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One of the great things about working on the Internet is the ability to track promotions, ad campaigns, and market research through the use of domain names. Just develop a subfolder on your existing website, write copy regarding your recent promotion, add a buy button, register a domain name that fits that promotion and have it redirected to the subfolder. With a proper stats counter, you’ll be able to tell who visited that page by typing in that unique domain name.

Another advantage of domain name forwarding concerns people who make their living with affiliate programs. Affiliate programs allow companies to pay commissions to webmasters when a sale is made from a web address with the affiliate’s unique identification code. The problem with this is many of those affiliate web pages are long, complicated web addresses and the slightest mistake could mean lost sales. If the affiliate host agrees, the affiliate can purchase a domain name related to the product or service and redirect that domain name to his/her unique affiliate web page.

And let’s not forget the advantage of forwarding variations of your domain name to the home page so that you don’t lose traffic due to improper spellings or mistyped web addresses.

How To Forward Domain Names
Forwarding a domain name, often referred to as redirecting, is fairly easy to do. Once you buy your domain name from a domain name registrar, you’re given a unique password to keep track of your domain names and make any necessary changes to billing and the DNS servers. Just sign into your account, click on the link that says “url forwarding” (or similar variation), click on the domain name you want to forward, then type in the web page where you want the domain name to go. It’s that simple.

When the domain name is typed into an address bar, the domain name will automatically forward (or redirect) to the web page you specified in your account. The downside is that viewers will see your original web address instead of the domain name they typed in.

Masking Covers Original Web Page
If you don’t want the original website’s address to show up in the address bar, you can have it masked. What masking does is show the domain name instead of the original web page’s address. This is great if you only have a one page sales letter, but it becomes a problem when you have a mini-website for the purpose of this redirect. In other words, if the visitor refreshes a web page, other than the main page, he/she will be taken back to the page where the masked web address is supposed to redirect to. Another disadvantage is that if the visitor saves the website in his/her favorites file, the original web page will be saved, not the masked web address.

Time Frame For Transfer To Take Effect
Most forwards and masking options take anywhere from 24 hours to a week to travel through the Internet, so if you plan on using forward or masked domains for advertising purposes, make sure your set up your account a week before your advertising campaign goes live.

Cost Of Forwards, Redirects, And Masking
Depending on the domain name registrar you use, the cost of forwarding or masking your domain name can be anywhere from free to a few dollars per month.