What to build? - Domain Names

Registering a domain name is simple and easy however there are a few unique tricks here to helping you find something better than average and not pay through the nose for the privilege.

Firstly there are literally thousands of domain names that get registered each and every single day.

Now, as we've discussed most people are lazy and don't get off their backsides and do anything with their newly aquired domain names which means that:

Thousands of domain names fail to get renewed on a daily basis.

Yep that's right. Just because a domain name is registered today does not mean that the owner intends to keep it for any length of time. More often than not what seemed like a good idea at the time turns into a forgotten about domain name that does not get renewed.

Now, there was a time when hundreds and hundreds of really good domain names would expire on a daily basis and fail to get re-registered but those days have long gone. Now we have armies of people armed to the teeth with the latest scripts geared up to grab a soon to expire name as soon as it drops. This is a big industry.

I'm not suggesting that you get involved in this but it may be worth your while getting a copy of available domains for a measly 10 quid and it will go to work looking up all of the popular available domain names in your niche. Far more preferable to keep typing in names to http://www.whois-search.com and they keep coming back as taken.

Also check out http://www.acorndomains.co.uk and http://www.sedo.co.uk

Once you've found that ideal name http://www.123reg.co.uk will register it for you and give it a temporary home until you get some webhosting space.

Dedicated servers are servers which are given over entirely to a select website or websites and the owner can usually choose between having this server managed on their behalf or actually managing it themselves.

Managing a server yourself requires unix or windows admin skills and should be steered well clear of and left to those who know what they are doing.

You are looking for space on a shared server for your first site. This means that you will be sharing the server space with other people and their sites.

The advantage of this is that it is very cheap. To host one domain name should cost no more than around £5 per month. The disadvantage is that you don't get any control over the server settings but for Adsense or affiliate sites this shouldn't be an issue. The only time you need control over server settings is when you need to make PHP or ASP scripts work with your server and we are nowhere near that advanced yet.

Alternatively you could buy a reseller hosting account. These are intended for people to resell hosting but in practical terms they are ideal for people who want to set up ten or more domains.

And once again we head off down the path of losing focus, creating extra work we don't need, learning technologies we don't need to learn and generally doing anything but making money. Stop.

Reseller accounts are a massive time consumer that if you are serious about making money you don't need. For each site you build simply get a shared hosting account and let the hosting company look after it. It will save you weeks of farting about trying to learn something that you don't need to learn and will get in the way of making money.

Don't listen to what others tell you about setting up reseller accounts and getting involved in learning stuff you don't need to learn.

Register one domain. Buy hosting for that one domain which should cost you less than a fiver a month. I'm not going to recommend any one particular company here for hosting as there are loads of them. Build that one site. Get it to the stage where it is making money. Repeat.

This should take you at least nine months whilst holding down a day job so there is no time for doing reseller accounts, learning PHP or ASP or anything else.

Just build your site.