DazzlinDonna » How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas

How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas - Part Four

In the first three parts of this series, I introduced the concept that any of you can make a living online, working from home in your pajamas. Part two of the series presented you with a task to come up with the WHAT - in other words, WHAT was going to be the topic of your online venture? Hopefully, by now you’ve decided upon your main topic, and you are ready to begin the process. (If you’re not ready, that’s ok, you can always come back later to refresh your memory on the steps you need to take).

Before you can earn your first nickel, you have some things to do behind the scenes. In order to put this plan together, you are going to need a domain name and a web site. Today’s lesson will focus just on finding and purchasing a domain name. (This is also known as “registering” a domain name).

A domain name, for those unfamiliar with the lingo, is the basic address of your web site. For example, dazzlindonna.com is the domain name of this blog.

If you’ve never purchased a domain name, ordered a hosting plan, or set up a website before, you may want to consider buying a set of tutorial videos that will walk you through the process step-by-step. This set is relatively cheap at $15, and may be useful for people who are visually-oriented. Otherwise, just skip this step and move on.

I recommend purchasing your domain name at www.GoDaddy.com . I’ve used GoDaddy for years and use it for a lot of domains. You can certainly begin your search for the perfect domain name right there at GoDaddy, but you may want to search using DomainsBot instead. It can be very useful for coming up with ideas for domain names, and once you’ve found the right one, you can then register it at GoDaddy. (If you want more details on DomainsBot, I’ve reviewed the site here).

The domain name you choose is completely up to you, but I would strongly suggest several things:

Get a .com name, rather than a .net, .org, or any other variation.
Get the shortest, most easily memorable domain you can find.
Try to make the domain name keyword-rich. What does that mean? Well, let’s say you’ve decided to create a site all about flying kites, because that’s what you love to do, and you know everything there is to know about kite-flying. Do your best to get a domain name such as flykites.com, kite-flying.com, etc. Those domain names have the actual words (keywords) in them that people might search for if they were looking for such a site. Having a domain name with those words in it (keyword-rich) will make it more likely that visitors will find your site, and remember the name once they do.

Once you’ve found the perfect domain name, register it at GoDaddy. If you can afford to register it for an extended period of time, do so. Not only do you save a little money by registering for multiple years, but you also let the world know that you are serious about being in business long-term. (Search engines like Google like to see that). However, if you can only afford the $8.95 for a domain name for one year, that’s ok too.

Below are some screen shots of a typical GoDaddy domain name registration process. I’ve occasionally drawn a big red circle around certain areas of the screen shots so that you can easily see what I’m referring to.

This is a partial view of the GoDaddy home page. You can type in the domain name you’ve chosen in either of those search boxes. Assuming it is available for purchase (no one else already owns it), you can register for an account so that you can buy it.

Create new account
This is a a partial view of the new account creation screen.

Once you’ve successfully registered a new account, you are ready to purchase the domain name.

Notice the red circle I drew around “Quick checkout”. You WANT to check this so that you aren’t bombarded with lots of “offers” from GoDaddy for things you don’t want or need at this point. If you miss this step, and you are presented with lots of additional options of things to buy, ignore them. All you want right now is the domain name.

I don’t recommend letting GoDaddy host your site. It is always better to have your domain registered with one company, and the site hosted with another. That way, no one company holds the fate of your entire business in their hands. We’ll discuss hosting options in the next lesson.

Checkout
Finally, you’re able to pay for the domain name and make it your own! You’ll notice that you have several possible methods of payment, with one of those being PayPal. I only mention this because you’ll find that owning a PayPal account will come in handy many times over the course of your business, both for paying for things, as well as for easily receiving money. If you don’t have one yet, get one. You don’t need to do this right now, but put it on your to-do list for sometime later.

Once you’ve paid GoDaddy, you’re the proud owner of a brand new domain name! Congratulations. Your new venture has truly begun, however there’s more to do. You can move on to the next step in the process.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

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(from Smash Mouth. "AllStar" Astro Lounge. Interscope Records, 1999.)

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