6 Ways to Motivate Your Employees and Create a Productive Workplace

Creating a productive workplace that will allow your employees to develop and shine should be on the top of your list when running a successful business. When you are hiring, never settle for anyone else but the brightest minds you can find out there. The question is, once you have employed them, how do you motivate them and stay engaged with every employee and, at the same time, get the best out of them? We all know that happy workers are productive workers, and luckily, if you want to motivate your employees, it only takes a little effort and not a lot of resources. Here are a couple of steps you can consider when you are motivating your employees and trying to create a productive workplace.

Better Communication

To your employees, you should be more than just a name on an email, because employers often overlook how important good communication is. If you are just a face they see occasionally, how will that motivate them to meet the goals you have set for them? So, you should communicate with your employees as frequently as you can, speak with them in person and get their feedback. That way, they can see that they are valued in your company and, if you talk to them in person, you will show them how much you appreciate all the hard work they are doing for you.

Give Them the Freedom to Experiment

If you give your employees the freedom to experiment, you will allow their creative juices to flow and that will help them create a balance between having fun and work. While your employees are experimenting, whether on their personal or work related project, it is important that they never slow down and always have their foot on the gas. You will need to have a lot of empathy because, if they manage to keep doing what is necessary and, at the same time, they can do what they want, you will create leaders. Treating your employees with security and freedom will enable them to thrive and stay brilliant.

Set an Example

You should not expect from your employees to behave in a certain manner or work hard if you don’t set an example for them. You need to show how excited you are to come to work every day, to achieve the goals you have set for your company, and your employees will notice that behavior and start feeling the same. They’ll work with you towards achieving your common goals. A good mood is like an infection, it spreads fast, especially when it comes to a workplace.

Add Some Responsibility to Their Role in Your Company

After some time, an employee can feel frustrated when doing the same day to day job, and this is why you should add some more responsibility to their role. You have to make them think outside the box and make them understand that they are different individuals. Do this in time – don’t wait for your employees to become careless and lazy. More responsibility will motivate them and drive them towards getting better results.

Give Them More Power

Your employees will feel important if they have a say when it comes to what they can do to improve your company. Ask them for their input, suggestions on how they can improve your company’s performance. Every employee has an idea on how they can make themselves more efficient, but are afraid to share them with you. Therefore, you have to ask them. If you really want your employees to feel empowered and motivated, you need to listen to what they have to say and implement it. Make sure to give them the authority to make their decisions, trust them so that, at a certain point, they will not need your approval.

Organize Social Gatherings

Social gatherings are a good way to entertain your employees and keep them motivated. It is important to let your staff wind down from time to time and organize a couple of social events. Your employees should bond outside the office, so consider taking them out to happy hours, sporting events and organizing holiday parties. Your employees will grow together and become closer to each other. Just make sure that you don’t decide on what is fun, but rather let your employees decide what they want to do.

Motivation is an important role in making your employees happy and productive. You should motivate your employees all the time and you will only experience positive feedback. So, if you want your business to be and stay successful and your employees happy and productive, implementing these six ways of motivating them will help you achieve that.

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/ivandseo/6-ways-to-motivate-your-employees-and-create-a-productive-workplace/

Content Markeing That Doesn’t Suck! Real Stories From Real People

Content Marketing is one of the largest marketing segments on the internet today. B2B is especially large in the content marketing space with 94% of business to business marketers saying they utilize content marketing in their approach. Why then are their so many people that are not content marketing and what is it causing them not to do something that seems so fruitful for those that use it.

Content Marketing is Time Intensive

Small Businesses seem to face the struggle and not have great answers for it. Normally small business owners are challenged with time due to the lack of streamlined systematic processes and that is the same in their content marketing efforts.

Data and Chart from: Search Engine Journal

While small businesses seem to have inabilities and lack of buy in for content marketing, the ones that do pick it up seem to flourish.

Yale Appliance Content Strategy

Yale Appliance  in Boston picked up on a content strategy that sent their website views and customer engagement through the roof. First Steve began “blogging” in 2007 but in 2011 began to understand more about his customers life or buying cycle. He began to focus on creating post that capture a prospect when they are in the decision making stage of the buying sales cycle. They started to provide critical reviews and side by side comparisons of competing brands. This information attracted the potential lookers and gained trust from them. This made it highly more likely that the purchase would be made at “Yale.”

