dot.com versus dot.co.uk
Now I am in a bit of a predicament (perplexed or just not thinking straight) trying to decide where I should be concentrating my efforts?
I have built and developed my website as a dot.com but I do own the same domain name as a dot.co.uk
My initial thoughts were that more people were likely to visit a dot.com website than any other. I suppose I have also been trying to cater for customers here in the UK (where I live) but wanted to benefit from a much bigger (predominantly USA) market. I am promoting physical products that will need shipping.
Amazon.co.uk affiliation is fine and as a UK citizen I will earn real cash (£) commissions if I ever do make that elusive first sale! With Amazon.com, however, they won't actually pay me but give me credits/Amazon vouchers to spend with them.
I've got a few other affiliation partners both UK and US based and I suppose I just wanted to know if anyone else has had the same thoughts or perceived problems? My head is telling me that, the wider audience I can reach, the more likely I am to make sales. Or am I over-thinking and making this much more complex than necessary?
As always any and all observations welcome :0)
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Thank you all for your comments. It is interesting to consider that audiences can be very different and what their reaction might be to content when viewed in different parts of the world. I am planning my next campaign to be a more generic one (I've been really concentrating on the Halloween market for the last couple of weeks) so hopefully will appeal equally well worldwide. Cheers :0) Jan
Good question - interesting answers. I just assumed .com so it's interesting to hear what others have to say.
The majority of affiliate programs don't require you to localise, Amazon being the exception. You can follow Dom's excellent training https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/using-the-amazon-link-localizer to resolve this issue across multiple Amazon country-based affiliate programs. Regional domains such as co.uk work extremely well with localised search engines such as http://www.google.co.uk/ncr if the business is truly local, ie. a UK based emergency plumbing services, etc. You can also use regional domains to redirect to language subdomains, ie. us.fotolia.com (USA) de.fotolia.com (Germany) etc. :) Rich.
That's really fab Rich. Would you be more inclined to keep going with the dot.com then? I have been getting 50/50 traffic from both the UK and US (yes yipee I have had some people coming to the website). My niche isn't at all localised so it can appeal worldwide. I suppose that a lot of the Amazon product list is available to customers every where too. Thanks again :0)
Yes. I'd always recommend the generic .com or .org unless a product or service is genuinely geographically specific. :) Rich.
Yes that's what my head's telling me but my website looks a bit messy with links showing prices in $ and £.
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In my view on all technical issues @RICH comments are like God's will. I would follow him blindly.