So you want to make money online. If you are here, then you must want to start an online business. The first thing anything online has to do is of course, have a web site. With out that your very limited. But what name should you pick? The first thing you need to consider is, “what are the key phrases people will use to find my site?” Why?

The domain name plays an important part in Search Engine rankings, which we will get into later. So if you plan to get any traffic by people searching for what you have to offer, then having Targeted keywords in your domain name can bump your site up very far if a person searches for them. So what are these keywords? Well, keywords are a very deep subject, and if you know nothing about them, you will be at a disadvantage. I will try to cover keywords in another post, maybe even another series since it’s so deep. For now, check a site like Wordpot.com and search for the key words you would use and it will show you what other people are looking for. Try to use some of the most popular search terms in your domain name. However, it is not always good to go for the top keywords, pick something with a decent amount of searches, but not the best. Why would you do this? Basically because the gurus know those are the best keywords so there will be heavier competition making it harder to get your foot in the door. Longer key phrases are the best way to go, but even some of those have a lot of competition. As I said, I could go on an on about keywords, more to come later. For now, use your best judgment.

You also may want to consider using some word(s) that brands your site as you, or your company, so that people know it from other sites using those keywords. However, try not to go over 3 to 5 words, any bigger and it may start to look like spam to other sites. It also becomes harder for people to remember at a glance, which could be important or not. For instance, this web site uses four keywords for it’s name (‘totally’ is an emotion word, yet another topic), free web site tools. I picked these keywords for many reasons: free is a good keyword because everyone like free stuff, web site tools is what this site is about. But I also get to target people looking for free web sites, site tools, free tools, free web tools, and a few more combinations, all of which get some traffic according to Wordpot.com. Like I said, Search Engines and SEO are another deep topic that I may dig into down the road.

Another thing you’ll need is a place to host your web site, along with registering your domain name. I suggest getting paid hosting and getting your own domain name. Free sub-domain hosting is great, but it has its drawbacks when it comes to certain marketing tactics and often are very restricted on features. There are plenty of cheap hosts to go with, however, cheap hosting can cause problem, and we can vouch for that. Our last host was down constantly, had problems and poor support, but we didn’t have a lot of money, it was very cheap hosting and we got our own domain name. Trust me, it’s worth a few more dollars for a better host. Personally, I recommend HostMonster. They are very affordable, have great tech support, and have the best features for the price. We use HostMonster and are very satisfied with they’re tech support expertise. And with unlimited databases and plenty of storage and bandwidth at such an affordable price, they are the best host we have worked with. We also have an affiliate link for HostMonster in the resources, so please use it. It doesn’t affect you and supports us and our goal.

Once you have that done, we are off to build a web site! Don’t worry, it not that hard and in the next post I’ll show you another free tool that will make it easy to setup and build a feature rich site that will make you money.