Basically the blog post were designed to answer questions that customers asked their sales staff daily. Questions like:

• What is the best
• How does this compare to
• What Problems to avoid
• How do I maintain or service this

As a result, these blog post move the customers from shopping and asking to calling and buying. The results are in and they are great. His potential customers move through the buying sales funnel online and then actually call or visit ready to purchase.

A few of the other strategies combined with the above that have helped his content marketing really take off are:

• Free Guides
• Recipes – Chef Demonstration and then the Recipes are Online
• Videos – 140 located on his Youtube Channel which show off employees as specialist which helps push his companies expert profile on each appliance.

These approaches have shown off the expert position while embracing the customers themselves.

“We send lead nurturing (non-sales) emails to consumers who download our free guides.  The unsubscribe rate is less than a 1 percent and the click through averages 30 percent, so they must like them!” Sheinkopf says of Yale’s free guide and email success.

Traffic has skyrocketed from 40k visitors monthly to 150k monthly. Leads went from 800 to 4300 monthly. Revenue has spiked over 40 percent since 2009. Profitability is up way more than that because they were able to eliminate a lot of marketing expenses. Their consumers feel more confident in their purchases and the brands that Yale sales on a daily basis due to this sequence.

Here are some examples of their best posts:

Yale Insider

KitchenAid vs Jenn-Air Side-In Gas Ranges (Reviews/Ratings/Prices)

Best Small Bedroom and Living Room Paddle/Ceiling Fans

Home Appliance University – Refrigerators

When you look through the success of these campaigns you have to understand the time passing between 2009 to 2015. You have to also look at the amount of promotion needed in order to gain valuable links that push the articles to the top locally. Once that process is followed effectively then the snowball starts and is perpetual in growth. You just have to keep feeding the machine the content it needs.

Old World Inn – Content Marketing Through TripAdvisor

Old World Inn in Napa Valley California

The reviews and content marketing that this wonderful inn is doing has worked out tremendously for their rating and bookings. They focused on genuinely helpful information about their inn but more importantly they focused on planners visiting Trip Advisor and directing them to answers to questions such as the best time of year to visit the area and weather forecast.

The creation of the “Best Kept Secrets” of Napa help travelers dig into the surroundings better than a generic travel guide. Creating the perception  of “The Expert” and that they have inside knowledge on Napa have streamlined their bookings. They also take time to provide helpful guidance when booking events and activities for groups while they are staying at the inn.

Credibility within the travel industry is the final result from the content marketing the inn has produced. When the content started they just wanted to serve their target customers better. Now they are considered the go to for Napa information and booking events. Their website looks amazing and is filled with this great content as well. Customer bookings and 2nd stays are up across the board since the brand started their content campaign.

The Possibilities Are Endless When Content is Done Right

Now that you see the possibilities of outcomes and ideas for your business to start content marketing, let’s look at what it takes and how to achieve it. Looking over the previous examples we dive a bit deeper into how their content was produced and exactly what the steps are to creating these lasting campaigns.

Content Marketing Playbook – The Go To Steps For Content

1. Education and Buying Cycles

Start with your customer in mind. Answer the questions that they would want to know. Look at forums and think about what they ask you while they are on phone calls with you and your sales team. The real essence of content marketing is just education. You take a customer from interested maybe to results focused and ready to buy. You clear the doubts and conversations they have with themselves about the doubts and possibilities of failures that come up with any purchase. You clear the path with the content you create for the customer to engage with your brand. You position yourself as the expert that can help them. You position your impeccable service as a must and how it is really your brand that makes buying this item make sense and not just the item itself.

That is the true power in content marketing. The positioning that you can create when forming content and content paths. You focus on the life cycle of your customer and make sure that the right content hits them at the right time. You want to take the shoppers and engage them to a review and then to the highlighted benefits and then into the store or online meeting with sales people.

2. Entire Companies Get Behind the Content

Yale Appliance

The top of the organization has to be behind the content marketing and content driven strategy. This marketing strategy takes everyone as it hinges on the collaboration between management, service, and sales. In the case of Yale Appliance, the CEO Steve Sheinkopf, has contributed over 1600 articles himself.

3. Production of Content Must Be In House

When you are looking at the level of information that it takes to forge a successful content driven marketing campaign you realize that the information must come from in house.

Dominant Link SEO

Jason Roelke from Dominant Link SEO who manages content marketing campaigns at the firm said that “Content comes from the company themselves. We may interview and record sessions and then take it to our writers, but the real content has to come from the owner, the sales people, and the service staff. The details from content that are generic are just not of interest to their prospects. The real power in content marketing campaigns come from the details that position the brand and its people as the experts on that topic.”

