New Feature: Private Label Custom Domains

Last week I gave our premium publishers a few days' head start on a new capability to be announced this week. It being next week now, time to take the wraps off Private Label Custom Domains.

Custom domains are fully functional micro-sites from FeedBlitz that make life simpler for your subscribers by simplifying access to your newsletters and associated functionality online, and reinforce your branding via the domain itself and your custom template.

Incoming!

And a quick heads up here - if you haven't already heard from me about this, you will. Reason is that we've reserved domains for all our existing publishers, but these reservations all expire on August 10th. It's only fair and just that everyone has the chance to lock in their own brand names before they expire (and are available to all and sundry), even if they're not subscribing to this blog.

Simplify Access for your Subscribers

OK, so what do custom domains do? Well, they're URLs (here's one that's live right now: http://weathersnob.feedblitz.com/) that you define that map to your brand, site, publication and more. They can be set up with a variety of default actions, such as:

• Offering a subscription form for a specific publication;
• Displaying an online preview for a publication with a link to subscribe;
• A subscription form for all your online publications;
• Online subscriber preference centers for your publications.

By simply having a single domain that sets subscribers on the path to subscribing to your content using an easily remembered, consistently branded web address, you build on the trust they have in you as well as making signing up simpler. These custom domains are also great to include in email or IM signatures, for example, or to have added to your business cards.

Intelligent Design

All the pages on your custom domain are constructed and maintained for you by FeedBlitz automatically, saving you thousands over the equivalent cost for a web site developer to add similar functionality to an existing site.

Better yet, FeedBlitz will figure out the domains that fit best for you - and their default actions - automatically. They can be viewed at any time at www.feedblitz.com/f?pl_domains. Don't like what we picked? That's OK! You can define your own instead.

Secure Your Brand

One other benefit of a FeedBlitz custom domain is that it's yours: nobody else can take it while your account is in good standing and you're not violating any third party's copyright. You can protect your good name as well as making life simpler for your subscribers by reserving the newsletter domain that matches your brand, name or company.

If you're an advanced user, you can also modify your DNS to map a FeedBlitz custom domain to a subdomain on your own site via a CNAME record.

Just $9.99 per domain per year

FeedBlitz domains are available to any FeedBlitz account holder (not just premium publishers) for just $9.99 per domain per year. For well under a buck a month per domain you get branded pages, simplified subscriber access and brand security.

Go to the private label domains page now to see the reservations we've made on your behalf, and activate the ones you want before they expire or are taken by someone else. At the very least, go grab the one that maps most closely to your blog's name.

Managing Private Label Domains

As well as using the links above, you can always get to your custom domain page visa your Newsletter Center using the custom domain link or the "www" icon which has been there since last week.

So that's it for now. Those reservations will last until 11:59pm eastern on August 10th, which is fast approaching. Don't procrastinate! Get going!

UPDATE: FAQs on the new custom domains feature are now available.