In my last article I discussed how to find a niche topic to blog about.  It’s important that we find a niche to blog about before we create a blog.  Having a plan, even if it’s just an outline of a plan, will save tons of aggravation and ultimately set you apart from the thousands of others that are starting new blogs every day.

In this article, I’m going to discuss how to establish a domain name for your blog and also how to establish web hosting.  You’re probably thinking, why should I pay for a domain name and hosting when there are plenty of places where I can start a free blog?  Well, the answer is the difference between possibly earning pennies each day and earning several dollars each day. 

By owning your own blog, you have total control over it and you are not limited to which ad network or affiliate programs you can associate with your blog.  Owning your own blog can earn you much more money than you could ever earn on a shared blogging network, like blogger.com 

Choosing a domain name

Before I tell you how to choose a domain name, I want to suggest that you use Godaddy.com to purchase all your domain names. I have been using Godaddy.com for many years now and have never had a problem. Their dashboard is easy to navigate and I never worry about any of the ad on services they try to sell me because I do not host my domains with the same company. It’s like having too many eggs in one basket. I will also disclose that if you purchase a domain name through my affiliate link, I will earn a small commission that is paid out of the Godaddy.com side and not your side. Godaddy.com is offering domain names that start out at only .89 cents.

Since you have already selected a niche topic to blog about, it’s time to find a domain name that is fitting for your new blog. Let’s say you chose to blog about homemade candy recipes. Your next step would be to navigate over to the Godaddy.com site through this affiliate link and find their domain name selection tool. Type in, as one word, homemadecandyrecipes and hit enter.

Using the keyword phrase that you selected as your niche topic should tell you that the phrase already has a decent search volume. It only makes sense then to select a name people are already searching for. If you followed the steps above you would find that homemadecandyrecipes.com has already been taken and the Godaddy.com tool has given you plenty of suggestions that are similar. Don’t worry about that just yet. Open a new tab in your browser and navigate to homemadecandyrecipes.com and you will see that it is just a parked page and not being used. This is great because back on the Godaddy.com tool you will see that the .info domain name is available for only .89cents and so is the .us domain (which is mainly for American site) for only $7.99. There are plenty of domains available with the name we want.

The .com domain is of course the most popular of all Top Level Domains (TLD) but there are so many more that are no less valuable. Most 3 to 4 letter TLD’s (.net, .org, .info, .mobi, .biz etc…) are for general purpose use by anyone. Most 2 letter TLD’s (.uk, .eu, .in, .nz, .us, .de etc…) are country specific and generally used by individuals in those countries. There are a few TLD’s (.edu, .gov, .mil etc…) that are reserved for certain organizations which take a special application process to obtain. All TLD’s are useful because it opens many more opportunities to get the name you are seeking.

Set up a hosting account

I want to suggest that you consider using HostGator.com as the company to host your domains. Just as earlier, I want to disclose that if you choose to sign up with HostGator.com through my affiliate link then I will earn a small commission from HostGator.com that will not come from your side. If you desire, you may navigate to the HostGator.com site to host your domain name through this affiliate link.

You may be asking, why HostGator.com when it could be just as easy to set up a hosting account through Godaddy.com? It would be a legitimate question and the only answer I can give you is that it like I stated above, I don’t like to have all my eggs in one basket. If one service were to go down, I could always transfer my accounts to another, however if all my accounts were with the site that goes down I lose everything for the entire time the site is down. This isn’t so much a factor when you only have one site, I happen to have over a dozen sites and add 1 or 2 each month.

The ease of adding accounts is the main reason I selected HostGator.com. On that site, they allow the hosting of unlimited domains through the main account. That means I don’t have to set up a separate host account for every domain I purchase. You can see how valuable this is. I can purchase an .89 cent .info domain name from Godaddy.com for one year at a time and host the site on HostGator.com by changing the NameServers (I’ll discuss this in a later post) and pay a small monthly hosting fee. Currently, my hosting fee is only $7.99 a month. With this account, I can have hundreds or even thousands of domains hosted for only $7.99 a month.

Setting up an account with both HostGator.com and Godaddy.com is very easy. Each site gives very clear instructions on how to do it. To steal a phrase from GEICO, “It’s so easy a Caveman could do it.” The only thing you will need is a notebook to write down all your passwords and login information.

In the next part of this series I will discuss how to send your newly purchased domain name over to your newly hosted account on HostGator.com using the NameServers briefly mentioned above. I’ll discuss how to load the Wordpress script onto your new account, how to select a Wordpress theme for your new blog, where to get and how to use a free FTP account to upload items to your new domain and the types of thing you may opt to upload. (uploading through FTP is not a necessity with a blog thought it can come in handy when you want to add third party widgets or themes or change theme templates…) Whoa! Way over the head for this discussion…

FINDING A NICHE                                         ---------> Part 1 How to Start a Blog

GETTING STARTED WITH WORDPRESS    ---------> Part 3 How to Start a Blog