Creation of content is simple. It seems hard and a lot of people have “stage fright” when it comes to placing “words on paper.” Jason and Dominant Link SEO taking the interviews and then creating the content make perfect sense for a lot of small businesses that are pressed for time.

4. Education Comes From Honest Non-Promotional Content

There is no need to promote yourself or your brand in your content. You should offer honest fact based information and position yourself as the expert that knows about all the information.

Checkstand Program

Anthony Bautista from Checkstand Program knows about the positioning of an expert. He said “We are experts. We just make sure other people have access to all the common pieces of information that we know from years of experience. Our competitors despise us and try to do underhanded internet tricks that never work for the long term while we continue to gain business because of our dedication to blogging, customers, and customer service. We grew this business because we were honest and hardworking. We know that grass roots is why we are Nationally known in the C Store Markets today.”

Checkstand Program and their honest first approach really shows off their business and showcases to potential customers why their brand can achieve the thing they do. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to educational content. Leave out all the promotions and just focus on talking to the customer and answering their questions.

5.Find the Big Questions and Don’t Avoid Them

There are certain questions that have many variables. They are tough in nature to answer. These are the perfect questions to go after and answer in your content.

Content Marketing with Content How

Content How – Content Marketing says this, “You have to maintain the mindset of a champion. Wins are long away. Loses and Failures are strung together often and bountiful. Just survive and continue. The real winners at content marketing are those that do just a few things really well and then tenaciously, like bulldogs, they latch on and don’t stop. I can count on one hand the number of blogs that consistently put out great content on a streamlined consistent fashion that are not successful. Sometimes winning is just consistently showing up waiting on others to fail and leave. Create Compelling Content that Showcases your ability to answer the big questions. Show that off, don’t hide from it.”

When you are looking at your Revenue goals and marketing strategy for 2016 make sure you look into content marketing. Understand what it takes to do it right. Get top down buy in. Create great content that comes from your customers and service staff. Find ways to promote that content in your circles. Enjoy the process and grow!

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/admin/content-markeing-that-doesnt-suck-real-stories-from-real-people/

Ecofying Your Business

Not everything in your job should necessarily be profit-oriented. Sure, staying solvent is not easy, and in order to do so, some sacrifices will have to be made, but you should never do so at the expense of your own ethical principles. Our planet is not only suffering, it is slowly dying, however the illness is not yet terminal. There is a cure, but for it to start working each and every one of us needs to work towards it. In this struggle, no effort is too insignificant to go unnoticed and you can start by making your business more eco-friendly, thus doing both yourself and your business a great favor.

Encouraging greener commute

As great Gandhi once said “be the change you want to see in the world.” Any great revolution in way of thought must first come from within and with it in mind, it might be time to introduce some changes. First of all, you can change your commute method and encourage your employees to do the same. Carpooling and the use of public transportation are far better for the environment than everyone going separately.

To make things even better, these changes are not just planet-friendly but wallet-friendly as well. However, for those who really want to make a difference, riding a bike or even walking to work are also great options. This way, one can help both their environment and their health at the same time. A genuine win-win scenario, if there ever was one.

Managing consumables

Now, the best thing about these eco-friendly changes is that most of them help save you substantial amounts of money on a regular basis. What our planet faces every day are pollution and resource shortage. Managing your consumables can make all the difference here. By simply switching from regular to recycled paper you can cut your expenses and help the planet at the same time. Also, you need to mind the type of ink cartridges that you are using. Some of them are greener than the others, but you can also improve your efforts by refilling them with ink on your own. Where there is a will, there is always a way.

Saving energy

Sometimes in order to save some money you need to invest something first. Same goes for the planet as well. Seeing how power bill, is one of your greatest monthly expenses, buying appliances that consume less electricity definitely sounds like a good idea. Think about this next time you go out to buy a printer or coffee maker. Finally, every bit helps and you can add a final touch to this energy saving endeavor by replacing your regular light bulbs with some LED ones. The saving you can make by introducing all of these changes is so great that any purchase is bound to pay off in the long run.

Educate and encourage your staff

In the end, regardless of how hard you try, you are just one person. However, this doesn’t mean that you should just give up, but that you should try to spread the word to others who are willing to listen. Try raising awareness among your employees of the importance of going green and ways of doing so. Also, it could help to create an award system for those members of your staff who invest the most effort into saving the planet.

As Roman poet Ovid once said, “Our children shall reap the fruits of our labors.” In other words our main goal should always be to leave this world better than it was when we got here. In the light of this worthy cause, everything else stands subordinate.

