Section 1 - From A to Z of setting up a website and profiting

Hi there everyone,

People are always asking me "How can I make money online?" and I can't really respond because there are so many ways. But I will try to help with some basic starter steps :) One of the easiest ways is to just start blogging about something you like and the traffic will eventually come in. But I'll get to that :)

My next few posts will help you from thinking of a domain to making money with your website.

I'm going to break this up into a few posts so that you don't get overwhelmed with the amount of information that will be going into this. You'll be able to skip ahead or back up to wherever you want in these next few posts with links I'll be posting in the bottom.

Section 1:

Domain Registration

• Domain registrars
• Brandable Domains
• Paying for the domain

A domain registrar is what you'll be dealing with at first. You need a domain and that's what they do :D

Domain Registrars

• Godaddy
• Namecheap

I normally use GoDaddy because that's what I started out using. I hate their hosting, but their domain registrar is pretty straight forward so if this is your first time, you'll be ok :)

You'll need a domain that is brandable

• Your domain will need to be easily remembered, why? Because after you're done branding it, people will just type your domain into the address bar to find you. A brandable domain is typically short and sweet. I try to use no more than 2 words in my domain, 1 made up word if I'm trying to start a world wide brand. If you choose to go with 2 words in your domain, try to get a keyword in there so people instantly know what your website is about. Back in the day if you had your keyword in the domain it helped a lot with search engine rankings but that's not as helpful now.

Paying for the domain

• When you're buying your domain through whatever registrar you choose, be sure to get domain privacy for an extra $5 to $10 per year. This will protect your privacy just in case someone does a whois search on your domain. Your public email will not show up and that's always a nice thing to fight spam :D If you're registering the domain under a business name, then you might not want the privacy protection.

• When you're checking out you'll be asked if you want hosting and an email for you new domain. Avoid these like the damn plague if you're going through godaddy lol. You can pay $5 to godaddy for each email you set up or you can pay $5 for a shared hosting account through a different company and set up unlimited emails. Which do you think is better? lol

• Be sure to just pay for 1 year at check out. Sometimes GoDaddy is set for 2 to 5 years but you can change that pretty easily. Just pay year to year until you think the website is going to be a huge success, then upgrade and safe a few bucks.

Thanks,

• Razzy