My webmistress, Virginia Lawrence at Cognitext, alerted me yesterday to the fact that someone has developed a website using my website address only misspelled. What?
Yes, they are capitalizing on my typing errors. Her team immediately went to work searching for instances of www.matiljapress.com (my website address without the second “i.â€) Here is my correct website address:
http://www.matilijapress.com
Perhaps there are people out there using your misspellings. Have you ever attempted to type in your website address only to land at an unfamiliar site with a domain name similar to yours? It could be that someone is capitalizing on your mistakes, too. How? Evidently, he (or she) has ads on the site and somehow gets paid for each click on the site or on the ads.
I chose Matilija Press for my publishing company name in 1983 when I produced my first self-published book, The Ojai Valley, An Illustrated History. I chose it because it’s an interesting name and it’s familiar to anyone who lives in or visits Ojai (California). It’s a Chumash (American Indian) word and it graces a main street in our city, our junior high school, an ancient canyon and river in the backcountry and is included in several business names in town.
I’ve admitted to audiences in recent years, that I should have changed my company name when I started producing books outside of the local realm. Matilija is hard for most people to say, it’s difficult to spell and it’s tricky to type (my fingers often stumble over the letters).
If you’re considering a company and/or domain name that is equally difficult to spell—if you find yourself sometimes transposing letters in this title, for example—you might rethink it. You might find other people taking away your business because of a missing or transposed letter.
At least I have a fairly simple personal name. When people type in Patricia Fry while doing an internet search, they will find me at my website, MatilijaPress.com. Have you searched yourself lately? It’s fun and it’s informative. You learn much about the promotion you’ve been doing related to your book or service. When I type in my name at Google, I get 438,000 hits. I receive 2,700 for my book title, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book.
http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html
So we spent the day yesterday repairing the misspelled links to my site and my blog in hopes of steering people who want to visit us in the right direction. And we apologize for any inconvenience to those of you who tried to visit and were denied access because of that silly missing “i.â€
This week, let’s all strive for excellence and perfection in our choices, our typing, our communication, our writing and our promotional efforts. Contact me at PLFry620@yahoo.com. I’d love to meet you.