a search for "fish carvings", but this takes time and money to keep pushing your name above the crowd. A crowd of web developers and promotional companies that do this all day for a living can keep you spending more time trying to stay in the top 100 than you ever spent carving.  

Search Engine Friendly Domain Names
Old Uncle Frank doesn't want to waste time he would have used carving to keep his site alive in the search engine databases so he decides to take another route.  Choose a domain name that will keep you near the surface all the time.  He sat down and made a list of search words he felt his prime customers would use to locate his product.  From that list some of the best words he felt were "fish carvings, Frank Smith, and custom carvings" so a domain name needed to be assembled using these words.  And, since many web developers argue whether a condensed domain is better than a hyphenated domain old Frank has to choose whether he is going to use www.customfishcarvingsbyFrankSmith.com or www.custom-fish-carvings-by-Frank-Smith.com.  Many people just register both and forget about the debate.  In my experience with search engines the hyphenated domain works much better.  Since the average surfer would not enter all the search keywords as one long word the odds of an exact match are very high in a condensed domain.  Search engines see the hyphen as a "space" between the words in the domain.  So a search for "fish carvings" or "Frank Smith" or "Fish Carvings by Frank Smith" would all catch the eye of a search engine to the hyphenated domain name.  And since an exact or partial domain name match in most cases scores higher than META tags and content words old Frank would appear high in the search for those keywords with no other work needed, consistently.  The major drawback is the domain is too hard to remember, too long and too easy to make a mistake spelling.  So pushing a long domain on business cards and advertising is a waste of space.

The best solution.....
Uncle Frank registers both www. FranksFish.com and www.Custom-Fish-Carvings-by-Frank-Smith.com.  He points them both to his website and has the best of both worlds. He advertises FranksFish.com on all his stationary and advertising and uses the long hyphenated domain to snag web surfers looking for a one-of-a-kind gift or a magazine looking to write an article on Frank Smiths hand carved fish, get the idea?.  Uncle Frank doesn't have the budget to advertise FranksFish.com world wide but a small investment of $35 a year in a hyphenated domain can attract traffic from places his advertising dollars have never been.  In my book money well spent.

As time goes by internet savvy Frank may come to realize his customers are using different keywords to locate his site.  If that happens he can purchase other domain names to use with the others or let the old ones expire and develop new ones to keep his product in front of his customers.  Choosing the perfect search engine domain is an ongoing process.  Done properly can reap huge results.

Tips for choosing the perfect domain....

• Keep it short, simple to remember, and easy to spell.
• Tell it to a few 8yr old kids and ask them to spell it, if they can most adults should be able to.  Many articles have been written on this.  The biggest problem with most domain names is misspelling.  People hear one thing and often spell another.  www.unclefranksfishcarvings.com would not be a easy domain for many to spell correctly the first time.  Keep this in mind.
• Do the words look good together?  Can you separate them in your head quickly?  I am sure you have seen those vanity auto license plates that read strange.  Example; "blewbyu"....blew by you.  Or one I saw the other day, "DV8ER", I think they want me to read it as "deviator" but I am not sure, don't do this to your customers in a domain name.  People should not have to study a domain name to unravel the meaning, it should stand out.
• Is it "search engine friendly"?  One of your domains should contain critical keywords used in a search to locate your site or product.  Many companies buy their competitors company name or product names in a domain name and point it to their website. 
• Mention it to a neighbor in conversation and a half hour later ask them if they remember it.  If they can, it would make a good primary domain name. 
• Since most people are use to looking things up on the web the same way they look telephone numbers up in the yellow pages give some thought as to where you would appear in the yellow pages.  Hand a phone book to a friend or neighbor and ask them..."based on what you know I do for a living, where would you turn to in the yellow pages to find my service?"  You would be surprised where some people would look for you and why.  I did this years ago and passed on several domain names I choose, for Fish Carver.  Too many people told me they would look for Ed Walicki under "Fish Carvers," so rather than fight the obvious I bought FishCarver.com.  Based on that experience it was no surprise to me Wildlife Artist Supply Company (WASCO) bought Taxidermy. net.  Why fight the obvious, your customers wont.