Buying A Domain Name

I've often been asked, "How do I buy a website name (Domain name)?" Well, first of all, a website name is called a "domain name." And the process is pretty simple.

My advice is that you buy your domain name from a primary domain name registry, such as Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com).

Why?

Network Solutions is a bit more expensive, but by buying it there you can use any content management system to build your website, whereas with other secondary registry sites you have to use that registry's services. This is not an exclusive scenario as you can extricate the domain name, but it is very difficult to do so. You want to buy it from a service whose web builder services is an option, not a requirement.

Personally, I always use Network Solutions as their customer service is "A+," and I always develop my websites using SquareSpace (www.squarespace.com). SquareSpace also has excellent customer service, excellent tutorials and an easy to use interface. If you are a developer, you can also declare yourself as such and get additional support.

The following is a list of steps that you can take to buy your domain name and develop your website:

1. You have to decide on what you are going to name your website. This is critical to the success of your marketing efforts. The following advice is worth its weight in gold in terms of the success of your effort, and what you should pay attention to when naming your site:
1. choose a short name (no hyphens unless grammatically correct)
2. easy to spell and memorable
3. easy to pronounce and understand
4. relevant to the product type or service
5. "keyword friendly"
6. easy to perform search engine optimization
7. make sure that you use the correct extension (.com, .biz, .gov, .org, .edu, . . . etc)
8. check your name legally to ensure that no one else "owns" it but hasn't bought the domain name for it yet, i.e. they have the copyright or trademark legally declared
2. Once you have your domain name, you have to see if it is available. Generally, at this point, most .com names are already taken, so you have to be creative. A friend of mine and I were going to start a "writing consulting business."  We thought and thought about what we would call it, and we knew about the eight above attributes. We looked and looked on Network Solutions to see what we could obtain, and after many attempts, we ended up with:

http://www.writeforyou.club

New Extensions:

1. Bearing in mind that we were limited, we had to go with an alternate extension (.club). Because the Internet is getting so crowded, and the market has bought so many names that you have to think about alternate extensions.
2. Originally there were a handful of extensions for domain names, such as .com, .biz, .info, .edu, .net, .gov and .org. And those were followed up with many more extensions, including .club. For a complete list of extensions go to Network Solutions to see what is available.

Developing Your Website: Your next step is to create your website and there are three different ways that you can do this.

1. Hire someone to do this for you
2. Choose a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress or SquareSpace, and learn their systems
3. Or, finally, go to a drag and drop function such as Wix, Weebly or Yola to name a few. 

You must figure this one out on your own and you can contact me for additional advice or guidance.

Developing Your Content

Your next step is to develop your content. To do that you need to answer these questions:

• Can you write?

1. If not, you'll have to hire someone to do that, preferably with a background in content strategy.
   
2. If you can write, think of your website like a research paper, start with an outline. You can then break down the content in manageable pages.
3. When you are putting information on a page you need to follow Princeton Professor' George Miller's 7 + or - 2's research so that you don't underwhelm or overwhelm your readers. If you don't know about this research, read about it in the above link, it will change the way you think about cognitive psychology.
4. Once you figure out your content, you have to look at your design elements. When I first started designing websites --- I had no idea what I was doing. So, I did what I always do, I looked for a book. Eventually, I found Robin Williams' (the designer, not the actor) book: "The Non-designers Design Book.
   
   And the rest was history. This book is in its fourth printing and it can make you into a great designer --- overnight.
5. In her book, Williams initially teaches you about contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity, or CRAP. CRAP is an anachronism for those four design elements to help you think about them. To learn more about these elements go to see what Garr Reynolds, presentation guru says about them.
6. Once you have the writing and the design set, you have to begin to start your marketing work. First, for search engine optimization (SEO), you have to make a list of keywords that represents the tone, structure, and content of your site.
7. SEO is initially a complicated process, but once you understand its process, you will constantly be able to address changes in your optimization process. This is an ongoing process, and should always be a part of your weekly process.
8. I can't explain SEO in this blog entry but there are three resources that I can have you research and check, which will help you immensely.

1. Lynda.com
2. Youtube.com
3. Wikipedia.com

Marketing Efforts

1. Once you have the "keywords" settled, you need to work on your marketing efforts. So, what do you need to do? Social Media marketing:

1. Your options are to go out and create an online presence at least 5 basic applications:
1. FaceBook
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. Pinterest
5. inkedIn
2. I like to use Facebook, Twitter and Linked in to just write a quick teaser sentence like: "Do you need to hire a content strategist?" or "Do you understand "net neutrality?"  
3. From there you can get more creative using Instagram and Pinterest by using imagery. 
4. Of course, if you wanted to hire someone to help you with this you could also do that, but I am going to be doing a future blog on social media marketing, so hang tight.

Adwords

Google offers a paid service called Google AdWords, which is an advertising service. It is where you pay to display advertising copy to web users. Google AdWords' is based partly on cookies and on keywords which you can determine based on what you think your target audience will use to make a search.

Measuring Your Results

1. Once you have all of the above initiated you can begin to statistically measure your results, and determine where you are obtaining inquiries.
2. You can use Google to determine your following, particularly if you are using Google Blogger.
3. If you are using Blogger, there are statistical elements built right into the app. (see above)

Adsense

1. Once you begin to understand your metrics, you can begin to use them to determine your marketing and help further monetize your results through Adsense.
2. Further work monetizing your website, product, or blog by associating it with Amazon as an associate website.

I would really appreciate gaining feedback from you on any aspect of the above. Tell me where you would like to see more information. Thanks!