Next step after choosing domain name is setting up web hosting. This article describes a process of how to get .com domain for free and how to create host account for your blog. After this article you’ll have your own domain on your hosting and you’ll be ready to start real blogging. I’ll recommend some services of other companies. I do this primarily because I’m using it and it’s the best way for me to host my blogs and sites.

What is a web host?

Web host (server in the other words) is like a computer provided by a hosting company. It stores your site and provide it to other people who are also connected through the internet.

Externally hosted blog

Basically you have two options to go with. One of them is externally hosted blog and the second one is self hosted blog. If you just want to get the feel of blogging you can think about 100% free services such as Blogger.com owned by Google.com. This service gives you everything you need for blogging. It gives you free domain name (subdomain- yourblogname.blogspot.com), hosting and blog software you can use to manage your posts. This solution is good to start, but it has several disadvantages. One of them is lack of professionalism. Your options are limited; you cannot customize your blog the way you want. You should know that you actually don’t own externally hosted blog and your provider can switch your blog off any time. So for being a real blogger you need something more.

Self hosted blog

Ideal way to start blogging is self hosted blog. All you have to do is to choose hosting provider and link your domain you got based on my previous post to your new host. I tried many web hosting but right now I’m using DreamHost.com for couple hundreds of my sites. This is unlimited hosting, so you can host as many domains as you want. You have unlimited space and on the top of it you can register 1 domain for free. Because I’m confident it’s the best web host for your blog, I’m offering you 10$ off the price of hosting! This special offer is only for BlogMentoring.com readers. You can use this unlimited hosting for other pages you have or you will create in the future.

Why did I choose DreamHost.com?

The reason is simplicity and sophisticate solution especially for bloggers. In upcoming post I’ll show you, how to install and start your blog in several seconds! If you order through this link, I’ll give you 10$ off for year hosting program, so you save money. Let’s have a look what you have to do to set up your hosting account properly.

How to set up hosting account in 9 steps?

1. Go on www.DreamHost.com and click on “Sign up Now” button. Select “Host Domain” option on sign up page.
2. This will move you to the next step. Now you can pre-pay your hosting monthly, yearly and even for longer. The longer period the cheaper it is per month. I strongly recommend 1 year payment. Things are changing fast and you don’t want to pay hosting 10 years from now even you are not using it.
3. You don’t need private server (don’t choose anything here).
4. You want to use Google Apps (about them later), nothing more.
5. In step 5 you can either register a new domain for free or if you already have a domain, just choose “I already own a domain, I just want to host it with you.“ option. Free domain registration is still later available.
6. In step 6 you have to fill some basic information about you.
7. In final step you can use our special Promo Code “BLOGMENTORING”. If you fill this in, you’ll get 10$ off the price, so it will actually save you money. Check DreamHost’s Terms of Service and push “Proceed to Payment” button.
8. On “Submit Payment” page you will see summary of your order. You can pay by PayPal, Google Checkout or credit card.
9. After successful payment you will receive an email from DreamHost with all information you need. There will be your password too. After that you can login with your email address and password.

Link your domain to your hosting

If you registered domain during sign-up process on DreamHost.com, everything should be ready to use. You don’t have to link or set-up anything.

If want to use domain name that is registered somewhere else, go to Domains -> Manage domains in Dreamhost Panel (administration center). You’ll see there “Add New Domain” button. Click on it, fill your domain name and enter security text in the box and finally click “Fully host this domain now!”. After some time a successful page should appear with instruction how to set nameservers. These servers enable to show content of your blog after you write blog’s domain name into some internet browser. They connects domain and web host. Go to website of your domain registrant and find administration center. Change nameservers there to NS1.DREAMHOST.COM, NS2.DREAMHOST.COM and NS3.DREAMHOST.COM. After 24-48 hours everything should be set-up.

This whole process can take about 5 minutes. Next time I’ll tell you how to install and setup your blog in several seconds with DreamHost.

Read my DreamHost review.

In this post will be discussing valuable techniques, that will help us to choose the best domain name for your blog. After you made decision about what niche to write about, another step is choosing a domain name. Let’s take a look at it.

First thing you have to do is to brainstorm about domain name. Search for keywords people search and are related to your topic, use your creativity. Take some time for completing this step- Sometimes it is a long way to think of a great domain name. After you  write a long list of words, ideas and keywords, you can continue.

