Choosing Our Whatchamacallit’s… 🥴

In an earlier post I talked about some of the terms you will run across when you start your Online business. Don’t worry about knowing them all right off because you will learn as you go. Our next step in our journey was picking out our Whatchamacallit’s (No, it wasn’t a handful of candy bars 😉) That might have been an easier process.

The Whatchamacallit’s we are referring to, are the Basic Tools or vehicles that you will need when you start your business. Keep in mind that you will not need them right away, but in order to get your business functional, and have an “Online Presence” you will eventually have to settle on a few tools that you will use. Keep this in the back of your mind when working through your business setup process.

If you recall, we had Business Cards well before we had a Business. We also had some of our Whatchamacallit’s months before we needed or even used them. We should have waited and put them in place when we needed them, instead of having that monthly payment that we could have done without. Some of the tools that we wanted to try were already out of the trial period, before we even had a chance to use them.

When we first investigated our business name, we had a little experience in what a “Domain Name” was… Without getting too technical, think of it as a Permanent Name and Address for your mobile business. You can take it with you wherever you decide to go. This is where your customers will be able to find your business online, no matter if you decide to go on vacation, move across the country, or even halfway around the world. You can get as Fancy or as Plain as you would like. It can be something simple or something extremely complicated.

Let us give you an extreme example on both ends of the spectrum: llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk won the title of the longest website URL in the world by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002. The shortest domain name ever registered is “http://x.com”. It was originally registered in 1985 by http://X.com Corporation, which later became PayPal. (🤔Hmmm, I wonder who that one belongs to…)

Now, if we had to remember one of these, which one would it be? When you are “Branding” your company (the process of creating a distinct identity for a business in the minds of your target audience and the general population), you need to think about what your business does or sales, your customers, and the people visiting your site. Our suggestion is to pick a few names that you like, that would be easy for other people to remember, and start there. Write them down and have fun with it!

When we formed Harper Grace Solutions LLC., we Registered our Domain name for that Parent company as Harpergracesolutions.com. When we decided to start our Blog, so we could share and document our Journey, we decided on BlogHGS.com. They relate to each other, and we think they are somewhat easy to remember, even easier if you read the “About Us” page, on our Blog, that introduces you to our “WHY”.

There are many sites to purchase a domain from and you can search your different ideas to see if any of them are available. We have had Domains purchased through sites such as GoDaddy.com, Bluehost.com, and NameCheap.com. All of these companies have different options and prices. For convenience sake, we moved all of our domains to NameCheap.com and so far, we can’t complain about the service.

While you’re in the process of looking at Domains and Business names, we would suggest that you check with your State as well to make sure the Business name is available there also.

Other than a Name, some other Items that you will need will be an Autoresponder of some sort, and a tool to build your list building pages. Simply put, an Autoresponder is a program that can send emails to people that have agreed to join your list. You can set up a series of emails that can be sent out at predetermined scheduled times, send individual emails to people on your list whenever you would like, and even send Broadcast emails to your whole list at the same exact time. A couple of the autoresponders that we have used are  GetResponse.com and BuilderAll.com . We are presently using Builderall.com, but we are looking at a brand-new program that is called “Affiliate System”. We are currently testing its capabilities, ease of use, as well as its multitude of other functions. We are extremely excited about the “Affiliate System” because it is a brand-new Internet Profits tool. Currently it is not available to the Public, but we will let you know when it becomes available. One of the best parts of this program is that “YOU” can see the results First hand, because Our Blog is just one of the fantastic results! 😁

Harper Says: 

To end up where you want to go, you are going to need the right vehicles to get you there. Don’t let the process of choosing the right vehicles be overwhelming. There are a lot of choices, that’s for sure, but many have trial periods or what I like to refer to as “Test Drives”. Don’t be afraid to take it for a spin, kick the tires, or see how it drives… When we come across the ones that we get excited about, we will obviously let you know!