How did I generate such an awesome review of my web site? Simple--online research. Online marketing and promotion is time consuming. You can spend several hours just submitting your url to search engines. If you’re going to devote all that energy, you’d better make sure you have a site that’s user friendly. After all once visitors have arrived, your first goal is to keep them there.

When I decided to build a web site to promote my novel “Rumors of War,” I researched other book sites. I found three main types--author driven, book driven and fan driven. Starting with Yahoo.com I found “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt among web pages at Simon & Schuster’s site. Same with Harry Potter series, I found J.K. Rowling’s books at Scholastic’s site.

The goal of my web site is to use Internet to help build an audience for my current and future books. Since I’m relatively unknown, readers aren’t going to come searching for me. The best way to discover new authors is to read their books.

While searching I noticed that movies are always promoted by title. That got me thinking, if I’m putting my book title in front of hundreds of pairs of eyes every day, then title should be my domain name. I purchased rumorsofwar.net.

Coming up with content was easy--cover image, plot summary, reviews, sample chapter, ordering information, and a page about author. I kept style and graphics simple. It’s a web site about a book. Readers are accustomed to black print on a white page, framed with an attractive cover. The banner and side bar are colorful, but same on every page so visitors know they’re still at my site while they’re bouncing around.

An example of cybersquatting would be if someone purchased domain name "mcdonalds.ws" and then proceeded to attempt to sell it back to McDonalds. It would also be considered a violation of law if purchaser put up a web site describing how bad McDonald's food was or commenting on service.

Cybersquatting was made illegal by passage of a federal law in 1999 known as Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. The law became necessary because numerous large companies were forced to pay large sums to buy their domain names from third parties. These companies included such notables as Panasonic, Fry's Electronics, Hertz and Avon.

How do you know if a company is a victim of cybersquatting? Type in a name that has been trademarked preceded by "www" and following by ".com", ".net" or ".org". If you get a valid web site which looks like it is related in some way to domain name, then there is no cybersquatting in effect (although this could be a simple trademark violation). However, if you get one of following results, then this could be a cybersquatter.

- Can't find server

- under construction

- page with no relationship to domain name

Of course there could be a reasonable explanation for each of these results, so they do not always mean there is cybersquatting occurring. It's a good idea to contact domain name owner before taking any legal action to find out what's going on.