1. Where to register a domain name

There are many different companies that register domains. Some of them are cheap and ready to help. In the post about hosting your blog you can find a way how to get your domain for free with DreamHost.com web hosting. Instead of this special offer I use GoDaddy.com. It has a choice of all types of domains you can think of, great administration, support and low prices. If you take some time, you can find many promo codes almost for every domain type and save money. If you want to try it my way, go on GoDaddy.com and register your domain name. You can get there also a good hosting that is integrated in your administration system, which saves you a time. But let’s talk about hosting your blog later.

2. Generic versus brand name domains

Do you want to have your blog on pizza.com or pizzamaster.com, pizzachef.com or yourcompanyname.com? Question is not as much about your wants, it’s primarily about money. Domain name pizza.com was sold for 2,605,000 USD on April 2008. If you want to start a blog about pizza recipes, making own pizza etc. you probably don’t want to spend that much money on buying domain name, especially if you just got started. Many blogs succeeded because they used memorable brand. If you look on the list of 100 most popular blogs you can see many of bloggers chose brand name domains (i.e. Mashable! or Gizmodo). Another reason for choosing brand name is the fact that most good generic domains are already taken and it’s usually hard to find good generic names related to your niche. Good strategy that works for me is to pick a generic keyword (”blog” in my case) and add some catchy word to it (add “mentoring”).

3. What is SEO domain?

SEO domain means special domain name that contains popular keywords applicable for your industry. If you discover a keyword that people search, you can try to register it as a domain name (i.e. yourkeyword.com). Because domain names of high searched keywords are usually taken, you can try to mix several keywords together (keywordkeyword.com) or use hyphen between them. Advantage of SEO domain name is definitely in the competition with other sites in search engines (like Google or Yahoo). Search engines think your site is related to the topic more than other domains and you have greater chance of displaying higher in the search results. Disadvantage can be that people cannot remember and you are forced to get visitor’s attention (or convince him to buy a product) on the first time they come to your site.

4. Long or short domain?

Domain name should be relatively short. Once again, if you have money for it, you can buy great and short domain name related to your niche. But for beginners I’ll just recommend to pick some name under 15 characters. Domain name should be easy to memorize. You don’t want to use more than 3 words in one domain name. The permitted characters are: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789-

5. Can I use hyphen in the domain name?

You can, but it’s not optimal. Better and more valuable have always been domain names without hyphens. To prevent someone else will become a parasite on your idea, you can register both hyphen and original name (in case of domain name consisting from 2 or more names). If your blog start to be popular and you only have a name with hyphen, someone else will probably register non-hyphen version and earn money from your traffic. Great example is www.entrepreneursjourney.com vs. www.entrepreneurs-journey.com.

6. Com, org, net or other domain name?

Most people stick with .com domains for sites written in English. If you build your blog on .com domain, your project will probably have bigger credibility than .info or .biz blogs. If you plan something bigger you should register other versions of your domain name (like com, org, net and maybe even more). For those who would like to expand on other markets or write in other languages, register also other TLD (top-level domain) domain.

7. Can I use digits?

I don’t recommend using them unless it’s going to be a name of a year like 2009. Be careful about O and the number 0 (zero). Average visitor has no chance to figure out whether it’s a number or a letter.

8. My, The, plural version of domain name

If you are still didn’t succeed with finding a good domains, you can try to add My, The, e, i or Best in front of the keyword you head for. If it doesn’t work you might try to add s (plural) of  last noun in the name.

9. Is it legal to use my domain?

Check out laws and rules of your country and find out what domain name you cannot choose. You cannot use any registered trademark in your domain name.

10. Other advices

• If you are planning to register your blog to free directories, you can consider to start your domain name with the 1 or A. Many directories sort names based on alphabet.
• Your domain name should not be easily confused, create own brand.
• Choose domain that is hard to misspell.
• Use simple and plain English

That’s it for today. Keep in mind it takes some time to choose good domain name. It’s really important step in creating your own blog. Of course you can say there is no need to register own domain. But these days purchasing domain is affordable for everyone (you pay just about 10$/year) and without own domain you’ll struggle and won’t earn confidence of visitors.

In the post about hosting I’ll show you how to register own domain name for free.

