Okay, so here we are at step 2. It’s taken a while, but no matter, let’s get on with it.
You’ve done your keyword research and you’ve decided that ‘blue widgets’ is a nice, profitable keyword with competition that isn’t too stiff. Now you need to purchase a domain. There are many places to do this, such as GoDaddy, but in my opinion there’s no one stand-out option. Decide who you’re going to go with and find out if www.bluewidgets.com is available. If not, try www.bluewidgets.net. If that fails, try www.thebluewidgetguide.com. Keep going until you find one that’s available and contains your keyword (this will help get indexed by Google).
You have your domain, now you need somewhere to host it (assuming you haven’t gone with a Domian+Hosting deal, which is fine). My personal choice for hosting is HostGator (which is where this site is hosted), for various reasons. They’re affordable and allow unlimited domains on your account, which will be handy if you plan on developing a stable of sites (as you should). Once you’ve signed up with someone, follow their instructions to point your domain at their nameservers (if none of this makes sense, don’t worry. Just read the instructions on your hosting account’s control panel.
Last thing to do for now – install WordPress on your domain. WordPress is a free website content management system that is flexible and has excellent support from the WordPress community. Also, it has a large number of themes available for you to install including several optimised for Google (both for search ranking and placing ads). Most themes are free and will do you perfectly well, or you can look at many which cost a few dollars. I’ve never seen the need to pay for a theme (go to www.courtneytuttle.com for a great selection of free themes). Once again, the instructions for installation can be found in your hosting account – with HostGator it’s simply a matter of Finding the Fantastico scripts under Software/Services, clicking a few links and you’re good to go. Before I leave this topic, there are options other than WordPress, such as Drupal and Joomla (heavy-duty content management systems, both free, both with many customisation options, but for a beginner probably too many). At this point you may feel overwhelmed by choice, so just go with WordPress. It won’t cost you a penny and it will do everything you need.
Now, you’re almost ready to launch your on-line business. Type your domain into a browser and you should see the WordPress generic start page (“Just Another WordPress Blog”). Log in to the admin page and you’re ready to start adding content. Which is the subject of Step 3. Have a look at The Post Service for more information on starting an online business.
Have a look at the Step 1 in this series
Or have a look at another article on making easy money online