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/marcusjensen/ecofying-your-business/

Weigh Your Options: Choose the Best Payment Methods for Your Online Store

Entrepreneurs who are either just starting out or operating small businesses are wholly dependent on their cash flow. A big part of that is making sure that you get the payments from your customers as seamlessly, safely, and consistently as possible. Being able to guarantee quick and easy payment processing for all transactions is crucial to earning both steady income and the trust of your customers.

There are viable options you can consider for your online business–all of them having dependable practices, as well as various methods of security to ensure customers that their transactions are safe.

Being able to pick the best payment method for you may require a bit of mental gymnastics to work out all the details involved, including what type of company you are running and how you conduct your business.

If you are still confused about it, the following could help you choose by looking at the intricacies of various payment methods.

 

Credit Card and Debit Card

The most logical option for most people is payment through card due to convenience and having banks doing a lot of the busywork for you. It is said that businesses these days can never get by without being able to accept card payments as they have become ubiquitous all over the world.

In order to accept credit and debit card payments, it is recommended to use a merchant account from a service that acts as a middleman in processing card transactions, which ensures that the money is appropriately withdrawn from the right place through the right card. Upon confirming the transaction, the money can then transferred from the merchant account to the business’ regular bank account.

You can just forgo the use of a merchant account if you wish, but it may be better to avail of the security and convenience of having one. There are different kinds of merchant accounts for card payments, including retail merchant accounts, Internet merchant accounts, and mail or telephone order (MOTO) merchant accounts. The purpose of each is clearly stated through their names, and online businesses will most likely benefit from Internet merchant accounts.

Of course, making use of such a service is not free; monthly fees and transaction fees are included. However, if your business is to earn most of its revenue through credit and/or debit card payments, then it is recommended that you use one for your transactions.

 

Direct Deposit and Direct Debit

The direct deposit method requires a bit more work since customers transfer money directly from their own accounts to your business’ account through a bank deposit. As for direct debit, it is mostly the same as the former, but done through an automated electronic fund transfer. The customer must give a proof of payment, usually the receipt and/or date of transaction and transaction number, in order to complete a purchase.

These transactions do take 24 hours to clear and require you to give your business’ bank account details. It also means that you must consistently practice caution by keeping a record of references to every transaction so you can track them when needed. This is needed to protect your business from fraudulent transactions, which is likely through this payment method.

This option is good if most of your customer base is within your local physical area where you operate, which lets customers have the option of going to the bank to make their payments.

 

Online Payment Services

While credit and debit cards are convenient, not everybody can get them. That is why online payment services are regularly used to shop and transfer money online since anyone of legal age can register a free account for one. Services such as PayPal have become synonymous to online transactions, and they can go hand in hand with card payment options for online businesses both big and small.

In order to receive money from customers through an online payment service, you will most likely have to register a merchant account as opposed to a personal account. This is to prevent having your account frozen when the service detects multiple accounts sending money to you in quick succession, as well as to make use of additional features that may prove useful to your business.

 

Cheques and Money Orders

By now, this option has become rarer due to the prevalence of online payment methods. Cheques and money orders take time to send, receive, and process, which is not favorable for online businesses.

However, some customers may still prefer this payment option due to security and personal reasons. Similar to direct deposit, you have to exercise extra caution by making sure that all payments include references to easily identify the corresponding transaction.

Now that you have seen your options, which of these are you planning to use for your e-commerce site? Let us know in the comments section below.

 

 

 

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/twitter-easyvince/weigh-your-options-choose-the-best-payment-methods-for-your-online-store/

SHOULD COMPANIES MONITOR THEIR EMPLOYEES’ SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS?

Social media opens a window to interests, hobbies and personal life of employees. The only question is should employers pry into that window?

Modern employees live in a virtual online aquarium and there is a big possibility that the person browsing your Facebook profile is either your current or your future employer.

The number of people getting fired over posts in social media is pretty significant to consider keeping it nice and simple. You can understand employers on the one hand – it can be quite embarrassing if your worker is posting cruel jokes about his or her boss online. On the other hand it is against ethical behavior and basic moral principles. Let’s see if we can find a happy medium by looking through pros and cons of social media monitoring of employees.

Cons

I decided to start with cons as I am an employee myself, so I do have something to say from my point of view.