If you already know why to start blogging, first thing on your way is to pick the right niche for your site. In this post I’ll describe some important steps you have to follow before you decide what to write about. For those who don’t want to read the whole article I’ll just name the headlines from this post to summarize it:

Brainstorm what you are interested in and good at, choose the best niches you brainstormed and consider traffic potentional, competition on the market and making money potential.

1. Brainstorming- What are you interested in?

First step I recommend is brainstorming. For those who don’t know what brainstorming is, you can look on Wikipedia or just keep reading. In fact, it’s really simple. All you have to do is to grab a paper and a pencil, and write down topics you are interested in. After several minutes sort a list of your passions give to the best items on the list priorities (use numbers 1 to 10).

My unsorted list:

• Computer
• Software
• Internet browsers
• Photoshop
• Dreamweaver
• Windows operation system and its features
• Music programs (editing, recording)
• Internet
• Blogging
• Affiliate marketing
• Managing web pages
• Monetizing sites
• Getting traffic
• Forums
• Selling staff online
• Gadgets
• New technologies and products
• New gadgets on the market
• Music
• Playing saxophone
• Listening jazz and famous jazz players
• Music improvisation
• Learning how to play on music instruments (methods, courses)
• Travelling
• Around Europe
• Famous cities, pure nature, tramping
• Around USA
• National parks, American culture, living in US

My sorted list I’m interested in:

1. Blogging
2. Affiliate marketing
3. Monetizing sites
4. Playing saxophone
5. Music improvisation
6. Travelling around Europe
7. Travelling around USA
8. Gadgets
9. Dreamweaver
10. Selling staff online

2. Brainstorming- What are you good at?

Do the same things again, but now brainstorm about topics you do well and you are good at. First make a net of topics, sort them and give them priorities. You will see many items from your previous list will appear here. For me it’s almost the same, so I’ll just show my sorted list.
My sorted list of things I do well (or a lot):

1. Monetizing sites
2. Affiliate marketing
3. Blogging
4. Travelling around Europe
5. Playing saxophone
6. Selling staff online
7. Windows operation system and its features
8. Music improvisation

3. Choose the best niches

After this you can congratulate to yourself, because just finished the first and very important step. Now you have to put these two sorted lists together and pick up maybe 3-5 best topics you’d like to focus on.

My choice:

• Blogging
• Affiliate Marketing
• Monetizing sites
• Saxophone
• Traveling

Good question can then cross your mind: “Is the topic popular and is it going to be popular in next several years?” . In order to get an answer, you can simply google some keywords related to your topics and check out number of results founded by the search engine. If there are a lot of sites- good for you.

Keywords:

• Blog- 2,900,000,000 results
• Blogging- 149,000,000 results
• Affiliate marketing- 19,200,000 results
• Monetization- 21,300,000 results
• Saxophone- 11,300,000 results
• Travel- 976,000,000 results

4. Traffic potential

One thing that goes usually together with popularity is traffic potential. You have to be sure people want to read (watch or listen) what you write about. You should always find a niche that will solve someone other’s problem or (and) will help people who struggle with something. You can check search volume in Google Adwords administration. It’s called Keyword Tool and it tells you how much and what are people trying to find.

5. Competition

Competition of your niche is also important. If so many people already run a web site about your topic, it’ll be harder to succeed. In my case there is a big competition in “Blogging” niche. But after all I decided to face it, because I’m sure I can succeed. Maybe it will take longer time, but I hope I’ll find patience for that.

6. Making money potential

Next step is potential of making money. If you are interested in making money from your blog, this step is solid for you. First of all you have to use your common sense and think if people buy something you describe or write about on your blog. It can be either product or service. Then you can go on Google and search your keyword. On the right site you’ll see Sponsored Links. This is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisement that is paid by companies and webmasters. If you see some ads displaying here, you are on the right track. If you cannot see any Sponsored links, there can be two reasons for that. One of them is the fact that the word is too general. If not, you’ll struggle to earn some money with this topic because you will not have anything to sell or promote. You can do the same research on Yahoo.

Some people think it good to see no sponsored links because there is place for you to get a high traffic for pennies. That’s right, but if you want to make money out of that and no one advertise in this topic, you won’t earn much. If you want to do more for your research, you can look on ClickBank products, things selling on eBay and into Amazon store. If you find something you can promote or sell, there is some money making potential. But let’s talk about that later.

