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.