One week later my children’s novel, “Carly’s Ghost” arrived from publisher several months earlier than I expected. Overnight I had two books to promote and only one web site. My focus on book title was practical in theory but could turn out to be expensive in practice. I certainly couldn’t afford to publish a new web site every time I have a book released.

For help in solving this dilemma, I called Scott Forler at Prairie Web, my web hosting service. Impressed with amount of traffic at my newly debuted site, he recognized I’d hit on something positive with my design. Building on that initial bump, we put together a plan to cover not only release of “Carly’s Ghost” but all future releases. I purchased domain name for title, carlysghost.net. Next I replaced home page with a splash page featuring cover images of both books, accessible from both urls: rumorsofwar.net and carlysghost.net. Visitors can click on either book cover, or text instructions.

Each book has its own home page. The two books are together on splash page. The only other link between their pages is at “About author” page. Each book’s pages carry banner designed for that particular book and cover image. But I kept side bars same color and used same basic framework for both books’ pages. Again to let visitors know they’re still at my site while they’re clicking about.

For future releases, instead of publishing a new web site, all I have to do is publish new book’s cover image on splash page, and add a set of web pages.

An attractive web site and terrific reviews definitely keeps visitors there. To make sales you want them to bookmark your site so they’ll return. The way I do that is by updating, sometimes as often as once a week; adding reviews, sites that feature my books, posting articles, and other news about my books. Visitors quickly recognize fresh information. Put emphasis on enjoyment of your visitors, and they’ll keep coming back. That’s most effective way to make sales.

- The domain name registrants intention was to profit from your domain name in bad faith

- Your trademark was in effect and widely known at time domain name was registered

- The domain name is identical to your trademark

- And you have actually registered trademark

How do you know there is a bad faith intent? Well, there is probably no bad faith intent if one of following is true:

- domain name is same as person's name or nickname.

- They are actually selling or intend on selling something on their web site

- Does web site owner actually have a legitimate use of domain name? This would be, for example, true for a company named "McDonalds Plumbing". They would have a legitimate reason for owning "McDonalds" domain name.

Some clues that cybersquatting is occurring include:

- The domain name owner has put up a web site which in some way harms your company. For example, if you had somehow purchased "AOL.ORG" and created a web site about how AOL provided terrible service, you are cybersquatting.

- If domain name owner never legitimately used domain name and simply offered to sell it to you, he is cybersquatting. If a person buys up a lot of names and has sold them over and over, there is a pattern of cybersquatting.

- If domain name is same as a very famous trademark, then it has a greater likelihood of being considered cybersquatting.

What can happen if someone is found guilty of cybersquatting is they can be ordered to hand over domain name. In addition, if domain was purchased after 1999, they can be ordered to pay monetary damages.