Keyword competition on Google:

• Blog- 6 ads
• How to blog- 2 ads
• Affiliate marketing- 8 ads
• Monetization- 0 ads
• Saxophone- 2 ads
• Music lessons- 5 ads
• Travel- 8 ads

As you can see keywords “How to blog” and “Blog” didn’t show so many Sponsored Links. If you thing (like me) your keywords have bigger commercial potential than it seems from previous results and you have access to Google AdWords, you can use Traffic Estimator Tool and type in your keywords. You’ll see average cost per click (CPC). The higher cost the better. For me it looks good:

Average cost per click in Google AdWords:

• Affiliate marketing- $2.98 - $4.03
• Blog- $1.60 - $2.40
• How to blog- $1.90 - $2.85
• Monetization- $1.68 - $2.18
• Music lessons- $1.13 - $1.46
• Saxophone- $1.00 - $1.27
• Travel- $1.78 - $2.36

7. Specialization

Today I’m going to finish with my last advice for today. You have to specialize! If people enter your blog, they are probably looking for something. How would you feel if you found information about blogging, music lessons, traveling around USA and cooking together on one web site? I would be confused and leave the site pretty soon. Pick something you want to write about and stick with it. Only exception is personal blog about your life where people go because they want to read all information about you. Disadvantage of this type of blog is hard monetization (to make money).

That’s all. Keep in mind that my way of doing this isn’t the only way. Maybe you know about better system or you’ll find something else that works too. If you do, you’re welcome to post a comment below this post about how you do it. Next time I’ll help you to pick a right domain name and we will continue with setting up a successful blog.

I received this question several times. Why should I have a blog? In fact there is no easy answer for that. There are some possibilities why you should blog:

• You want to find other people who are interested in the same thing and interact with them.
• You want to create something on the internet, backup interesting ideas.
• You want to write about your life, because you are creative and want to express.
• You want to help other people, to entertain them.
• You want to make more money.
• You know that being professional is about communication with other experts on your field.
• It forces you to do your homework, to focus on topic. When you write about it there is bigger chance of actually realizing it.
• You want to practice language skills.
• You want to test if you are able to blog.
• You want to change the way you are living.

As you see everyone can find many reasons why to blog. You can decide by yourself or someone (something) can decide for you. On this blog I will help you through my articles with setting up blog, choosing a domain name, hosting your blog, managing your posts, building useful content, focusing and improving, earning money with your blog, getting traffic, communicating with visitors and other bloggers and much more.

There is one advice for early bloggers:  Do everything with a great effort, focus on what you are doing, set up your goals and reach them. You have to blog fully, not just to keep goodwill.

Some other good posts about Why should you blog?

• Do you need some reasons why to blog?
• Why Blog
• Top Ten Reasons Why You Should (not) Blog
• Why to blog? What difference does blogging make?

Next time we will discuss choosing a niche…

For past couple years I have been interested in expanding my online activities worldwide. Big challenge for me became a language. Because I’m from Czech Republic (Europe) and English is not my first language, first thing I had to do was to decide, how I’m going to learn it. For those who don’t know, it’s really hard to expand on English market without knowing at least couple words in English. After years at school, regular and online courses I realized that the only way how to speak English is to go abroad.

I used High School Exchange program CIEE and left to California for 10 month. Thanks to all people who helped me to enjoy my stay several miles away from Sacramento I got back home with a lot of experiences about how the life out of Europe looks like and how people in America live.

My English improved dramatically and the next big step towards understanding and speaking English fluently is this blog. This way I want to improve even more.

Even I don’t have much experience on English market, I know a lot about local market in Europe. By this time I sold a lot of websites, ran an internet store and then successfully sold it. Today I’m having more than 200 web projects that earn me money and give useful information for users. I’m using affiliate programs of different companies, Google AdSense, selling and buying backlinks, trading with whole websites and much more. What I don’t like on my projects is fact they are not in English.

Because I know a lot about blogging, I decided to build up my new project that is finally in English. I’m sure many things I know work worldwide. I want to help people who wish to have their own blog. After I cover basic topics for beginners I’d like to go deeper and write about some great ways how to monetize blog, how to make money, how to became a part of blogging community, how to set up successful blog, that will bring to users content they want to read and listen.

Have a great time here, you are welcome to subscribe to RSS feed and comment my future posts.