• Time-out. Every person needs a time out, even employers. Remember those times when you hated your boss for yelling at you for watching some YouTube video or checking your IM chats? This is the exact same situation. You may overgrown it, but your employees still need time-outs. And if they want to share something silly it is only their right. Face it, they have their own lives. I personally enjoy checking Facebook several times a day. It is my way of procrastination and I admit it. If I am forbidden to do so, I will simply find another way to procrastinate.
• Needless drama. There is a good saying: “What the eyes don’t see, the heart does not grieve over”. It comes as a surprise but your workers might not be your biggest fans. Sometimes they discuss their feelings in social media and there is no need to get upset as they do it in their free time and treat you nicely while at work. Seeing that employees don’t like you will only make you feel bad and destroy the spirit of your team. Once they get to know that there are being monitored they will change their behavior but they will find a way to discuss you in a more severe manner. It is better to focus on being a good and unbiased boss and not to look for people who write bad things about you. Being a boss always means to have some employees that don’t like. It is just the way it goes. Deal with it.

Pros

Sure thing there are pros, as well. Monitoring either potential or current employees can be quite beneficial for an employer. Here are some of the advantages of it.

• Recruitment tool. Monitoring social media accounts can be a great recruitment tool not only for job seekers but even for potential employees. CareerBuilder reported than as much as 39 % of employers search for information on potential candidates in social media. Moreover 41 % of workers post information about them drinking or doing drugs. Also, no one can deny that most job seekers lie during their interviews. And while you can turn a blind eye to some sort of lying, you cannot hire a police officer who belongs to some sort of a racist group. Surely, many people hide or delete inappropriate content from their social profiles. But still some people totally forget about it and you can check your candidates and see whether they are decent and suitable for your company.
• Increasing productivity. Some bosses monitor employees’ social media activity to increase the company’s productivity. There is a reason for it as some people would spend their entire day online and then demand promotion. If this is an easy job where people are paid hourly without any intention to help out the company, then additional keylogging tools can be also of use. The same way you put limits for kids, you can put limits for some employees and there is nothing wrong about it. In fact, many companies already do it and say that such measures for sure increase employees’ productivity.

So should we allow social media monitoring? I believe there are two sides of a medal. I know that no one is allowed to invade my personal privacy but I understand that an applicant with a drinking problem cannot be hired to drive kids to school every morning. So, there are definitely pros and cons and every employer, boss or manager should consider all of them. What do you think?

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/twitter-rachelfowlersf/should-companies-monitor-their-employees-social-media-accounts/

Top 10 Important Tips for Making a Jaw-dropping Poster Design

There’s a lot that goes into good poster design, although not a lot of people seem to understand how much it really takes. It does have that arts and crafts feel to it, but poster design is a science onto itself. It’s a big part of marketing for many, ranging from individuals and groups to even big companies who still understand the power of the poster on the wall in a public place. To create a good poster design that can draw people in, here are 10 important tips to go by.

 

Start with Good Ideas

It’s good to be creative and be filled with ideas because the concept is the foundation of what will become the finished product. Therefore, you have to build a good foundation in order for the rest of it to stand strong. By starting with an idea that’s already good to begin with, you’ll have something you can wrap your head around easily, rather than a bad idea that you have to justify and bend around to make it work.

All Information Should be Readable

This is a poster, not an abstract art piece. It still has to relay a good bit of information to audiences, so you have to make sure that you can put text on it. If it’s dark, make the text light, and vice versa. Also, have the text in colors that stand out without clashing with the rest of the colors on the poster, making it readable without making it tacky.

Make Good Use of Colors

Taking from the last tip, you have to make sure that the colors don’t clash. The overall look of the poster is such that a person should be able to tell its main color from far away. Then when that person gets closer, he can see the details of the poster. It should be both harmonious within itself and still be eye-catching from even far away.

Create Point of Focus

All elements of the poster must work in harmony. A great way to accomplish this is to have them all point towards a single focus. Perhaps it’s a person, an animal, an object, or a logo. Whatever it is, make sure that everything in the poster draws eyes towards that central element, and that should say everything about the poster as a whole.

Typography is Your Best Friend

As mentioned, the poster contains a good bit of text for relaying information like the date and venue for an event, a public service announcement, or so on. Typography isn’t just about making it readable, but also making it match the rest of the poster. If you use the wrong typeface, it can look tacky and distracting, the latter of which is not the right way to create a point of focus.

 Call-to-Action is Important

Most of the time, a poster is made to convince people to do something like attend an event, heed a warning, or remember a message. To hit home that purpose, create a call-to-action that talks directly to the person and makes him/her think about what you’re telling him/her to do. It need not overtake everything else on the poster, but at least make it pronounced enough to be noticed virtually immediately.

