Did I Fuck Up?

[Guest FourAces]

No secret I and five hundred million other people have a blog. But I think I over-estimated the ability of visitors to grasp a name change.

My views have been down recently and I had taken several hours to study my stats. Its amazing all the statistics that can be captured. Anyway, one disturbing stat I found was each time I changed the blog name I lost visitors. And the guys who kept coming continued to use the older domain (which I have forwarded to the blog).

So it began with www.ricoreporthq.com then I thought ok maybe something more mainstream would be best and changed it to www.allmaleonline.com after a year of no major progress I came up with a semi clever name www.omgnsfw.com (Oh My God Not Safe For Work). But I guess the acronym just wasn't everybodys cup of tea. I spent thousands of dollars advertising the new name without the results I was seeking.

Since 1/3 of my visitors are still using the allmaleonline.com or the ricoreporthq.com domain to access the site and there has been no growth I'm thinking of switching back to one of these older domains .. as apparently they are easier to remember for the average surfer.

If you even have read this far lol what do you guys think? Change back to one of them? If so which one?

(note for those who been around a while www.ricoreporthq.com had nothing in common with the blogspot blog ricoreport. the ricoreporthq.com was strictly an adult gay porn site where the other was .. whatever.)

[Lucky]

OMGNSFW seems fine to me. Stick with it.

[caeron]

I'm a marketing guy, so here's my free .02.

Lots of people think that having the clever name, and that it has 'catchiness' is really important. It isn't. It helps, but the key thing in marketing is repetition. An average to crappy name or message that is frequently and consistently repeated is much better than a great name that isn't.

So my advice is to leave it alone with the current name, and just keep getting your name out.

Name changes are popular since they seem like the quick and easy fix, but as you've seen, usually you just end up losing the momentum you've already built.

[TotallyOz]

I have a few questions for you.

Do you forward all of the old names over to the new name?

What would be the benefit of starting a new name?

I do believe that a domain name is very important in the success of the website. Although you will get many domain names that are unimportant to the success of the site that usually has to do with a great deal of marketing and takes a webmaster a great deal of time to build up the traffic. A good name will often often put you at the top of Google very fast. So I've always believed that a good domain name is the first thing to consider when opening up a new website. If you start off with a good domain name, that you know will rise high in the Google ranking, you will end up spending less money on Google ad words. I know people that spend thousands of not hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to get high up in the Google rankings. If the domain name is the name of the keyword that you are looking to advance in the Google rankings, you get out of the gate faster than anyone else.

That being said I have been watching your blog for a long time. I like it. I think it looks nice and I think the flow is easy to read and very comfortable.

I know that I always use my bookmarks to find new websites. When websites change the URL of the website often times they lose traffic. Part of this is because people don't update the bookmarks in their browser. Part of it also is that every time you change a domain name and you stop working on that domain name you lose your ranking in Google. You need to keep the rankings in Google going high, and you need to keep people coming back to the site.

If you look at the original Hooboy website, you will see that the domain name was not a very good one. However, he was able to make a great deal of money off of the website because the traffic was there. Once he realized the value of having the right domain name he started by and other domain names. I mention this only to show that any URL can be a successful domain name. The right domain name, however, puts you ahead of everyone else in the race.

[lookin]

Not as knowledgeable as others, but that's never stopped me from kibitzing before, so, here goes.

When I find a site I enjoy, like this one, I bookmark it. After that, I don't care what the domain name is. Unless, I get redirected some weeks later and there's a new banner on top and the page looks a little different. If I like what I see, then I'll keep coming back. If I don't happen to like what I see that particular day, I'd figure somebody else bought the domain and the site's not as good any more. So I might not go back to that bookmark ever again. That might be why you lose some traffic with each name change.

If that's what's behind the lost traffic, I'd suggest not changing the name too much. Or, if you do decide to change the name, add something like (formerly allmaleonline.com) under the new name. Or you could find a tagline that always rides along with every name change. ("The Perv's Playground") is one suggestion, but that's just me.

To me, the current name seems targeted toward a younger audience than yours truly. I know what OMG means and I've learned what NSFW means, but I don't often hear them used among my fellow sixty-somethings, assuming you're trying to bring us in also. I think allmaleonline.com sounds like a really inclusive name that could build a strong identity while still allowing for future shifts in content and audience.

Wish I knew more about how the business works, as these are some fun things to think about.

[Guest FourAces]

Hey guys I do appreciate each of your replies and taking everything into consideration. Most likely I will stick with the current domain as its in place and about two thirds of my visitors do use it.

I agree Lookin that it tends to skew younger and that was unintentional. I actually rather have it reach a slightly older crowd. OZ as always thanks for your insight. I know marketing it so important caeron and your two cents is appreciated. Lucky what can I say lol, seriously thanks for the vote.