Registering a domain name can be a daunting first step for first timers. Keeping a few things in mind when deciding on the name, and domain extension can make all the difference when you’re trying to get started in a business to make money from home.

Here are my favorite domain registrars:

Domaincheap.com - Simply the best.  Very low priced .com’s and .net’s and excellent customer service.  Next to no time between service enquiries and even their hosting packages are well organised for the business minded.

Godaddy.com – Voted the best for providing every service associated with running a website.  A little longer on the turnaround for service inquiries but just as good value. Consider buying your domains here, but hosting them on a server who’s service is tailored towards business when your traffic has grown.  Great place to start with all the essentials.

Selecting the domain name is one of the reasons you’ll be doing keyword research in the first place.  Ask yourself what’s the common phrase or keywords used in your niche field? (I’m assuming you’ve done your keyword research already! If not, go and do it now!)

Selecting a .com is essential to get the most “respect” from Google and the other search engines, not to mention real live visitors.  It just makes more sense to get a .com domain.

Use your best keywords in the domain name.

If your main keywords are: make money, how to make money fast, how to make money now, make money today etc… then your common phrase is “make money”.  The idea is to attempt to get a domain that’s got this main keyword in it.  If not, something very similar.

Some examples are:

www.howtomakemoneyonline.com

www.makemoneyonlineeasily.com

www.makeeasymoneynow.com

As a general rule, shorter is better. If you cannot get the exact phrase you’re after, use a “-” to break up the words, but only a last resort.  It’s better to add another word than it is to use a “-”.

Use the bulk keyword registration tool on Godaddy.com to search up to 500 possible keywords at a time.  Take your time, and get one that’s just right for your angle.  It needs to strike something memorable in the minds of the visitors to your site.

A few ways to engineer some unique names are to add prefixes and suffixes to your words. (try Google search)

I found some good examples using online dictionaries and thesauruses as well as scrabble dictionaries too!

Another good idea is to use a term you can add page descriptions to, or descriptive sub domain names to.  eg, www.howto.com/ride-a-bike.html or www.ride-a-bike.theeasyway.com (sub domain)

The best idea is to get creative, think like your market/customers and have some fun.  You’ll be able to make money from home in no time!

OK, so I like to take notes – Here are some very detailed notes I took while doing a course online (I hope I’m not giving away any trade secrets here!)

Follow them exactly, and make sure to do them in order (I’ll add some time saving tips a bit later when I get time!  – does that make ANY sense?)

So here it is…

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(SAVE YOUR FILES OFTEN!)

Keyword research:

1. Go to amazon.com
2. Chose a department
3. chose a sub category
4. Look for brand names etc
5. Go to Google keyword tool
6. enter broad match keyword
7. hide columns – advertiser competition – Approx search volume and Local search volume
8. Show ‘estimated avg CPC” column
9. change broad match type to: EXACT
10. sort by “approx avg search volume”
11. export to excel spreadsheet
12. add column “POTENTIAL” (cell D1)
13. enter formula: =B2*0.25*C2*0.4*0.05 in cell d2 (This means… 25% of the CPC times how many searches for the phrase times estimation of traffic from 1st page [40%] times about 5% click through rate on site)
14. copy down through the entire list
15. sort by potential (highlight all fields, click Data>Sort>By Column D>Descending)
16. add heaps of keywords to the list (repeat above process using as many related keywords you can find on amazon or think of using your brain)
17. sort again when reached 5000 keywords (might take an hour?)
18. delete any that earn less than $50/m potential

Part 2 – Prepare to Check Competition By Searching Google

(excel spreadsheet column headings A1: SEARCH A2: KEYWORD A3: OUTPUT URL)

1. Grab another excel spreadsheet and enter this data in to the left column A2: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=

2. Leave column B Blank for now

3. Enter this data into column C2: =IF(B2=”",”",CONCATENATE(“<a href=”"”,A2,SUBSTITUTE($B2,” “,”+”),”"”>”,B2,”</a><br>”)

4. SAVE IT SOMEWHERE SAFE!

5. Go and download the firefox addon called “Linkey” from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/425

6. Go and download firefox addon called: “SEO For Firefox” from: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html

7. Adjust settings on SEO for Firefox to “Show pagerank automatically” with a delay of 1-2 seconds (less demand on google and less likely to get banned!)

How To use it:

1. Enter in all your keywords that have potential earnings above $50/month into column B (and watch the url’s code come out in column C)

2. Copy column C into a Notepad file and save it as .html extension to your desktop (or somewhere you’ll remember)

3. Open it

4. Use mouse to highlight approx 100 of the links (select less if you have a slower internet connection)

5. Right click your mouse and choose Linkey>Open Selected Links In Tabs

6. Go get a cup of tea while you wait for the data to load

7. Highlight the keywords that meet the following criteria:
- Top 4 results with pr3 or less
- OK with pr4 ONLY if EXACT keyword is NOT in title
- we never go after keywords that have ranked sites with pr5+
(NOTE: once I got to the sites with less than $100 potential, I only took sites with competition of less than pr3 – No point working too hard!)

The resulting keywords are getting enough traffic, and have few enough competition for you to rank highly with the least amount of effort.

Now that you’ve done all that… here’s one I prepaired earlier   (look honestly, you’re better off doing it yourself at least once so you know what it’s all about) DOWNLOAD KEYWORD URL GENERATOR

In my opinion, keyword (market) research is the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of setting up a website or business.  Think about this: if you don’t know what your market wants, how are you going to give it to them?