Be Consistent with Details

There’s nothing worse about a poster, or anything else in that matter, than it saying one thing, and then another thing. The information in the poster must be made consistent; they must compliment each other and not contrast at all. You must avoid confusion with the poster, so have other people proof whatever you’re about to put on the poster so you can be sure that everything is consistent with each other.

Think Symmetry

The human brain is attracted to symmetrical shapes and patterns, so take that face into advantage by having symmetry in your poster. A well-designed poster has symmetry somewhere on it that draws people to it like eye candy. If you’re able to make the background and the text symmetrical, that could do well in attracting viewers.

 Balance Type and Images

Of course, with both type and images in one poster, balance must be achieved with all visual elements. When something is off in the poster, whatever it may be, it can become distracting and take away from the main purpose of the poster itself. Therefore, it would be good to get second opinions from other people to see if they think it’s balanced as well.

Have Fun

Of course, this is the most important factor of them all. If you’re not having fun making the poster, it’s going to show on the finished product. People who are having fun create great work, so be sure to not let the seriousness of the endeavor get to you too much. Let it be a ball to work with so the finished product will reflect that joy as well.

 

Perhaps some may think that these tips are a bit vague and too broad, but that’s how it is when involving anything creative. It’s all up to the designers themselves to figure out what their optimal process is, but these tips are indeed some of the more commonly attributed factors that make for a good poster design. Practice and persistence takes care of the rest, and you’ll soon find yourself enjoying that process and churning out impressive designs.

 

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/twitter-easyvince/top-10-important-tips-for-making-a-jaw-dropping-poster-design/

The End of Dot Com?

A domain name has a significant impact on the branding process and the value of the internet domain. It is a chance to shine with customers, and grab their attention. Since the dawn of the Internet, people have been using TLDs like .net, .org, and .com. Websites with these extensions still form the majority of our search results, but lately there has been a surge of new generic top-level domains (TLDs). A bulk of smaller players can hardly afford a top-notch dot com address, or a solid domain name is simply not available.

The one and the many

In the early stages of the Internet, only one computer scientist used to oversee the state of online affairs, but something like that is unimaginable today. ICANN is a non-profit corporation with the governing purpose of coordinating the domain names on the internet. You can register a domain name through a web hosting provider or via an appropriate domain register. Unrestricted gTLD can be registered by anyone, while sponsored domains are acquired by organizations and private agencies.

It has become difficult to attain a good gTLD, while over 240 ccTLDs worldwide offer a wide array of options for two letter domains. As a result, ICANN has lately introduced hundreds of new gTLDs to the Internet, which has given rise to bidding wars for hot names. Not everyone can spend a fortune on the auction, and many people opt for other solutions.  There are numerous extensions that we do not even know about, so can we make good use of them? Is a dot com domain really necessary?

A name to conjure with

New domain names are not gaining any preference form Google, but this does not mean that they do not carry the weight in the real-world search engine marketing. Research shows that even Google AdWords tend to favor new gTLDs, which suggests they are more cost-effective in protecting the brand and enhancing the growth of business. But, in terms of conversions, the public seems to still favor the dot com domains. These extensions are easy to understand for users and the annual registration prices are usually lower than with the ccTLDs.

Although this points out to the tenacity of dot com, there are great examples of shunning this domain for something snazzier. One rising trend is the use of .io, a ccTLD for the Indian Ocean Territory. It seems that this domain extension has an irresistible nerd allure, and Google even started treating this extension as a generic one in search results.  That is why many internet “real estate” owners use TLDs like Domain.me to reap the benefits of SEO and chose the premium name that can live up to high expectations.

We are also witnessing emerging gTLDs like .xyz and keyword-rich extensions such as .photography.  The first one is seen as a combination of three letters that will bring an end to the supreme reign of dot-com sites. This has not occurred, as some search engines still push those old school gTLDs.  Although the wind of change is strong, it seems that the part of the digital landscape is resisting it and trying to preserve its topography.

Property sold

Domain name industry is not in the spotlight of the online community, but it is a foundation of the internet’s success. There is clear potential in new gTLDs, and they provide a plethora of exciting investment opportunities. Favoring dot com domains is just fine as long as it is possible to find the right name that separates you from the competition. This is becoming a serious challenge, and it seems that we are running out of good dot coms. The internet may seem infinite, but its real estate is far from it. This realization might not be the end of the dot com, but it may be a beginning of the end.

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/marcusjensen/the-end-of-dot-com/