Naming Your Site
If you haven't already picked a name for your web site, try to select a name that helps to tell your story. Good names, at least with a .com
suffix, are hard to find these days. It's worth working hard to find the right name.
The Cult of Personality
Life writ large with the cult of personality might well describe the times we live in. Paris Hilton, an heiress with an
apparently vacuous personality, has a television show, and is famous, because (and not despite) of that vacuous
personality. I think the reality is that Paris is a great deal smarter than she seemsalthough another moral you can
certainly draw from the Paris Hilton success story is that sex sells.
My point is that people, particularly celebrities, get attention these days. If you have celebrity, have access to
celebrities, or have ideas about how to create celebrity, I say: "Go for it! Milk it!" And don't forget to mention your web
site.
It's reasonable that people should be interested in people. People are interesting. As the poet Alexander Pope said a
long time ago, "The proper study of mankind is man." (If Pope had included both genders, we moderns could surely go
along with this.)
It's really very simple. Getting web site traffic requires publicity. Publicity is best generated using stories about people,
particularly interesting or notorious people. If your web site has an interesting story about people, let others know about
it (perhaps using a press release). Your people story will draw traffic.
Ideally,
a site name, as I mentioned, should tell, or evoke, the story of your site and be memorable. Consider these classics:
Amazon: the world's greatest river meets the world's largest inventory.
eBay: I don't know why this one works, but it does.
Google: a very big number fits with the very large quantity of information Google indexes.
Naming Your Site
